Hello GMs!

Right now, I'm on kind of a quest to run a series of games that I own, but never really got a chance to play, or those that didn't get a fair shake. I've narrowed the list down to just over 40 games.

One of my players really wants to play the WEG Star Wars and I and another player are just dying to play EotE again! We all played the beginners adventure, and loved it!

What I would like to do is run the WEG as a prequel or set up to the EotE game, so that each gets played and everyone is happy. But in writing almost 40 adventures (some one-shot, some chronicle-length), and I'm drawing a blank as to how to tie the two seperate stories together. I have some ideas, but thought I'd ask you fine folks. Hopefully I can supprise my group with a differant style story than the ones I've done.

I'd like to seperate the stories far enough that the WEG character aren't involved, or perhaps they're just too old help much beyond mentoring.

What kind of adventure could a group in the past have a part in that would effect another unrelated(?) group in the future? What would you do?

wow, i guess i have a lot of questions. i think much of my answers right now would be along the lines of "it depends on..."

one thought that popped to my mind however was doing some type of 'butterfly effect' for the later campaign, where the actions of the PCs in the earlier WEG campaigns somehow slightly altered the SW canon. the later group would then have to go back and correct history, or somehow make things right again. (i'm NOT talking about time travel...)

some examples that i can think of are along the lines of "what if..." questions. look to "SW infinities" for some interesting ideas.

here's a link to a related "what if" post:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/108635-alternate-sw-universe-ideas/

another idea that i have (i did something like this in a DnD campaign) would be to say that the earlier group's (of PCs) actions had significant influence on a small population, who then later formed a town or some type of group (like a guild or something) using the beliefs and actions of the original group of PCs as something like a gospel - except they now have a somewhat warped understanding of what the original intent was.

in the DnD game i ran (i think the ideas/themes could easilybe converted to just about any setting), there was a group of PCs who were like paladins (not all the paladin class, just all a group traveling around serving small, unprotected communities with "justice"). one of the towns they helped were having troubles with someone they suspected to be a "witch." (they wanted to kill her, but ended up learning she was actually helping the community, just not informing people of her actions - so this created a sort of paranoid panic). anyway, a few years later we played a different campaign in which the town had actually founded a magic school or something, the original witch as the "founder." the PCs were all students of the school. the school's graduates actively went out into the world "protecting" magic users, regardless of the type of magic being used, or the purpose of the magic's use. the school actually ended up protecting dark magic users - the PCs started off blindly following the school's dogma, but then realized they were working for "the bad guys..."

This game is not going to be played for a few months, I have several games lined up between now (finishing up Time of Crisis for M&M) and the Star Wars game(s). No one has made any characters yet, but I suspect I'll have a Smuggler (Pilot or Scoundrel), Hired Gun (Bodyguard or Mercenary), Colonist (Politico) or Explorer (Scout) for the characters in the "current" story and may have similar character types for the WEG story in the past. Though one may supprise me and go against their normal type of characters. There's a slim chance of another player being free to play and he really likes to try new things, so he's not going to be predictable at all!

I like the "cleaning up the mess" type stories, and the modern characters can just stumble onto it, or maybe their past characters can direct them to look into it. You even have a nice twist there, washer! I don't know that I'm going to want to involve any Force users (I guess that would depend on if any players go there), but your idea can work with just a regular type of cult too I suppose (heh, "regular" cult...).

My only idea I had, and I'm not really happy about it, is a McGuffin story that the past characters die trying to get and the modern characters either have to find it or get/keep it away from the bad guys. See, I don't know. This first game will kinda set the tone for the chronicle and I'd like to try to keep the stories focused on their own personal dilemmas and keep the epic empire vs rebellion in the background.

I'm sure we'll want to go there eventually, but I'd like to go more Firefly than Clone Wars this time around. After the first story, I'll let character Obligations direct me where to take their personal stories, but I'm really just drawing a blank here! Why would Group 2 care about what Group 1 (who may not be around anymore) did maybe 20 years ago!?

that's why i was thinking more in terms of group 1's actions, and how they may have affected the galaxy, more than the people themselves. otherwise you get stuck in that trap of just playing extensions of group 1 (i.e. the failed mcguffin pickup story). then you beg the question: if you're going to play that story, why not just stick with the original characters in group 1?

Well, I want to avoid the players feeling that their characters are more effective in one system than the other, and since I've decided to use both systems in this story (to make everyone happy) I had the idea that the WEG should be the older prequel story and EotE should be the modern and ongoing story.

The seperate systems I don't really have any issue with, I'm ok with that. I'm just brainstorming and getting stuck on the story where Group 1 effect Group 2 with a gap in between. I think you're right, the key is getting the Group 1 story down and making their actions or contrabution to the story have some lasting effect.

The cult idea is great and if a player makes a force user, or even a decendant of one, there will be no issue making them care about it! I could even do some kind of a 'sins of the father' story where a players father (in person or in an inherited journal) recounts the events of Group 1's adventure and have that story be kind of a flashback. The decendant in Group 2 can try to redeem their father (or his memory).

Another idea came to me while going through the Big Book of RPG plots; have G1 track down a bad guy, they capture him and send him off to prison. The bad guy and the heroes of G1 become a thing of local legend. Fast foward to G2 and the bad guy escapes, G2 does the tracking thing as the baddie seeks revenge on G1 (if they still live) or have a member od G2 be somehow tied to G1 (family or mentor)... and I just realized this is roughly the plot to Kung Fu Panda...

Do you have Tales of the Jedi Companion for WEG? I ask because you could set the WEG game in that time period and your Edge of the Empire game in the Rebellion Era. As for linking the two, you could have the WEG group find and use ancient bits of cool technology or Jedi relics and you could have the Edge of the Empire group hunting down those artifacts and treasures for use by the Rebel Alliance (money) or the Empire (Jedi/Sith artifacts)

Here's three examples: West End Games group

1. The characters break up a slave ring where the slavers use a special neural headband to make their slaves docile. The characters have the tech for a short time and then drop it off with the Republic or the Jedi for study and/or disposal.

2. The characters find a small trove of holocrons and lightsabers all relics left by an ancient Jedi Master. The entire adventure would be playing keep away from a small band of Dark Jedi or their duly hired representatives (in the case of non-Jedi groups). Add in a few chases and have some of the relics change hands once or twice before the group sells them to the Jedi Order for a big payday.

3. The characters get their hands on the coordinates or a key for a pirate king's treasure moon hidden on some planet far outside of Known Space. The pirates make it impossible to actually go and get the treasure, but without the coordinates or the key they can't actually get the treasure for themselves. They end up getting out of the area and sometimes fondly imagine what they might do if they were able to get the treasure.

Jump to the Edge of the Empire group:

1a. A Hutt hires the group to steal a piece of ancient technology from a collector perhaps to settle a debt or gain his favor. The adventure would involve getting their hands on the ancient tech and delivering it to a guy that's gonna do some terrible things with it.

Bonus: There's a built in follow up adventure right there for the group when they figure out this Hutt is doing some pretty bad things with the tech and that they have the chance to set things right by either stealing the tech back or breaking up the Hutt's slave operations.

2a, The characters get to track down what the Jedi Order did with those artifacts their old characters gave them and recover them before a dastardly villain (imperial or criminal type as appropriate) gets to them.

3a. The group's rival approaches them as the only people he can trust. His great and old ancestor had these coordinates and went to his grave talking about how they led to a super treasure. The memory device/droid has been passed down through the generations and eventually broke down. The rival repaired the droid/storage device and fired it up. Turns out that the ancestor was right and now their rival is willing to cut them in on the treasure if they help keep him alive long enough to grab it. The pirates have descendants of their own and they heard stories about a band of meddlers that robbed them of their ill gotten gains. This band has managed to track down everyone descended from them and have killed or captured the other descendants with only the rival left. Now it is a chase to get the treasure and maybe deal with the band of pirates. And of course the rival is gonna turn on the group once the treasure is found.