Star Wars d20 – share your experiences! (Please)

[Henry]

Sounds like a question made for me to answer...

Early this year we wrapped up a 14-episode Star Wars game set in the new Jedi Order Era. I GM'ed the game using d20 rules. The players went down the lightning pace from 1st to 13th level (!), being the part of a special New Republic Intelligence Agency, Known as the Republic Agency of Interior Directives (RAID). The game was set during the New Jedi Order, and in order to proceed, I had to do something quite novel (or should I say, "un" novel):

I set the events up to the Book, Jedi Eclipse, and then I threw the rest of the continuity screaming from the second-story window. I told the players that I did not care what happened to the continuity from this point, and that some characters may do vastly different things from the book. This gave me total carte blanche to play my game, and not try to tip-toe around the events of future novels.

My in-game reasoning was simple: I picked this campaign up from the DM of a previous (D6 system) Star Wars game. He, previously, had taken it over from me back in 1999, and introduced time-travel on a massive scale. I simply used the reasoning that this was the same universe, and although his time-travel plot had wrapped up with the universe back to being the same, I added the plot that not ALL of the events had been restored perfectly.

Incidently, The events followed pretty well, and I even included the Invasion of Coruscant.

In a nutshell:

--The PC's were recruited by RAID after two of the team was rescued by the rest of the team (using the events of "Rendezvous at Ord Mantell" in Star Wars Gamer #1).

--The PC's had to conduct an evacuation of the Re-opened Bilbringi Shipyards, under Vong attack. They recovered a Dovin Basal intact in this maneuver, something that was quite rare.

--The PC's conducted a diplomatic mission to prevent a core world from seceeding; A dark-jedi-would-be-sith was responsible, because the middle of a war is the perfect time to hatch dark plots to get your enemies to fight one another. One of the PC's developed a romance with the Ruler of the world, even! (I say "developed" - in truth the player didn't feel like pursuing it, and couldn't figure out a way to break it to the love-sick puppy!)

--The PC's had to find and shut down some Thalassian Slavers, and subsequently be rescued from a backwater planet covered with Gigerian Aliens.

--The PC's then tracked down and raided said Thalassian Slavers, uncovering several ships and armaments for RAID in the process.

--They had to aid in the Coruscant invasion.

--They spent several sessions on the run from Yuuzhan Vong, all the while one player received revelations that his PC was more than even he realized.

--Using the events of one of the adventures in the tatooine Sorucebook, I revealed that the PC in question was from a totally different time, and carried the key to the Republic's (Once again the Rebellion's) salvation. The Republic was by this point only in control of about 30% of the galaxy, and rapidly shrinking!

--The party tracked down clues to the PC's past, and successfully learned that his father (a PC from the previous Star Wars Campaign, played by him, no less!), along with several other of the party members from the previous party, travelled to the future, foresaw the total domination of the Yuuzhan Vong of the galaxy, and enacted plans to prevent the Yuuzhan Vong from destroying all the plant life on Ithorr.

--The PC's then spent the last sessions tracking down (1) the first PC's near-relic lightsaber, (2) The hidden research center established by the time-travellers, and (3) the last known Super-Star Destoyer left.

I ended the campaign on a happy note, with the Vong in retreat, the Republic-in-exile reclaiming up to half the galaxy, and the PC's asked to become Generals of the fleet that was being assembled to push the Yuuzhan Vong back to their own galaxy, and if possible, beyond that! Thanks to research of the Dovin Basal that they recovered, a new Hyperdrive/Graviton Technology was developed that the Fleet could use to traverse the vast distance between galaxies in a fraction of the time - only a few years or so.

We had a blast with that campaign - it had romance, it had greed, it had more action than the player knew what to do with, and it spanned approximately 75% of the Star Wars Galaxy!

One of my favorite quotes from that campaign, when one player found out that the time-travellers had come through Tatooine in their travels:

"Tatooine! Tatooine! It's always *** ****ed Tatooine! For the dustiest ball of nothing, it's got everybody and their *** ***ed grandma traipsing through it!"

 

[SurfMonkey01]

I just finished GMing my first Star Wars "trilogy." It was a ton of fun... I tried my best to follow the outline of the movies (2-3 locales each, fast pace, pulpy feel, second one darker in tone, someone captured at the end of movie two so movie three can start with a rescue, celebratory ending with a hint of somberness) and my players, in turn, tried to keep in the sense of fun and adventure, even going so far as to quote the original trilogy whenever possible and appropriate. As I said, it was a ton of fun... I think I did a storyhour on the first "movie" around here before, but I can't remember... next week we start our New Jedi Order game, and they're all in for a few surprises... hehe...

 

[hong]

even going so far as to quote the original trilogy whenever possible and appropriate.

What, you mean they don't do that ANYWAY? For shame!

 

[DPGDarrin]

Right now Star Wars D20 is my only current campaign. I know my players check these boards periodically, so I need to keep the meta story that hasn't been revealed to myself. What I can tell you is what has happened, and then maybe you can draw your own conclusions on where the story is going from here.

The story is set during the New Jedi Order era, and the party consists of a droid, a jedi consular, a jedi guardian and a warrior that just happens to be a true unaltered Jango Clone who was "released" about 25 years ago with no knowledge that he's a clone, or who the Fetts are.

In the first adventure the party was on a world where an enormous ship swooped down and sucked up numerous smaller ships from a planetside space port. The party followed an encrypted homing beacon that was located on the jedi guardian's A-wing to a world near the invasion path of the Yuzhon Vong. Without going into all the details, they learned that the Vong had cut a deal with Nom Anor to spare their system as long as they could forge an alliance. Nom Anore had a habit of entering this usually inactive system in a variety of disguises aboard a variety of ships.

The system had been run by a former imperial warlord. This changed shortly after the Black Fleet Crisis when a jedi who had studied at Yavin went to the dark side, embraced the Sith philosophy, and adopted the title Darth Malign. He infiltrated the command structure of the system, and assassinated the warlord, assuming control himself. When the empire and the New Republic decided that peace was better, Malign kept his system quiet but separate from either power.

When the party arrived, in system, they bluffed their way onto the command skyhook, and ended up confronting Malign and Nom Anore. Things went extremely well for the players, and extremely poorly for the Vong/Sith, and the skyhook ended up being destroyed, and the two main evil dudes almost ended up getting vaped. The players recovered their A-wing and got out before the skyhook blew, and then jumped to hyperspace.

In the next session I ran "Welcome to the Jungle" from Star Wars Gamer #6, which I wrote. Hyperdrive problems led to their landing on an Ithorian Herdship. At the end of the adventure, Hereven and Dayla were imprisoned aboard the Herd ship, but while the party was preparing to leave, the ship came under assault by a dreadnaught class ship. The Herd ship surrendered and they were invaded by storm troopers. They caught up with the party in cargo bay. While the party escaped to their larger ship (same type as Dash Rendar's Outrider), the stormtroopers started blowing the living hell out of the ship from outside while the ship warmed up. The fight was close, resulted in the cargo bay destruction of the Jedi Guardian's A-wing, but they managed to escape with 2 hull points left. They jury rigged the hyper drive, which was when the Jango connection caught up with them.

Once free of the herd ship, their ship went on autopilot and jumped to a hollowed out asteroid where they were instructed to fix their ship. They did so, then the ship jumped to Nar Shadda where they met with Boba Fett (yes, in my story, he's still alive). This was a lengthy encounter, but it boiled down to the fact that I informed the Jango Clone of who he was, Boba asked him to carry on the Mandalorian tradition, and gave him a suit of armor. In exchange for this, they owed him a favor. Boba still doesn't like Jedi (see Star Wars Jango Fett comic #4 to see why the Fetts don't like jedi), but in his old age, he's willing to see the fact that the jedi alive now are not the same jedi that killed his father, and that the galaxy is rapidly changing. He gave the character a suit of armor and sent him on his way. At the end of the session, the jedi contacted the new jedi order on Corruscant and asked them to go back to the planet where they met with Darth Malign. Also, while reestablishing communications with the rest of the galaxy, they were asked to return to the planet where they discovered Darth malign.

Feel free to mine any of this for ideas.

 

[Wiley]

Has anyone else had trouble with groups who act like they are in a D&D Dungeon in games like SW, Deadlands, etc?

<DM> You walk into the hotel doors...
<Player> I'm going to listen, do a move silent, check for traps, and draw my gun....
<DM> The maid comes around the corner
<Player> "Halt! Friend or foe?!"

 

[bwgwl]

like i said above, i had this problem during the first session of the campaign. after that, i talked to the group, and they've really done a good job of adopting a more "cinematic" mindset for Star Wars as opposed to what we do in D&D.

 

[sfgiants]

A few commnets on vp/wp (and yes, I know this is a long standing debate): I think that vp/wp work perfectly well for any game in which blasters are a part of. Lethality is needed. I also want to point out that a critical hit doesn't mean instant death, even from a blaster (3d8). remember, wp go to -10. Most sw pc's tend to have at least a 12 con, this means they can take a crit for 22 damage before being dead. Avg. damage for a blaster won't bring this (and a medpac can do amazing things...)

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think, this once again proves the weaknesses of Starwars d20:
Starwars is Heroic "Space Fantasy". Nowhere the heroes were deadly hit - only "NHs" (Non-Hero-Character) die.
But in Starwars d20, what do they do: They invent Wound & Vitality Points, and if a hero suffers a critical hit, he is probably dead. (3d8 from a heavy blaster?) That is not Starwars. You may be able to do this in a more realistic setting, but not in Starwars...

Mustrum Ridcully

I'm afraid I must correct you. When a SW character runs out of Wound points he is NOT automatically dead - he has to make a DC10 saving throw to be unconcious and mortally wounded, a check he has to make every hour (IIRC).

In D&D anyone who hits -10 hp is DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. In SW the heroes are likely to be able to keep on going, as long as their buddies pick them up (or the villains who want someone to gloat over).

So lets scotch this rumour that vp/wp results in more deaths... the system *as a whole* leads to far less character deaths.

Cheers

 

[sfgiants]

Actually as far as I can remember that in the Revised Star wars Rules, it operates like d+d. -10 and death (except you make a fort save each round indtead of roll percentile...)

 

[Bodah]

We recently began playing SW (recent in the sense that we havent been playing nearly as long as D&D). The campaign has gone on for about 3 to 4 months so far and currently all my players are enjoying it much more then the D&D campaign I am also running. I love the feel of it and the VP/WP system.

We are playing in the New Jedi Order timeline (since I've read all of the novels I figured this would be a good timeline for our first campaign). The party consists of two Human Jedi Guardians, an Ewok Scout, a Iktotchi Force Adept, a Sluissi Tech Specialist, and a Rodian Scoundrel. So far things have gone far beyond my expectations and the campaign is turning out to be one of the better campaigns I've run out of any game.


There is way to much to sum up here but the campaign started with the attack upon Ord Mantell while the players began on the Jubilee Wheel, and is currently up to the point shortly before the attack on the Fondor shipyards and the use of Centerpoint Station. In between the players have had some wild and very cinematic adventures. Alot involving the peace brigade chasing the players down at every turn due to their reputation with the peace brigade and the multiple force users in the group. So far the players have crossed the Hutts, the Peace Brigade, and the Vong time and time again. Currently they are operating out of the Errant Venture (Booster Terriks Star Destroyer) and on their way to investigate the dissapearance of a friend of theirs last seen in the Fondor system. I could sum up more another time if I am not busy, but for now I gotta run..