Hey guys,

I'd love to do a planet liberation campaign with my players for Age of Rebellion. I'm having a little bit of difficulty coming up with an appropriate planet.

They would be on their own, having to forge ties with the locals, acquire gear and ordnance, develop bases, etc etc.

It has to be a planet that the empire is not going to immediately smash if they rebel, but rather one that they would let slide.

What do you guys think? Doable? Or is the whole idea flawed?

Cool Idea but the PCs can't defend a planet on their own. Maybe have them hire an army. This could give a really cool part for anyone that is a leadership type build, because they could stay back and be commanding troops in a large scale, while more combat oriented PCs have to be out there leading troops on the front. If you have a medic they may have to help the injured that are rushed back to the base.

When it comes down to it, the PCs have to coordinate their efforts or risk getting wrecked.

For example, if the Medic doesn't save 6 guys (you would have to come up with a system in which the PCs would do multiple things at a time) then it represents his medic corp not being able to get soldiers back in the fight. The combat oriented guys then have two Setback dice, but wait, the general dude that is orchestrating the whole battle passes a leader ship check with a triumph! The two setback are now one advantage because the troops were rallied, and extra reinforcements were sent to help.

Certainly doable. You might want to look at some of the more backwater areas of the Rim, of course; the less important to the Empire logistically/strategically, the less likely significant forces will be diverted to smash an uprising.

Personally, I think some fun could certainly be had with Argai (long history of daring pilots, shrewd merchants, and piracy) in the Cron Mandate, and/or Desevro (xenophobic backwater with an ancient grudge against Coruscant) in the Tion Hegemony. (The latter would probably be a more challenging task for a mixed-species party, as Desevrars refer to all nonhumans as "Hutts," which gives you some idea of the sort of reception the party is likely to get.)

Taris

It's already a mess, instead of the Empire being directly involved lets say the Corporation who are officially supposed to be cleaning up the environment in preparation to rebuild and make the world inhabitable.

However anyone familiar with Taris knows it's infested with Ratghouls (got the name wrong I think!) and they're being researched and reverse engineered in an attempt to create a new kind of supersoldier similar to the Darktroopers.

To do this they need a large and readily accessible pool of potential candidates so they go recruiting and not everyone is exactly willing to go...

So inbetween searching the ruins of Taris or whatever has been reclaimed (Watch the KOTOR game video on this I believe the MMO visited it too!) your group is not only involved in the research, but also trying to establish why they were brought let alone why the Empire is currently willing to not be directly involved in this operation.

Also would your players not be interested to learn of the connection between Sith Alchemy and the Ratghouls?

Taanab would be doable I think: low imperial presence, the occasional pirate raid to keep things interesting, a former headquarters of the Agri-Corps just waiting to be repurposed, feral and docile animals to be used in the Rebellions war machine, plenty of food and a nice stream of revenue from the various corporate sponsors located there. I'd say it would make a great location for a rebel base, especially if you wanted to deal more in the Inner/Mid Rim than the Outer Rim, and could be used to seed a multitude of missions right on planet.

Go take a peek at the PDF addon game for the AoR Beginner set. It has something similar to what you're looking for: finding a base, setting up the base, equipping the base, making friends with the locals and not getting discovered by the Empire.

Ylesia. Check out the Han Solo Legends paperback "Rebel Dawn". Also look up Ylesia on the wookiepedia. Don't have my stuff in front of me but it basically entails a strike force of "freelancer" (smuggler) freighters and rebel ground troops sent to attack a number of Hutt-owned ryll processing facilities on Ylesia that are run by alien "priests" and protected by Black Sun mercs. Rebel objective was to free the slaves and gain recruits; smuggler goal was to get paid (ryll).

I hastily sketched it up for my EotE group who took the place of one of the (ten?) smuggler ships. Basic scenes were: (1) Mission receipt, (2) penetrate atmosphere (defeat fighters in orbit, then piloting checks through severe ion storms), (3) Assault on a compound, (4) plot twist by the rebels (read the book / wiki for that spoiler ), (5) epilogue.

You could easily run it from the rebel perspective by having the AoR group be one of the rebel strike teams.

MTFBWY,

- GM Khyrith

OR... you can wait for the recently-announced "Friends Like These" AoR adventure to come out (sometime in next 90 days). From what FFG has revealed, its plot is pretty much in line with what you are looking for in the OP.

MTFBWY,

GM Khyrith