Here's my idea for an Age of Rebellion campaign:

Begin prior to the Battle of Yavin and have three or four sessions to let the players get a feel for the system and their little corner of the galaxy. Then, begin a session with the news that the Rebel base on Yavin 4 has been wiped out, along with most of the Rebellion high command, by some Imperial super weapon called the Death Star. Luke, Leia, and the rest aren't around to save the galaxy now!

Most of the Rebellion's leaders and key people are dead, but not all. The Rebel fleet wasn't at the battle and would be the biggest collection of rebel assets left. (Under whose command? Not Ackbar's, he wasn't an admiral yet.) I imagine that most worlds that supported the Rebellion would quickly be changing their tune, as fear of the Death Star keeps the local systems in line. Without leadership, rebel groups throughout the galaxy find themselves cut off, without allies, and soon to be hunted down.

Unless the PCs decide to run off to the Outer Rim and turn things into an increasingly dystopian Edge of the Empire game they now have to figure out how to salvage the Rebellion in the face of this disaster. If the players are particularly self-motivated go-getters, they can take the leading role, deciding what to do next. If they are the type of players who need direction and prefer to have someone give them a mission, then after a few sessions they can hook up with some surviving rebel leader or a larger group.

I suspect the first act of the campaign would involve trying to scrape as much of the Rebellion back together as possible. The rest would likely focus on what to do about the Death Star, as the Rebellion won't succeed with it running around.

So, some topics for brainstorming:
Who, among the named rebel leaders, died at Yavin and who was elsewhere?
Which planets that were with the Rebellion or supporting it would drop that idea like a hot rock? (I suppose that depends on where the Death Star is hanging out. Let's assume they go to the pocket of rebel loyalty closest to Yavin.)
What big assets would the rebellion still have out there (like the fleet) and what would they do?
What else changes from the fallout of this big event? What doesn't? (Yoda is still out there.)

If it matters, I intend that the reason the Death Star did not get blown up and instead destroyed Yavin 4 was that Luke didn't make his "one in a million" shot. I'm kicking around three different reasons why.

1) Luke didn't use the force and flubbed the shot. This is the least interesting to me (but see below).

2) Han Solo didn't come back to the battle (decided it was better to pay off Jabba right away). He doesn't arrive in the nick of time to shoot Vader's TIE, so Vader shoots down Luke.

3) Similar to 1 above but here Luke isn't urged to use the Force by Obi-Wan because instead of killing him during their duel, Vader incapacitated and captured him. Obi-Wan still lives!

Regardless of which is true, I want to have Luke survive the battle (though probably injured) and become the Emperor's new apprentice. In cases 1 and 3, Vader was out of the picture for a while after his fighter flew out of control. In case 2, he is on hand to turn his son to the Dark Side. Whichever it is, I want Vader to fade out of the picture. Either he never returns to the Emperor, he gets replaced by Luke and tossed aside, or something. Basically, if the Death Star is still around for the PCs to tackle, I wanted to give them a break and have the Sith Lord they have to deal with be a less-experienced one. Plus, revealing that it's Luke would be a nice mid-campaign moment. And if I need Vader to still be alive somewhere, unsure of his future and maybe ready to change (or still evil but no longer loyal to Palpatine), that's an option.

Thoughts?

1) Then R2-D2 instead makes the shot and the death star gets still blown up

2) Yavin 4 is toast, Luke is toast, the rebels blow up the death star a few weeks later with a modified torpedo which is programmed to automatically hit the target. Your PCs can tackle in here and Luke can get captured by Vader, crippled, maybe even with severe damage to his lungs from partly vacuum exposure from the failing life support and shield systems of his flight suit. Whatever suits you best here.

3) Again, R2-D2 makes the shot instead.

BTW, iirc was Ackbar already captain of the royal guard during the clone wars, and one of the masterminds behind the mon calamari exodus from Mon Cala , so I would assume he joined the alliance as admiral already. New cannon and all, with the mon calamari transforming or building their giant underwater homes into starships and evacuating the planet to escape from the empire.

Anyway, back to your campaign idee. Vader is still the chosen one, and vader still is not really happy with the emperor, furthermore will the emperor be eager to see Vader dead if he takes Luke as his apprentice, which would make Vader to a person who might actually be an ally to the alliance. That is actually a fun perspective for an alternative universe star wars story.

Naw, dont do that. We just got new toys for Christmas, so why not play with them?

The Death Star Navigator manages to trim some time off the hyperspace trip and Tarkin blows up Scarff Base before Jyn transmits the plans. The flaw still exists, and the rebels know they have to exploit it, they just need intel. Infiltrate a team on the Death Star to inspect the reactor core? Find back up plans somewhere - perhaps a clue on Eadu? Scour the ruins of Scarff base to see if anything of use survived?

Oooh, wait - Vader does the Force Pull on the "Open The Door!!!" guy, yanking the plans out of his hands. If he chases down the Tantive to it's next stop, without the plans to worry about, he might go "Hey, wait a second. Why is she coming here?", digs a little deeper and finds out her secondary mission. Suddenly Vader throws down with Kenobi before Kenobi can bring Luke up to speed.

Oh, I definately want to keep the Death Star around and let it be the PCs' problem to deal with. And, unless they need a serious helping hand, my inclination would be to let them figure out a way to destroy it for themselves, then roll with that.

If you want Luke alive, just have him do the "idiot PC" thing of refusing to retreat when Vader downs Kenobi. He's captured and the others are killed easily enough.

Obviously the shock to the players will be the turn of events as the players see it.

As the characters see it however, you could just run this exact same campaign and set it a few years before the events at Yavin. It's not like the Empire ever needed the Death Star, it was more a political tool than anything else. The Empire can always call in 40 Star Destroyers and lay waste to an entire planet in moments, the effective result is roughly the same. In this campaign, you can still have the PCs approached by a Rebel organizer in order to get the Rebellion jump started, planets have not yet openly rebelled and may need help seeing the light, most of the Rebellion's key leaders are not dead but they are still hiding their loyalties and intentions well enough that they cannot be relied upon, and small bands of rebel cells operating throughout the galaxy are still hunted by the ever present Imperial spies.

I understand that the goal here is to cast confusion and doubt across your player base and stun them with the "not as it should be" version of events. I wanted to say that should that fall through or prove too difficult, there's plenty to offer during the Dark Times.

P.S. Be prepared for your players to avoid the Death Star like .... well... the Death Star. Nobody purposely heads towards that thing without a huge amount of motivation.

The deathstar is a terror to the core worlds, which have multi-layered shields and could take incoming fire from fleets for a long time before anything reaches the surface.

5 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

The deathstar is a terror to the core worlds, which have multi-layered shields and could take incoming fire from fleets for a long time before anything reaches the surface.

Heh. Ah, well, there you go.

Yes, the point is to take the heroes of the films off the board entirely, as well as put the rebellion itself on the edge of ruin. There will be no one to come along and save the day. It will be all up to the pkayer-characters.

Plus I like to take an established setting and kick the legs out from under it while still keeping the feel of playing in that world.* Here, I want to carve an opening the PCs can fill, that of being the heroes who save the galaxy. Not the ones who were doing cool and maybe important work offstage while Luke, Han, and Leia were having more important adventures. Yes, there are ways to run a good and meaningful AoR campaign and keep it within canon. That's just not my goal here.

*If I ever run a game set in Middle Earth, for example, it will be set after Sam Gamgee betrayed Frodo in Mordor and kept the one ring for himself. That hope is gone, can the PCs save the world now?

14 hours ago, R5D8 said:

Obviously the shock to the players will be the turn of events as the players see it.

As the characters see it however, you could just run this exact same campaign and set it a few years before the events at Yavin. It's not like the Empire ever needed the Death Star, it was more a political tool than anything else. The Empire can always call in 40 Star Destroyers and lay waste to an entire planet in moments, the effective result is roughly the same. In this campaign, you can still have the PCs approached by a Rebel organizer in order to get the Rebellion jump started, planets have not yet openly rebelled and may need help seeing the light, most of the Rebellion's key leaders are not dead but they are still hiding their loyalties and intentions well enough that they cannot be relied upon, and small bands of rebel cells operating throughout the galaxy are still hunted by the ever present Imperial spies.

I understand that the goal here is to cast confusion and doubt across your player base and stun them with the "not as it should be" version of events. I wanted to say that should that fall through or prove too difficult, there's plenty to offer during the Dark Times.

P.S. Be prepared for your players to avoid the Death Star like .... well... the Death Star. Nobody purposely heads towards that thing without a huge amount of motivation.

The motivation would be that there's probably no stopping the Empire while they have the Death Star. If they want to run and hide while the galaxy gets consumed by space Fascists, then that's the campaign they get.

Could pull in Old Republic lore and have them discover ancient Rakatan superweapons like the Star Forge or Foundry. Corellia would probably pull out of the rebellion after the event as would Mon Mothma's home so the Rebellion would lose most of it's funding and Mon Cala might pull out too.

22 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

If you want Luke alive, just have him do the "idiot PC" thing of refusing to retreat when Vader downs Kenobi. He's captured and the others are killed easily enough.

Go with this except Han wasn't an idiot PC and left without luke. If you want Leia to still be around say that she was trying to buy Luke a little more time. So vader has both his cHildren to train as sith (and sincentives luke never blew uplease the deat star he didn't attract palpatine's attention) so vader plans to overthrow the empereor, and rule the galaxy as father son and daughter. Han, has R2 and c-3p0, never went to yavin because hey he's not suicidal, he found the tracking device on the falcon and ditched it (the tracking device), Vader used the force to get the location of the rebel base (yavin) out of Leia's head and in the process discovers her latent force sensitivity, and just because she's the same age as Luke (who he knows is his son, because Skywalker is his last name so that's an incredibly obvious thing to check) and lookse a bit like padma he runs a DNA test on her too.

So a couple weeks later (after breaking Leia) is when the death star blows up yavin. And Han is looking for a bothan spynet agent to buy R2 off him, cause hey R2 has the death star plans it, but he makes a copy of the plans as an insurance policy. Han uses the money from the bothan spynet agent to pay off Jabba, retires from smuggling (temporarily) because 1 he's stinking rich and 2 he's got a huge imperial bounty on him. But that doesn't last all that long because he gets bored.

This thread reminds me of my own take on SW. However, I diverged at the Battle of Endor, which was a mutual decapitation for both the Rebels (the MonCal ships targeted for destruction by the Death Star started with Home One) and the Empire. Most of the named characters are dead, except for Lando. It's a bit of dark ages feel in the galaxy far, far away.

Mon Cala and Chandrila would be on the shortlist of worlds the Empire would consider wiping out with the Death Star with the main Rebel threat eliminated.

Basically read the dark Empire comic. I'd have luke turned to the dark side and all hell break loose. Your heros get to kill Luke.

I was on a mush where some of the PCs found themselves in a similar setting but much later. Basic R2's and 3P0's escape pod was destroyed by Devastator if I remember right. We arrived nine or ten years after the Alliance was destroyed and ended up forging a new Rebel Alliance. I don't remember what everyone's role in the new rebel high command but mine was primarily linked to setting up a supply grid for the new rebellion,

The death star blew up yavin then the moon...

If the torpedoes failed to hit the reactor (hit the exhaust port, exploded inside the shaft before reaching the reactor, never armed and impacted harmlessly, etc), what would happen?

Yavin 4 is immediately destroyed, along with Leia, General Dodonna, and C3PO. The Death Star's tractor beams would likely capture the remaining rebels (Luke and Wedge's X-Wings, and possibly even the Millennium Falcon (again) as they try to escape), but Han might be able to get away , if you need it. Vader recovered his spin quickly, and would have landed on the Death Star soon afterwards.

If you need Vader out of the way, he could have hit something (fragments of Yavin 4, another starship, etc) and was destroyed, or he may have even crashed into the Death Star instead of spinning out of orbit.

Luke would be extremely distraught about loosing Leia, 3PO, Biggs, his squad, Ben, and the whole rebel base, all of this because he failed (even though it was really the torpedo that failed). This could be the catalyst in his turn toward the dark side.

Mon Mothma may not have been on Yavin 4 during the attack, and could even be in the company of your players when the incident occurs. If so, their job is to get her into hiding quickly and start the events that leads to their saving the galaxy.

Since the rebels worked in isolated cells, for the most part, it is quite possible General Rieekan is active, and may assume command of the alliance remnants in the event Mon Mothma perished on Yavin 4. If so, he would send word through the network and assemble a new council. As an Alderaanian, he wouldn't likely stop fighting despite the incident at Yavin. As such, he may be your go to guy for leadership. General Madine also survived the battle, and could likely do something.

As for planets and systems, the news of the rebel's defeat would be spread far and wide by the Empire, causing many planets on the fence to side with the Empire, and those secretly in rebellion would hunker down and make platitudes toward the new order. Those planets in open rebellion would likely remain in this state, as the memory of what happened to the Separatist after they surrendered remains an example for traitors. This is especially true for planets devastated by the Empire and those whose populace was enslaved. Chandrila may ask for forgiveness, since it is a core world, but who knows what the Emperor would do to it.

How would the Hutt and other criminal activities react to the battle and the thought of a Death Star roaming the galaxy? They are likely to see this as a real threat, thus may form a loose alliance with the remaining rebels (and a new governing council) as a buffer between Hutt space and the Empire. Of course, they could form an alliance with the remaining rebels, with the intent to sell them out to the Empire, as a means of proving their loyalty to the New Order in hopes of keeping the status quo. Captured by the Empire, Han Solo could even be given to Jabba, which removes him from the picture.

Good luck with your adventure! It sounds exciting.