Could anyone point me towards any published adventures (FFG, D20, D6) that involve infiltrating an Imperial base (or similar)? More specifically, I'm looking for something along the lines of Scarif in Rogue One i.e. a secret, heavily fortified base that's being infiltrated for the purpose of sabotage.

I'm working on an adventure that's loosely based on the Dark Trooper project from the first Dark Forces game. The climax will require the party to head to the main research base to destroy it and end the program.

The closest I can think of is the AoR beginner game, but that is very small scale and designed for beginning PCs.

Agreed. Also I've already used it. I'm definitely looking for something larger scale. Dozens or hundreds of staff. Difficult to infiltrate.

After a bit more looking around, it's clear that this is a question (or something similar) that's come up many times over the years and never with a satisfying answer. There seems to be a dearth of adventures and maps/descriptions of Imperial bases. Disappointing.

This may not help, but there are a LOT of adventures for the Traveller game on drivethrurpg.com and the ones I've found are pretty good and completely adaptable. I'm sure there's a military base in one of them if you browse around.

Thanks. I'll have a look.

You could perhaps reskin a current adventure. Or make one! (This probably doesn't help you, sorry)

Aye. I don't recall any adventures where attacking the Empire really was on the cards; it's always been themed toward the rebellion defending something, be it a scrap ship settlement, a rebel base or something along those vain's. Never really understood why. Presumably because they don't want to actually encourage terrorism? XD

That being said, we usually run our bases as fundamental puzzles to solve, with a general layout described and it's left to us to uncover the base's defences or weaknesses. I'll come back tomorrow and mention some ideas that have come up in our campaigns. Generally though; Millitry bases rarely exist in isolation and either exist somewhere (out of a need to defend a location or city) or are concealed in something (a secret research base was concealed within a liberary, with a self destruct system and full lockdown system devised so that if the base was breached; it would self destruct and inflict *gigantic* civie causalities to blame on the rebellion movement.). These places rarely exist in isolation, but when they do it's either because it's so vast (a massive ship yard) or what they are doing is extra sensitive (raising a massive Super Stormtrooper project, where effectively an entire Kamino "island" had been turned over to expressly explore cloning super soldiers.), in which cases surviving a full on lockdown would require diehard level antics or everyone might die. Those super isolated places however usually tend to be better enacted as a stealth mission however and usually aren't a interesting roleplaying space; they are pretty much the last location on any given list and is likely what the PC's might spend an entire campaign ramping up to invade.

Basically, build the location, then figure out where the base would sit within that framework. From there you can establish how complex that location is and how well fortified it would be. A concealed bunker for interrogations might need the rebel agents to effectively preform a heist in a particular location to access it (ala Jewel of Yavin) or require the agent to preform assignments to obtain the equipment to infiltrate a base. Basically; provide a base and an interesting location to house a base, along with some NPC's that can either be a boon or a bane and that probably is most adventure books in a nutshell.

23 hours ago, LordBritish said:

Aye. I don't recall any adventures where attacking the Empire really was on the cards; it's always been themed toward the rebellion defending something, be it a scrap ship settlement, a rebel base or something along those vain's. Never really understood why. Presumably because they don't want to actually encourage terrorism? XD

I guess? It's especially weird because that's basically the plot of ANH, ROTJ, R1, and TFA. Blowing up bad guy bases is kind of the Rebellion's jam.

23 hours ago, LordBritish said:

That being said, we usually run our bases as fundamental puzzles to solve, with a general layout described and it's left to us to uncover the base's defences or weaknesses. I'll come back tomorrow and mention some ideas that have come up in our campaigns.

I look forward to hearing more specifics.

23 hours ago, LordBritish said:

...or what they are doing is extra sensitive (raising a massive Super Stormtrooper project, where effectively an entire Kamino "island" had been turned over to expressly explore cloning super soldiers.), in which cases surviving a full on lockdown would require diehard level antics or everyone might die.

This is exactly what I'm looking for. Replace "Super Stromtrooper" with "Dark Trooper" and you're essentially describing my plan.

23 hours ago, LordBritish said:

Basically; provide a base and an interesting location to house a base, along with some NPC's that can either be a boon or a bane and that probably is most adventure books in a nutshell.

Yeah, it's the "provide a base," part that's the problem. The high level narrative/flavour part isn't my issue. I just don't know what to do with it once that's done.

Don't know if it has anything that would help you, but there is a list of fan-made adventures in the Compiled Resources thread that you may want to check out.

my two cents = An imperial bunker and a forgotten force-temple are the closest thing that Edge has to the classic D&D dungeon ...

So ... design it like a D&D dungeon? I think it'd be permissible to have "intel point out the best entry point" and have that be the forced-gateway into the encounter.

The only two FFG adventures that are something like this is Takeover at Whisper Base (already mentioned) and Operation: Shellgame (AoR Beta adventure). Shellgame needs lots of help before running it (as written, it is crap), but may provide some inspiration. It takes place on a space station, but there is no map or layout. Only the important areas (where the PCs will go) are described - hangar bay, detention center, engineering, etc. It’s an alternative to Whisper Base’s dungeon-crawl style adventure.

I think the key will be like all the movie plots mentioned - the PCs have some kind of “in” and the Empire is easily duped due to stupidity, over confidence, or being surprised.

The Corporate Security Handbook, from 2E Shadowrun, is another option for reskinning. You should be able to find a decent used copy for pretty cheap.

Shadowrun in general overlaps nicely with Edge.

2 hours ago, wilsch said:

The Corporate Security Handbook, from 2E Shadowrun, is another option for reskinning. You should be able to find a decent used copy for pretty cheap.

Shadowrun in general overlaps nicely with Edge.

Hadn't thought about Shadowrun. In general, cyberpunk could be a good source for this.

Take a look at West End Games' "Mission to Lianna" for some ideas regarding cracking into a secure facility and "Strike Force Shantipole" if you'd like to do some space encounters beforehand. If you set this final encounter on a ship or anywhere that isn't the surface of a planet, "Starfall" might give you some good ideas for an escape challenge. FFG's "Takeover at Whisper Base" is good at teaching the game to new players and not too much else, but it does have a pretty good description of what sort of structures you could find at an Imperial base and how they're connected to each other. I used this template to create a remote mountain outpost on Space Bosnia where my players went, coincidentally, to investigate the dark trooper project.

If you want to talk improvisation, I would start by making a list of features players could expect to find at the base and in the general environs. Then draw an abstract map of the base in the "flow chart" style to illustrate where different features are in relation to each other and how they're connected. This is a great reference to use during play, and if you keep everything spread out enough, you can make notes for yourself as to what kind of impediments the players will run into when they attempt to access certain areas. Then rough out some basic encounters that could happen, from technical and social challenges to combat. Good encounters will play to the PCs' strengths, as well as their weaknesses- "So you can do this the sneaky way, or you could do it the way that fulfills your Duty." Last, a time-table for Imperial response would be a good thing to have on hand as well, if and when things begin to go pear-shaped for the players. It's an easy way of keeping track of how much the opposition knows about the situation, and a good place to make notes when Despair rolls come up and no-one can think of what to do with them right away.

1 hour ago, Superunknown said:

Take a look at West End Games' "Mission to Lianna" for some ideas regarding cracking into a secure facility and "Strike Force Shantipole" if you'd like to do some space encounters beforehand. If you set this final encounter on a ship or anywhere that isn't the surface of a planet, "Starfall" might give you some good ideas for an escape challenge. FFG's "Takeover at Whisper Base" is good at teaching the game to new players and not too much else, but it does have a pretty good description of what sort of structures you could find at an Imperial base and how they're connected to each other. I used this template to create a remote mountain outpost on Space Bosnia where my players went, coincidentally, to investigate the dark trooper project.

If you want to talk improvisation, I would start by making a list of features players could expect to find at the base and in the general environs. Then draw an abstract map of the base in the "flow chart" style to illustrate where different features are in relation to each other and how they're connected. This is a great reference to use during play, and if you keep everything spread out enough, you can make notes for yourself as to what kind of impediments the players will run into when they attempt to access certain areas. Then rough out some basic encounters that could happen, from technical and social challenges to combat. Good encounters will play to the PCs' strengths, as well as their weaknesses- "So you can do this the sneaky way, or you could do it the way that fulfills your Duty." Last, a time-table for Imperial response would be a good thing to have on hand as well, if and when things begin to go pear-shaped for the players. It's an easy way of keeping track of how much the opposition knows about the situation, and a good place to make notes when Despair rolls come up and no-one can think of what to do with them right away.

Nice. Mission to Lianna is the closest I've seen so far. I can definitely crib pieces from this.

All of your secondary advice is quite useful, as well. Thanks.

The WEG adventure module Battle for the Golden Sun sees the heroes infiltrate an Imperial Base on a water planet to rescue a dude. I haven't played this in 25 years, but I seem to remember really loving it as a kid. Might be worth looking into.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sOYqpJ1Fb44FmQXR7gOzLaoHWRcvGpU4/view

3 hours ago, angelman2 said:

The WEG adventure module Battle for the Golden Sun sees the heroes infiltrate an Imperial Base on a water planet to rescue a dude. I haven't played this in 25 years, but I seem to remember really loving it as a kid. Might be forth looking into.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sOYqpJ1Fb44FmQXR7gOzLaoHWRcvGpU4/view

This is an excellent resource, as well. Thanks!

On 1/17/2020 at 4:48 PM, whafrog said:

This may not help, but there are a LOT of adventures for the Traveller game on drivethrurpg.com and the ones I've found are pretty good and completely adaptable.

Awesome idea. Any specific recommendations? Not for bases, just adventures that have worked well porting them over into swrpg

5 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

Awesome idea. Any specific recommendations? Not for bases, just adventures that have worked well porting them over into swrpg

The Prison Planet one was great, easy to port and modify (I shortened it quite a bit, but there's a lot in there). I don't think I've run another directly, but that's also true for the modules for this game (except Beyond the Rim)...they still make good idea mines. My faves are a whole series called "21 Plots" which are excellent idea fodder. I like the setup: each plot is an overview of what the PCs see, then you can choose from one of several "realities" that underly that plot, ranging from "what you see is what you get" to various interesting plot twists. There are other "21s", like for NPCs, good samaritans, scum and villainy, etc. This is usually all that's needed to get the ball rolling if I'm stuck for ideas. It's super satisfying when a whole set of sessions emerges just from reading some NPC's blurb

For bases and such, I'd just use google images and get something from real life, or even just this: "military base map rpg". I just did that and there are a ton of hits.

I used to think Maps of Mastery ( https://maps-of-mastery-store.myshopify.com ) was pretty good...and they are really gorgeous works of art...but they are *way* too small for this game, by turn 2 or 3 everybody would be somewhere else.

Also check out Armored Cartographer's stuff. https://www.nobleknight.com/Products/Armored-Cartographers-Maps---Star-Wars