(Minor spoilers for Chronicles of the Gatekeeper and Lessons from the Past below...)

I'm about 5 sessions into my first Force and Destiny campaign as a GM (after an extended time away from GMing). After an introductory "Get the Team Together" adventure that introduced their mentor, I ran them through the adventure in the back of the core book - Lessons from the Past. For the next step, I really like the look of the story in Chronicles and how I can tie it into multiple character back stories, as well as taking the story burden off me for the next couple months as I'll have little to no time to create a campaign. However, the first stumbling block is giving them another holocron when they already have a holocron from Lessons from the Past. On top of a mentor. Even though most of the players are well aware of the Lore, it will still seem like surviving Jedi and holocrons are waiting around every corner which is not the overall feel I want long term. Most of the ideas from the Chronicles book are either not applicable (like make the holocron from Lessons the same holocron - they've already interacted with it and know it's based on a Jedi Master from Old Republic days) or I'm not a fan of (make them lose their holocron and "find it" but really they find Warde's instead). They worked hard enough for the holocron they already have; I know I'd be mad as a player if it just got stolen immediately the next session. I also don't want to kill off the mentor just yet - at this point I'm using him as a mission hub and safety valve if they get into too much trouble until they get a bit more powerful.

My only thought so far is to replace the holocron outright with a protocol droid Warde used to own who has maybe been deactivated for a while - that would give me almost all the same plot hooks and similar reactions to the comedy and/or tragedy of current events . The players would lose out on the new Force Power, but I'm not sure any of my players would actually be interested in it. There are ways around this issue depending on how the campaign resolves, but it would be a long shot.

Did anyone else run into this or have suggestions about how to handle this?

It's been a while since I read/ran Chronicles but I want to say there was a sidebar in there early in the book when talking about the holocron covering this exact situation. I am not home and near by books so I can't check it but it did warn against giving players multiple holocrons

I agree with the spirit that the holocrons shouldn't be readily available, but the game gives players one in the Beginner Game and optionally at party creation and at the end of adventure in the core book and the first campaign book published... I think I may bend (break?) the Lore on this one and have them just find the first crystal from Warde's holocron, let them figure out what it is and then offer them some sort of series of Lore/Mechanics/Computers checks using the holocron they have and Warde's crystal to jury rig a dual boot holocron with a long in game cooldown on 'OS' switching.

Gotta remember that the books are only really suggestions as to what you could run in the adventure; the contents of the books can be freely modified for your adventure to fit the theme. Just because the book states it's a holocron, doesn't mean it has to be a holocron; it really could be a paper trail of tracking down this mysterious Jedi or as said a protocal or better yet, an astromech droid that had once served Warde whom had chunks of his memory removed to protect particular dig sites; the location of which can be only found by tracking down three objects that the memory banks were housed in. Or three people whom were entrusted with part of the final location, or three things, or three stimuli. Or have it only need to go to one or two locations and just skip out on any leg work that is unnecessary; each part of the adventure could be dramatically expanded into it's own adventure, especially part 1.

As said, if the party already have a Jedi and a holocron, make this quest more personal to the mentor. There are very few Jedi who remain, so maybe this mentor figure genuinely wants to know what happened to his old friend, after all there are very few stars of light in this galaxy in these current times.

On 7/17/2019 at 2:44 PM, Varrin said:

(Minor spoilers for Chronicles of the Gatekeeper and Lessons from the Past below...)

I'm about 5 sessions into my first Force and Destiny campaign as a GM (after an extended time away from GMing). After an introductory "Get the Team Together" adventure that introduced their mentor, I ran them through the adventure in the back of the core book - Lessons from the Past. For the next step, I really like the look of the story in Chronicles and how I can tie it into multiple character back stories, as well as taking the story burden off me for the next couple months as I'll have little to no time to create a campaign. However, the first stumbling block is giving them another holocron when they already have a holocron from Lessons from the Past. On top of a mentor. Even though most of the players are well aware of the Lore, it will still seem like surviving Jedi and holocrons are waiting around every corner which is not the overall feel I want long term. Most of the ideas from the Chronicles book are either not applicable (like make the holocron from Lessons the same holocron - they've already interacted with it and know it's based on a Jedi Master from Old Republic days) or I'm not a fan of (make them lose their holocron and "find it" but really they find Warde's instead). They worked hard enough for the holocron they already have; I know I'd be mad as a player if it just got stolen immediately the next session. I also don't want to kill off the mentor just yet - at this point I'm using him as a mission hub and safety valve if they get into too much trouble until they get a bit more powerful.

My only thought so far is to replace the holocron outright with a protocol droid Warde used to own who has maybe been deactivated for a while - that would give me almost all the same plot hooks and similar reactions to the comedy and/or tragedy of current events . The players would lose out on the new Force Power, but I'm not sure any of my players would actually be interested in it. There are ways around this issue depending on how the campaign resolves, but it would be a long shot.

Did anyone else run into this or have suggestions about how to handle this?

I planned on running Chronicles (it was my second time) so I planned ahead. First I did the starter box adventure (but did not do the continued free pdf adventure). They find Warde's holocron after saving Heathan Romund (the starting damsel in distress) who then has a contact...which led to Lessons from the Past. I replaced the holocron of the Jedi with a Datacron--basically like a holocron but no Force Ghost, it contains an immense plethora of information and is in Star Wars lore. That way when they find Ward's holocron its not crazy. Granted a Datacron is still valuable, but not as omg awesome. I gave them the free trained skill as recommended. I also did not give them lightsaber crystals as I was planning on running them through Hidden Depths [GM kit] to get lightsabers--well they had a choice--search for lightsaber cyrstals [Hidden Depths] or find Ward's crystals [Chronicles]). Have your players already gotten the holocron in Lessons from the passed?