In the preparation for another campaign, set at least a few hundred years/millennia after RotJ, I find myself needing to draw up a list of brand new factions. I'm looking to Legends for a lot of inspiration, having various Imperial Remnant factions still making and breaking alliances with one another, a handful of pirate groups and criminal gangs but beyond that, I find myself stuck.

The setup for the campaign is based around the idea of a combination of Star Trek: Voyager and the Outbound Flight book. Essentially, the New Republic tries to recreate that project on a brand new scale, and with a new experimental hyperdrive system, set out with a variety of alien species to inhabit another galaxy. Of course, this fails, burning out ALL the hyperdrives and frying the navicomputers beyond repair, and the ship only makes it about 1/3 of the way and is forced to turn around at sublight speeds. When this ship returns, a cataclysm has struck, essentially destroying the HoloNet, hyperspace routes end up being rendered too dangerous to cross (for a period of time), and entire sectors of the galaxy, even lone systems, are cut off from each other for an extended period of time.

What sort of factions do you think would sprout up during this time? Aesthetic and weaponry? Ideals? Maybe certain species?

Every system would pretty much be its own faction if hyperspace travel and communication are impossible, especially if this has been going on for longer than a few years.

The major thing here is how so much of teh worlds in the Star Wars universe are hyper-specialised: you have industrial worlds, agricultural worlds, city worlds... All the large corporations are gone. Intersystem trade is gone. The concept of industry is dead. City worlds like Coruscant and Nar Shaddaa are probably mass graveyards because they all starved, unable to import food or grow enough on their own to feed its trillion-sized population. Much of the galaxy needs to pretty much start over from scratch.

Aestetic? Anything from rennaisance Europe to Fallout to Firefly to Mad Max. Places like Tatooine are propbably largely unchanged. Tech level? Way lower on 90% of the galaxy. Blasters would be exotic luxury itmes.

12 hours ago, GameboyAK said:

In the preparation for another campaign, set at least a few hundred years/millennia after RotJ, I find myself needing to draw up a list of brand new factions. I'm looking to Legends for a lot of inspiration, having various Imperial Remnant factions still making and breaking alliances with one another, a handful of pirate groups and criminal gangs but beyond that, I find myself stuck.

I used to do this too...create the world/galaxy and populate it with organizations. It can be fun, but I found it very quickly dried up. Usually now I start with NPCs (both adversaries and potential allies) and flesh them out first. I find this often leads to more inspiration about the world around them, because it explains why they want what they want, and what challenges they have achieving their goals.

Anyway, agree with @micheldebruyn , if there is no hyperspace, every planet/asteroid/space-wheel will collapse to its lowest sustainable point. Probably lower at first, before bouncing back, if it bounces back at all. The people involved will react in a variety of ways, no doubt any political or religious group you can think of will be present in some form.

Thinking of that, maybe some people view the collapse of the hyper-lanes as a religious event, some punishment for a perceived over-usage by an uncaring and decadent populace. You must repent. You must have your ship re-christened in the blood of the worthy before being allowed to leave, as an offering to the HyperGod. Or after you land, you must be cleansed. As one of the few organized groups, people flock to it, and then this cult starts making its way from port to port...

13 hours ago, GameboyAK said:

(for a period of time)

This bit is very important. How long? If "period of time" is a few months, the consequences are going to be significantly less severe than if "period of time" is hundreds of years.

Furthermore, the question for how long people think they will be down. If they think that they will be down indefinitely, the situation on the ground will be much different than if they think "the techies will fix this any day now, we just have to wait it out."

The Godmakers by Frank Herbert is about a galaxy that lost FTL travel. The main character is part of an organization that “recovers” lost planets. Doesn’t answer your question but might be a good thing to mine for ideas.

I'd have carbon freezing THE WAY to go to continue colonisation... you could have the players original characters turn up from cryo who set off ten years after FTL travel went t*ts up.. complete with orange pilot jumpsuits,,,

Maybe the Corporate Sector (or wherever the Hyperdrive ships are built) re-engineer NEAR LIGHT SPEED Drives.... still make hyper travel take ages

Just use Earth history for example ideas.. we're SOOOOO good at sticking it to each other - for money, illegal goods, oil, expanding political borders, disagreements over treaties, disagreements over G*d/All*H/the First Guru/what a prophet said or did - we should cast off our shoes and follow the holy gourd..... etc etc

Maybe it's The Force's Will that it happened....

3 hours ago, whafrog said:

I used to do this too...create the world/galaxy and populate it with organizations. It can be fun, but I found it very quickly dried up. Usually now I start with NPCs (both adversaries and potential allies) and flesh them out first. I find this often leads to more inspiration about the world around them, because it explains why they want what they want, and what challenges they have achieving their goals.

This. There's only so much world building you need to do before play starts. Start with the PCs and their goals and determine who are the two or three factions they are most likely to run into first (in their first adventure or two). No need to go beyond that yet. As they adventure, new factions may become relevant, but no need to define them at this early stage. This is called a "spiral campaign," and it saves you inordinate amounts of prep time. (Of course, if you find world building fun, by all means continue. But if you're pressed for time, other aspects of prep will yield more useful results.)

2 hours ago, SavageBob said:

This. There's only so much world building you need to do before play starts. Start with the PCs and their goals and determine who are the two or three factions they are most likely to run into first (in their first adventure or two). No need to go beyond that yet. As they adventure, new factions may become relevant, but no need to define them at this early stage. This is called a "spiral campaign," and it saves you inordinate amounts of prep time. (Of course, if you find world building fun, by all means continue. But if you're pressed for time, other aspects of prep will yield more useful results.)

Doing it THIS way means that the adventure is mostly discovering what has happened rather than they just get brief on it and then you adventure. In such a case, you only need to prep what the PC's will experience. It is all you are going to use for a while. IMO, better off the PC's have no idea about what has become of things. Also, with no holonet, how does anyone know anything anyways? I imagine that each planet or system will have its own explanation as to what happened. One individual system might think it is "only them" to whom this has befallen. Why would anyone even "know" what has happened when there is no travel or communication? Also, this 'spiral campaign' idea allows you to add or change things down the road, as you go. Most certainly, you will have more and better ideas as you go.

3 hours ago, SavageBob said:

This. There's only so much world building you need to do before play starts. Start with the PCs and their goals and determine who are the two or three factions they are most likely to run into first (in their first adventure or two). No need to go beyond that yet. As they adventure, new factions may become relevant, but no need to define them at this early stage. This is called a "spiral campaign," and it saves you inordinate amounts of prep time.

38 minutes ago, DurosSpacer said:

Doing it THIS way means that the adventure is mostly discovering what has happened rather than they just get brief on it and then you adventure. In such a case, you only need to prep what the PC's will experience. It is all you are going to use for a while. IMO, better off the PC's have no idea about what has become of things.

Normally, this is how I would run things, but I'm not looking for a fully fleshed out map of the galaxy with whom controls what at this time, these people are at war with these ones, these guys are still isolated etc. More just the offhand "maybe a group of dark side cultists experimenting with their powers on a tribe of pre-hyperspace lifeforms" or "a group of travelling hunters and beastriders on a jungle planet". The big factions can be gleaned from stuff like this and I can populate it myself by just doing a random generator but it isn't nearly as... immersive I guess would be the phrase. I plan on this campaign to be quite long term, indefinite if need be, so always having additional little factions to throw in that have been on their own since the cataclysm would be nice for a one or two session deal.

I already have plans for Imperial Remnant factions, New Republic Remnant, new Hutt Cartels and criminal syndicates, an entire sentient droid faction (thanks to the actions of players in the current campaign we're in), and a new take on the Chiss Ascendancy. Like I said, big factions are no problem, but it's the small isolationists and groups that will bring diversity and more life into the galaxy as a whole for if and when they make some crazy hyperspace jump off into the unknown.

My players are especially the kind to push for the bounderies for what is planned, and while I'm pretty good at improv, I've found having at least a foundation of the galaxy at large gives better adventures for them.

6 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

the question for how long people think they will be down. If they think that they will be down indefinitely, the situation on the ground will be much different than if they think "the techies will fix this any day now, we just have to wait it out."

The time span is quite a duration, a couple generations for most species (Wookiees being an example of the exceptions), to the point where hyperspace travel does start to pop up again, but there isn't mapped out trade routes and each jump is far more dangerous than during the Imperial era, more akin to the Old Republic of the EU during the time of Ludo Kressh and Naga Sadow. It then gives the PCs the chance to be pretty much anything, whether it dedicate themselves to being explorers, becoming pirates or traders, hunters of lost Force artifacts, wanting to find an ideal planet to colonize, or heading to the core to find the ever famous "World of Light" (Coruscant).