I've DM'd for years for 3.5 and some Star Wars D20. I'm LOVING Imperial Assault, both the campaign, and the skirmish. The only thing I feel the game lacks is an element of characterization and/or more choices.

I would love to see some sort of choice the players could make in the middle of a mission that would give a mission a different outcome, akin to how winning or losing the mission does, but mid mission, if that makes sense. Would also be cool to see a little more background about each of the characters. Anyone have any experience in any of this, or should I just whip up some backstory and take a 20 on the process?

I've DM'd for years for 3.5 and some Star Wars D20. I'm LOVING Imperial Assault, both the campaign, and the skirmish. The only thing I feel the game lacks is an element of characterization and/or more choices.

I would love to see some sort of choice the players could make in the middle of a mission that would give a mission a different outcome, akin to how winning or losing the mission does, but mid mission, if that makes sense. Would also be cool to see a little more background about each of the characters. Anyone have any experience in any of this, or should I just whip up some backstory and take a 20 on the process?

I know this isn't really what you mean, but in my campaign, the middle of a mission is USUALLY when my rebel-playing wife DOES make a single choice that determines whether she wins or loses. Usually it is along the lines of "open this door with the last activation this round, triggering a villain to appear and ruin me ; or shoot this lowly officer and worry about the door next round." She just lost the finale like that last night.

P.S. She did not file for divorce, so I can gloat

It depends on how much of that you want.

The game's balance teeters on a knife's edge. In theory, rewarding the winning side with extra XP but then pushing to a mission that is theoretically in favor of the loser (debatable), any tinkering is going to throw that out of balance. More options for someone just gives them one more way to win.

Why not simply run an RPG? The FF line is well done. Besides, there are practically an infinite number of options there. Crawl through ducts, sneak up on Stormtroopers instead of blasting them, talking/bribing your way past officers, turbolaser them from the sky, etc. On the other side of the coin, the whole way IA is set up, especially the round limit, encouraged behavior you'd almost never see in the RPG. "I run through the grouping of Troopers clustered around the computer terminal in order to download the schematics. They won't shoot me while I do that right? Or immediately afterwards?"

Offering one or two additional options still seems rather limited when trying to make an RPG out of it. You may be better off accepting it for the game it is and trying out the RPG. (Or merely picking up your D20 books again. )

It depends on how much of that you want.

The game's balance teeters on a knife's edge. In theory, rewarding the winning side with extra XP but then pushing to a mission that is theoretically in favor of the loser (debatable), any tinkering is going to throw that out of balance. More options for someone just gives them one more way to win.

Why not simply run an RPG? The FF line is well done. Besides, there are practically an infinite number of options there. Crawl through ducts, sneak up on Stormtroopers instead of blasting them, talking/bribing your way past officers, turbolaser them from the sky, etc. On the other side of the coin, the whole way IA is set up, especially the round limit, encouraged behavior you'd almost never see I the RPG. "I run through the grouping of Troopers clustered around the computer terminal in order to download the schematics. They won't shoot me while I do that right? Or immediately afterwards."

Offering one or two additional options still seems rather limited when trying to make an RPG out of it. You may be better off accepting it for the game it is and trying out the RPG. (Or merely picking up your D20 books again. )

Don't get me wrong, I like this game how it is a lot. It's almost the out of the box RPG I'd love too - also what I meant wasn't open ended like a true RPG just more of a group goes left, do a, b, c. Group goes right, do x, y, z. The game has things similar to this, but in the regard that they WILL be triggered. It would be cool if each mission had two paths (not nonsensically literal paths) the group could go on.

A.) Initial Deployment 2 Storm Trooper Squads

B.) When the two initial storm trooper squads are defeated resolve one of the following event paths:

a.) Sound the Alarm!

"You've been discovered, and it looks like you've got company inbound. They're scrambling interceptors and it's too hot for a pick up in the original LZ. Move to the designated secondary pick up point, but hurry up the base will be swarming with troops any minute.

Hero's must interact with the two control terminals located on the outside of the transmission facility tech check 3, then steal (interact with) a speeder bike to escape into the forest. Mission ends in 3 Rounds

b.) Storm the Base!

Hero's must storm the entry way to the base. (Door is locked Health, twice the threat level 1 block.) Once inside they must find and assassinate the Imperial Commander (Imperial Officer, Health twice the threat level) Mission ends in 6 rounds.

Just something like that, of course with some balance checks worked out as I just made that all up on the spot, but that's the sort of thing I mean.

Also, would love if instead of having you generic "Your commander," and "Your pilot," if they had taken 5 minutes to give those people names, so it just felt a little more in depth. Also, some character back story like Arkham Horror (FFG makes both games)

We went the other way with ours. We play "Assault the Base", wherein we use as many forest and Imperial base tiles as we can to make our own haphazard maps. The Rebels get various XP and Credits and deploy in the base, the Imperial picks two deployment points on the far edge. Start with Threat and XP equal to the highest XP Rebel, ignore Agenda cards, and start Threat Level at 2 but increase it by one every round. See how long it takes to withdraw every Rebel.

There's nothing preventing people from making their own missions and scenarios. Play around with it, and if you get one you like, heck, send it into FF. Perhaps we'll see it in the next expansion. It would be neat to see something like that. Rebels have to decode a terminal by round 3, if they succeed they then get to do one thing that's relatively easy, but fail and they have to do something much more difficult in the same mission. There are some missions that do something similar now, but normally they are just slightly different timing obstacles for the same objective (Fly Solo, Imperial Hospitality).

Any updates on the merging of IA and the rpg games?

To me it dont seems that hard to turn it in to a RPG. If I whanted to do this I shod do something like this

1. Remove the threat system. The imperial player (game master) just use what troops he likes. And try to create a good experience for the rebels.

2. Improvised missions. The imperial players decide what happens afther a event. You can use the campaign missions as base if you like or just improvise your own.

3. Try to balance the game or improvise events that makes it more balance. For exempel, you made the game to hard for the rebels, then let Han and 3 rebel troopers come to the rescue or let the rebels be captured and set up a escape mission.

For more advanced styles. Only let the rebels know that they can see. If they go around a corner you can put up models that they dident see beforehand. This makes it more easy to balance for the game master, also more thematic.

As the imperial you can also roll every die hidden, so you can change the results if you need.

You can let the rebels rolle on the "eye" and search a room for secrets. Just don't tell them what they need to pass and only let them rolle once/hero.

Just a few ideas from the top of my head

Overall I think it's a cool idea - my only advice is that you make sure you really understand the balance of the game first. Play through a campaign, play some skirmish mode, whatever. Just make sure you understand what heroes are capable of, and what the different Imperial units are capable of. Sometimes a situation will feel hopeless even when it's not, and missions can swing very quickly.

Also understand that the missions are not designed for the Rebels to win, like RPG scenarios might be. They are designed to be winnable by either side - the Imperial player is as much a player as the Rebels are. So if you want the Rebels to win most of the time, but with varying degrees of challenge, you're going to have to meaningfully reduce the power of the Imperial forces or give the Rebels upgrades. You might consider just giving each rebel bonus health, like the "Heroic" and "Legendary" rewards in the base game do.

All that to say - it will be important to understand the balance of the game so that you know how to create appropriate - and winnable - challenges for the Rebels. I imagine experience as a DM will help a lot with this, but it's not a system that's designed for RPG play so you will have to do some work to make it fit that model.

I'm using an old SW Minis map pack 34" X 22". Four maps, one side is the roof and three floors of a building - the other side a space station. Doing the building first - "Rescue the Scientists". Using paper to cover the spaces the heros haven't been through/can't see.

Imps were too strong so had to make adjustments on the fly. We love it so far: at the moment the heros are running from eHeavies that have assault armor. Might need to lower the threat level some. Anyway you've got some great suggestions in this thread to tinker with.

Yes, IA has quite balanced and exact rules, compared with a rpg that might not even have a map. So a good understanding of the game mechanics is needed. Then som dungeon masters experience will help as well.

You can even include som normal roll playing and use the maps for the battles, if you want. Still at some point it might just be better to just turn to a normal rpg.

In later years I have started to like rpg with quite simplified rules, that leaves lot of freedom to me, the DM. I like to make it narrative where the battles are fast phased and not that mig part of the adventure and I never use maps over the battle.