Hi, folks!

I've been playing around with the Adversary Decks, and I think I've hit on a way to use them to easily create the skeletons of epic campaigns very quickly and easily. It's based on the "Conspyramid" concept from Ken Hite's excellent "Night's Black Agents" RPG, from Pelgrane Press.

So the idea is that you're going to create a pyramid made out of Adversary cards. (Ignore the stats and whether a given card is a Nemesis, a Rival, or a Minion; you're looking more at the overall concept of the card than the specifics.)

First, look through your Adversary cards and pick one out to be your Big Bad, who the players will face at the climax of the whole campaign. Set this card on the table to create the first node of your conspiracy: it becomes the top tier of your pyramid.

Now pick out two more Adversary cards. These are the people working under the Big Bad, and you'll put them on the table below the Big Bad to form the nodes in Tier 2 of your pyramid.

Tier 3 will have three nodes, Tier 4 will have four, and so on, until you've filled Tier 6 with six nodes. When you're done, it'll look something like this:

Now, at this point, you've got 21 cards out on the table, forming a nice pyramid shape. Now you start creating connections. Start brainstorming connections between each node and the adjacent ones (for example, a node in the middle of the pyramid will have six potential connections: two to nodes below, two to nodes above, and two to the adjacent nodes on the same level). The pyramid can, if you desire, "wrap around" the sides as well; the card on the left edge of Tier 5, for example, would then be considered adjacent to the card on the right edge of Tier 5.

See the Spaceport Administrator in Tier 4? Let's name him Qalok, and we'll use him as an example. Above Qalok are a Hutt Crime Lord and a Planetary Governor. Next to him are a Black Marketeer and an Imperial Naval Officer. Below him are a Customs Inspector and a Provincial Law Enforcement Officer. This might suggest the following connections:

- The spaceport in question is located on (or in orbit around) the planet associated with the Planetary Governor, and Qalok answers to her.

- Qalok is being paid off by the Hutt Crime Lord to falsify certain entries in the spaceport arrival and departure logs.

- Due to the Hutt's influence, Qalok also turns a blind eye to the Black Marketeer, who uses the spaceport as a safe place to do business.

- The Imperial Naval Officer is in charge of the task force in the sector containing the spaceport. The Planetary Governor is insistent that Qalok render the Officer every possible assistance.

- A small army of customs inspectors work at the spaceport. This particular Customs Inspector, however, is the one Qalok ensures is on duty when "special" cargoes come through. In exchange, the Customs Inspector gets regular performance bonuses.

- Qalok feeds the Provincial Law Enforcement Officer information about selected criminals who pass through the port, and lets the Officer take the credit for the arrests. Occaasionally, Qalok will give him false information about non-criminals who are nosing around too much.

You don't have to fill in every possible connection, of course, though there should be some path traceable from any given card to each other card (otherwise, you've got two or more smaller, separate conspiracies, instead of one big one).

Now, don't think of these nodes as just the one person pictured or described on 'em. For example, the Slaver down in Tier 6 isn't just a slaver by himself, but a gang of slavers. Likewise, the Chiss Mercenary card stands for a whole unit of mercenaries. Each node should support an entire adventure/session of play on its own, and the higher up the pyramid you go, the more powerful the forces that can be brought to bear by the antagonists.

So then you pick one or two likely looking Tier 6 nodes, and kick off the campaign by letting the PCs come into contact with that group. So maybe the PCs are harrassed by a swoop gang, or their ship is taken over by a group of shipjackers. As you run the adventure for them, drop in clues along the connections you've developed to adjacent nodes. So after the PCs shoot up the slavers' base, they find that a) several of the dead slavers sport distinct tattoos consistent with those of a local swoop gang, that b) one of them was carrying a datapad with a series of dates and location coordinates (where the pirates will be waiting to transfer captives to the slavers), and c) a document file contains a stack of approved customs forms... all signed by the same customs inspector. Following up on these clues gives the PCs a way to work their way up, down, or across the pyramid.

By the time the PCs have explored the pyramid, they'll have had all sorts of adventures, all plausibly linked to each other, and you'll look like a campaign-design genius without actually having to do all that much work!

Really like this idea! So are u choosing adversaries that fit your idea or are u just choosing random cards?

Have to admit that I've never really bothered with the card decks but this has started me thinking that they could be pretty useful

Have to admit that I've never really bothered with the card decks but this has started me thinking that they could be pretty useful

The Adversary Decks are well worth your time. They're incredibly convenient and a great help to avoid having to flip through the book or transcribe stat blocks before the session.

And I really like this pyramid idea. It may save my bacon in planning for a new arc of one of my campaigns. Thanks for sharing it!

I bought 3 of them about 10 minutes after reading this thread... Scum & Villainy, Rebels & Imperials & Galactic Citizens! They were less than £5 each as well... Bargain

Really like this idea! So are u choosing adversaries that fit your idea or are u just choosing random cards?

Kind of a hybrid of both. I'll generally first go through the deck and set aside some cards that I definitely don't want to have. Then I'll lay the rest out randomly and see what sparks my imagination. As I start asking the questions that will allow me to fill in relationships ("What sort of sway might a Provincial Law Enforcement Officer have over a group of Chiss Mercenaries?"), sometimes it'll become clear that I need to rearrange some portion of the pyramid, or maybe swap out the Hutt Crime Lord for a Black Sun Vigo, or even get rid of the Twi'lek Dancer and bring in an Arms Dealer instead.

So the randomness is really just a tool to spark ideas; the pyramid ends up as a mostly-designed thing. However, those random bits can add some real unexpected surprise and fun for players and GM alike ("So the Hutt Crime Lord is taking orders from a Twi'lek Dancer? Awesome!").

Hm, you've inspired me to try combining this technique with some Rory's Story Cubes to build fantastic stories.

Another thing I'm playing with now is coming up with one unique "set-piece" scene for each node of the pyramid. Ideally, it should be something that you can really "see" in your head; something that'd make you say, "Oh, this would be an awesome scene in a movie!" For example:

Swoop Gang: A high-speed swoop chase through a crowded urban center during a festival.

Murderous Fugitive: The PCs are being stalked through a dark forest in the midst of a raging storm.

Arms Dealer: The infiltration of a fortified bunker high in the frozen, wind-swept mountains.

Pirate Captain: A tense cat-and-mouse hunt in a sensor-confounding nebula.

Black Marketeer: The PCs end up in a gunfight in an undersea dome... watch out for leaks!

Politician: An escape from a fortified vehicle after some of the PCs are arrested on trumped-up charges.

Et cetera...

Each of the 21 scenes should be different and memorable, so when the PCs get close to that node, I'll have enough to be able to easily build the adventure (or just wing it) around that scene... and should ensure that I don't fall into a rut and create adventures that are too "samey."