I've been cooking up a campaign idea lately, involving a small group of friends (all Force-sensitive, obviously) discovering a buried Sith library many years after the events of Return of the Jedi and learning how to use their abilities and essentially kick off a new Sith Order (sort of the opposite of the classic "PCs accidentally create a new Jedi Order" campaign). While Force and Destiny's Force system is probably the best of any Star Wars RPG I've read, I've still got a few issues with it. That being said, my question is, is this type of campaign viable under Force and Destiny's Force system, or would I be better off doing something else?

Are they inadvertently evil or delibertly so? Well they make a redemption arc or just be murder warlocks?

Yeah, a plot like this heavily depends on what your opinion (as a GM) the Force represents. Is it black and white, or is their some granularity to it? Your players may also have a similar idea in mind, and a conflict of views can spoil the fun. Keep in mind that the Sith are naturally backstabby thanks to Dark Siders growing more socio/psychopathic the more they delve into the Dark Side. You will likely need a good justification why this uncovered lore doesn't have them all try to fight each other over it. You should also consider what sort of force will counter them. Is this in the new canon, or is something more like Legends? If the former, you should try to consider what forces could feasibly counteract a coven of Dark Side users, as the Jedi at this time are near death with only Luke and arguably Rey representing it (so far at least).

The party will be starting out as regular New Republic citizens, but I'm leaving their decisions up to them. Honestly I'm interested in seeing what kind of path they take with ancient Sith teachings. They might become villains, they might become vigilantes, or maybe even become the new institutional law enforcement seeing as Luke's new academy ain't doing so hot (or, rather, is very hot).

Well, even if you start with +150xp so that they have decent powers, it still won't be enough to influence bureaucrats, citizens, governors, or anyone else to fall in line with them. They could possibly run a new 'order' that operates out of a cave for the first 20 years. Why would anybody fear them unless they can do really great and devastating things?

The FaD system makes them vulnerable to a handful of capable NPC's. In d20 systems, you eventually gain so much AC and powers that no one below a certain level can lay a finger on you. In d20 systems, a powerful PC can wade through a crowd of people and hack them all down.

Now, the idea is good. Especially if they are law & order focused, where they don't see their powers as evil at all. Or they never even hear the word 'Sith' and just use their powers. They just want to reign in piracy and lawlessness. The big problem is how anyone would be awed by them enough to follow them. Now, they could go back to this resource (Sith in a Holocron/crypt) for power. The "ghost" could act through them and they could be surrogates, but that really isn't playing "your" character. Perhaps the ghost could cause a cataclysmic event and allow the PC's to be seen as causing it? One big event could sauce a city, planet, or system to fall into order quickly. Maybe they depose a weak king using the ancient knowledge they found? There has to be an accelerated manner of gaining power. 4-5 PC's aren't going to be able to start from scratch and get anywhere.

8 minutes ago, DurosSpacer said:

Well, even if you start with +150xp so that they have decent powers, it still won't be enough to influence bureaucrats, citizens, governors, or anyone else to fall in line with them. They could possibly run a new 'order' that operates out of a cave for the first 20 years. Why would anybody fear them unless they can do really great and devastating things?

Now, the idea is good. Especially if they are law & order focused, where they don't see their powers as evil at all. Or they never even hear the word 'Sith' and just use their powers. They just want to reign in piracy and lawlessness. The big problem is how anyone would be awed by them enough to follow them.

It's true that it would be rather hard for a base-level group to gather a following early on, so perhaps I'll start off with a few small-scale encounters that would help them gain public attention, like a pirate raid on their home town or something. And you're right that they probably wouldn't even know about the Sith or Jedi starting off. The library won't contain any direct mention of the Sith, just a few surviving tomes of lore and philosophy and things like that from the early days when the Sith were just a splinter faction of the Jedi.

I would suggest leaving the possibility open to the new order being a "grey" one instead of completely Sith. That sets up a broader and possibly longer lasting campaign in my opinion.

On 11/24/2017 at 10:31 PM, DurosSpacer said:

Well, even if you start with +150xp so that they have decent powers, it still won't be enough to influence bureaucrats, citizens, governors, or anyone else to fall in line with them. They could possibly run a new 'order' that operates out of a cave for the first 20 years. Why would anybody fear them unless they can do really great and devastating things?

Now, the idea is good. Especially if they are law & order focused, where they don't see their powers as evil at all....

While I agree with some points I have to disagree that they would be useless right off.

Sure it would take a little while...10 to 20 sessions maybe... maybe a little more even. But our basic aor team effectively disrupted a whole system by the time we had 300 earned xp... also took out 2 isd's and a wmd then set up the moff and an isb agent to take the fall for it all... and that was without any force powers... Ok... one character had a couple of powers but not too much.