So I'm coming up on the end of my current campaign. It's been an epic tale told over three years IRL, spanning the galaxy and composed of intrigue, drama, and strife. The PCs have experienced triumph and sorrow, seen their personal quests pay emotional dividends, and achieved fame and notoriety. They're heroes of the Rebellion and scions of the Force, and their names will echo in legend.

Naturally, I've been asking what kind of campaign they'd be interested in doing next. We'll be returning to Star Wars after a brief diversion into a Genesys-based Shadowrun adventure, so I was curious what they'd like to tackle next. A tightly-plotted syndicate story, perhaps? Maybe something with serious political ramifications, like diplomats negotiating for the nascent New Republic? Ooh, what about a generation story about the founding of the Republic's relationship with the Jedi Order?

Their answer: "We want to make a frak-ton of money."

That's right. They've decided they want to do whatever it takes to be rolling in riches. Specifically, they want to be able to buy whatever cool stuff they find in the books, and some things outside of it. An entire cruiser to store all their loot. Bending corporations to their will under the weight of all their credits. A moon—not to live there, but because they just like the way it looks.

Thing is, I've tried running a campaign like this before... and it was boring. It was just so boring, you guys. It was like getting your friends together to play Accountant Simulator 2007. Sure, there was some occasional excitement, but if left to their own devices, the PCs would stick to just running cargo rather than doing anything fun. Part of that's on me; I was a newer GM then, and I didn't have a great toolbox for introducing conflicts and making sure there was always a dramatic turn waiting. I've already come up with some interesting possibilities, whether they want to make their money aboveboard, belowboard, or somewhere in between.

But when I think about trying it again... ugh. I don't want to say no, since I'm sure we can make it work, but I have no idea how to proceed.

Does anyone have any anecdotes to share? Advice and wisdom? Ever tried something similar, or do you have a good reason why no one should ever do this ever?

How about they had vast wealth and a life of leisure, but someone threw them under the bus, dimed them out to the Empire and is now living the soft life at their expense. Meanwhile they managed to get away with whatever clothes they had on their back, a beater spaceship that they managed to somehow shanghai and no appreciable real-world skills other than counting money. Now they have to climb back up the ladder of success from nothing, dig up the proof that they were framed and get back in the Empire's good graces. Along they way they learn the power of Love and Friendship (or something like that) through adversity.

EDIT - I just realized that I outlined the plot of Trading Places , but with less Orange Juice Commodity Trading.

Have their various resources come under fire, perhaps literally since they have ties to the Rebellion. If they own companies, have those companies suffer from hostile takeovers, or perhaps the board of directors (you know, the people who actually run the business while the PC's do more interesting things), decide to change allegiances, and the PC's find themselves voted out, losing controlling stock of their company.

Basically, as the angry penguin suggests, go watch some of the many Riches to Rags to Riches stories, and pull liberally from their plot elements.

I'm running a game somewhat like that right now. Here are some things I've done to keep it interesting:

1. Make sure there are adversaries who have already succeeded at what the PCs are trying to do. In our game, that began with a Hutt, some business moguls, and the local gentry. The players will always feel the heat, even with millions of credits, if there's someone around with billions who thinks they're adorable and precocious. In one three game stretch, the Hutt loaned the PCs a million credits on the stipulation that they build a track and run a podrace (they wanted to race, but...). If they didn't pull it off, they owed the Hutt One. Million. Credits. It was a ton of fun. The Hutt made a lot more off of that than the PCs did - so even with a win, it just made them want more.

2. Remember everyone else. One of my extreme joys in running this game is coming up with scrappy groups of low-level rivals to hit the PCs where they aren't looking. At the aforementioned podrace, a local drug lord tried to rob the vault at the track, pirates swooped in and stole the five most expensive airspeeders parked outside the venue, and rebels tried to assassinate the Imperial official who was there. The PCs were busy, there was a lot of excitement, and I got to be the one breeding the chaos for a change.

3. The Empire. There is nothing the PCs possess that the Empire cannot take away.

4. Pile on the obligation, and work to ensure that they are obligations the PCs cannot solve with credits. Betrayal, family, obsession, criminal pasts...all of these are fuel to keep the game moving even when the players could buy Coruscant. If things get boring, pile on Obligation that the PCs didn't even earn: someone wrote a marker in their name at a ridiculously high end casino and now they're ducking all the associated problems the impostor foisted off on them. An old friend used their name as collateral and things went monumentally sideways - and the aggrieved parties are not interested in monetary recompense.

Anyway, that's where my group have had success. Humorous NPCs with colorful back story and a lot of ridiculous comedy pretty well ensure our game never gets boring.

By the way, here's a discussion from a while ago about keeping the players in perpetual poverty. Not quite the answer to the question you asked, but you might find some value and ideas there.

My game started for the same reasons, make a ton of credits. I just make the game more adventurous then campaign like. Sure if you only leave the group do regular task like cargo hauling it will be boring as ****. Maybe I got lucky but my group always wanted more dangerous jobs for more cash. They tend to go forward into bigger adventures for more possible income or favors from high end society. Just give it a try with your group and let them know in advance that after 3 or 4 sessions if you don't feel it, you might change the settings or the rpg or go back to an epic campaign.

Here are a few exemple of what they did (my table) skipping the basic bounty hunter claims :

Double crossing two opposite drug King pin for an uprising crime lord then killing him for the favors of a black sun Vigo.

Seek and destroy a rebel cell for the imperials

Capture and bring back a rancor (failed horribly) for a big crime lord

Setting up a Fight to the death event on nar shaddar. One PC decided to participate of course.

They also brought back some of the missing helmets for a crazy bartender with a trooper helmet collection.

Well; according to Rose, the only way to make big money in the Star Wars setting is by selling weapons to the First Order. So that should simplify things for your PCs.

Ask your players how many movies, TV shows, or books they've read about people making a lot of money and then ask them how interesting those stories were.

100% of games use currency as a method of moving the story along, not the end goal. Crime stories always focus on criminals getting the Big Score because they need to use that money to accomplish... something: pay off a mob boss, pay for a loved one's surgery, etc.

No one ever got rich by playing it safe. Big rewards require big (and usually illegal) risks. Cargo hauling will keep you out of poverty, not make you a Land(moon) Baron. All Han solo got for 20+ years was a slightly bigger ship and his other ship stolen.

I think the best step you can take is to make this your second campaign in Genesys. Tycoons, dons and rich heirs are all in Star Wars but playing them in full glory, however fun it might be, isn't Star Wars.

Contemplate adapting or developing a space-magnate setting, and I wonder if you'll see a lot more opportunity for interesting play.

4 hours ago, wilsch said:

but playing them in full glory, however fun it might be, isn't Star Wars.

Lando would disagree. A high roller with a taste for The Good Life and tons of Obligation - looking out for the people of Cloud City - would not be out of place in a Edge campaign.

On ‎2‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 6:10 PM, Desslok said:

By the way, here's a discussion from a while ago about keeping the players in perpetual poverty. Not quite the answer to the question you asked, but you might find some value and ideas there.

Please don't keep your players in perpetual poverty.

Their characters? Sure, go nuts! But your players may come to resent you for it rather quickly...

Naw, it's the GMs (and the X-Wing players) that are in perpetual poverty. . . . .

On 2/28/2018 at 10:07 AM, Concise Locket said:

Ask your players how many movies, TV shows, or books they've read about people making a lot of money and then ask them how interesting those stories were.

100% of games use currency as a method of moving the story along, not the end goal. Crime stories always focus on criminals getting the Big Score because they need to use that money to accomplish... something: pay off a mob boss, pay for a loved one's surgery, etc.

I disagree with this one. There are plenty of movies that focus on the money. Some of the characters may have side plots, but most of them are all about the money.

Ocean's Eleven - Everyone but Danny Ocean is in it for money. Or notoriety.

The Italian Job - Earn a crapload of money by getting revenge.

Trading Places - Earn a crapload of money by getting revenge.

Three Kings

Catch me if you Can

The Aviator

Brewster's Millions - Comedy, but he is all about getting the money.

The Color of Money

Point Break

Bonnie and Clyde

The Wolf of Wall Street - Jordan Belfort

Wall Street - Gordon Gekko

Admittedly, the bad guys tend to be more motivated by the money, but maybe thats where they want to go. Die Hard is good that way (or at least it would have been if it weren't for that pesky hero).

In reality, to earn that much money the PC's will need to either turn into Corporate overlords, Crime Bosses, or Governments. That can be an achievable goal, depending on how they want to climb the ladder.

If they want to just get filthy rich (not buy a moon because you can, but maybe a star cruiser), that could be a single, big haul. You would have to figure out whether they are stealing money, or something they plan to sell, but a heist is a good adventure. See the Jewel of Yavin for a large, but not ludicrous, heist. And if they are looking to go Overlord big, a really big heist could fund the start of it all.

7 hours ago, Edgookin said:

I disagree with this one. There are plenty of movies that focus on the money. Some of the characters may have side plots, but most of them are all about the money.

Ocean's Eleven - Everyone but Danny Ocean is in it for money. Or notoriety.

The Italian Job - Earn a crapload of money by getting revenge.

Trading Places - Earn a crapload of money by getting revenge.

Three Kings

Catch me if you Can

The Aviator

Brewster's Millions - Comedy, but he is all about getting the money.

The Color of Money

Point Break

Bonnie and Clyde

The Wolf of Wall Street - Jordan Belfort

Wall Street - Gordon Gekko

Admittedly, the bad guys tend to be more motivated by the money, but maybe thats where they want to go. Die Hard is good that way (or at least it would have been if it weren't for that pesky hero).

None of those movies were about the money. The money was the MacGuffin to move the plot along. Plus, Gordon Gekko went to prison.

I call this the Analog Video Game campaign. The players are wanting to do the kinds of things that are fun in a computer game, but don't translate very well to a table except maybe as a board game. I think you could run this game as an RPG in the sessions, but if you have close contact with your players you could also set up a self-running resource management game and just oversee it and throw in tweaks between games. It will require that the players be as familiar with the rules and resolution as you are, and that they aren't cheaters.

I did this once by having a lot of random tables that had a timeframe of how many checks could be made in a real 24-hour period. It sounds like you did this before so I probably don't need to go into detail but basically I had a system of Acquisition and Loss. Resource gathering, Resource and Product Trading, and New Contracts were the Acquisition modes, Destruction, Theft, and Hazards were the Losses. The Loss probs should be heavy so that it is very possible to go through checks without getting significant resources from harvesters and other gathering methods. The players have NPC workers who can handle a certain amount of Units of Resource/Product each, and they make rolls to determine the net success/failure of each operation period. The workers in turn require resources to maintain.

When it comes time for the session try to get them to not do the resource game, but you can run hooks off of things that happened in the rolls. For example my friend rolled that his entire crop of wheat had been stolen by bandits. The next adventure they hunted down the bandits but found they were feeding refugees with the wheat.

Hope this helps

13 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

None of those movies were about the money. The money was the MacGuffin to move the plot along.

Go to the Spaghetti Western well then. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was all about the pesos. As was Any Gun Can Play (three gunmen constantly double cross each other to find a million dollars in stolen gold), Take a Hard Ride (which was admittedly more about delivering money that everyone else wanted), The Stranger and the Gunfighter (recover lost treasure), Too Much Gold for One Gringo (find 28 sacks of hidden gold), Light the Fuse, Sartana Is Coming (Gold disappears during a shootout and everyone is hunting for it), Companeros (a bandit leader and an arms dealer have to rescue someone who has a combination to a safe) and on and on and on.

Pretty much Spaghetti Westerns were either "Find the treasure" or "Get revenge on the one who wronged me". Occasionally both.

On 3/1/2018 at 12:32 PM, Desslok said:

Lando would disagree. A high roller with a taste for The Good Life and tons of Obligation - looking out for the people of Cloud City - would not be out of place in a Edge campaign.

Lando's operation was "small enough not to be noticed." The OP's player want "An entire cruiser to store all their loot. Bending corporations to their will under the weight of all their credits. A moon—not to live there, but because they just like the way it looks."

The OP's essentially talking about the TV show Dallas, which could be cool, but it's Dallas.

On 2/28/2018 at 7:24 AM, Vorzakk said:

Well; according to Rose, the only way to make big money in the Star Wars setting is by selling weapons to the First Order. So that should simplify things for your PCs.

"The only way we get rich is buy spending all the credits we have."

-Rose

I TOTALLY agree. A ton of credits is COMPLETELY boring. I mean, after the PC’s spend 5,000 on each item they have to give it Superior Quality and then max out their equipment, there’s really nothing left to make the character better except XP (and Duty/Obligation). Then the PC’s shrug off being offered 25,000 credits on a job because it can’t buy them a space cruiser. ("You can't buy ANYTHING with 25K.") Quickly the GM runs out of plot hooks.

One idea to spice things up is to add competitiveness. In sort of a skill challenge, there is a group aiming to do what they are doing. This nameless, faceless group makes competitive rolls against the PC’s each session (Negotiate vs Negotiate, or Charm/Charm, Knowledge/Knowledge) and the winner gets the contract from the corporation (wins the credits, earns the income in a competitive corporate world). They’ll be nameless and faceless until a certain point, but this gives the PC’s something to unravel. They could have a cryptic name like “The Black Hands” and they have really good skills. So, at the beginning, they outdo the PC’s in most instances. This will make the PC’s want to identify their opponents, play a social game of intrigue, and make them want more XP (not money). You see, money isn’t helping them earn income.

I also liked someone's idea of starting them off with one million credits to build a structure for a billionaire. They can be part of the development team, but dishonest ones who find ways to launder the money.

5 hours ago, wilsch said:

Lando's operation was "small enough not to be noticed."

Small enough not to be noticed? I cant find it now, but I saw a graphic that compared Cloud City to Manhattan island - it was about the same diameter (not quite, since one was round and one was long and skinny). Then you consider that it has 392 levels, that's nearly four hundred New York Cities stacked on top of each other. That is clearly not a "small operation". Lando was just trying to deflect the "Hey, why isn't the Empire here?" question as he was leading them into a trap set by the Empire.

5 hours ago, wilsch said:

The OP's player want "An entire cruiser to store all their loot. Bending corporations to their will under the weight of all their credits. A moon—not to live there, but because they just like the way it looks." The OP's essentially talking about the TV show Dallas, which could be cool, but it's Dallas.

I reject that notion. You can still play ridiculously rich characters and still have it be Star Wars. I once ran a princess from a powerful and influential core world family with an army of servants and a vast ancestral palace. Her bathroom was bigger than your average house. And it was VERY Star Wars - she had to repel an invasion from Sith Empire invasion of her homeworld, broker a deal with the Republic to bring her world into the galactic government, smoothing over her people's distrust of Jedi and generally doing ambassadorial leadership things.

And yes, she still went out on adventures to save the galaxy, and her vast wealth did occasionally color the game - but it was still Star Wars.

2 hours ago, DurosSpacer said:

Quickly the GM runs out of plot hooks.

Then that GM sucks. Bruce Wayne still went out on adventures. Tony Stark went out on adventures. James Bond - who while not necessarily filthy rich himself, had the entire backing of The Crown and every toy he could possibly want supplied to him by Q-Branch - went out on adventures. Black Panther is a king and still goes out on adventures. My 1% princess still went out on adventures.

Mind you, players like that suck too. They need to have a character definition beyond "Get stinking rich". In all of the above, there's a motivation - Bruce Wayne is working out his personal demons, M tells 007 to "Go stop Specter", my princess was trying to do right by her people and so on and so on. One of the end games that my brand new thief character that I'll be starting up in a couple of weeks will probably be Get Stinking Rich - but she's trying to do so as a way to get out of her mother's very long shadow. Getting rich in an impressive and showboat-y way is just a means to escape that legacy, prove that she can stand on her own.

21 hours ago, Desslok said:

Small enough not to be noticed? I cant find it now, but I saw a graphic that compared Cloud City to Manhattan island - it was about the same diameter (not quite, since one was round and one was long and skinny). Then you consider that it has 392 levels, that's nearly four hundred New York Cities stacked on top of each other. That is clearly not a "small operation". Lando was just trying to deflect the "Hey, why isn't the Empire here?" question as he was leading them into a trap set by the Empire.

Galactic scale is probably a bit different; Jewel of Yavin itself notes that Cloud City is a "relatively small operation." Even if Lando was Ed Koch in space, Ed didn't take New York City home with him. Different shades of power, here.

That aside, "star tycoon" is perhaps a bit like Dune, which is a bit like Star Wars, but missing or otherwise precluding enough elements to not be Star Wars. Could an exception be argued? Maybe; you're making an effort. But the OP wasn't wrong in being skeptical.

On 03/03/2018 at 3:38 PM, DurosSpacer said:

I TOTALLY agree. A ton of credits is COMPLETELY boring. I mean, after the PC’s spend 5,000 on each item they have to give it Superior Quality and then max out their equipment, there’s really nothing left to make the character better except XP (and Duty/Obligation). Then the PC’s shrug off being offered 25,000 credits on a job because it can’t buy them a space cruiser. ("You can't buy ANYTHING with 25K.") Quickly the GM runs out of plot hooks.

One idea to spice things up is to add competitiveness. In sort of a skill challenge, there is a group aiming to do what they are doing. This nameless, faceless group makes competitive rolls against the PC’s each session (Negotiate vs Negotiate, or Charm/Charm, Knowledge/Knowledge) and the winner gets the contract from the corporation (wins the credits, earns the income in a competitive corporate world). They’ll be nameless and faceless until a certain point, but this gives the PC’s something to unravel. They could have a cryptic name like “The Black Hands” and they have really good skills. So, at the beginning, they outdo the PC’s in most instances. This will make the PC’s want to identify their opponents, play a social game of intrigue, and make them want more XP (not money). You see, money isn’t helping them earn income.

I also liked someone's idea of starting them off with one million credits to build a structure for a billionaire. They can be part of the development team, but dishonest ones who find ways to launder the money.

Rogue Trader essentially starts you with unlimited cash, but still provides a challenge.

As noted, the trick is to provide opponents on the same level; not rebels versus customs, but moff vs moff vs black sun vigo....especially if the wealth is illegal in origin, it's easy to force people to do things in person.

10 hours ago, wilsch said:

"star tycoon" is perhaps a bit like Dune, which is a bit like Star Wars, but missing or otherwise precluding enough elements to not be Star Wars.

Okay, I'll bite - what is "Star Wars"? Because the high rolling games I've played have Jedi and Sith and lightsabers and spaceships and weird worlds and epic Flash-Gordon like adventures. Two real-time weeks ago, we boosted a credit transfer of over a billion credits from Black Sun with Stormtroopers and TIE Fighters and daring do. All the Star Wars boxes were ticked. It seemed like Star Wars to me.

10 hours ago, wilsch said:

Galactic scale is probably a bit different; Jewel of Yavin itself notes that Cloud City is a "relatively small operation."

Small compared to what? My two man backyard Tabana mining operation? Compared to a city-planet of 6 trillion miners? Compared to a Dyson Sphere that's harvesting a sun?

Putting aside the completely subjective standards of how big Cloud City was - Lando was clearly doing very well for himself. Position of power, nice clothes, women (which, okay - we don't see in Empire, but you think a playah like Lando didn't have them hanging off him?). By every appreciable benchmark, Lando was a High Roller - and very easily could have been in a fringe game.

If that's not the theme of the campaign as laid down in Session Zero, fine. But to say that a Big Money campaign isn't "Star Wars" is nonsense. Playing a Lords of the Expanse game with houses and nobles and court intrigue is just as much Star Wars as is playing a gang of schlubbs desperately scrounging through the couch cushions for gas money.