Hey guys and galls

I have been mulling this over a bit and now I want to have a conversation with you all about the trend I have noticed. It seems like a lot of the time in the Edge games I run, as well as the scenarios that I read about here, the Empire is used as the bad guy, the opposition.

This is obviously a fine use for the totalitarian regime bent on dominating the galaxy under it's iron fist, but it leads to a feeling where an "Edge of the Empire" game evolves into an "Age of Rebellion" game.

Fighting against the empire is natural and all but as a storyteller I have this feeling where the fight against the empire becomes shtick, old hat, and rote.

I want to tell a story where the Edge characters stay at the Edge but still have an epic story of galactic scale. The Empire will be there but more as a force of nature. You can prepare for, hide from or run from the hurricane but only those crazy rebels think they can defeat the oncoming storm.

I am interested in your thoughts on this.

What do you do to keep the Empire from becoming the bad guy, or does it not bother you?

My guys are out of Nar Shadda and I've only used the Empire for one fight, and to just mix it up a bit and gauge their relative combat level. I even had them shot at by Rebels attacking an Imperial base where they were picking up black market weapons from a corrupt Imperial officer on a weapons smuggling job.

If you stay far enough out on the edge you could stick to systems the Empire may have a presence in but not claim. Then they're more of an annoyance but with that constant background fear that this might be the year they annex this free region of space.

Otherwise, there's always the options of operating in Corporate Sector Authority territory which has a great Edge feel to it. Hurt space is another option. The Empire lets these regions mostly self govern. Run into the Empire here, and they're mostly guests. In fact, if that CSA viceprex and his Espo goons or that bastard Hurt and his mercy and slave soldiers have you by the throat, maybe they've overstepped their authority and violated your rights as an Imperial citizen. Maybe you go running to the Imperial Navy for aid

Use the Obligation mechanic to bring the group back around to the "real" bad guys: their "benefactors." The Hutts, the Pykes, the Black Sun, the CSA, Sector Rangers, etc. Either their Obligation is an external force driving them to deal with enemies of their benefactor, or else their Obligation is an internal force driving them to confront their own demons. They simply don't have time to deal with the Empire!

To use the Smuggler story line of Star Wars the old republic MMO, the characters are offered the chance to go on a Galaxy spanning treasure hunt, looking for the long lost loot of a dead criminal kingpin.

What do you do to keep the Empire from becoming the bad guy

Easy. You steal from the best:

subtitle: the three very awesome Brian Daley Han Solo books, where there is no Empire, no Jedi, just two smugglers trying to make their way in the universe.

Depending how you run this your PCs may be working for the Imperials on legitimately benevolent reasons maybe due to the pressure kept on imperial shipping by the unrest they end delivering supplies and personnel as part of a lucrative contract that keeps their bills paid, their families well looked after and the local Moff is actually one of the good guys uninterested in Tarkin's Doctrine because it clearly failed the same day as Tarkin and his prototype spacestation were wiped out.

Now imagine if they had a Death Star used to actually defend the Empire rather than misused as a terror weapon now you have Rebels wanting to take it out ignoring the fact it doesn't have its predecessor's superlaser being intended to help protect the sector but due to being obviously unfinished whose to say it can't be turned into an important junction point ala Babylon V but intended to be more self sufficient and less of a strain on the economy and where's there's trade there's usually an underworld... isn't there?

What do you do to keep the Empire from becoming the bad guy, or does it not bother you?

I very much adopt a "less is more" approach to the Empire, when running a Firef...I mean Edge of the Empire style of game. For example, Stormtroopers are no longer dime-a-dozen minions...they're the elite shock troops of the empire: Dedicated, professional, brutal, terrifying. Some might feel that its not really Star Wars without dozens of faceless, white clad baddies to dispose of, but that's all in where you're standing, and what kind of game you're running.

It is very much a question of focus. The default setting (even for EotE), makes it very easy to slide into the heroic rebel or...Robin Hood in space mentality. But if you start playing up the bills involved (fuel, maintenance, food), suddenly your guys are no longer movie screen heroes, doing movie screen heroics, instead they're regular people scrabbling in an unfriendly galaxy. Again, a question of focus, and shifting the mentality of the campaign.

The middle of the road, as awayputyrwpn mentioned, is to use Obligation to put pressure on the group without getting too lost in the minutiae (once you start tracking fuel, food, ammo...where do you stop?). Sure, if the characters were free to do whatever they wanted...they might just become swashbuckling rebel fighters. But the characters aren't free to choose. They have debts to pay, people to pay off and scores to settle. Fighting the Empire can happen along the way...but it does not have to be the focus of the campaign.

Now of course, if that's what your players WANT to do...then perhaps you're running the wrong kind of game for them.

If you want an epic story of galactic scale then you've got to create a nemesis/villain with an organization around them and whose interests are opposed to those of the party.

In other words - the Empire is a go to villain in this era because the work is already done for you in coming up with the common bad guy everyone hates so you've got to come up with a substitute.

You need a villain to DRIVE the story. The villain is out there doing stuff - stuff the PCs won't like - and the villain has a plan and is pursuing goals etc.

It would be reasonable to take the stance that the Empire has no presence, or at least no meaningful presence, in much of the Outer Rim. The corporate sector and banking clan worlds could be seen as client regimes of the Empire (lots of non-military Imperial presence), but aside from Imperial activities in the Arkanis sector, and a few heavily occupied worlds like Formos, Naboo and Kashyyyk, how ubiquitous is the empire on the Rim?

I'd argue they are spread pretty thin and a lot of worlds never see an Imperial. I've taken the position that the Empire doesn't have a Star Destroyer to police every system - far less! - and can't be everywhere at once. Imperial presence is most concentrated in the (human) Core Worlds and Colonies, key production centers and strategic points in the Inner Rim and Expansion Region, and only in a handful of places on the Outer Rim. Or, at least, that's how I run it.

So, while there may be some rebel bases in the Outer Rim, most of the "action" will be where the Imperials actually are. You can easily run adventures without rebels, or a desire to be rebels, if there are no imperials in the vicinity. There are plenty of worlds out there where pirates, hutt lords, rival scum, local warlords, or even planet spanning corps are the main antagonists. I would think a show and situation like that in Killjoys would be readily adaptable to a backwater system on the outer rim.

I painted the Rebellion as a bunch of terrorist thugs looking to hire my Edge group to do their dirty work. After all, the Empire just wants to bring peace and stability to the galaxy, who doesn't want that? Not everyone in the Rebellion is there out of the kindness of their hearts - many have a score to settle, others just like shooting things. The idea that they're all noble freedom fighters is laughable even in a fictional setting.

Small time criminals might want this sort of conflict to go on - the Powers That Be are too busy to police them, and there's always a market for whatever they're trying to sell. What criminal in their right mind would actively seek to curtail their own freedom and profits?

I've run two campaigns now, both in Hutt space for essentially this same reason. The big bads are boring and impossibly huge, I like a story that can be more intricately woven around the specific backgrounds of the characters so the PCs. They'll really feel like they carved out a story in their own corner of the star wars universe, with characters and organizations small enough that they feel intimately involved with and attached to them.

We'll, you could say the Empire has separate levels. Tiers, if you will. The Rebellion is butting heads with the top tiers. Edge characters could be limited to dealing with only the low tiers (thinking of law enforcement), such as Customs, which (and I think it's in the Edge core...) is separate from the Imperial military hierarchy. Or you could use Sector Rangers, which are still governed by the Empire, but galactic war isn't their problem. Even if a Customs official isn't the main nemesis, a group of smugglers would justifiably fear running into a Customs patrol, but that doesn't mean they go from free traders to Rebel heroes in one encounter.

Great points all, I'm glad I am not the only one to have been thinking about this.

The big bads are boring and impossibly huge...

I tend to agree, but am actually on the opposite course. Our game is strictly AU and the trajectory is to have a few linchpin events, which the player characters will be key players in, break the empire into feuding factions and altering the face of the galaxy. Its eight years after Order 66, our heroes are a group of Jedi survivors searching for Kenobi. Padme Amidala is alive and running point in the field for Bail Organa's nascent rebel network. The general chain of potential events is that Palpatine learns first, sends assassins to kill her, and then Vader learns that not only is Padme alive, but that Palpatine knew she was alive and tried to kill her. There is a lot for our ninja-leaping psychics with laser swords to do in that mess.

And that's all before we ask the question: what does Vader do now? My general plan for that, if and when we get there, is that he is going to reenact Caesar's March on Rome, or if he's crafty, invade the corporate sector and banking clan worlds instead, thereby securing a war-chest and setting off an Imperial Civil War. I may have him, in turn, send assassins to kill Palpatine, or trick the rebels into taking a shot at it, so that Palpatine - if he lives (I find him boring) - retreats to Byss and rules through a front-moff. How Tarkin and other Moffs react may turn it into more than a two-way conflict. That, in turn, gives the rebellion an early jump-start and allows for an immediate declaration of a new republic by those who join it.

The conflict, and galaxy, then ceases to be monolithic, and we can ask questions like: What does a new Jedi order look like? One other wrench: in my backstory notes, Darth Plageius became a Force Poltergeist after Sidious murdered him and then took control of a host body. He's in the outer rim training a cult of Sith warriors aiming for revenge on Sidious. Why? Because, we need more lightsaber. Truth be told, I'm only taking this route because we have bonafide Jedi in our game. If it were a scum and villainy game, I'd just go with what I wrote above - the Empire isn't everywhere and there are other people to fight. As it is, maybe Sidious and Vader with die...

Before they released the prequels I wondered if the Clone Wars was set up so at a convenient point Palpatine becomes the latest Voice of Valkorian, Anakin's is actually a descendant of his and the whole deal with Padme was to insure his bloodline continued even if he occasionally drained a world dry to stay alive.

The only Jedi on Coruscant were members of the noble bloodlines as well as politically minded meaning they were mostly darksider whilst Yoda headed up the monastic orders which were spread across the galaxy trying to attain the light unaware both sides were horribly wrong in their respective outlooks.

Still wish they had Republic Knights rather than Jedi Knights since I consider Jedi Knights to be Ronin and the Republic Knights the Samurai.

Obi-Wan was a Republic Knight until the Empire replaced the Republic so he became a Jedi Knight rather than accept what the Republic became those that remained loyal to the Empire became Imperial Knights so rather than outlaw lightsabers make them symbols of the Knights making them important symbols.

That would make Luke the last Jedi Knight rather than last Jedi and since Kanan was effectively a Squire rather than Knight mean Ezra doesn't mess up ROTJ since it would work better that Yoda was referring to Kanan rather than Leia.

That last trailer and suggestions about the Grey Jedi make me wonder about exactly how much information the Empire retained about the Jedi if Yoda could delete the records in the Jedi Temple after all if Count Dooku could pull that off then so could his former master!

Sorry let that get away from me!

The thing I have always gone with is that for your average group of criminals the Rebellion isn't going to treat you any better than the Empire once the immediate need is gone. All those space station customs guards who want to search your ship for spice or weapons or whatever ill gotten gains you are hauling are still going to be there if/when the empire is defeated. The thing is when you fly loose and by the seat of your pants it doesn't matter who is in charge the town will always have a sheriff who wants throw the outlaws in jail.

I always deal with this by making the empire the guys who scan your cargo and look for bribes and cheats and occasionally pick on the outer rim colony for rea. The Rebellion always want to use the moral high ground to low ball the price for the job. In the end my characters kind of root for the rebellion but at the end of the day they know they are not friends but only strange bedfellows at best.

I had the same concern, here was my solution.

Rebel intelligence can be jerks. Just establish early that the Rebellion is willing to do WHATEVER it takes to win.. even if that's screwing over some smugglers. Have your players ***** about that not seeming very "Rebel-like"

Then run an Age of Rebellion game and push the same group of players so far that they are willing to screw some innocent smugglers over to win the day.. Only at the end of the session do the realize the symmetry.. Then cackle maniacally.

I think the evolution you're talking about feels natural for a lot of people because of the precedent set by Han Solo and Chewie. Smugglers have been established as the "good criminals", while Bounty Hunters were the bad ones (even in SWTOR, Smugglers are on the Republic side while Bounty Hunters are with the Sith Empire), so it's only natural for some people to associate Fringers with the Alliance, while they don't have an inherent common enemy (as others have said on this very thread, customs will always be there, whoever's in charge). Plus, the Empire is an easy bad guy for a lot of people.

It is easy to make an Edge of the Empire without even mentioning the Empire, let alone use them as the main baddies. Hutts Cartel, Black Sun, Pyke Syndicate, Zann Consortium: a lot of those make great patrons, but also great enemies. In my current campaign my PCs belong to a Hutt clan and are stuck in the middle of an internal feud between 3 Hutt brothers. One of them is using a mercenary company associated with the Black Sun to disrupt his brothers' businesses and become the sole leader in the clan. My players have encountered the Empire twice in the campaign: once they were randomly selected for a search by Customs, and another time they got manipulated by an ISB agent, posing as a sector ranger, to do his bidding. I wanted them to feel the presence of the Empire, but more as the lawful authorities in the Galaxy (which every criminal should be somewhat afraid of), more than the main baddies.

I use the Empire as a threat but remember that the Imperial presence on the Outer Rim is relatively light. The Empire can show up when the characters get a little too out of line but their day-to-day threats can be something else entirely. You can introduce plenty of other villains other than Imperials.

Planetary government security forces may be a far more constant and visible force.

A large criminal organization like the Black Sun can be an epic galaxy-spanning threat. So could any other similar crime syndicate.

The Corporate Sector Authority was used in the Han Solo trilogy.

Another things you can do is introduce shades of grey into the usual black and white universe. In the TIE Fighter game, the Empire spends a lot of its time ending pirate threats, interplanetary disputes, and generally trying to maintain law and order. You might even have a couple situations where the Empire rescues the party from a criminal threat.

The Rebellion might take actions that are unpalatable to the characters. Remember that it's called the Rebel Alliance for a reason. It is an alliance of what were many disparate rebel factions brought together against their common enemy. Not all of these factions may be as ethical as Rebel High Command. Think of the ways that real world guerilla organizations get funding, training, and equipment. They may be involved in drugs, kidnapping/ransom (easy to "justify" when they're snatching the kid of a wealthy Imperial family, although the players should realize the child is innocent), dealing with various criminal groups, piracy, some might even delve into slavery (especially if its a rebel cell comprised of members that hail from cultures where this is common), training exchanges with terrorist groups, blowing up a market full of civilians in order to take out a squad of stormtroopers, etc.

Some of that may be too dark for your group, so judge it accordingly, but there's no reason to believe that every Imperial is a sadistic tyrant and every rebel is an upstanding hero with a heart of gold.

That might lessen their desire to take on the Empire or if you at least turn them off to wanting to join the rebels, fighting the Empire on any large scale becomes largely impractical.

I think the evolution you're talking about feels natural for a lot of people because of the precedent set by Han Solo and Chewie. Smugglers have been established as the "good criminals", while Bounty Hunters were the bad ones (even in SWTOR, Smugglers are on the Republic side while Bounty Hunters are with the Sith Empire), so it's only natural for some people to associate Fringers with the Alliance, while they don't have an inherent common enemy (as others have said on this very thread, customs will always be there, whoever's in charge). Plus, the Empire is an easy bad guy for a lot of people.

Side note... I've always wished that they'd made Smugglers and Bounty Hunters "factionless", taking jobs from both sides along the way... filled in the factions with SIS agents and Imperial spec ops. The idea that no one smuggles anything in the Sith Empire, and that none of the many many repugnant "good guys" we see in the Republic ever hire mercenaries or hunters to do some dirty work... goofy as hell.

But sadly, Bioware went with the very MMO-formulaic "faction uber alles" setup.

I always got the impression that not all smugglers worked for one side or the other. Your character just happened to be one of the smugglers that chose a side, and that side was the Republic.

Bounty Hunter may be a little more questionable on that presumption. My impression as that the republic frowned on bounty hunting, so hunters naturally sided with the empire.

I always got the impression that not all smugglers worked for one side or the other. Your character just happened to be one of the smugglers that chose a side, and that side was the Republic.

Bounty Hunter may be a little more questionable on that presumption. My impression as that the republic frowned on bounty hunting, so hunters naturally sided with the empire.

They frame it as part of the whole "Mandalorian thing", even if your hunter character rejects the Mandos -- or as my main hunter keeps saying "just joined for the discount card at Blasters R Us".

(I'd say we're derailing the thread, but I actually think this is relevant in that SWTOR serves as an example of a game in which the "main conflict" is invariably written into the stories of even the characters who maybe should be somewhat estranged from it. In the terms of this thread, you cannot "keep the rebellion out of the edge" in SWTOR.)

In the case of the smuggler, it would be one thing if you had some choice, but you can never actually play a smuggler who really does not side with the Pubbies.

I think the other factor to consider though is that if you are a party of smugglers, or at least taking part in illegal actions of some kind or another (which is how you get by in the Outer Rim after all), you will clash with the controlling power. When they need to police you, who is it up against you? The Galactic Empire!

It's only natural for outlaw bands to clash with the Empire. If that clashing gets too bad, with too high a price on their heads, what's to stop them getting sucked into the rebellion? At least it's a powerful faction to hide under, if you're one of those selfish kinds, like many good outlaws are.

I guess you need to get in nice and early with the Empire if you want to work with them, make sure they know you're theirs. Of course.

My group is more concerned with the politics between different criminal organizations than the Rebel vs. Empire struggle. They are too busy trying not to get their throats cut by their employers, past and present, to be caring about the government. As bounty hunters, both the Empire and the Rebellion are possible sources of income. I guess if they were smugglers, this might be a bigger issue. Smugglers would naturally be breaking Imperial law, but a few well-placed bribes can help that issue.