Star Wars Campaigns-Managing a Great Campaign vs. True to Canon Spirit

[Mal Malenkirk]

One thing that is fun is to to redo the Star Wars saga, replacing the main canon characters by the PCs.

I don't mean playing Skywalker, Solo and Leia. I mean pretend that they never existed.

That doesn't mean you run them through the scripts of the last three movies. Beside the fact that it's too short for a campaign, several pieces won't fit.

No, you just take the basic plot; there is an Evil Empire with a sinister right hand man. They oppress the galaxy. They are currently building a doomsday weapon. You also have a well established cast of secondary characters. Just use them.

Let the Players create whatever PCs they wish and then see how you can work this out.

One of the PCs is an imperial about to defect? Then he's the one who is in possession of the Death Star's blue prints. Heck, he used to work there. He gets help from a golden hearted Wookie pilot who does guided tour of the Galaxy's most beautiful destination for jaded tourist. One of his customer is a jaded son/daughter of a rich industrialist whose uncanny ability to anticipate everyone's action turn out to be more than great people skill. Together they will smuggle the plans to the Rebel alliance and start a journey that will lead them accross the galaxy and toward a collision course with the emperor.

Sounds fun, no?

 

[Corinth]

I had a guy rip off TPM and mix in a Chiss invasion in a time about 1000 years before the Tales of the Jedi stuff went down. Chiss w/ a Dark Jedi cult backing them up made for a lot of SW action, and I got to play the Young Obi-Wan character: Jann-Gore Eire (and yes, that's meant to be a joke).

Of course, now that there's a chance, I have to run the sequel: rip off AOTC, bring back the Chiss and reveal the Sith behind it all.

 

[WayneLigon]

I set my campaign during the Rise of the Empire era, about ten years before the Battle of Yavin. Since we don't know exactly when Annakin and the Emperor destroy the Jedi, there was some 'wobble' in using Jedi or other Force adepts.

At this point, they haven't gotten to the point of hunting down every last survivor. There are maybe about 5-6 Jedi in hiding on various worlds, plus there are a few Force-Adept traditions that have not been destroyed or corrupted.

In the campaign, we had a Scoundrel, a Scout (my PC/NPC, since we all switched out running the same campaign), a force-adept/Jedi and a Force-Adept/Soldier. The soldier was a member of a mercenary order that had 'monks', special Force Adept soldiers who emphasized the physical aspects of the Force (battlemind, force push, etc). The FA/Jedi was a kid frozen in carbonite by his evil master when he would not turn to the Dark Side along with the other students; he was frozen about five years before Episode One. By the time the campaign started, his former master was the Inquisitor General, whose secret mission was to hunt down and kill the remaining Force users. Unbeknownst to him, he was also slated for death by Vader, as he was powerful enough to be a possible threat.

There were a LOT more Dark Jedi and corrupted Force Adepts in the game.

The 'Grand Design' of the first part of the campaign was this: the heroes would encounter the very earliest parts of the Rebellion, in it's infancy. The New Order is just starting to flex it's iron grip on the Outer Rim territories. The first game, the planet they were on was 'occupied for the good of the people', and the 'corrupt tyranny' of the ruling council was replaced by an Imperial Govenor. The person commanding the 'liberation force' was Tarkin

A major theme of the campaign was the 'growing darkness'. At the point the game is set, almost no-one outside the most isolated Outer Rim planets thinks that the Emperor is anything but a good man who had to step in and take the reigns of power in order to restore peace after the devestating holocaust of the Clone Wars. (Which, of course, he started so this would come about). Gradually, the PC's began to uncover the atrocities that were being tested on the planets no-one ever went to or cared about. The anti-alien rhetoric was just beginning. They began to see patterns. They had a big leg up in that the Jedi PC could tell them about the Sith legends, and so they eventually were able to figure out that Vader was a Sith Lord, which meant the Emperor was his Master.

Finally after many adventures, they were contacted by an agent of an agent of Senator Bail Organa and were eventually brought closer to his inner circle. They even got to deal with the 8-year-old Leia and Winter. In one of the very last episodes we did (roughly two game years have passed at this time), they finally were in the presence of Darth Vader, briefly (they were in a crowd that Tarkin was addressing, and Vader was standing beside him). By this time, my PC has a couple levels in Force Adept and has just started his Jedi training under the other PC. Vader rolls a '1' on his See Force skill, giving him something like an 18, while I manage to make a 22+ with Force Stealth, I think (rolled a '20'). Whew!

Generally, we would use 'major players' very, very rarely. Maybe once about every three sessions we'd /hear/ a 'familiar name', and meetings were even rarer.

One major way to get the Jedi character some advice and training was that he stole an ancient Jedi Holocron (and destroyed the even more ancient Sith holocron) from the palace of the Inquisitor when the other PC's set him free. This gave him a way to train in skills, learn how to construct his lightsaber, etc.

 

[National Acrobat]

All good advice, thanks for the responses. I have a pretty good group of 5 characters, who are really good role-players, quick on their feet and who all have great senses of humor. That being said, they are also very good at problem solving and when push-comes-to-shove, taking care of the situation. Also, due to cosmic karma, they have an incredible knack of inadvertantly causing catastrophic snafu's on a regular basis.

The Group

Jedi Consular 4
Jedi Guardian 4
Noble1/Soldier3
Scoundrel 4
Scout 4

They are all open minded and are pretty cool with the idea that certain actions of theirs could lead to some story line changes. I think at least initially, I will keep them away from the Tatooine incident with the Tantive IV and the Death Star thing, as those are 2 major events. Other than that, the sky is the limit. I have 2 jedi, so I need a jedi master.

The Noble is from Alderaan and actually his father knew Bail Organa. The Noble character's father was arrested by Vader on some trumped up charges and executed.

The campaign is currently about 12 months from the Battle of Yavin and the party is currently finishing up a survey mission to Yavin and helping to establish the new base. The main NPC advisor to the group is on Dantooine negotiating with the leaders there to keep the evacuation of the rebel base a secret.

 

[National Acrobat]

The one thing that I forgot to mention was the OOC humor. That and one of the characters is involved with a lady from Alderaan and he keeps thinking of ways to get her to move.

2 Things that the scoundrel wants to do OOC that are funny are:

Sell land on Alderaan cheap to off worlders and to have a Celebrity Picture Signing Day with Captain Needa.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I always say to heck with canon in my SW games. The latest incarnation that combines D&D, OA, Four Color to Fantasy, Diablo 2, and Star Wars has a lot changed from standard SW canon.

First off is that Maul is not dead, but is instead leading the Sith Inquisition that is routing out all jedi, mages, sorcerers, and psions in the galaxy.

Count Dooku is on the run from the Empire after a failed assassination attempt on the Emperor to take control of the Empire. He is now in charge of a mercantile alliance in the Outer Rim.

Darth Vader is in charge of the entire Imperial forces, but he is focused more on finding the strange youth that saved Obi-Wan Kenobi from death on the Death Star.

The Yuuzhan Vong are in exile in a desolate system in the Outer Rim after a failed attempt to take control of the galaxy that lead to the beginning of the Empire.

Dark Sun Syndicate is in ruins after it was discovered that Prince Xizor put a price on the head of Luke after he discovered that Vader is interested in finding him. Xizor is now in hiding somewhere in the galaxy.

There are a myriad of other changes I made to allow the inclusion of magic and religion in a world of technology, but I think I've talked enough for now. That ought to give you an idea on just how far you can change canon and still hold true to the Star Wars feel.

The movies are great, but your games can be better!

Adios,
Kane

 

[Mr Fidgit]

The one thing that I forgot to mention was the OOC humor.

it's not a real Star Wars game until someone quotes the movies, in character or not.

we used to reward the first character to say, "i've got a bad feeling about this" appropriately in a game session

now, the problem is everyone quoting Kevin Smith (Clerks, etc.) movies! "how the lightsaber know when to stop? the whole thing's flawed!"

 

[Aeris Winterood]

Eras of play...

I have always avoided the problem of that by playing in different eras. I Dm two different eras of play...

The first is 25,000 years before ANH. During the Great Hyperspace Wars. kind of cool.. everything is archaic.

The second era is 4000 years before ANH, during the Sith Wars. Cool tiime period, lots of jedi and sith battling...

 

[Drakmar]

the other day in our game, during the escape from Yavin after the destruction of the Death Star.. two of the players got to play Luke and Wedge as they fought a couple of imperial gunboats... Luke got shot down..

and the player..

"R2, that's not fair.. I hate being shot down." in a typical whiny voice.

we all cracked up so much.

 

[frozenjedi]

Make it your own.

In my gaming group i am the GM when we play Star Wars and after running a D20 game that ran for about two years , id say this about running ANY game with an established background like star wars .

Make it your own .

I prefaced the entire campaign by telling the players that while there are certain truths in star wars they could always count on,
( like wookie tempers , and prissy droids )there are certain things they cannot count on due to my changing the story to fit a more wide range RPG . and in doing this i feel , that we captured the feel of cannon better than if we had tried to follow the letter of George's script.

the players enjoyed not knowing what was around the corner and the feeling of being able to affect the future adds to the longevity of a campaign.

BTW:: anyone looking for Star Wars help should do themselves a favor and go to www.swrpgnetwork.com