Old Drew Id
First Post
If you have a race for a cash prize created as entertainment, it feels like something you are setting on top of the SW universe. If you have the same race for a serious prize, where the race was not something artificially created for entertainment, then it would feel more like SW. More "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World" than "Amazing Race". Same plot, same twists, settings, etc. but with a different *motivation* that is more in keeping with the rest of the SW universe.
So, what would everyone be racing for? Something that all of those different factions would be interested in, or at least interested in keeping their opponents from. A new type of weapon or energy source would be the easiest answer.
Something else to consider is how the second-place team on each planet finds the coordinates for the next planet, if the first team is smart, they'll destroy or further hide the answer each time, so that no one can follow them.
My personal suggestion: Insane Droid Jedi
One of the many secret research projects that the Emperor had done - the creation of droid force-users. This was done on a secluded planet or space station not listed on any map. The researchers eventually captured some force users (maybe more than one, maybe just one) and sliced up their brain, grafting tiny fragments of dead jedi brain into a variety of droids. The project produced many different droid prototypes with unusual abilities, but nothing reliable or repeatable.
Fast forward to after the fall of the Empire. All of those droids have been stolen, sold off, or otherwise lost, the project has been forgotten. Then the first droid "dies", as the brain material (now several years old) has decayed and become diseased. This "awakens" all of the other droids out there, from their current posts as medical droids, astromechs, bounty hunter droids, or farm workers. They each gain some small force awareness from their neural graft.
Here's where it gets interesting: The droids are all connected through the Force. They can sense each other's location, and they each remember some vague details of the research lab where they were created. Also, now that one of them has "died", the others just gained his memories. (Echoes of Highlander in here a little bit. heh. ) So each time one of them dies, the others get a little more powerful. Most importantly, they all know that they have to get back to that lab and get the cure before the other droids do. (Somehow the cure for one of them would also likely spell doom for the others.) Also, each droid is basically going insane from the combination of droid brain and jedi brain in their personality.
More importantly for the rest of the Galaxy, whoever finds that lost research station will have the key to creating an entire race of these jedi droids, without the flaws of this generation, and program them for whatever purpose they want. Some factions want that for themselves, and others would want to destroy that knowledge altogether.
Now each one of these droids grabs whatever adventurers are nearby, whether they are Empire, rebel, Hutt, bounty hunter, smuggler, or whatever. They explain things to their team, get a ship, and head off to the first planet (the location where the first droid died) to get more clues. The race is on.
The clues at that point can be largely arbitrary, to keep the race going as long as you want, because the team droid is the key to your race progress. Maybe they get an encoded map from planet #1, then go to planet #2 to decode it, then to planet #3 based on the map, etc. Any time one of them loses the trail, they can just sense where the others are and pick back up again, so even if the players are in first place in the race, they can not shake off the pursuit by hiding or destroying clues.
Oh, also, the team droid would not allow his team to destroy the other droids directly. it would violate his programming. So that would hinder most attempts for one team to simply destroy the competition. But some of that can happen every now and then, as long as you can outsmart your team droid.
So, what would everyone be racing for? Something that all of those different factions would be interested in, or at least interested in keeping their opponents from. A new type of weapon or energy source would be the easiest answer.
Something else to consider is how the second-place team on each planet finds the coordinates for the next planet, if the first team is smart, they'll destroy or further hide the answer each time, so that no one can follow them.
My personal suggestion: Insane Droid Jedi
One of the many secret research projects that the Emperor had done - the creation of droid force-users. This was done on a secluded planet or space station not listed on any map. The researchers eventually captured some force users (maybe more than one, maybe just one) and sliced up their brain, grafting tiny fragments of dead jedi brain into a variety of droids. The project produced many different droid prototypes with unusual abilities, but nothing reliable or repeatable.
Fast forward to after the fall of the Empire. All of those droids have been stolen, sold off, or otherwise lost, the project has been forgotten. Then the first droid "dies", as the brain material (now several years old) has decayed and become diseased. This "awakens" all of the other droids out there, from their current posts as medical droids, astromechs, bounty hunter droids, or farm workers. They each gain some small force awareness from their neural graft.
Here's where it gets interesting: The droids are all connected through the Force. They can sense each other's location, and they each remember some vague details of the research lab where they were created. Also, now that one of them has "died", the others just gained his memories. (Echoes of Highlander in here a little bit. heh. ) So each time one of them dies, the others get a little more powerful. Most importantly, they all know that they have to get back to that lab and get the cure before the other droids do. (Somehow the cure for one of them would also likely spell doom for the others.) Also, each droid is basically going insane from the combination of droid brain and jedi brain in their personality.
More importantly for the rest of the Galaxy, whoever finds that lost research station will have the key to creating an entire race of these jedi droids, without the flaws of this generation, and program them for whatever purpose they want. Some factions want that for themselves, and others would want to destroy that knowledge altogether.
Now each one of these droids grabs whatever adventurers are nearby, whether they are Empire, rebel, Hutt, bounty hunter, smuggler, or whatever. They explain things to their team, get a ship, and head off to the first planet (the location where the first droid died) to get more clues. The race is on.
The clues at that point can be largely arbitrary, to keep the race going as long as you want, because the team droid is the key to your race progress. Maybe they get an encoded map from planet #1, then go to planet #2 to decode it, then to planet #3 based on the map, etc. Any time one of them loses the trail, they can just sense where the others are and pick back up again, so even if the players are in first place in the race, they can not shake off the pursuit by hiding or destroying clues.
Oh, also, the team droid would not allow his team to destroy the other droids directly. it would violate his programming. So that would hinder most attempts for one team to simply destroy the competition. But some of that can happen every now and then, as long as you can outsmart your team droid.
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