Well it doesn't have to be a warship, but has anyone ever played a game with the PCs in charge of a big ship (Silhouette 6 plus)? The sort of game where you make someone play as a Commodore, and then proceed to run every other sci-fi franchise (Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Star Trek [except DS9]) through the viewpoint of Star Wars?

How did you run it? What was the ship? What roles did the PCs fill? What storylines did you use?

Or has nobody been brave/crazy enough to try this?

Well, I've always got the idea to give the players a Xanter-class frigatte for a 5-years-mission.

Their mission: to explore strange new worlds in the Unknown Regions / Companion Besh galaxy...

Possible positions would be captain, chief medical officer, chief science officer,...

But unfortunately, I haven't had the time to run this campaign so far. Well, maybe in the future...

Well, I've always got the idea to give the players a Xanter-class frigatte for a 5-years-mission.

Their mission: to explore strange new worlds in the Unknown Regions / Companion Besh galaxy...

Possible positions would be captain, chief medical officer, chief science officer,...

That sounds like a very original idea! Where'd you get the idea?

But unfortunately, I haven't had the time to run this campaign so far. Well, maybe in the future...

What about a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away)?

Don't know where I got the idea from - could be ripped off an obscure TV show from the 60ies maybe? ;-)

Well, the moment I read about the Xanter class in Enter the Unknown I was hooked - It's a big ship, but the weapons aren't too scary, and there's even a garden on board. And the ship class was apparently used for several hundred years - plenty of time to set a campaign in.

Maybe the players in my RL campaign will stumble upon an old abandoned Xanter one day (of course infested with either pirates, assassin droids or bio-enhanced carnivores...).

Would be a good ship for a rebellion campaign as well:

Old --> easy to acquire

Garden, long autonomy --> ideal for the Rebel Alliance Fleet

I mean if someone rich enough wants to buy a Sil 6 warship to give it the Alliance, the Empire will probably come down on him...

But if he just wants to equip an exploration ship, that of course mysteriously goes missing during it's first flight, the Empire probably won't know immediatly that he just gave the Alliance a warship.

Currently running the Darkstryder Campaign, which fits the campaign style you describe. Ship is a heavily modified corvette on a mission to chase down a renegade moff escaping into uncharted territory. Running the campaign roughly as written with the addition of some fillers to help introduce and bring back recurring characters.

Biggest fancy trick was working out a method to allow the use of 3 or 4 characters. They primarily run the command crew, but having additional characters on hand allows the players to select a character with a different skill set when the command crew character isn't appropriate or available for a mission or encounter chain.

The Commander is my favorite AoR class with the Commodore being the specialization I like the most. I look forward to the day I get to play that out. I like the idea of being in command of a ship. Something about being called Captain .... that's appealing to me.

I think the biggest hurdle would be coming up with enough space based adventures and reasons for why a PC captain is always leaving the ship to go on adventures!!! Granted I suppose you could just do it the Star Trek way (also why no love for DS 9?).

The best concept I've toyed with in my head for such a game though is a BSG rip off in which the Yuuzhan Vong rip through and conquer the galaxy and what is left of the resistance is a rag tag group of fleets doing hit and run strikes.

For a mixed crew you may have a hanger bay with a couple of heavy fighters, a scout ship and some ground vehicles. Of course there will need to be pilots for them, then there's the ground crew that explore and investigate, someone needs to speak over 6,000,000 forms of communication.

Everyone onboard probably needs to be proficient in a couple of different areas, and you could run it in different ways. The party are in charge, deciding where the ship goes, and what gets done there. Or the Party could be the ground team, each session or module is a new location, with new obstacles and McGuffins to collect.

It's a fun sounding campaign

I kick around a lot of ideas I don't often don't get to work out. Ship commander is one of my favorites. One concept I thought of was working with a task force that's entire purpose was to acquire resources for the Alliance by capturing pirate vessels, resources from criminal groups and the like and make it look like other criminals were doing the stealing. You'd be dealing with a lot of criminal elements while trying to fly under the Empire's radar, and make sure those same criminals don't catch onto you being the Alliance.

Another would be to track down a dangerous Imperial ship/task force causing problems in the Outer Rim/Wild Space. It'd be like a tense submarine war movies kind of thing, partially trying to pick up the scent while never really knowing when it might just pop out right on top of you.

The old WEG sourcebook talks about the rebellion obtaining a lot of ships via either purchasing them through front companies or stealing them from friendly planets so you're correct there.

Right now my group is running a campaign based around a Rebel Xanter scouting the unknown regions for possible base and Safe World locations as well as supply routes through the region.

Listing every campaign my group has done that involved the party commanding a Sil 6 or equivalent vessel or larger, or a group of such vessels would take a long time and that's assuming I can even remember them all. We've done a number of pirate and privateer campaigns either starting as Sil 6 vessels or starting at Sil 5 and upgrading to Six or above, roving naval vessel or fleet campaigns, independent fleet or naval vessel campaigns, Sector or system based fleet campaigns. Never really done campaigns based on other settings but we have adapted a few battles and some operational strategies from other sources.

Your ideas sound interesting Blackbird but how much of a role would a capship serve in the first one Unless you are raiding a lot of criminal ship traffic the warship doesn't seem like it would see ,much action.

I've always loved the idea of capital ship combat. I would love to run/play a Bridge Crew game.

I know at least one fellow PC in the game I'm in now is interested in someday getting command of a capital ship, and I'm interested in helping him if we get the chance, so if it happens I'll be sure to let you know how it goes

(Granted we're EotE so it might be a case of the "Queen Anne's Revenge" going on, but hey, all the more fun!)

I thought there would be several ships. A Nebulon-B or Neutron Star would serve as base of operations, and you would have a sil 5 gunship (maybe a CR90 or DP20, maybe a Quasar Fire) to deal with most catches.

There a handful of neutral faction sil 5+ ships that would be the meat of the adventure, and plenty more in EU. Keldabe, Kossak, Starbolt, 4R3, Gozanti...

And then the threat of an Imperial patrol or convoy...

I've always loved the idea of capital ship combat. I would love to run/play a Bridge Crew game.

One of the GMs in my group adapted the space combat combat system from the old FASA Star Trek RPG to Star Wars specifically for Bridge crew campaigns long ago,

I know at least one fellow PC in the game I'm in now is interested in someday getting command of a capital ship, and I'm interested in helping him if we get the chance, so if it happens I'll be sure to let you know how it goes

(Granted we're EotE so it might be a case of the "Queen Anne's Revenge" going on, but hey, all the more fun!)

Yeah privateer and pirate campaigns are the favorites of most of the groups I have been part of.

I thought there would be several ships. A Nebulon-B or Neutron Star would serve as base of operations, and you would have a sil 5 gunship (maybe a CR90 or DP20, maybe a Quasar Fire) to deal with most catches.

There a handful of neutral faction sil 5+ ships that would be the meat of the adventure, and plenty more in EU. Keldabe, Kossak, Starbolt, 4R3, Gozanti...

And then the threat of an Imperial patrol or convoy...

Could always use a Kossak or Starbolt as the base ship. I'm certain that the Rebellion has some Starbolts given the groups the Starbolt was marketed too. And while the Kossak was originally built for the Hutts I'm certain they sold some off to arms dealers and other groups soon after production started. If the Hutts kept them all to themselves then any attacks launched by a Kossak can be traced to the Hutts. By selling some they gain plausible deniability for any raids using Kossaks.

I do like the design of the Xanter, I'd definitely try that if I ever got asked to do an EotE campaign (though I'm tempted to rip off the 'searching for a new base' plotline - have a weird environment of the week).

As for DS9, I wasn't hating, but it was much more about the space station than anything else (although the Defiant was probably the coolest ship from the show as a whole). And while that works for a homestead game, I'm not thinking that way.

The extreme end of this scale would probably be having the PCs in command of an MC80, which would be awesome if done well. Certainly, playing the Battle of Endor as a Mon Cal cruiser would be awesome, but it doesn't leave a lot of room to expand, and you'd have to set the campaign post-Endor in order to have a reasonable number of encounters. Still, if everyone had a role and a bridge position it could be very good.

An alternative would be to set them up with a Corellian Corvette and have them promoted through the Alliance from there.

What I imagine, is a group of 4 or 5 PC's starting out small as the key officers on say like a CR90, maybe just post Yavin. Captain, Pilot, Tactical Officer, Sensor/Comms, Engineering, then as you do a series of encounters. Exploring, running cargo, escorting convoy's, throw in a couple low-key space battles against the Imps, as their duties progress they continue to get promoted up the ranks, taking maybe a Neb-B next, then another series of encounters and now they've got their own fighter squadrons so the next few encounters probably focusing more on ship to ship combat, maybe being involved in/changing history at the Battle of Derra IV, then depending on how the campaign goes again, they're promoted to the bridge crew of a MC-80 just prior to Endor, with the 2nd death star battle being the climatic end of the campaign with a massive ship to ship battle against the imperial fleet.

I really like the idea of that. From what we've seen Rebel ship captains have a lot to do beyond just flying the ship, so it could definitely work. I'd really like to run a campaign like that, even if I can only imagine the amount of dice rolling for running an MC80's gun batteries!

I really like the idea of that. From what we've seen Rebel ship captains have a lot to do beyond just flying the ship, so it could definitely work. I'd really like to run a campaign like that, even if I can only imagine the amount of dice rolling for running an MC80's gun batteries!

Oh yeah, early on the in the campaign tons of away missions lol. Order 66 Podcast does a great episode (I think its a two parter actually) on ship combat in the roleplaying setting. Grouping the guns to fire as the Tac Officer, and perhaps giving them the linked quality (with a cap or increased cost per gun perhaps) could be a solution.

It is what I do with Neb's in my EotE campaign so I'm not rolling for each individual turbolaser but rather a volley of turbolaser fire. Though with npc's its much easier to do a group of turbolasers as minions. I dunno I just really want to shout things like "Get me a targeting solution on that Star Destroyer" or "Intensify forward firepower!".

Alternatively, this campaign could also work well as an Imperial group, which opens a whole new plethora of options i.e. To defect or not to defect.

even if I can only imagine the amount of dice rolling for running an MC80's gun batteries!

I've been wondering about this, could you just opt to use minion rules on gun batteries when there's a lot of them?

You could have, say, six batteries on an MC80 (a bit much for smaller ships, but scaleable) which you roll for together. You could have the number of turrets used for the Ability dice of the Tactical Officer's role, with their Gunnery skill for the Proficiency dice. Breaking them into groups of a reasonable size does seem like a good option. The only problem comes when battle is joined and the pilot and sensor officer are just sitting there waiting for the Tactical Officer to finish his tenth armful of dice.

even if I can only imagine the amount of dice rolling for running an MC80's gun batteries!

I've been wondering about this, could you just opt to use minion rules on gun batteries when there's a lot of them?

This would probably be ideal. Find a decent minion starship gunner profile, and put those weapons together into groups.

Given that a lot of starship weapons on the big cruisers have the Slow Firing quality, it might be best to only fire some of them each round, so that you can a continuous barrage of fire instead of one massive burst, then nothing for a while.

even if I can only imagine the amount of dice rolling for running an MC80's gun batteries!

I've been wondering about this, could you just opt to use minion rules on gun batteries when there's a lot of them?

This would probably be ideal. Find a decent minion starship gunner profile, and put those weapons together into groups.

Given that a lot of starship weapons on the big cruisers have the Slow Firing quality, it might be best to only fire some of them each round, so that you can a continuous barrage of fire instead of one massive burst, then nothing for a while.

An alternative on the shooting all being managed by NPC minion groups, is that they set the dice pool, and rolling the dice goes around the table: thus, the Captain would roll just as many shooting dice as the Tactical Officer. In this way nobody is sitting around during combat, and they all have specific duties to perform on the bridge or at their station. It's also more representative - the bridge officers aren't directly responsible for shooting, the gun crews are. The only thing I'd wonder about would be that six turrets would only be doing one lot of damage, which is a bit odd. But easier than rolling for 36 turrets in one direction.

I personally want to run a "carrier operations" style game, taking lots of ques from the Wing Commander series and Battlestar Galactica. Key roles would be CAG (commander, air group, maybe CSG in this case), maintenance officer, medical officer, intelligence officer, security officer/marine detachment commander. I would keep the position of ship's captain as an NPC though; I wouldn't want any of my PCs to "pull rank" within a game.

I'm debating heavily on how to tie in the starfighter aspect in this style of campaign. The main party wouldn't be manning the starfighters in this case unless it were a really small strike carrier of sorts. Maybe I could have the players play multiple PCs, with one group being a set of pilots. On the other hand, I like the idea of keeping the crews separate and maybe using the X-Wing miniatures game as something of a sideshow for the main RPG, which will determine the success of the various missions.

Managing starfighters is an interesting one here. Would you run it narratively, or have players rolling dice for it?

Another would be to track down a dangerous Imperial ship/task force causing problems in the Outer Rim/Wild Space. It'd be like a tense submarine war movies kind of thing, partially trying to pick up the scent while never really knowing when it might just pop out right on top of you.

I *really* like this idea, and could definitely see a 2-3 PC per player game working here. I'm sure such a game of cat and mouse would mean that, rather than the capship herself doing the dirty work, a lot of the day-to-day activity would be in the form of sending a shuttle into a location for a mission team to accomplish some goal. So each player might run an officer on the ship, one of their most capable operatives, plus perhaps a member of an attached cell (a la the Rebels cartoon, but directly working for the mothership).

I'd likely set something like this in or near a large nebula, where there were official routes blazed through it between various systems, but ships could, slowly, plot an uncharted course through as well...meanwhile all the stellar radiation effectively blinds any ship within the nebula. The "quarry" has been using this stellar feature to lie in wait and attack friendlies, and now it's time for the hunter to become the hunted, as the PC's ship goes in after them, all the while sending their people to the various planets on the periphery, gathering intel, tracking down people with information, etc.