Campaign Notes: alternate universe

-27 BBY

-Valorum still chancellor

-Dooku still apart of the Jedi

-Qui Gon still alive: and is nowthe supreme general of the Republic

-Qui Gon has an inner circle of force users and Jedi who answer to him. They are a radical militant group who is proactive and use extremist measures in peacekeeping the Galaxy. (Younger versions of Blaise zirkon and Suljo Warde are some note worthy members of this inner circle)

-Maul is still alive and serves as the “champion” of a separatist movement led by the trade federation, techno union, geonoshans, banking clan)...

-the inner circle is loved by the galaxy due to their “heroics”

-senate still corrupt Ie they just rescued a senator who is opposed to a formation of a grand army of the republic and is in fact a separatist pawn who has been paid a lot of money for his vote

-PCs are staunch supporters of the Jedi council who have taken a more passive approach.

-palp is not sidious. Instead Plaegius is manipulating the events as hego demask and Warde is the Sith apprentice (darth famine or pestiliance) and he has been manipulating Qui Gon and Valorum.

-the group is very wary of Palp who in fact is one of their biggest supporters.

Next session: the group along with the inner circle, a smaller republic army (composed of militias), and the Jedi will invade Cato Nemodia in hopes to finish off Maul and destroy the trade fed.

-during the session there will be a great betrayal by Warde who will turn on the republic forces, the PCs. The CIS will reinforce the trade federation leading to the destruction of the militia republic army. Death of Qui Gon

the PCs will be an insertion force looking to capture/assassinate maul who is in a bacta tank.

Essentially the PCs will enter into a coma or be frozen in carbonate/placed in stasis either at the hands of Warde or the building they are in will be bombarded by torpedos/laser cannons. Zirkon will rescue and recover their bodies and place them in stasis/carbonate (where they will not age)

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this is where the time jump will happen the group will awaken in 4aby or 1Aby on the planet of Serrano which has been destroyed and infested with “zombies” (experiments conducted by Plagueis)

-the group will have no weapons or equipment and have to start from scratch (I’ve been very generous so far)

-total earned exp will be 150 at this point (knight level)

-the universe or most of it has been completly wiped out (lesser version of raistlins world in Test of the Twins)

-there was a great purging of the Jedi

-Plagueis has formed the One Sith made up of new force users and rogue Jedi who survived

-their allies will have aged, and there will be little to no rebellion Plagueis and if warde survives will be the ultimate winners

-clones will be the storm troopers and main foot soldiers of the one Sith with imperial tech

Question: have you guys ever conducted a time jump in your campaigns and how did it go?

25 minutes ago, Sincereagape said:

Question: have you guys ever conducted a time jump in your campaigns and how did it go?

I'm not sure if this counts, but I usually run campaigns where the PCs have some kind of home base, and while an arc (several sessions) might take place over anything from weeks to mere hours, the break between the next arc can be weeks to years.

Various thoughts, and no idea if they will be useful or not (particularly as I'm not familiar with either Zirkon or Warde) ...

Maybe there are differing versions of Qui-Gon in various levels of canon, but I would think it to be out of character for Qui-Gon to become a general. Dooku sounds like a more likely option, or some of the Legends characters, possibly Micah Giett (wasn't he a Combat Master or something?).

How and why was most of the universe wiped out? (And might it not be more localised, like "just the galaxy"?) Are we talking about the actual stars/planets, or just the inhabitants?

If it's this much of an AU, then I'd suggest not using the BBY/ABY form of dating. Maybe count forward from the Ruusan Reformation which was over 900 years earlier? In Legends that was traditionally the foundation of the newer form of the Republic (to distinguish it from the Old Republic of KotOR and SWtOR fame), when the Jedi stepped down as political and military leaders after the Sith "were definitively eradicated".

My own experience with a time jump in a game was okay, although the campaign itself didn't last long. What I remember most as a player was a desperate need for information about changes in politics, geography (the surface of the world had literally changed), and how magic worked (it was a MERP game).

On time jumps in general I feel they can be a useful tool for moving a game from one set of circumstances, usually exterior to the characters, to another. Some players have to be handled carefully in this situation though, and in my experience reluctance to skip time resides in players who wanted to downtime stuff (crafting, shopping, etc.) and wanted to revel in the results, or just weren't through exploring the current situation. Also it can be seen as a form of railroading and so it should be regarded as a risky tool, because by taking control of time and narration you can effectively stop players from choosing what they do in that time, unless they feel it is a collaborative description. It also has the effect of essentially becoming a new game, so if they liked the situation as it was they may not be happy to change to a new scenario.

My only piece of advice on this subject: TALK TO THE PLAYERS. Either assure that they are onboard with whatever, or assure that they are fine with the intended change.

There is a quote from TPM where Obi mentions that Qui Gon has had tension with the council so the campaign ha been building on that.

Quigo has been slowly corrupted with the game and now power given to him by valorum along with influence from the Sith.

That being said, redemption is a big theme in my campaigns. Qui Gon in his own eyes is justified in taking a more radical approach to peace keeping the galaxy. I don’t know to much about EU so the other characters were unfamiliar to me. The group seems to be liking it so far IC and OoC.

Quigon will be on their side next session when they invade Cato Nemodia so they’ll enjoy that.

Good points on there world building plans. From what I know they don’t have plans to craft. They are fairly casual players.

The time jump will be the open sandbox portion of the campaign as they will have to explore the universe, discover new threats, obtain new resources, find a HQ etc.

right now, based off the campaign they everything is handed to them and they tend to “we defer to the council”.

I've hit the fast forward button sometimes - usually when the characters have been running non-stop chasing the overall plot, like when we pick up our current game here in a couple of weeks, I'll jump forward a handful of months and kick them some badly needed credits, handwaving the tedious "So you've run a bunch of easy smuggling jobs" bits. I've also done it when they've wanted to do something a bit more long term, like when a couple of characters wanted to get some college courses in and a third wanted some longer term relationship time with a girlfriend. We've also done generational games, where the kids pick up the mantle some time down the road. All new campaign but with roots firmly in the old one.

There's never been an issue with the skips in time. Everyone seems to appreciate some down time now and again.

To be concise, no I've never done a major fast forward as a GM.

I did have a GM do that for us. We took a hiatus IRL and reformed the group with the existing players bringing PC's that had aged about 20 years and most of the new players were running teenagers, some of whom were related to the former PC's. It worked out pretty well, but is probably quite different from what you're talking about.

I have made three jumps of "a few months" in our game, but never a really big one. After our next big arc we may skip a year or so.

I was the victim of one. The GM started the game as a clone wars game. Before session two he announced that we were jumping to 0 BBY and our characters have aged appropriately. Playing a clone trooper, that wasn't exactly my favorite moment.

12 hours ago, Ahrimon said:

I was the victim of one. The GM started the game as a clone wars game. Before session two he announced that we were jumping to 0 BBY and our characters have aged appropriately. Playing a clone trooper, that wasn't exactly my favorite moment.

That's the sort of thing gamemasters need to provide full disclosure for in "Session 0" or to bring up for discussion with the players.

And, if you do it, some players will reasonably want to play a different character or revamp the one they originally built.

Small time jumps are relatively trivial, but twenty years and a complete change of eras?

That's saying "I've decided to run a different game today."

On 12/25/2019 at 9:39 AM, Vondy said:

That's saying "I've decided to run a different game today."

That unfortunately happens a lot with this GM. We play weekly and go about 6-10 weeks per game, or "campaign" as he calls them.

5 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

That unfortunately happens a lot with this GM. We play weekly and go about 6-10 weeks per game, or "campaign" as he calls them.

Then you need a new GM. Six to ten weeks is not enough time to properly develop a character, neither story wise nor advancement in skills, talents, Force powers, etc.

1 hour ago, Ahrimon said:

That unfortunately happens a lot with this GM. We play weekly and go about 6-10 weeks per game, or "campaign" as he calls them.

As Tramp Graphics says above, you need a new GM. Preferably someone with the attention span to actually see oit a proper campaign.

Mine's been going 5 sessions already (we play fortnightly), and I feel like we've barely even started to scratch the surface of most of the characters.

5 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Then you need a new GM. Six to ten weeks is not enough time to properly develop a character, neither story wise nor advancement in skills, talents, Force powers, etc.

3 hours ago, Stethemessiah said:

As Tramp Graphics says above, you need a new GM. Preferably someone with the attention span to actually see oit a proper campaign.

He's the only Star Wars GM I've been able to find in the area, and a decent fellow outside of his switching games. But we have talked and he's trying his hand at expanding out the game we're in and we're going to try a compromise of alternating every month. One month the current story, the next, a different one, then back, etc. Fingers crossed.