So after years of living in the city where I grew up and barley finding anyone to play RPG's with I moved to Belfast in 2008 and forgot about RPG's, about two and a half years ago some friends of mine got into Skyrim and started talking about wanting to play D&D. I told them I used to play.
Present day and now I have a waiting list to play, the reguar group is at 7 players with 5 in the wings who attend sometimes just to watch. It's the turn of Star Wars and I've had an idea but I would love to hear any thoughts.
In the Shadow of the Rebllion
Combination of EoftE and AoR rules.
Setting is the planet Copia, a critical and very efficiently run Farmworld supplying foodstuffs to the most of the systems in the local sector. In the aftermath of the Battle of Yavin the unrest and anger at Alderaan's destrcution spilled over into rioting and civil disobedience which was put down by the local Imperial Garrison and reinforcements which arrived about a week after the unrest began. Martial law is in place and the populace is under control.
This is when the resistance formed.
It'll be a sandbox setting. If everyone my game and waiting list wants in I run two startup games of 6 which sets the scene for all and introduces the important locations and charcters. Using a large number of pre-gens initially (Have made about a third of the planned 18 starting choices already) which should have most skills covered between them (There will be very few if any of the soldier/fighter type classes available amongst them). Players will pick what appeals for now. These characters will be used to introduce how the game works. While the game won't be deadly, captured players will be very difficult to rescue so if someone is lost then a spare pre-gen can be taken or player can opt to generate their own from the available specializations, some will be locked out until certain objectives are completed.
Game sessions will come from two sources;
1. Timeline events (Once every 3 or 4 weeks) - Certain events are planned to happen in game and I'll need to have PC's be part of these events. A game invite will go out a few days ahead of time saying I need 6 players for this episode and first responders get in.
2. Radiant quest type things (In between the main timeline episodes) - Through interacting with NPC's and obtaining intelligence other optional side adventures become available. If anyone in the group is interested they can see if they can get other players to help them complete these goals and ask me to run that session. These side missions will 'unlock' new equipment, resources, evironmental conditions, intelligence, contacts or access to personnel from locked out career paths for the group (Effectively allowing people to generate characters from one of the locked careers from that point forward if their player is killed or captured)
It's ambitious but I'm really excited by this idea. Has anyone else tried anything like this? Any more ideas or constructive criticism would be gratefully recieved. (I'm aware there will likely be some attrition from the unwieldly starting number of players but I'm pretty certain of 8 definites and I don't enjoy running numbers higher than 5 that much so this format seemed an ideal way of proceeding without excluding anyone).