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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kafen" data-source="post: 5454593" data-attributes="member: 11273">You have a straight forward starting point. However, you should keep in mind something with Space Opera. The starting point for the characters is not always the starting point of the narrative. The distinction is profound once you sit down to assign adventures.As a sci-fi GM, I keep several  things in mind. Player background, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin" target="_blank">MacGuffin</a>, story arc, growth for PCs, and closure for background details of PCs. The primary thing is player background for the starting characters in my mind. It's what draws the players into your campaign and invests them in your story. The story of Han Solo is a good example of the backgrounds that show you have dark stories even in a Good Guy game. Even if you choose to go all "Good Guy" backgrounds, the backgrounds are going to allow you to develop 'living' stories with the PCs. So, backgrounds are the most important thing to keep in mind at the beginning. After that, I tend to the MacGuffin which takes the shape of whatever gets the PCs to chase the first part of the story.  It gives the players an immediate motivation to proceed through your narrative and Space Opera story without giving you the finger. For example, you have family revenge as per Luke's background and his toasty 'parents' which motivates him to proceed through the whole Jedi process while doing all the feel good adventures along the way. However you deal with it, the MacGuffin is the bait which you use to draw players into the story of the PCs. It is the first investment of attention which is going to start the game. Third in importance to the game in my own opinion, the story arc is where you keep the attention of the players. For example, Star Trek uses the long term story arcs during DS9 in order to bridge the 20+ episodes seasons. The arc itself is generic - the bad guys are over there! But, they manage to keep quite a few fans on board with it over several years. If you apply the example to the RPGs, the players are investing real concern, real time, and real money into the game over the course of a campaign. They become serious players, aka fans, of your campaign. So, the story arc is possible the most important thing to control even if it is not the most aspect of the Space Opera. It is your measure which you use to pace the overall game. Fourth in importance in my book, the growth of the PCs is where you give players the reward for their investment of time into the PCs. It's a mutual story that is unique to the campaign. The collective mix of campaign, you as GM, the other players, and the game itself becomes the world's greatest novel if you do it well. Master it, players talk about the game sessions for years. Lastly, closure! I try to sneak closure for background details into the games in order to allow players to move forward without loose ends. It makes it easy to close up a good campaign as the players, story, and real life changes affect the game. It is my method of making a good impression on the player for future games. Micro-adventures play a big part in my games at all stages for Space Opera. The game has to play to the specific moods of the players on any given day. If the players are in the mood for a space fight, you give them a space fight. If they are in the mood for a long RP session, you give them a long RP session. It's where I fine tune my game table. Sorry, I love the genre and ramble.. To answer your question...I would drag the players into it by a case of mistaken identity. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> The players could be similar in appearance to real criminals. It would give you two factions that drive the players head first into either the underworld of crime or the lanes of space to flee the police forces. That way, you could introduce NPCs of both good and bad dispositions to the party and start the game with a bang  - so to speak. Plus, you could use Ulrick's idea and have the mistaken identity cost them personal things.</blockquote>

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