This is just a thread for chewing fat about concepts you've found cool that have come up in your games (either deliberately as a plot point, or as tangents in random discussions).

My game is about a droid droid rights activist (who is the antagonist) who has constructed a hive mind. When negotiating with the Rebellion, a few points were raised with respect to how droids should be treated in a hypothetical republic.

If droids were given a number of votes in the senate, it couldn't be bound by either population (as droids can be mass produced) or by planets controlled (as droids don't really control planets, certainly not at the time that the players are playing). Giving them an arbitrary number of votes would edge out minor planets/races, many of whom have already existing alliances who may feel it necessary to protect them.

A lot of cultures/religions play around with the concept of the force, which droids don't interact with (well, much). Certainly, light side Jedi have absolutely no qualms with tearing apart droids willy nilly. The Jedi don't really consider droids to be alive in a real sense, and they seem to have some sort of philosophical clout in the Star Wars setting.

Culturally speaking, there would be an uphill battle, as most people view droids as slaves/peasants/source of relatively cheap labour. Even if they treat their droids nicely, that's basically the "I have a droid friend" argument.

Aside from that, we've also tried to store lightsabres in, uh, orifices to try to steal them, stolen ships from Hutts, and I've mostly been frustrated by my players not wanting to fight the bad guy.

How's your campaigns and its silly internal humour/whatever going?

I currently have Moff Theegan Scurre as an antagonist in my game. Brilliant hyperdrive physicist with political ties ( hence being a moff), owner of ScurreTech hypersystems - manufacturer of hyperdrives, very good ones, but of which each one secretly records data and when maintained at a ScurreTech station, this info is retrieved. The point of this?

Moff Scurre is pushing the boundries of hyperdrive technology. Rumour has he has developed a prototype .25 rating hyperdrive for the imperial military. While it has not been duplicated successfully, should the Empire gain this technology, who knows what could happen?

That is not all. Some imperials have heard of a project called 'Arbalest'. A star destroyer sized vessel that can launch other ships and objects into hyperspace - willingly or not!

A member of our old group, playing a Shistavenen Wolfman named Mak Bokra, was intent on getting as high as he could on the Empire's "Most Wanted" list. On each mission, at some point, he would scrawl "Mak Bokra was here!" on a wall or other surface. The wildest was, after infiltrating an Imperial battle platform that was a recurring opponent in the campaign, the Admiral in command reached for a button to call security. Mak chopped off the Admiral's hand as he did so, tossed him in an escape pod, but before shooting it off, scrawled "Mak Bokra was here!" in the Admiral's own blood inside the pod, tossed the hand in with him, THEN shot the pod off.

Party consists of a Chiss bounty hunter, an Akarrian offshoot hired gun, and a Mandalorian smuggler.

We snuck into a highly regulated university looking for some archeological help. We got noticed (easily enough, most non-humans had been kicked out, and the one human in the group wears mandalorian gear), and so COMPNOR set up a roadblock to check us out on our way out. Our GM clearly expected a firefight here, but we were hesitant to start a battle - we wanted to be able to come back as necessary. So, our Mandalorian scoundrel took his helmet off, took the leader of the COMPNOR squad aside and attempted to, ah, sell a few hours of the offshoot's time. In private, if you know what I mean. An epic deception check and a failed negotiation check later (triumph, 3 successes and 8 advantage, and 4 failures no threat, respectively), we were through the check. So far as COMPNOR thinks, the Mandalorian is just an incompetent pimp with a few unattractive alien prostitutes.

We also have spent several months playing bodyguard for the star of the famous Holonet soap opera, General Hothpital.

My game is about a droid droid rights activist (who is the antagonist) who has constructed a hive mind. When negotiating with the Rebellion, a few points were raised with respect to how droids should be treated in a hypothetical republic.

So you've got The Mechanist? I mean you even listed the Ant-agonist.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Fallout reference? I think that's what that is. I haven't played the DLC

Well the Mechanist/Antagonist were technically in Fallout 3 first, so you might've heard of them from there.

But yeah, when you mentioned a guy who is all about robot rights, and who has constructed lots of robots for that purpose, and then put the word antagonist right after it, I'm pretty much going to go to talking about Fallout

My best was also totally by accident.

My players are a running a campaign in command of a cap ship pursuing an imperial moff into not-so well known territory (Technically Legends NR era, though I can't see how the story will impact the current canon in any meaningful way, so that's cool).

The Captain was built as a fairly multipurpose character that could handle herself in a firefight or formal dinner. We played a few adventures, and then the player dropped out. We didn't want to hand his character over to another in case he wanted to return, so I put the character in "stasis" and the Operations Officer took over the role of captain... He's a good leader, but a rather stern no-monkey business type and is statted as such...

The very next adventure, already planned for some time, was the big diplomatic adventure to win over a new planet to the side of the New Republic. I considered postponing the session and changing the adventure to better fit the new leadership, but decided to just go with it rather then delay play time.....

Best decision ever.

The mission essentially required the Captain (or in this case acting captain) to be the primary Republic rep in all matters, and replacing the diplomatically capable captain with the Ops Officer that wasn't about to put up with political ego stroking and bantha poop totally changed the entire feel of the adventure. He regularly rubbed the locals the wrong way JUST ENOUGH to keep it interesting and said exactly the wrong thing needed to get the politicians at each others throats fighting over which faction the NR favored.

Giving the players a time to shine is good, and something every GM should do, but if you're not also putting them totally out of their element and letting the sort out the mess anyway, you're missing out on some real fun.

A lot of cultures/religions play around with the concept of the force, which droids don't interact with (well, much). Certainly, light side Jedi have absolutely no qualms with tearing apart droids willy nilly. The Jedi don't really consider droids to be alive in a real sense, and they seem to have some sort of philosophical clout in the Star Wars setting.

Culturally speaking, there would be an uphill battle, as most people view droids as slaves/peasants/source of relatively cheap labour. Even if they treat their droids nicely, that's basically the "I have a droid friend" argument.

To be fair, basically nobody in the Star Wars-verse consider droids to be alive in a real sense. Disregarding the problems of droids is pretty much universal. I mean none of our heroes in the movies seem worried about C3-PO's destruction on Cloud City. They see it more as an inconvenience than anything. Though, to be fair, he was perfectly fine after being repaired. Luke is the only one that showed genuine affection for his droids, and treated them pretty much as equals.

I wish I could give a fun derailing story with my players, but they don't like getting off their comfortable rails. It scares them, like my cat when I open the windows and blinds to let in the outside air and noise. She freaks out and hides in the darkest part of the house she can find until we close all the windows again.

That is not all. Some imperials have heard of a project called 'Arbalest'. A star destroyer sized vessel that can launch other ships and objects into hyperspace - willingly or not!

I ran a very similar idea a few years ago in a different game universe. Bascially a huge slingshot gate near the galactic core. Certain trader species ran exploitative monopolies on many trade routes by using it to shortcut to the outer rim and trade slowly coreward. It was called The Engine by the species that used it. I was part of a fun bunch one-shot scenarios to cap off a long campaign game, basically tipping the hand of some of the secrets of the game. The Engine that allowed the Spacers to dominate trade, a famous armored Assassin that was actually just a suit donned by many different agents over time, the traitor(s) in the PC's midst, and so on...

I set up a very complex three-movie/story arc when I began the game. Episode I: Revenge of the Jedi - the Jedi return after 20 years and they're complete jerks. Episode II - Deux Ex Machinae: droid rights and the quest for synthesis. Episode III doesn't have a cool title yet but it's basically about the return of the Elder God (probably Abeloth) in Anakin's horrifically-tortured body and the PCs having to unite the surviving factions against it.

All that was pretty much derailed when the PCs started a new Galactic Civil War during 'Mask of the Pirate Queen'. I'm sure we'll get back to it but there's a ton of stuff to do in the meantime.

A lot of cultures/religions play around with the concept of the force, which droids don't interact with (well, much). Certainly, light side Jedi have absolutely no qualms with tearing apart droids willy nilly. The Jedi don't really consider droids to be alive in a real sense, and they seem to have some sort of philosophical clout in the Star Wars setting.

Culturally speaking, there would be an uphill battle, as most people view droids as slaves/peasants/source of relatively cheap labour. Even if they treat their droids nicely, that's basically the "I have a droid friend" argument.

To be fair, basically nobody in the Star Wars-verse consider droids to be alive in a real sense. Disregarding the problems of droids is pretty much universal. I mean none of our heroes in the movies seem worried about C3-PO's destruction on Cloud City. They see it more as an inconvenience than anything. Though, to be fair, he was perfectly fine after being repaired. Luke is the only one that showed genuine affection for his droids, and treated them pretty much as equals.

Absolutely. Which is why I feel it's the great 'untold story' of Star Wars and why it was top of my list to be a major plot. It will end in tears, naturally, but nobody can say the poor things didn't try...

My PC's are trying to access an ancient Sith city on Myrkr that was recently discovered in the jungle.

One way into this "City of Vines" was to reactivate an ancient outpost/lighthouse for the city. In the basement of the lighthouse, they found a rabid cult of the local neti people worshipping a hieroglyph wall about Darth Lovec. The cult also happened to have the mirror-device that the PC's needed to activate the lighthouse.

I was fully prepared for them to charge in guns blazing (cuz that's what they usually do), but instead, our Duros gunslinger/smuggler--who often tries to talk to people and usually gets shot for his trouble--pulled some ridiculous luck out with not just one but THREE successful daunting Coercion checks to convince these tribespeople that he was in fact Darth Lovec's reincarnated Sith nemesis, and that they should worship him instead.

The rest of the party even helped him by dropping a modded ammo cartridge into a brazier on the Duros' command to make it look like he had wild powers. The neti cult went bananas, dropped to their knees and went crazy over worshipping their new god. The high priest neti even gave our man his spear.

When they all calmed down, the new "Darth" Ka Renek commanded the neti to reactivate the lighthouse, which of course they did. But they insisted on hoisting the mirror up to the top of the lighthouse with their new god standing on it. So he literally rose through this five-story ancient stone building being carried by adoring locals.

The GM decided to kill our Hutt during a business meeting. He planned to hook us into a new story and send us looking for the imperial assassin, which would get us off Tatooine. The other Hutts were supposed to fight for dominance and take over the planet once word got out. Only us and the Hutt's majordomo survived the attack.

My first instinct was to call H1-Jack, a droid mechanic droid I have in my backstory, and hook him up with the majordomo so they can build a fake, holographic Hutt. It took a lot of convincing, in and out of character, but I managed to get everyone on board with it. We are now our own Hutt, and are in the process of taking over the planet. Since only the assassin, her boss, and her boss' moff know that the Hutt is dead, we've taken the liberty of hunting them all down anyway to keep the lid on the secret. We've also reopened a mine, employed some locals, and made a deal with with the sand people, who are convinced our Byronian padawan is God. Happy times.

Tangents? That's, like, most of my game.

I always try to make each of my players feel included in a session, but sometimes that just can't happen. Some days, you need to sit at the negotiating table and sort a whole city of bird people (Sathari, in this case) out so that they don't muck up their planet after you leave. The combat and crafting heavy characters felt a bit left out, even though our roleplayers and social skill barons were having tons of fun. One of our combat guys, though, adores birds in real life, so I had the resistance lieutenant I'd used as a mouthpiece for the leader before they met him (who also doesn't really like negotiations) to have a super flirty aside with the PC.

Another time, what was supposed to be a quick wrap-up epilogue and transition to a new plot arc, a real Burning Homesteads moment, ended up taking all session. I thought they'd show up, "oh no!", do a quick search for their mentor, and find the holorecording she'd left, and away we'd go on the lead she gave them. After all, my players are "breakneck" kind of people on an average day. This time, though, they took their time sifting through the ashes, trying to repair an old shuttle that had (partially) survived the bombardment, looking for survivors, and generally being emotional. When they finally found their lightsaber instructor, murdered and body resting against a vault door, and listened to her last message to them inside, I was surprised by how it affected my players. I think my mom, who plays our Shadow and whose character feels most connected to the Force through people both past and present, took it especially hard; she had bad dreams about it after.

My first game I GMed after the Beta was largely propelled by two things: player motivations, and Obligation. The group did a great job pursuing their own ends, working odd jobs to pay bills on the side, and ran their Obligation up and up, never paying any off until this got too ugly. The fallout of a two sequential sets of doubles on Obligation ruined them. The human doctor pursued mind control into the realm of madness, trying to implant bits of a busted Sith talisman in his skull to bend others to his will (how a Triumph turned out on his science-y check), spent some time in an asylum, and eventually returned to Tatooine as a messed up chop-shop surgeon. The assassin droid was recaptured by his Hutt master and had his memory wiped, but not before a major shootout in the Mos Eisley cantina gave droids a pretty bad name in that establishment. The human pilot got his heart broken too many times, crashed multiple ships beyond repair, and lost all confidence in himself.

The game epilogue consisted of the cantina scene in A New Hope. 3PO was forced to wait outside because droids aren't served, for fear of our assassin droid. Luke ran afoul of the mad doctor, now calling himself Dr. Evazan. And the pilot, having no nerve left, recommended Obi-Wan to Chewbacca for transportation.

The players loved every minute of it.

I set up a very complex three-movie/story arc when I began the game. Episode I: Revenge of the Jedi - the Jedi return after 20 years and they're complete jerks. Episode II - Deux Ex Machinae: droid rights and the quest for synthesis. Episode III doesn't have a cool title yet but it's basically about the return of the Elder God (probably Abeloth) in Anakin's horrifically-tortured body and the PCs having to unite the surviving factions against it.

All that was pretty much derailed when the PCs started a new Galactic Civil War during 'Mask of the Pirate Queen'. I'm sure we'll get back to it but there's a ton of stuff to do in the meantime.

A lot of cultures/religions play around with the concept of the force, which droids don't interact with (well, much). Certainly, light side Jedi have absolutely no qualms with tearing apart droids willy nilly. The Jedi don't really consider droids to be alive in a real sense, and they seem to have some sort of philosophical clout in the Star Wars setting.

Culturally speaking, there would be an uphill battle, as most people view droids as slaves/peasants/source of relatively cheap labour. Even if they treat their droids nicely, that's basically the "I have a droid friend" argument.

To be fair, basically nobody in the Star Wars-verse consider droids to be alive in a real sense. Disregarding the problems of droids is pretty much universal. I mean none of our heroes in the movies seem worried about C3-PO's destruction on Cloud City. They see it more as an inconvenience than anything. Though, to be fair, he was perfectly fine after being repaired. Luke is the only one that showed genuine affection for his droids, and treated them pretty much as equals.

Absolutely. Which is why I feel it's the great 'untold story' of Star Wars and why it was top of my list to be a major plot. It will end in tears, naturally, but nobody can say the poor things didn't try...

Yeah, though I try to be a bit forgiving about it considering when the universe was made, back during a decade where very little thought was given to the idea of AI having a personality and rights. That changed a bit as the series moved on, and the society's views on the subject adjusted after decades of debating the subject.

Yeah, though I try to be a bit forgiving about it considering when the universe was made, back during a decade where very little thought was given to the idea of AI having a personality and rights. That changed a bit as the series moved on, and the society's views on the subject adjusted after decades of debating the subject.

Oh yes. The whole 'AI have rights' thing in sci-fi happened just after Star Wars, during the early to mid 80's, with 'Blade Runner' the best of them, but including 'Android', 'Electric Dreams', 'Short Circuit', etc.

But Star Wars never seemed to address it, despite having comparatively sophisticated robots, so I really wanted to.

Yeah, though I try to be a bit forgiving about it considering when the universe was made, back during a decade where very little thought was given to the idea of AI having a personality and rights. That changed a bit as the series moved on, and the society's views on the subject adjusted after decades of debating the subject.

Oh yes. The whole 'AI have rights' thing in sci-fi happened just after Star Wars, during the early to mid 80's, with 'Blade Runner' the best of them, but including 'Android', 'Electric Dreams', 'Short Circuit', etc.

But Star Wars never seemed to address it, despite having comparatively sophisticated robots, so I really wanted to.

Oh I agree, it's a good story idea, one I've tossed around with my own players. I am curious though, how much of the fan love for C-3PO and R2 helped to spur the discussion in popular culture. I mean not everyone saw Balde Runner and other more niche movies on the subject, but just about everyone saw Star Wars, and enjoyed the very close to human behavior of those 2 droids.