Greetings.
I am relative new to the Game Master Business and have experience only in Dark Heresy, but will soon start a Campaign with a small group in EotE.
I made this post for everyone else who is a new game master and may find creating a campaign rather difficult.

EotE has many adventures and they are a great start for a lengthy campaign, however just swinging from adventure to adventure seems rather boring.
So I'd create a main story and tie the adventures into them, to guide it.
But how does one start a Story? EotE gives us here a great tool, Obligation.

Create backgrounds for the characters with the players, with secrets and problems of their past, a second, hidden, obligation if you will.
A Droid could easily have memory problems and doesn't remember important parts of his life, or maybe the character is an Imperial Deserter?
Take those concepts and create a story that brought the Characters together and start your quest with an adventure.

After an alliance is smithed between the characters, they'll have to deal with the impact and consequences of their acting, resolving in problems mostly.
Here I would think about what could possibly be the perfect antagonist for you characters?
That gives us one big question, do we want to create a story only in EotE or over several books, up to FaD?
With the first option the antagonist could be a big player in the Black Sun or any criminal Syndicate, if it is the latter, the Antagonist should be present in every Campaign and would thus, most likely, be part of the Empire.

A concept I rather adore is the one of the main villain and the secondary, tertiary... villain. Like in the movies, the Emperor is the main villain, but stays hidden until the end, before we had to deal with Vader.

So our main Villain may not even appear in EotE, but rather only if certain circumstances are met. (like an Inquisitor who is in search for your Force Sensitive Exile)
While our secondary villains come in different flavours. I suggest may taking the villains out of the Adventures (just a selected few), flavour them up abit and have them a current threat.

With the Characters Background/Intentions and the Opposition, we can now form a Story with the Help of Adventures.
Use them to guide you. Do you Want to get from the Outer Rim to the Core Worlds? Or do you want to build a connection to the Rebels? Maybe you like your group to jump all over the place or maybe you want them to finish where they started.


To give you an example of my process, I give you an example of my current raw building of the campaign:
We have a Force Sensitive Twi'lek Smuggler, who has some unpayed depts. Also she survived Order 66 as a Padawan.
A Trandoshan Survivalist, who is driven by revenge to regain his Points. He had some problems with his Clan and lives only for the Scorekeeper.
At last an HK-Assassin Droid, who is rather valuable and stolen good from a Hutt. Is about 3000 years old and doesn't have access to most of it's programs.

The Villains are the Hutt, the Droid was stolen from, the one who betrayed the Trandoshan and an Inquisitor who may appear if the Smuggler uses her abilities too openly .
The Main Villain is a Black Sun Vigo and deals with the other villains in one way or another. Being that they are mostly Scum, they will be plot against each other and hold no loyalty for each other.

The Campaign starts with the Beginners Game Adventure and it's follow up, during which the Droid will be stolen.
Then the group will have to deal with the Hutts in the Outer Rim for some time until they'll eventually find their way to the core Worlds and get in Contact with the Black Sun, from whom they'll need to escape into Hutt Space and eventually come in Contact with the Rebels.
During this time the Trandoshan will seek his nemesis, while dealing with his past. The Smuggler is trying to repay or avoid repaying her Dept and the Droid has to gain access to it's programs and try to fit in this time. While with every character conflicts with their believes and motives occur.

Then would come the Followup with Age of Rebellion, where they'll leave their past behind, but it'll still haunt them.


Also, don't be scared to use inspiration from Books, Movies, Videogames or similar, most stories can be integrated into the Star Wars Universe rather easily.



Tell me what you think, how do you create Campaigns? Any suggestions how I could flesh out the time between Adventures?
I'm happy for every answer

I like picking a couple of movies or tv series and see what I like most and try thinking up a scenario using that idea.

For example I ran a Traveller game based around the start of the Phantom Menace using the premise that a diplomat arriving for a clandestine meeting to resolve an embargo accompanied by a bodyguard, assistant and a group of Marines.

Never got beyond them returning to their main ship after the double cross aboard the trade cruiser only managed to kill 2 of the battle armoured marines but it got me wondering about the rest!

Getting their input might also give you more ideas as to what to prepare for, for example I asked them to design their own home system and one came up with a few ideas that made mw want to run the game in that system instead!

With Edge I like watching Leverage for ideas, but you never really know when or where inspiration strikes!

For example the recent episode of Thunderbirds Are Go involved a space base that's on the verge of collapse getting pummelled by a meteor shower, now throw in the doctor who two parter about an alien race rising up in revolt seeking a devastating weapon that could wipe out all bar their own race.

The device is hidden somewhere on that base, the meteor shower threatens to destroy the weapon and end their scheme to seize control of the system since they believe the device calibrated to work on humans would keep the Empire from attacking them directly.

Now sit back and see what your players think up during the process of learning of the doomed space base and the hidden super weapon it should make for an interesting evening at the very least!

Sorry I didn't write something this long, I thought the post didn't go through, still have to figure out how this forum works

That's some great ideas, I will definetly keep that in mind when I create the next bit of story, there is probably enough material in the world with the vibe I expect from an EotE round!

Tell me what you think, how do you create Campaigns? Any suggestions how I could flesh out the time between Adventures?

I tend not to make long Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 continuing stories. I'm more episodic with recurring bad guys and good guys, building on what has come before, but not necessarily beholden to making sequels. I find that the free form-ness of that style tends to make things more organic. Things evolve on the player's, their actions and their backgrounds.

Besides, no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

How do I come up with a campaign? Two things for inspiration: I have the players come up with an extensive background . Meanwhile, I'll build a setting for them - a sector for them to call home, a handful useful NPCs, some settings for color and so on. And then of course, lastly during session zero, I'll ask the players what sort of games they want to see and what goals their character wants to accomplish.

After I have this huge pile of data, the games pretty much write themselves.

Also a great idea.
I mostly play Dark Heresy and there it is easy (and I find, neccessary) to write a story or at least the basic structure, as you are getting bossed around by an Inquisitor.

However I can see how the Episodic approach would much better for EotE.

Guess I will probably also force my players to go through your awesome guide
That and copperbells approach of searching for inspiration in series should give me enough data to build a sector, as both of you suggested.
After I figured how to rewrite the adventures I want to use, so they'll fit into the sector I can create some Villains and build a bare-bone story up around the data given and play around with it from seassion to seassion.

I just have to figure out how to get the Adventure from the Game Master Kit (the Droid Revolution thing) without buying the whole **** thing, all of the stuff is allready in the Beginner Set, but oh well

I think EotE lends itself to a "mission of the week" structure fairly well. I also like to run them as unrelated to begin with and let the characters interactions with the NPCs earn them allies and enimes. I remember years ago I ran a simple D&D game where an the characters actions with a simple bandit lead him to becomming a major villian and thorn in their side. Sometimes things write themselves. If you want an over arching story from the beginning several people have great ideas watch some tv read some novels and borrow some of the influences and ideas from there. Read the modules you plan to run and see if there is a theme you could use to link them all together. Maybe the maguffins are important to someone somewhere and all these items can be assembled into a device that would tip the scales of power. So what seems like random go here get that is actually part of a master plan.

Also I suggest looking at the characters your players bring to the table and see what kind of stories they have to tell and if a characters past (maybe obligation) lends itself into presenting the NPCs and organizations you need to make a campaign. Like I said sometimes these things write themselves.

I generally just come up with a basic adventure that is really just to gain money, (a published adventure works great for this) incorporate a charcter (generally a villain) who is based off of one of the PC's obligation, and see what happens. Then I just create a logical adventure to follow it, continuing a story based on whatever contacts (or enemies) the PCs made.

Originally we started out very mission of the week, but as these missions built they got tied in with a brewing war between corporations in Wild Space. We were fairly free form in the sense that their obligation dictated what would come up. I'd tend to think of a tone from movies or TV that I'd want to evoke (e.g. I want this session to feel like that scene in (that show) where (something really cool) happens). Generally speaking I found it useful to have a couple of ideas down for their obligations ahead of time ready to roll out. Then they took a left turn and decided to join the Rebellion and that effected the tone and style of the campaign.

I then went away and came up with the main villain, what his objectives are and how he hopes to achieve them. Who his allies are, how he thinks, what his resources are, etc. I then started plotting how to draw the PCs into his plot and broke this down into 'seasons' like with TV. At this point things became a bit more structured, whereby they tend fo receive missions from the Alliance with the long term goal of stopping this guy, but they might still get side tracked by their obligations or their own goals (and mission is a flexible term - it might be a single session, it might be a task that they've got to figure out how to complete over a few sessions).

Then once we've had a session, I'll often spend the time thinking about how the PCs actions have effected the villain's plans and how he might adapt. I'll also spend time between sessions asking the players what they want to see (and whether they mention specific ideas for situations or its just a vague concept like " more epic action" that's up to them), then I'll do my best to implement that within the framework of what the villains are planning - for example, one player wanted to go off on his own and scout, plan and execute a heist; so together we put that into motion, but it also happened to coincide with one of the villains attacking Nar Shaddar (where he also took the opportunity to kidnap one of the love interest of one of the PCs, the ex-wife of the villain).

Now I don't tend to plan more than a session or two ahead (whilst still having a fairly solid idea of where I think things will go within the TV season framework outline above), that way I feel I can better react to sudden changes. But basically, I try and focus on what the villains plan to do and what the players want out of the RPG and let that guide me.

My current campaign is creeping in on its conclusion so I think this might be a good space to share the process I went through.

Having been through another, shorter EotE campaign that felt very scattershot, I decided that I didn't want the PCs to start with a ship. Rather, I wanted the PCs to be invested in a locale, rather than run away every time the going got tough. I found the homesteader rules in the Colonist career book and decided the PCs should start with a business or piece of land instead.

I then began to brainstorm how I wanted the campaign to end . The image that appealed to me most was that of a sneak attack on an Imperial Super Star Destroyer. So my task was to figure out how to connect the two. Having the PCs go from money-obsessed mercenaries to Rebel sympathizers made sense and if they lost their business due to Imperial actions, it would be a good motivator to get involved in the war.

During character generation the players settled on having Mos Eisley as their base of operations. We came up with a backstory about Chalmun willing his cantina to the PCs, so they were invested in the location. The first batch of adventures centered around solving crimes and retrieving MacGuffins until a local crime boss offered a ship (and corresponding Obligation) as a "reward." A job that ran afoul of the Empire resulted in the Empire burning their bar... and they were in the Rebellion. After that, it was just a matter of escalating Rebel assignments until the final assault.