TL:DR

One of my players is a Rodian of the Tetsu clan. All Tetsus are being hunted by the Chattza Clan.

He fled with others of his clan to Nar Shadarr, but his friends were capture while he was on a job.

I need help working out some ideas how to tie this into some kinda mini side adventure for the group.

OK

So, I have been running an Edge game for about 9 months, before taking a short break. During that break I have pushed my players to develop a more comprehensive back story to their characters, in the hopes that something sparks off some inspiration in myself, or gives me an opening to do something, or tie something into their personal backgrounds.

One of my players, who in an earlier SAGA game was known simply as Captain Black Space (Because he never came up with a name, and there was literally a blank space on his character sheet) I thought was going to be a struggle to get anything from. The last time I asked the group if they had made any progress his response was; “I decided he was going to have black hair… then I realised he didn’t have hair… that’s as far as I got”

I sighed and figured this might be a lost cause. Said player is very quiet, but has moments of awesome.

Then I got an email from him. His back story.

All 7 pages of it.

I was floored.

He had, it seems, done a significant amount of research on Roadians, Rodia, their history and events, and come up with something fantastic.

He even wrote a short story telling of his times just prior to meeting the group, right up to the very start of Escape from Mos Shuuta where I started the game. Including the names of his companions he fled to Nar Shadarr with!

In summary, he is a member of the Tetsu clan, who were ousted from Rodia by Navik the Red, and all members of his clan are being hunted by the Chattza clan (where is where his starting Obligation of 5 came in: Bounty).

He fled, and his piloting saved their ship, hid out on a colony in the U-Tendik system until discovered, fled again to Nar Shadarr where he took on work as a freighter pilot to support his small group searching for other surviving Tetsus. He was away from the group when his companions were captured by Chattza’s and then took on a job in desperation that brought him to the group.

Now this was exactly what I wanted. In SPADES, and I have told him as much… even shamed the rest of the group for slacking!

He has given me options for:

A Chattza bounty hunter cropping up from time to time.

Messages or evidence of other survivors of his clan

Evidence that his companions are not dead, and he could rescue them.

The think is.. I need help fleshing out the hows, wheres and whens of the above, and that’s where I turn to you lovely lot.

So far, the group have run through:

Escape from Mos Shuuta

Long Arm of the Hutt

Trouble Brewing

Debts to Pay

And

Crates of Kryats.

They are currently on Nal Hutta after the events in Crates, I have Black Sun Rising and Under a Black Sun lined up, with Beyond the Rim, Tatooine Manhunt (Which I will use as a stepping stone into the Rebellion), the new Adventure when it is available, and possibly Jewel of Yavin, plus whatever I can create/scrouge/adjust from WEG/find/released in the future.

Now, I believe I have developed abit as a GM, if anyone has seen my previous posts, I’ve always felt I couldn’t adlib things, but I did run a rather reasonable customs inspection while they were on the way to Nar Shadarr in Crates, which seemed to work. It was only a short one session thing, where the Customs commander took a shine to our twilek doctor and tried chatting her up, the player roleplayed it wonderfully. The same player then came up with a convoluted method to get into BactaMax looking for their contact on Nar Shadarr, and I managed to wing that one reasonably well. (As a result, that player now has an XP advantage over the others I need to remedy).

But, I need inspiration and framework, if not full on details, to work from. And that’s still where I fall down unless a rare moment of inspiration comes along. So while I have some seeds, I need the soil to make it grow.

So… any suggestions?

Cheers

RD

OK, presuming no one can be bothered to read the whole post, Ive added a summary at the top of the original post.

This is a bit rambling, sorry...

It depends on how big the side adventure is, and how quickly you want to jump into it. Presumably the Chattza clan has more on their mind than hunting the Tetsu clan, in which case it would be easy to cross paths on any adventure in the future. Perhaps a group of Chattza are competitors on the next job, or are in cahoots with the next group of villains the players come across.

A "slow simmer" way might be to introduce "sightings" and brief interactions, where the Chattza keep crossing paths with the player's group. Introduce more interactions in future sessions, allowing the players to gather more information (and the Chattza clan to react) and eventually lead up to some final confrontation. You can drag this out as long as you wish.

In the first session, have the Tetsu player notice a nearby Chattza, either by recognizing them physically, or by some insignia. Perhaps the Chattza are witnessed in the act of "doing something bad" and the Tetsu player wants to tail them and see what they're up to, and maybe foil their plans. Perhaps the Chattza are chasing another Tetsu, and the player can set up an ambush.

Note that recognizing a Chattza physically makes it more personal, so you'll need to invent some history. It can be as simple as "that's the thug that used to beat me up, until our feud became a blood feud", or as complicated as "that's the guy who used to date my sister, until our clan feud went nuclear". The first is easy rivalry, the second might be layered with nuance...perhaps the Chattza fellow turned the player's sister in, but that act has haunted him ever since, etc.

Anyway, to turn your question back on you, how big and how important do you want to make this? Given the player's volume of input, I'd advise on the larger side rather than a one off, a recurring theme that pops up every once in a while and will eventually accumulate into something epic. The player's efforts would deserve it.

So to make that happen, first you need to decide what kind of personal relationships might there be between the Tetsu player and any members of the Chattza clan. Is it complicated, like a civil war where brother fought brother? Or relatively simple where two growing clans were simply fighting over new turf and one got the upper hand? What was the turf? Drugs, slaves, mining rights, rival manufacturers?

Second you need to decide how the conflict can be resolved. Is conflict and total annihilation of one side or the other a foregone conclusion? Is there anything that can make a peace between these groups? Is a mutually-assured-destruction kind of peace a possibility? Can a divisive figure be removed? Can a person of mixed heritage unite them?

Just some initial thoughts...

I don't know the context of the pre-fab adventures you've run, but we can look at the context of them being in Nal Hutta. Perhaps a branch of the clan is in partnership with one of the Hutts. Perhaps they're supplying slaves, or they've negotiated a deal where the Hutt sells them a portion of his mined ryll. This could create a quandry of whether or not to pursue them. The character finally has a bead on their rival clan, but pursuing it could mean making the enemies of a slimy slug crime boss. It could be especially difficult if the players already have a working relationship with the Hutt in question.

@whafrog

The background the PC is drawing on is part of the EU.

Navik the Red rose to power on Rodia and decided the Tetsu clan needed wiping out. I believe he got all his information from Wookieepedia.

I do like the idea of a slow burn, but not quite sure how to work it all in yet...

Another thought is to ask how other clans might fit into this. Is the Yiyar clan an old associate of one side or the other? What if they were to switch sides? Could they work things to their advantage so that the two main clans try to destroy each other, thus leaving a vacuum for the Yiyar to try to fill?

And what about other clans? You could come up with many layers of politics and intrigue and backstabbing and double-backstabbing, and so on.

I haven’t actually read any of the Star Wars books, so my knowledge of the EU begins and ends with Wookieepedia.

But I think that there are larger questions that can be asked here, of where these pieces fit into the puzzle, what kind of puzzle that might be, and whether that puzzle is actually just a piece of another larger puzzle.

Navik the Red rose to power on Rodia and decided the Tetsu clan needed wiping out. I believe he got all his information from Wookieepedia.

Heh, Navik the Red even comes up on Google. Honestly it makes it a bit more difficult because the only way to resolve it permanently would be to take out Navik, thus changing the story. Depends really how eager you are to stick with the existing resources, in which case some of the answers to the questions above would require reading the resources noted in Wookieepedia. From what I can gather in my limited reading of it, the sole rationale for Navik is "he's a thug and that's what thugs do". Which is really boring.

Personally I'd change the outcome, and Navik will (hopefully, if the players succeed) never make it to the New Republic Senate. Maybe Navik is becoming increasingly unhinged, and even his clan members are starting to have doubts. In fact, maybe all of Rodia is getting sick of this guy, but there's nobody to challenge him. Perhaps there are the beginnings of an undercurrent of rebellion on Rodia, but the player's character has been away too long to know. Introduce a personal, possibly sympathetic, connection to the Chattza clan in the first couple of sessions, and perhaps a rescued Tetsu who can reveal the current state of affairs.

That would be a start anyway. In fact, you wouldn't need much more than that to get the story flowing and see whether and where the player wants to take it. If they bite this bait, then you can flesh out more detail.

I'm not overly fussed if my players actions change events that happen 10 years after the game is set, since all of that is not Canon anyway, and even if I did use the EU 'as is' I have always gone with the approach that I will pick and choose what bits I use. My scope of galactic events is being left intentionally blurry.

They wont be able to change the major events as set out in the films, but the political standings of planets never really covered for that period are entirely flexible for me. I know Rodia was touched on a bit in TCW, and those events won't change, but my game time will probably only cover a few weeks or months by the time the new film comes out, and we know what happened between Ep6 and 7.

For all we know, the New Republic doesn't happen, or happens in a way vastly different to the way to EU has portrayed it. Since I know very little of this period, it doesn't bother me. The only thing so far that's perhaps... irked me a little but, is the Solo Origin film, as I LOVED the Han Solo Trilogy, and that film could potentially change all that story. But that's some 4 years away, so there is really little point worrying about it, as I can choose which story to use, and it wont have any effect on my game.

I like the idea that perhaps the hunting party sent to track down the PC and his companions are longing for home, and have been told they cannot return until they find the PC, which could cause unrest in that group the PC could discover and play on. Perhaps they have become so disillusioned with what they feel is now a pointless task, that their feelings on the matter, and the dogged insistence of Navik the Red has made them question his orders?

Still need to work this out.

Definitely a slow burn. Sightings and clashes are important... but what you really need is buy-in from the rest of the group. All of your players need to provide you with this kind of backstory. Not so that they have something down on paper for a backstory, but for compelling story in the days to come. If you have two players suddenly confronted with their past (say a bounty hunter on one side and a Chattza enforcer on the other) and in the fray both of the others attempt to escape, the players suddenly have to decide who to follow. Especially if they are trying to get to the informant that their little fight delayed them from. Slow burns with tension become very compelling story sessions. I'll be the first to admit I'm hard on players, but then again, I have had some great players in the last decade. Luckily we trade off GMs and I get shenanigans pulled on me too, but if you don't have tension in resolving where the group is going, you never get to resolve anything creatively. Coming together and feeling like you make a difference really does bring (and keep) a group together. And I don't just mean the paper people... the real people in the room love it and will keep coming back for more (as long as you don't abuse it... you have to be creative too!)