Star Wars rp game problems

[fireinthedust]

I'm posting this so I don't stomp on another recent thread (which this would drag off topic)

SAGA edition for SW is a lovely game I'd like to play (once I get a group who's interested; my current group loves my 4e campaign and doesn't want to interrupt it; and my sched is crazy). HOWEVER, the idea of PCs means throwing continuity out the window. Yes, the galaxy is a big place, but I don't want the movie to affect *anything* my players may want to do. Galaxy as sandbox for sure, with specific missions thrown in that I can prep for.


THE HOOK: I get to fiddle with SW and come up with interesting stories for how *I* would have made the films; while still doing a story that is in all respects a SW story. ((Example: what if the Death Star just blew up the planet in the way during Yavin 4, then blew up the rebels? Tarkin would have survived, with a Death Star. Ditto Thrawn and many other characters. Now the PCs show up, the session starts.))

THE PROBLEM: any time this sort of question goes up, people post really lovely ideas for general setting re-boots (like the Legacy era, etc.), but totally skip any details for the campaign itself.

Now, I love threads that discuss star wars. It's fantastic. The problem is that people who post in them never talk about how to make a session interesting. They talk about the ramifications for continuity. They talk about minutia. They talk about the novel they're writing. The DON'T talk about how to run a session.

Even the SAGA book doesn't really have great info on how to run a session. There are rules for "playing nice with other children", then a vague discussion of an encounter, then some hazards around a battlefield. Sure, that's great (and wooo, let's not make SW into a minis game, that would be too 4e/geeky of us [/sarcasm'].
The problem is they literally don't say how to run a session.

So: presuming that "how Star Wars should have ended" (look it up on youtube, btw) happens, and I want to go from there, what would be some great IN SESSION things I can do?

 

[WayneLigon]

Well.. running a session is pretty much like running a session of any other game. A hook, a delima, an obstacle to be overcome, a negotiation, whatever occurs and our heroes are the only people that can probably pull it off.

We just got to a stopping point with a Star Wars game. We decided ealy on that we were not going to follow 'canon'. We decided that we'd be playing in the time directly after Episode III. This gave us several advantages. The Big Players are mostly off the board; Yoda and Obi-Wan are in hiding, everyone else is dead, and Vader and The Emperor are unchallenged. Han Solo, Boba Fett, and others are little kids.

Now, the basic plot went that we're on a remote world when Order 66 goes out. Our padawan Jedi PC crashlands his ship near us, having barely escaped his own assassins. We need a place to lay low until we can figure things out. (This is the major Goal of the first quarter of the game).

Our second major Goal is to find opportunities in the New Order. We meet General Rahm Kota, the only living Jedi Master, and under him we begin to form ideas of our own force to strike back at the New Order. Now, most sessions in the beginning emphasize what a great job the New Order is doing. NPCs talk about those filthy Jedi traitors and how they never really trusted them. Aliens start to find themselves gradually marginalized (This is before Mon Calamari is enslaved, which really starts the anti-alien ball rolling).

Finally, we wind up contacted by Bail Organa (whose wife has just had a very difficult labor before producing two pretty children, one boy, one girl....) and form the core of a secret preparation group. Senator Organa still thinks he can blunt the military and work as the 'loyal opposition' to the Emperor from within the Senate.

Two years pass as we do missions. These are simple negotiations, or establishing contacts with a criminal network, or espionage missions to plant code or special modules in places like star destroyer mainframes, etc.

The Alliance has grown. Rahm Kota has almost trained our Jedi PC to be a Knight. A horrible encounter with the new Inquisitors almost kills everyone and Kota learns that the Emperor has broken Exar Kun's Rule of Two, meaning he can have as many Dark Side force users as he wants. Obviously, this is very, very bad.

Now the sessions change to information gathering and strikes against the Sith arm of the New Order. Kota is thwarted in any attempt to learn of their plans through The Force: all he ever gets is a giant burning eye (The Dark Lord on his dark throne... - really, it's simply a representation of the Emperor's obsession with the Death Star), so the group has to undertake many perilous fact-finding missions to the Inner Worlds.

The fourth part of the game shifted to more direct strikes against the New Order. Finally, they manage to rescue a surprise guest: Mace Windu. (Kill me? By throwing me out a window? I'm a ^$&% Jedi Master!). When we return to it, the game will shift again to the group being trained specifically as Sith Killers.

So, the nature of sessions will change along with your campaign focus. Slowly, we went from more sneaking around, resource gathering, and contact-making to direct action sequences.

 

[fireinthedust]

In terms of designing encounters, there are certainly parallels. However, I think there is something to be said for the specific genre needs for any particular scenario.

1) blaster use: lots of ranged means minions can take pot-shots. Most of Star Wars (other than lightsabre duels and monsters) seems to be ranged. This is very different from D&D, which is heavy melee.

2) Technology: PCs can better influence the setting around them. Control panels, gears, doors, droids to hotwire, etc. Fantasy tends to have maybe a door to open, or objects to throw/activate, but not to the same extent as SW.

3) Space Ships for sure are different.

Add to that locations for battles, and the potential differences in building an encounter are *huge*


Interesting campaign scenario, btw. I liked the idea of a Jedi master running about the galaxy with his crew on a Star Destroyer (well, republic battleship, but you get me).

My only SW game to date had the GM unveiled as trying to get us to act out his novel. Basically after spending a whole session tied to a chair watching one of the group of PCs on a view screen, I overheard him and one player talking about how this was their novel. I said to myself "wait, I scheduled my work week around this session to be your ******* seguay?!" and never went back. Session 1 was good, but it went downhill from there.
Interesting first session, however. We got locked in a flying car that was controlled by a droid, and had to take command of it. The play was good, for that one session.

 

[DM_Jeff]

I recently ran my first SAGA edition game. I also agree with your sentiments on how threads usually devolve. Here's what I learned:

There is a web enhancement for SAGA on the Wizard's web site helping detail how to actually build mechanically sound and diverse encounters.

LINK

And look for:

Web Enhancement - Encounter Design 101
Designing fresh, exciting, and (most importantly) fair encounters for Star Wars Roleplaying Game heroes can be one of the greatest challenges for a Gamemaster.

The sessions I planned were a good mix of roleplaying and combat. Combat runs very quickly in SAGA. Our 5 hour sessions were plenty long enough. I admit I watched a lot of the Clone Wars cartoon shows to get a feel for stuff not seen in the movies to add to my descriptions.

I also heavily used my SW minis collection as a basis for adventures. I have over 20 battlemats with exotic locations on them, and building encounters around them was a snap.

As one poster mentioned above, there's a lot of tech. We had one character who imagined herself sort of "the bard" who took lots of knowledge and technical skills. She literally changed battles by accessing security cameras, closing and opening doors on the battlefield to help her friends and hardly fired a shot.

D&D players will take at least a session or more to learn to make good, full use of "cover" because yes, many combats are at range. Building an adventure could be as easy as taking a D&D adventure and setting it in the SW universe, or borrowing from the Clone Wars series of another sci-fi show (I borrowed heavily from Firefly for influence).

Hope that helps a bit.

-DM Jeff

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

You're looking for some good advice on encounter/campaign design? Then I strongly suggest giving the following episodes of the Order 66 podcast a listen.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Order66/~3/sCtv0izTHU0/episode37.mp3
Episode 37 - The List: Deals with designing an encounter that is fun, challenging and most importantly interesting for the players.


http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Order66/~3/OsgXXvTomSE/episode47.mp3
Episode 47 - Tipsy Tips & Holocron Hijinx: Tips on getting things organized, both for adventure and encounter design.

As for doing an Infinities campaign, some solid advice can be found here:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Order66/~3/roxREOFGtPk/episode72.mp3
Episode 72 - Canon Shot to Infinity: Discusses different methods of running an Infinities game.

 

[outsider]

I've never played/gmed Star Wars saga, so I can't give much specific advice. I can give you suggestions on how I'd start your campaign, given the hook you described though.

So, the Empire did the smart thing. They blew up the planet instead of going around it. The rebels probably immediately scrambled their ships, trying to get as many off the ground as possible. Maybe one ship actually managed to get off the ground. That ship, of course, is carrying the PCs. They are the only ones that made it out. And they are the only people left in the universe that know how to destroy the Death Star.

I'd probably start the first session off with a firefight between their ship and a bunch of Tie Fighters as they try to escape. From that point forward, I'd have them constantly on the run. The empire is after them. There's a HUGE price on their heads, so they are chased by bounty hunters wherever they go. Every scumbag that wants to make a buck will tip off the Empire whenever they are seen. Maybe relive the scene where the Millenium Falcon is captured by the Death Star at some point. Ultimately, wherever they go, trouble will soon follow.

What they should be doing from that point forward is trying to reassemble what little there is left of the Alliance, and recruit more people. Freeing rebels from various Empire prisons would be a good adventure towards this. Sabotage and guerilla assualts on empire strongholds would work too. No matter what they do, they should get attacked by either the empire or a bounty hunter at least every couple of sessions.

I think the key difference in running a Star Wars game in comparison to something like D&D is that frequently the action comes to the players rather than the players coming to the action. Players will also need to accept that at times, they are going to have to run. This is often hard for RPG players. My advice on that one is to give them some sort of goal they can accomplish before they flee. Don't bring on the big guns until they accomplish that goal. As an example, say a Tie Fighter pilot has some important intel, and they need to take him out before he manages to board a nearby Star Destroyer. The goal is to destroy the fighter and get the heck out of there. They won't feel like they have to engage the Destroyer, and hopefully they'll have enough sense to know it's not a good idea to do so. I think that running away without accomplishing the goal is a hard pill for many gamers to swallow, but it isn't so bad if you've actualy done what you set out to do and have to flee afterwards.

Hopefully some of that will be useful to you.

 

[MarkB]

THE HOOK: I get to fiddle with SW and come up with interesting stories for how *I* would have made the films; while still doing a story that is in all respects a SW story. ((Example: what if the Death Star just blew up the planet in the way during Yavin 4, then blew up the rebels? Tarkin would have survived, with a Death Star. Ditto Thrawn and many other characters. Now the PCs show up, the session starts.))

THE PROBLEM: any time this sort of question goes up, people post really lovely ideas for general setting re-boots (like the Legacy era, etc.), but totally skip any details for the campaign itself.

That's a little harsh. In all cases I've seen where such variants have been suggested, the OP is almost always asking "What changes would result from this?", not "What campaign should I run?"

So: presuming that "how Star Wars should have ended" (look it up on youtube, btw) happens,

Seen it. Somehow, I think blowing up a gas giant is a somewhat different proposition than blowing up a far smaller ball of rock.

Of course, it's just as easy to simply assume that the rebel counter-attack failed. Luke's shot missed, or Han didn't show up at the last minute, or Vader's wingman didn't panic and sideswipe him.

and I want to go from there, what would be some great IN SESSION things I can do?

Pretty much exactly the same in session things you could do in any other Star Wars campaign - and that's a huge breadth of possibilities. The question is, what do you want to do? What sort of game are you hoping to run?

If you want your players to be, essentially, the nucleus of the new Rebel Alliance, in a campaign that will eventually lead to the overthrow of the Empire, then you've got an epic campaign on your hands, that will revolve around political intrigue, espionage, and eventually some epic ground and space combat.

If you want to run a campaign in which the players are just regular folk trying to earn a less-than-legal living in the cracks of an Imperial-dominated galaxy, that's going to have an entirely different feel - illicit jobs, sneaking around, getting into gunfights on remote outer-rim worlds and the like.

And that's just two possibilities out of a whole galaxy of options. Until you define who your PCs are and what situation they're starting in, it's hard to know what they're likely to get themselves into.