In my campaign i've started the pcs off at a very small level but given them the capacity to become galactic major players.

i wondered how important to the story of the galaxy at current are your players? Are they the level of Luke and co or do they dawdle somewhere beneath them? Or are they effectively the nameless NPCS who are at all times expendable and replaceable in the eyes of the cosmos?

You players should be the most important. It is a movie aboit them after all.

I let my players be as important as they want to be. Right now, they have the opportunity to rebuild the Jedi Order, or wipe out the last (known) surviving Jedi. They have the chance to take out the Dark Trooper project and join the Rebellion, or the choice to crush the fledgling Rebel Alliance in its infancy. However, at the moment, the players are spending their time making smuggling runs and taking part in illegal races, fighting arenas, and gambling. And that's working out just fine for the story too.

The game I ran (before my son was born, he's about 10 days shy of 4 months now) was a bounty hunter game, they pcs were important had a big impact (e.g. one was the rightful heir of a approx. 10% share in czerka and became ceo of czerka) but they weren't moral agents influencin the fate of the galaxy. But they had a significant impact on the galaxy's criminal underworld, mostly as tools/extensions of the will of a rising star hutt.

12 hours ago, Luahk said:

i wondered how important to the story of the galaxy at current are your players? Are they the level of Luke and co or do they dawdle somewhere beneath them? Or are they effectively the nameless NPCS who are at all times expendable and replaceable in the eyes of the cosmos?

In my last game they were effectively zero on the galactic importance scale. I don't see the point in rehashing the movie-level of epicness, then I have to compete with a Death Star and the Emperor. Been there, seen that.

However, they did grow to be critical players in their local sector, with the implication that by hurting the Empire "here" they made it more difficult for the Empire "there". Basically I took more of a Rebels approach, telling a parallel story.

12 hours ago, Luahk said:

In my campaign i've started the pcs off at a very small level but given them the capacity to become galactic major players.

i wondered how important to the story of the galaxy at current are your players? Are they the level of Luke and co or do they dawdle somewhere beneath them? Or are they effectively the nameless NPCS who are at all times expendable and replaceable in the eyes of the cosmos?

It depends on the game. Not every campaign is "Galactic Levels of Importance". One campaign I ran, was a planetary scale story. All of it took place on this one planet, and it was during the Old Republic era (5k years before Yavin) so this was distant past. Now the events they took part in were minor on the galactic scale. But to the people on that planet, caught up in the machinations of an ancient sith ghost, bent on planetary destruction, it was pretty major. In that story, they were the main characters who Saved The Day. But anyone from modern day Star Wars, would likely never have heard of them, and if they went to the planet, the most they would see, is a series of statues (of species not native to the planet), to the Jedi who saved them from a Great Evil. If they looked into the lore of the planet, they'd hear a tale of darkness and courage, and battling waves of enemies and monsters. But none of it would matter galactically.

9 hours ago, Underachiever599 said:

I let my players be as important as they want to be. Right now, they have the opportunity to rebuild the Jedi Order, or wipe out the last (known) surviving Jedi. They have the chance to take out the Dark Trooper project and join the Rebellion, or the choice to crush the fledgling Rebel Alliance in its infancy. However, at the moment, the players are spending their time making smuggling runs and taking part in illegal races, fighting arenas, and gambling. And that's working out just fine for the story too.

Perhaps they'd be happier playing Edge of the Empire

12 minutes ago, Orjo Creld said:

Perhaps they'd be happier playing Edge of the Empire

Considering the systems are pretty much identical, they already are

44 minutes ago, Orjo Creld said:

Perhaps they'd be happier playing Edge of the Empire

Nah. They play a hybrid game. It has elements of all three of FFG's lines. But my Jedi-in-training and (hopefully) soon-to-be Inquisitor definitely enjoy the stuff out of Force and Destiny more than Edge of the Empire.

The players are always theb most important people in the story, but the story doesn't need to be more important to the galaxy as a whole than making sure you get your regular table at Dexter's Diner. As long as you get your players engaged the stakes can be as low as you like them. Who cares about blowing up the death star when someone in the neighbourhood is stealing your mail!

Of course, Star Wars is rarely about such mundane things and the players are quite likely to demand a little more to be engaged. Make sure you know what their expectations are, and strive to live up to them, as well as doing your best to balance them. If one player is dead set on captaining capital ships in heroic battle and another is more intent on roughing up the local riffraff in an alleyway and stealing their money you might have a problem. Make sure the players know what each others expectations are so they can adjust accordingly.

A great way to think about the scale of importance, is to think of action movies. A classic example is the first Die Hard movie. I don't think anyone can accuse that movie of lacking action and tension, but the scale is small. A few dozen hostages, a few city blocks of potential property damage, and a city watching it on the news like crazy. But to the PC in that game (John McClain), he is at the center of everything going on. Each fight is an intense battle, even though it's only him versus a single mook, or perhaps a few mooks at once. The fact that the events aren't "Shaping the course of the Galaxy" is kind of secondary really.

That's the key to good storytelling, bigger doesn't always mean better. If you inflate the scale, you risk making the details become pointless to the PC's. There's just too much going on to be emotionally invested in all of it. The stuff literally becomes background filler. So for all intents and purposes, it might as well not even be there.

I much prefer small scale stories, where you can give a face to the people being affected. It's not just "35 people died in an Imperial raid today" that they see on the news. It's "They raided the rebel cell, where we had just taken those refugees we'd rescued, including that little girl NPC that the whole party ended up falling in love with due to some good roleplaying. She might be dead!" The players are way more interested in that case.

The player characters must be the focus of the story. Without that, you may as well just watch a movie rather than play a game. Most players in a SW game expect to the ones to kill Emperors, rescue Princesses and blow up Death Stars.

While that doesn't necessarily mean they have to be the game's shakers and movers, I personally believe that in Star Wars, bigger is better. It's a big, explosive genre and I don't think Pulp Science-Fantasy does the 'little' stories very well. Your Mileage May Vary , of course, but we based the MarcyVerse on the concept that the PCs would be the Aragorns, Star Lords and Buckaroo Banzai's of the setting. I believe other games 'sweat the small stuff' better.

The Marcy Cinematic Universe has a whole bunch of players and groups, and they have different levels of in-game power.

In EoE, one group - the Krayt Dragon smugglers - are kind of a 'Guardians of the Galaxy' bunch, who do (relatively) lighter-hearted misadventures, although they are almost always at the heart of important things and are frequently the ones to 'save the world' (then abscond with the willing Princess and the crown jewels). The other PC group serves one of the most influential crime lords in the galaxy, and commands significant power through that, albeit at the cost of their own freedom. Their stories tend to be more 'grimdark' and grimy, but they serve someone who is genuinely a big hitter in the campaign. To make matters even less straightforward, one of these PCs is herself a power in her own right, having taken over one smaller faction and destroyed another, and sacked planets and destroyed entire lesser traditions for their magic items. She's a dangerous wild card used as a battering ram by all the warring factions, and even the persona she ostensibly 'serves' doesn't trust her.

The AOR characters are the Captain Kirk and James Bond types - the elite of their faction, who do the super-heroics and six impossible things before breakfast. But they serve a greater organisation, and are at least nominally beholden to it (although naturally, Black Ops groups have a fairly wide remit). Another PC actually heads up the Alliance faction and is literally one of the three most influential people in the world (the Emperor himself is quite some way down that list...) All the PCs have a dramatic effect on the Galactic Civil War but this one actively sets the pace of it.

The F&D group mostly serve another of the galaxy's shakers and movers (our 'Luke' expy) who is guru to a small but incredibly influential Force tradition and wields immense, if subtle, influence. They affect the War as a wild card and generally fight for sane and peaceful ends. Two PCs are reformist Jedi who are trying to make their faction more like the canon version and less ruthless and amoral. There's another little togruta who will wander the galaxy looking for vergences, perhaps unknowingly trying to restore the Balance of the Force that was knocked out of kilter with the death of Alderaan. When the Great Enemy rears its ugly head in the third act (tentatively titled 'Kingdom Come'...) the badass PCs will have to fight it, but she'll be there to actually cure the damage and make sure the Force is working like it's supposed to... (so yeah, no pressure )

So everyone gets to contribute in different ways, and each of the most important NPCs is close to certain PCs. Most have personal goals, even mundane worries, but everyone is there to participate in The Plot at the highest level.

I definitely think that the PCs should be important to the story. Maybe not initially (heroes' journeys rarely start with the hero(es) already awesome and world galaxy-shaping), but eventually.

My own party is an example. They do want to keep to canon as much as possible, which limits my options as a GM, so I've settled on them being the ones who finally ended the Inquisitorius. I haven't kept up with Rebels, but neither have they, so it works ! Luke, Han, and Leia can go off and do their own thing, but if it wasn't for my party, the red-sabers would have stopped them before they could blow up those Danger Eggs!

It's not quite the same, but it's the best I can do and still stick to canon as my group requests .

2 hours ago, Maelora said:

The F&D group mostly serve another of the galaxy's shakers and movers (our 'Luke' expy) who is guru to a small but incredibly influential Force tradition and wields immense, if subtle, influence. They affect the War as a wild card and generally fight for sane and peaceful ends. Two PCs are reformist Jedi who are trying to make their faction more like the canon version and less ruthless and amoral. There's another little togruta who will wander the galaxy looking for vergences, perhaps unknowingly trying to restore the Balance of the Force that was knocked out of kilter with the death of Alderaan. When the Great Enemy rears its ugly head in the third act (tentatively titled 'Kingdom Come'...) the badass PCs will have to fight it, but she'll be there to actually cure the damage and make sure the Force is working like it's supposed to... (so yeah, no pressure )

So everyone gets to contribute in different ways, and each of the most important NPCs is close to certain PCs. Most have personal goals, even mundane worries, but everyone is there to participate in The Plot at the highest level.

Helping to heal the entire Force ? Umm...that's a little pressure...

To clarify folks I was simply interested what you're doing at your tables. To get discussion flowing rather than advice.

My table of players are in completely non-canon, because for the large part I don't like it, and are heroes of their specific level. To fall in line @Absol197 eventually they may be. However sometimes when I read stories of what people have done with their groups/achieved it does feel as though they are that level so i'm intrigued to hear from folks.
We started off as basic ben level of importance and have in the space of the half year are becoming heroic figures to our cause. I intend to speed that entirely based upon the group's success/failure but I won't have them at Galactic hero status unless we work up to a position where that makes sense for me and my table.
There isn't a goal as much as "Win the war" but it's more doing that by doing their jobs as best they can and as promotions come doing so more frequently.

You could also play with this a little. While the players are the focus of their story, it might turn out that their story isn't the big story.

The classic example would be letting the PCs go through a real meatgrinder of a mission, or series of missions, that they have been told are absolutely vital for the war effort/peace in the galaxy/other lofty goal. When they finally pull through, having bled or even died for the cause, they find out that their entire mission was a decoy, and their allies won the war while they were away. They get a pat on the back, maybe a medal and perhaps a "We couldn't have done this without you.".

They're still heroes. Just unsung ones.

Main thing my players have pulled off so far was destroying a munitions factory making some new bombs that would have bypassed planetary fields (using Gand Findsman to suicide pilot them), thus meaning Battle of Hoth took place on the ground and that the rebellion escaped.

18 hours ago, Luahk said:

To clarify folks I was simply interested what you're doing at your tables. To get discussion flowing rather than advice.

Well your initial post had some very extreme examples. They were either the pivotal people at the heart of the galaxy, or faceless nobodies. There's a lot more room in between those 2 extremes.

32 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Well your initial post had some very extreme examples. They were either the pivotal people at the heart of the galaxy, or faceless nobodies. There's a lot more room in between those 2 extremes.

That was on purpose. I didn't feel the need to list all of that which goes in between. I figured it was made obvious what I intended, since from your responses it was not, I clarified.

In general my campaigns start off slow. I like to make sure all of the players become comfortable with their characters, and the setting. Then at a certain point i usually dial it up to 11 at a point they least expect it. One of the other reasons i do this is to see what kind of campaign my players are going to want. And then the twist into a big galactic adventure, or a small one will be determined by that.

Like Noahjam325 I like to start slowly, and build up the importance of the player characters naturally. If they are content to do a few low-risk smuggling runs, I let them. It is their story (their movie) after all. If they wish to get involved with grander local, or even interstellar, politics and warfare, I let them. Through Obligation, Duty, and Morality, the core books give me numerical ways of measuring their importance, and I can always just wing it a bit. The number one rule here, is to all have fun.

Add to this, that I very rarely play in established era's. My latest campaign was " Dark Age of the Republic ", which I situated some 500 years after the events of Star Wars, The Old Republic. I took what I know of the TOR timeline and happenings, extrapolated it into what I wanted as a starting situation, and gave that to the players as the setting. In a nutshell, every faction (Sith, Republic, Jedi, Mandalorian, Hutt Cartell, etc.) is slowly rebuilding from the KOTOR and TOR events. During the game, the players can come across a statue of Revan, or a holorecording made by The Exile. They can even find historical records of the 'peace' between the Jedi, Republic, and Sith during the war against the Eternal Throne. But all that is history. Though it is more work for me, having to come up with the new movers and shakers in the Galaxy Far, Far Away, it is also more satisfying, as the players really can figure out their character's importance through their minor, or grand, actions.

This also allows me to make the player characters the most important people in the galaxy, if they want to be in such spotlights. There is no Luke or Darth Vader to compete against. There is no Revan or Bastilla Shan to eclipse.

16 hours ago, Xcapobl said:

Like Noahjam325 I like to start slowly, and build up the importance of the player characters naturally. If they are content to do a few low-risk smuggling runs, I let them. It is their story (their movie) after all. If they wish to get involved with grander local, or even interstellar, politics and warfare, I let them. Through Obligation, Duty, and Morality, the core books give me numerical ways of measuring their importance, and I can always just wing it a bit. The number one rule here, is to all have fun.

Add to this, that I very rarely play in established era's. My latest campaign was " Dark Age of the Republic ", which I situated some 500 years after the events of Star Wars, The Old Republic. I took what I know of the TOR timeline and happenings, extrapolated it into what I wanted as a starting situation, and gave that to the players as the setting. In a nutshell, every faction (Sith, Republic, Jedi, Mandalorian, Hutt Cartell, etc.) is slowly rebuilding from the KOTOR and TOR events. During the game, the players can come across a statue of Revan, or a holorecording made by The Exile. They can even find historical records of the 'peace' between the Jedi, Republic, and Sith during the war against the Eternal Throne. But all that is history. Though it is more work for me, having to come up with the new movers and shakers in the Galaxy Far, Far Away, it is also more satisfying, as the players really can figure out their character's importance through their minor, or grand, actions.

This also allows me to make the player characters the most important people in the galaxy, if they want to be in such spotlights. There is no Luke or Darth Vader to compete against. There is no Revan or Bastilla Shan to eclipse.

I love your last line here.

I personally don't mind having people to eclipse who exist in the universe that they can aim for. I find it to be. Worthy target for our heroes. Especially as they can meet them. I play in the TOR universe in an alternative reality where Malgus won at Ilum and a few other things are changed.

I like the characters meeting and interacting with people touched by this and it allows them to have something to aspire to be like or to destroy.

4 hours ago, Luahk said:

I like the characters meeting and interacting with people touched by this and it allows them to have something to aspire to be like or to destroy.

True dat. However, I think the only difference then, between you and me, is that your movers and shakers are established NPCs from the computer games, while mine are all custom-made for the setting. One character aspired to be like one of the few Jedi Masters at the Tython academy (an empty shadow of what it once was, with all the literally empty rooms and halls), and they got a nice Sith Lady to fear, loathe and defeat (who also lured the brother of one of the characters to the Dark Side).

My particular group are equally as influential as alliance war heroes in the civil war period, sometimes sharing the same limelight as them, sometimes fighting somewhere else. The alliance is fighting a pretty **** big war so we are making contributions both together and separate. As predator squad we take on the tough military assignments that non others can take. We were one of the last men off Hoth after battling to buy time against the imperial advance, other times we were attacking Kamino to stop the Tempest Project and kill the research and development Moff, Kevlin.

Likely our most significant we were the very first men on Endor and our main contribution was to destroy the second shield generator in a near suicidal mission, before two Force Sensitives PC's were captured and brought before the two hand's of the emperor; a Gungan whom name we not know and Mara Jade. Those two went on to escape and damaged the death star laser which made the reactor unstable and dropped it's personal shielding, a contribution that only us two know we have made that the rest of the galaxy would not believe, so we never told that tale to anyone. The movie heroes and squad had separate but equal parts to play in the battle of Endor,

The biggest impact I find actually is on Luke Skywalker himself and how our characters FS opinion divided us after Endor. Ghost is generally favourable toward Luke, with the former imperial assassin receiving a book on the Jedi Way to think on. Jacen Briggs actually on his path to becoming a full Jedi, after saving Luke once and stepped out of his own personal darkness into the light and was the one to return Obi-Wan's lightsaber to him after Endor. Tobin Stryder, my character who was taught via a Sith artifact and after being freed from it's influence dedicated his life to ridding the galaxy of them is utterly conflicted; Luke somehow destroyed the Sith utterly in a single encounter, the same being that crushed leaving his own destiny uncertain. It's that uncertainty, ("If not to defeat them, why did I suffer 4 years of constant hardship? Am I just some farm janitor") that nars away inside him and fuels the inner darkness he had repressed for so long for Jacen's sake. The fact our three force users had very different opinions on this individual paints a very interesting future.

What partly keeps the squad relatively under published compared to the face of the alliance is our squad has a very checkered history; a previous party member had murdered a entire crew of alliance personal on a cruiser that put a dark spot on the alliances reputation and is currently on our hit list, several alliance operatives are very recent imperial turncoats (Ghost originally joined our squad as a complete unknown, our publish relations officer turned out to be the daughter of a grand moff that was playing triple agent) and the few that remain have several issues (Tobin was captured by the inquistion and is remarked as unstable by the central alliance. Gand creates bombs, the gunner has been drinking directly from the cooling manifold of the star ships...). We generally have a reputation that is off putting for a lot of people.

This wasn't a Star Wars game, but one of my best campaigns yet was with a system called Age Past: The Incian Sphere. I won't go into a huge amount of detail about the system, but it's a very modular point buy system set in a semi-fantasy setting where magic is used for almost everything (doing daily tasks, powering vehicles/weapons, etc.) and simple gear, clockwork, and black powder technology.

The group was a ragtag bunch of adventurers/mercenaries. They were given a simple, but odd job from the office of a local lord to capture a goblin for "tax evasion." They end stumbling on this massive evil lair where they find this lord was controlling a Werking lab. Werking is the process of using humanoid souls to create new life forms. It's extremely dangerous, addictive, and illegal. It visibly destroys all life around where it's practiced.

The party fled back to the capital city where obviously nobody would believe that the Lord had done something like this. In fact it caused one of the party members to get the closest thing to a lobotomy you can with mind magic. After getting arrested they made allies with some NPC's that believed them and helped them escape. They fled the country and used one of the party member's contacts to hide in a neighboring country.

From there of their own accord decided to investigate what the heck was going on. They traveled all across the continent making allies and enemies wherever they want. Until they got caught in the middle of a massive war. This war was a giant cluster of werewolves, dragons, plant people, elemental people, etc.. The party discovered this war was being controlled by a very powerful Werker. So after weeks/months of sessions the party was finally able to put a face on what they were after. Unfortunately for them he was significantly more powerful than them at the time and escaped. But they knew who to hunt.

They continued their mission with new allies. Well... except for a part where they took a 2 month break to bring their goblin party member home. This goblin PC had knowledge of Werking and a lab where he used the knowledge for botany and not for humanoids. The party gained a lot useful information and the aid of the goblin kingdom for their mission. But at the cost of an elven city. While they were across the sea in goblin country an entire elven city got destroyed. Very close to one of the PC home where his wife and child still resided.

This is about where the campaign took a drastic turn. This "Werker Conspiracy" was now made personal. The party rushed back to primary civilization. Now extremely powerful heroes in their own right, with a small army of allies and the goblin nation at their aid. They could no longer be ignored by those in power. That's about when they started getting resources from the government and different factions. Because they had spent almost a year (both in character and real life at this point) becoming the only experts on what the heck is happening. They discovered this massive conspiracy by a group of Werkers that have invaded all walks of life in every country.

With the massive aid they had put together and the knowledge they gained they managed to hunt down the location of the man in charge. And after traversing months underground and piercing the barrier to heaven itself they confronted the villain from before. But now they were much stronger. They defeated him pretty easily, but not before he revealed something that caused a permanent rift in the party. One of the PC wanted to give him divine retribution, and not allow hom to speak. Some other party members wanted to hear what he had to say. The Holy Warrior found her position... non negotiable. So the big villain was slain without only a few fragments of his words making it to the party.

These 6 charactes were now international heroes. They had accomplished their task and left a permanent mark on the world. Now free to pursue their personal desires and because of the conflict in the last encounter most went their separate ways.

Now a few months after that campaign ended i started a new one with the same system. I currently run it every Sunday at my local comic shop. It is set 30 years in the future of the above campaign. But is significantly smaller in scope. Currently all the players are members of the Sienna Rangers. A for-hire group with honor and rules in this world's equivalent of the wild west. This campaign has not taken them all over the world. They've been helping the people of Exile rescuing husbands from slavers, escorting wagon trains, and learning about this fine town on the edge of civilization. At least until last session where giant 35 foot tentacles exploded out from underground and began destroying the town until the Rangers were able to reacue as many as they could and drive the tentacles back underground ;).

The main reason i bring up these stories is because both games i ran/currently run have very different tones and scopes. Even though something crazy just happened in the second game, it's still going to mainly stay within the town of Exile. This is almost the exact same group of players as the first campaign (excluding 1). My players get to see how their previous character permanently shaped this world, but the story they're in is a completely different scope.

Edit: These 2 campaigns have inspired one of my players to create their own campaign. To be centered around a civil war in the new goblin nation. I mention this because as GM you should leverage all different kinds of stories. If you're doing it right then your players will become just as passionate and inspired as you. Which makes the game more fun for everyone.

My first group of players started off as low-level characters, and since it was my first time we started with the Force Awakens Beginner Game. However, them gaining the Dawn Temple as a base led to much bigger things, as the group quickly went from helping out the local rebel cell in Reles and doing smuggling runs as a favor for Heavy Gan to blowing up high-security prisons on Coruscant, escaping from the Citadel Inquisitorious on Prakith, rediscovering the lost Jedi homeworld of Tython, and recovering multiple holocrons. One dead Inquisitor, a trip to Morriband, a shipload of force sensitive children, an accidental trip to Weik, and a crapton of experience later, our characters had turned the Dawn Temple into a fortress, complete with armor, heavy shielding, a hangar, a medical bay, and a command center, and started forming their own pseudo-Jedi order called the Order of the Phoenix. I later integrated subsequent campaigns with different players into the same universe, with one PC group becoming students of my old group, and my current PC group is about to stumble into a battle raging over Spintir that my old group has a heavy part in starting. (But don't tell my players what is coming, they have no idea. They think they are going to a quiet world were they can hide for a bit and do some shopping.) At this point, my original group have gained nearly the same importance as Luke, though they are focused on wiping out the Inquisitors, not so much Vader and the Emperor themselves.