So, the campaign I've been running hasbeen going on for around a year now. I have successfully turned one of the players to the Dark Side, and their character has been seeking out Vader, hoping to learn more about the Dark Side and grow in power. This weekend, they will finally be given the opportunity to join the Inquisitorious and learn under Vader himself.

With that in mind... How the heck should I go about playing Darth Vader as the GM? I'm sure a few of you have run into this issue before. I've already statted him out for my game. I'm not looking for stats, talents, or the like. I'm solely wondering how you guys go about actually role-playing as the man himself. How do you describe his actions during scenes? How do you make it truly feel like they're interacting with Vader, besides simply stating it?

I plan on rewatching the original trilogy this week and trying to pick up on Vader's mannerisms and speech patterns, but I was curious if anyone on here had some additional advice for me. Thanks in advance!

Start like you do with any NPC...what are his motivations? What does he want from the PC? What is he willing to do to get it?

Then just channel James Earl Jones

I've introduced Vader before but made it clear that he was not something to trifle with. He WILL kill you. That being said, if he is in the room with players, he should have zero fear of anything your players do. He controls the scenario and if the players manage to do something unexpected, it's almost a requirement to have him do the, "WHAT?!?" he did at the end of a new hope. But this should more then likely not happen because being in a room with Vader is like being in a room with a half starved tiger and you are standing between him and his next meal. Bargaining with Vader will not end well for the players (i.e. Lando's deal getting worse every time and Lando is smooth..) and this is THE dude in Star Wars we see choking people to death. Combat is not something to do with him. A sound effect will do wonders. Remember the breathing. Even a deep rumble as he does force powers will make you players realize its time to run. He also rarely talks unless he needs to. Notice in comics, Vader has hardly and speech bubbles. But what he wants is clear and that's results by any means necessary. He's a bad dude.

Edit: Also noticed 559, are you in the Fresno area?

I think you are doing fine... rewatching the movies will certainly help and portraying Darth Vader is nothing I would describe as challenging.

If you have any device handy to replay sound, put the breathing on a loop while he is in the scene.

"I feel cold...death..."

Vader should not feel like a run of the mill dark side opponent. Most media treat him as having a kind of aura, and I would definitely insist that PCs make a fear check of maximum difficulty when he is around just to drive the point home. Describing him like a black hole of dark side energy would fit a lot of canon sources, too.

Beyond that, there's the breathing. I'm fairly certain there are YouTube video of just his breathing for like ten hours. The sound creeps people out. I'd use that.

Further, if there are other NPCs around, I'd be sure to describe how they react to Vader, as well. If you've done all that, he shouldn't have to talk too much.

If you'd like more good source material, the current comics run includes him teaching some of the Inquisitorious, and shouldn't be too hard to track down. He's got some great dialogue that's about perfect to steal.

7 minutes ago, JRRP said:

"I feel cold...death..."

Vader should not feel like a run of the mill dark side opponent. Most media treat him as having a kind of aura, and I would definitely insist that PCs make a fear check of maximum difficulty when he is around just to drive the point home. Describing him like a black hole of dark side energy would fit a lot of canon sources, too.

Beyond that, there's the breathing. I'm fairly certain there are YouTube video of just his breathing for like ten hours. The sound creeps people out. I'd use that.

Further, if there are other NPCs around, I'd be sure to describe how they react to Vader, as well. If you've done all that, he shouldn't have to talk too much.

If you'd like more good source material, the current comics run includes him teaching some of the Inquisitorious, and shouldn't be too hard to track down. He's got some great dialogue that's about perfect to steal.

This! This is exactly the kind of advice I was looking for. Vader isn't showing up as an adversary or a roadblock in my game, so stuff about combat and whatnot aren't what I was after. But this here is exactly the kind of advice I was hoping someone would have! I'll be sure to incorporate the other NPC reactions in to the session

1 hour ago, Drig said:

I've introduced Vader before but made it clear that he was not something to trifle with. He WILL kill you. That being said, if he is in the room with players, he should have zero fear of anything your players do. He controls the scenario and if the players manage to do something unexpected, it's almost a requirement to have him do the, "WHAT?!?" he did at the end of a new hope. But this should more then likely not happen because being in a room with Vader is like being in a room with a half starved tiger and you are standing between him and his next meal. Bargaining with Vader will not end well for the players (i.e. Lando's deal getting worse every time and Lando is smooth..) and this is THE dude in Star Wars we see choking people to death. Combat is not something to do with him. A sound effect will do wonders. Remember the breathing. Even a deep rumble as he does force powers will make you players realize its time to run. He also rarely talks unless he needs to. Notice in comics, Vader has hardly and speech bubbles. But what he wants is clear and that's results by any means necessary. He's a bad dude.

Edit: Also noticed 559, are you in the Fresno area?

I am not. I live in Montana at the moment. Kind of the middle of nowhere.

1 hour ago, Drig said:

Edit: Also noticed 559, are you in the Fresno area?

His number is 5 9 9

That said, are you in the Fresno area?

Firstly, I would not even attempt to stat him up (If you stat them, the PCs can kill them)

What I would do is stat up an Inquisitor as an intermediary. Vader wouldn't get involved personnally, he would send a minion to investigate, and if its worth his while, bring the party before him.

The meeting should be handled VERY cinematically (I am talking Krennics little "Chat" cinematic) with LOTS of fear. If the party gets roudy, flip a few dark side points, Vader departs dramatically and leaves the inquisitor to mop them up.

This leaves the mythic terrifying nature of Vader intact, but also gives the Party a BBEG to fight (Inquisitors are scary enough)

1 hour ago, Funk Fu master said:

Firstly, I would not even attempt to stat him up (If you stat them, the PCs can kill them)

What I would do is stat up an Inquisitor as an intermediary. Vader wouldn't get involved personnally, he would send a minion to investigate, and if its worth his while, bring the party before him.

The meeting should be handled VERY cinematically (I am talking Krennics little "Chat" cinematic) with LOTS of fear. If the party gets roudy, flip a few dark side points, Vader departs dramatically and leaves the inquisitor to mop them up.

This leaves the mythic terrifying nature of Vader intact, but also gives the Party a BBEG to fight (Inquisitors are scary enough)

I guess I wasn't quite clear with my intentions here. So I'm gonna elaborate a bit.

First off, I statted Vader out because I'm fine with my party trying to defeat him. However, I gave him a ton of 'cheats' to his stats. If they actually try killing Vader, he will crush them.

But that's not really the point of what I'm doing here. My party has already been facing Inquisitors. One of the Inquisitors they fought saw the hate inside one of the player characters, amd convinced them to turn to the Dark Side. That player is now being offered the opportunity to join the Inquisitorious. This is a subplot from the main story of my campaign, a character arc specific for this one player character (I encouraged every player to come up with a personal arc for their characters, while the party as a whole has a different arc). Since this is a subplot, the whole party won't be involved here. It is a meeting between this player character and her new boss, the Dark Lord himself.

Basically what I'm going for with this Vader introduction is not a fight scene. Vader is not an adversary here. He is this player's Obi-Wan. He's taking on the role of an insidious mentor, to guide the player farther down the path of the Dark Side. I don't plan on the player meeting Vader often after this first meeting, but he is still her master.

If I may ask, you have said one of your PCs have fallen to the dark side and Vader will be his mentor.

What is the rest of the party doing and what are their motivations for/against the empire and sith?

Are they all onboard with working with Vader?

1 hour ago, Funk Fu master said:

If I may ask, you have said one of your PCs have fallen to the dark side and Vader will be his mentor.

What is the rest of the party doing and what are their motivations for/against the empire and sith?

Are they all onboard with working with Vader?

As characters, no. The entire party will not be working with Vader. I've got two Jedi, the son of a Jedi and Clone, and a mercenary in my party. None of them have much of a fondness for the Empire, and they all have radically different goals and character arcs they've been going through. Like I said before, I encourage each of my players to come up with story arcs for their characters. Different goals and motivations for me to make subplots out of that branch off from the main campaign. In my opinion, it's kinda dull if every player's goals line up perfectly. Having characters with divergent goals and conflicting ideals creates some stellar roleplaying moments. This particular character is the only one with the goal of working for Vader, and if they take up the offer to join the Inquisitorious, that would put them directly at odds with the rest of the party.

However, as players, everyone is totally on-board with this. The game has been building to this turn for some time, and we've discussed it several times at the table. The player of the character in question has been giddy to have their character turn since the moment they realized it was an option I allowed at my table. The rest of the players have really enjoyed seeing the character development as she slowly went from being an apprentice to a former Jedi to being a full-blown Dark Side warrior, and have loved the dynamics between the conflicting ideals of this player's character and the Jedi characters. It's pretty much become a unanimous decision at the table that this character should become a villain to the party down the line. Now that we've been gaming for over a year, and after several key moments have happened in the campaign to lead to this, I feel it's finally time for that to happen.

What I'm expecting after this session is that the player will likely hand their character sheet over to me to use as a recurring adversary. They've been spitballing new character ideas lately, and seem thrilled with the idea of their former character becoming a recurring villain. If this is what happens, I want to give the player a proper send-off for their character, ending the character's story arc by finally giving them the big meet-up with Darth Vader that they've discussed at the table several times.

If they do decide they would like to continue playing this character, I'll also discuss starting a spin-off campaign with the players. I've been wanting to run an Imperial-focused campaign for a while, and this seems like the perfect gateway to it. This would let that player still play as an Inquisitor, without forcing all the other light side-oriented characters to work alongside the servant of Darth Vader. A couple of the other players have expressed an interest in playing from an Imperial point-of-view, so I'll probably get at least three of the players at the table interested in this Imperial campaign. This is where the "Vader being this character's Obi-Wan" comes in. If I end up doing a spin-off campaign, Vader would make occasional appearances to send the players on missions and whatnot, and would also guide the character in question farther down the path of the Dark Side. His appearances would be few and far between, but each one would be meaningful and have a large impact on the campaign.

Oh wow. Thats awesome

A very elegant solution to a very complicated intraparty conflict

Kind of like a reverse Spike from buffy,

Or Ragnars Brother from Vikings (Rolo?)

39 minutes ago, Funk Fu master said:

Oh wow. Thats awesome

A very elegant solution to a very complicated intraparty conflict

Kind of like a reverse Spike from buffy,

Or Ragnars Brother from Vikings (Rolo?)

Thanks! This is actually the first and only campaign I've ever GMed so far, and I'm trying my hardest to keep the game as fair to all the players as possible. I try to give every player opportunities to do crazy and awesome story things, and let them follow whatever path they feel fits their character. However, as you can probably guess, handling a player turning to the Dark Side has not been easy to try and work with for a new GM like myself. This was the best I could come up with, and I hope that at the end of Sunday's game session, everyone leaves satisfied with the way things go.

Then again, there's always the possibility that the players completely derail my plans, as they are wont to do. There have certainly been enough game sessions in the past to show me not to commit too much to my established game plan, and to be flexible when the players do something totally unexpected. Even the last session went completely a different way when the players had the idea to befriend the baddie they were up against rather than fight him, and escape the situation by getting him sloshed and using a bit of diplomacy with a healthy dose of Influence.

I agree that is very cool! I had a similar experience with characters joining up with Dooku. A cool twist could be that Vader, when needed, will see this player as expendable, as he tends to do, and betray the character to a fate. This happened to us and Dooku and the whole party dug it. Kind of became the price for dealing with Sith and gaining the unnatural abilities, if you wanted to give the player a chance at redemption or a way back to becoming a player character.

What a cool thing for a player and GM to get behind. Sounds like a fun group!

Also yes. I am from Fresno. Caught me! *goes back to the shadows of lurking*

Maybe I missed it, but anyone opposing Vader should definitely have to make a Fear check, probably Daunting, and upgraded a few times.

One thing about this game is that it's fairly easy for a party to take down a single opponent of any ability. You may be fine with the PCs taking down Vader, but there are a few things you can do to prevent it from being anti-climatic. One is giving Vader an extra action slot outright...personally I consider that cheating, but YMMV. You can also replicate that by using Bind with max upgrades and Commits to immobilize multiple party members, which can effectively give Vader an action slot per PC, within the mechanics.

Also Vader has been defeated in various media and because he's mostly machine it's pretty easy to hand wave that he was rebuilt, again and possibly again lol. Unless you have a violent party that enjoys beheading opponents...

1 hour ago, whafrog said:

Maybe I missed it, but anyone opposing Vader should definitely have to make a Fear check, probably Daunting, and upgraded a few times.

One thing about this game is that it's fairly easy for a party to take down a single opponent of any ability. You may be fine with the PCs taking down Vader, but there are a few things you can do to prevent it from being anti-climatic. One is giving Vader an extra action slot outright...personally I consider that cheating, but YMMV. You can also replicate that by using Bind with max upgrades and Commits to immobilize multiple party members, which can effectively give Vader an action slot per PC, within the mechanics.

I did respond to someone earlier who suggested the fear check, and will be incorporating it into my portrayal of Vader.

Regarding an actual violent confrontation with Vader, I find the chances of the party actually trying to fight Vader extremely slim. Again, only one player character will be meeting with Vader in this upcoming session, not the entire party. And if the party does make it a goal to face off against Vader, the way I have him statted up is more than enough to put up a decent challenge to my entire party at once. I've playtested the encounter between the players and this Vader build a dozen times, and Vader's won each time. I do incorporate the extra initiative slot suggested by the core rule book in my games when a single adversary challenges the party, but it's not even necessary for the Vader I have built.

Darth Vader: Brawn 6, Agility 3, Intellect 4, Cunning 6, Willpower 6, Presence 3, Force Rating 7

Wound 36, Strain 36, Soak 9, Defense 2

Vader's Lightsaber: Damage 9, Crit 1, Breach 1, Sunder, Vicious 3, Superior, Dual-Phase. When Darth Vader makes a Force power check while wielding this lightsaber, add 1 Dark Side pip to the result.

Skills: Astrogation 3, Athletics 5, Coercion 5, Cool 5, Coordination 3, Deception 5, Discipline 5, Leadership 4, Mechanics 5, Negotiation 3, Perception 4, Piloting Planetary 5, Piloting Space 5, Resilience 5, Streetwise 3, Survival 3, Vigilance 5, Brawl 4, Gunnery 5, Lightsaber 5, Melee 3, Knowledge (each) 3

Talents: Parry 8, Reflect 8, Improved Parry, Improved Reflect, Supreme Parry, Supreme Reflect, Multiple Opponents, Duelist's Training, Sarlacc Sweep, Resist Disarm, Sum Djem, Lethal Blows 2, Crippling Blow, Improved Saber Throw, Djem So Deflection, Falling Avalanche, Improved Scathing Tirade, Against All Odds, Full Throttle, Skilled Jockey 2, Intuitive Strike, Tricky Target, Intuitive Evasion 2, Adversary 5, Shien Technique

Force Powers: A slightly improved version of what the Inquisitor has for Move, plus all of Bind and all of Enhance.

Now, I don't know about your party, but my party would have considerable difficulty trying to even do a single point of damage to this version of Vader. Being able to Parry or Reflect 10 damage, before taking his soak into consideration, makes it extremely hard to hurt him. My player's lightsabers aren't very powerful compared to certain builds (they're still damage 6), so getting through his Parry 8 when he's upgrading the difficulty of their check five times and adding in two black die is extremely unlikely. With his lightsaber having a crit of 1, Superior, and Dual-Phase, coupled with Vicious 3 and Lethal Blows 2, a single hit from Vader can be outright lethal. Not to mention Falling Avalanche can effectively bump the base damage of his lightsaber up to 15, well past the amount of Parry that any of my players has. On top of that, having all of Bind, backed by FR 7 and the extra Dark Side pip provided by his lightsaber crystal, means he can reliably immobilize the entire party and deal a massive amount of damage to all of them at once, ignoring soak.

Now, you could argue that this version of Vader is overbuilt, but that's kind of the point. The players are around 300-400 XP right now. I built Vader with 5000 XP, and then did a lot of tweaking after the initial build (mostly increasing his strain threshold, and removing talents that wouldn't be relevant). Right now, I picture a fight between one of my players and Darth Vader playing out like Ezra's attempt to face Vader in the season 2 finale of Rebels. Sure, Ezra's had a couple years of training, and is skilled enough to actually challenge an Inquisitor, but Vader still took him down with virtually no effort in just a couple swings. That's what I wanted my version of Vader to be capable of if my party somehow managed to fight him. And from my test runs of the party facing off against Vader, that's exactly how it would play out.

18 hours ago, JRRP said:

"I feel cold...death..."

Vader should not feel like a run of the mill dark side opponent. Most media treat him as having a kind of aura, and I would definitely insist that PCs make a fear check of maximum difficulty when he is around just to drive the point home. Describing him like a black hole of dark side energy would fit a lot of canon sources, too.

Beyond that, there's the breathing. I'm fairly certain there are YouTube video of just his breathing for like ten hours. The sound creeps people out. I'd use that.

Further, if there are other NPCs around, I'd be sure to describe how they react to Vader, as well. If you've done all that, he shouldn't have to talk too much.

If you'd like more good source material, the current comics run includes him teaching some of the Inquisitorious, and shouldn't be too hard to track down. He's got some great dialogue that's about perfect to steal.

I've always thought of Vader as controlled fire, his anger continuously burns hot (or at lteast a "pilot light") but he has learned to control it in a very mechanical/welding torch/jet engine sort of way under the emperor. Very occasionally it overwhelms the limiters, when that happens not even the emperor is safe.