Just spitballing some ideas for Star Wars campaign configurations.
Clone Wars
The pitch: Hey, let's all beat up some battledroids!
Primary inspiration: Clone Wars cartoons
Pros: High action with plenty of Jedi, but room for elite clone trooper PCs and the occasional oddball. That wicked awesome Sith chick as a villain.
Cons: Lotsa fights does not necessarily equal "epic".
Dark Times
The pitch: Everyone is Han Solo and the Empire is the Man.
Primary inspiration: The original film, trashy 70s sci-fi novels
Pros: All the trappings of Traveller tramp freighter play in the the Star Wars universe.
Cons: Fewer lightsabre fights.
Your Own Private Galaxy
The pitch: Forget those guys. Let's make our own Star Wars universe!
Primary inspiration: This post.
Pros: A whole friggin' galaxy to mess around with.
Cons: More prep work.
Rebel Scum
The pitch: Kick the Empire in the balls!
Primary inspiration: The first two films.
Pros: Every right-thinking human being instantly gets the concept.
Cons: Working in the shadow of Luke, Leia, and Han.
A Parallel Saga
The pitch: Between the movies there was a whole 'nother saga, starring you!
Primary inspiration: All six films.
Pros: An opportunity to participate in the overarching canonical storyline while the Hollywood types are offscreen.
Cons: Easy to get tangled up in canon wankery. The Rise and Fall of the House of Skywalker will be a hard act to follow.
A Long Time Ago in The Seventies
The pitch: Remember how open and wondrous the first film felt? We can bottle that lighting!
Primary inspiration: The original film, pre-Empire novels, comics. The Holiday Special.
Pros: Everything you love about the old film that started it all, with none of the later edits.
Cons: Painfully dated.
"Ark Against Time" Submitted for DunDraCon #48
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[image: A colorful thing seems to be made of several elongated pods]
(Ark of Time)
*GM: Matt MorrisonType: RPGSystem: D&D/Arduin GrimoireEdition: 5...
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Posts
My World Adventure Writing Month adventure (doesn't really flow off the tongue) is based during the Clone Wars. In essence, I decided to use the time frame with the idea that if I started a campaign, I wanted to play through the purge era.
ReplyDeleteAll of my Star Wars campaigns have (and will) fall into your "Rebel Scum" or "Dark Times" categories (or, even more commonly, be a hybrid of the two).
ReplyDeleteI've never encountered the "Working in the shadow of Luke, Leia, and Han" problem you mention. I don't think it really exists except as a GMing anxiety ... the scale of both the galaxy and the conflict preclude any character's shadow from stepping on anyone else's, IMO. Nuttin' to worry about.
I've never encountered the "Working in the shadow of Luke, Leia, and Han" problem you mention.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I've never done Star Wars before and that was one of my chief worries.
Ever consider running a "PCs are working for the Empire" game?
ReplyDeleteI hadn't given it much thought, except perhaps as a deliberately twisted setting where the Jedi are objectively wrong and the Sith are oppressed.
ReplyDeleteI've never encountered the "Working in the shadow of Luke, Leia, and Han" problem you mention. .... IMO. Nuttin' to worry about.Seconded. And thirded, too, so I can stand in to places at once. Ha!
ReplyDeleteI dropped Han, Leia and Luke into my games sparingly but to good effect. My PCs were all off doing stuff that the principals weren't...and if you think about it, most of what happens to Luke, Han and Leia is about Luke, Han and Leia.
If nothing else, they can't step on your shadow.
Jedi Purge
ReplyDeletehttp://www.answers.com/topic/great-jedi-purge
The pitch: It's the latter part of the Clone Wars. Eventually, Palpatine will issue Order 66 and the players will have to figure out how to survive in a galaxy where those in power are trying to kill them.
Primary inspiration: Clone Wars, Revenge of the Sith, the Imperial March.
Pros: Lots of action, no end of antagonists, lots of lightsabre fights. If they metagame, you can keep the players looking over their shoulders during the Clone Wars segment during tension-filled moments with foreshadows of Order 66...
Cons: Players will know what's going to happen (eventually), game will pretty much consist of players trying to keep one step ahead of the Empire.
Hmmm...
ReplyDeleteHow about:
Hope Now
...set after the third movie, well before A New Hope.
The PCs? The Secret Resistance: a group of Jedi survivors and their supporters, sworn to secrecy, who trust no one but each other, trying to undermine the growing Empire.
Can we stop the Empire before the future of A New Hope comes to pass?
I read the Dark Times, and I was thinking of Shaft=Luke.
ReplyDeleteStar Wars redone as 70's Blaxploitation Epic.
"That man Luke, he's one bad..."
"I'm just talkin' bout my man Luke"
OR, Dark Times, with Paul Newman as Luke (ala Cool Hand Luke).
That could get pretty sick at the end, but you get to use your light saber on a lot of parking meters.
What about the droids, man? A whole party of droids, smashing the vile Jawa empire!
ReplyDelete...set after the third movie, well before A New Hope.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone else read this, stop, and have to re-do the math in their heads to forcibly [and very temporarily pretend to] recognize the sixth movie as the "third" one?
Or is it just me? :)
No, it threw me for a loop as well. "Set after Jedi but before Star Wars? Huh?!?" was my initial reaction.
ReplyDeleteThe Star Wars campaign I've written notes on but never got to run is "Star Wars: Eras".
ReplyDeleteThe same group of PCs run at the time of Phantom Menace, Clone Wars and then Revenge ofthe Sith. (at proportinately advancing levels, like 5, 10, 15)
The group starts out as mostly Jedi at the Jedi Academy on Almas. There, they run into trouble and sort of (hopefully) gel as a group.
In the Clone Wars game(s), the Jedi are Generals in the Grand Army and they go to war. I might even switch to a minis game for this one. (or at least part of it)
The RotS session(s) plays out at the end of the Clone Wars. The trick here is to get the PCs between a rock and a hard place so that they have to depend on their Clone Troopers. When they just can't stand the tension anymore, drop Order 66 on them. Hilarity ensues.
I will run this some day, I will...
Did anyone else read this, stop, and have to re-do the math in their heads to forcibly [and very temporarily pretend to] recognize the sixth movie as the "third" one?
ReplyDeleteYeah, well... there wasn't a great way of saying it otherwise.
The campaign I always wanted to run but never got the chance to was Star Wars: Empire and Colony.
ReplyDeleteThe Pitch: Characters are part of an scouting/exploration group settling a star cluster in the Unknown Reaches. They find and colonize a quiet world with no other intelligent races, but find some unusual ancient ruins. They then are part of the group that goes further into the cluster and explores other star systems... and there they discover an ancient remnant of the original Sith Empire! Adventure ensues...
Primary Inspiration: The general Star Wars Universe. It can be set in any period; one of the more interesting eras, though, would be Dark Times. Perhaps the colonists are a segment of the Alliance that decided not to fight, but to flee. With them are several Jedi and their apprentices, survivors the purge. Now, with this ancient Sith Empire on one side and the new Sith Empire on the other, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place...
Pros: Completely open-ended. Can effectively re-play the entire Star Wars Empire/Rebellion saga (sans the whole family plot) with the players as the main heroes. Can add in odd Sith stuff, and plenty of Dark Side Adepts without screwing with canon history.
Cons: Um... none that I can think of... unless your players really, really want to be a part of the canon Rebellion, they've got everything they could want and more.
I just had to put "canon wankery" into Google to see what it came up with. Three hits, including this post, and a great, deep fakesite on the Great Outdoor Fight.
ReplyDeleteOne way to 'wank' the original canon might be to try to win the M.F. from Han the same way he acquired it...