I've been working on a campaign idea using this system. The explanation is based on the assumption that potential players would have differing degrees of experience with the system; so, there are parts where more experienced players might feel they are being talked down to. Hopefully, most will recognize it as an attempt to be inclusive of new players to the system. I have no idea when it will begin as I work long hours, but I intend to be ran online over Discord and Roll20. I also like to give my campaigns working titles which I have not come up with. Maybe, I will make that a topic of discussion for the session 0 and allow the players to have a roll in establishing the name.

Campaign ideas for FFG Star Wars

Here is some ideas of where I am going in the campaign I am working on for Star Wars. I like starting most campaigns some where just before or just after the events of The New Hope, and I may or may not use later movies and books as references for where I progress from there. This time I am starting the campaign at an unspecified amount of time between the prequels and the Clone Wars series and the New Hope, and I will be using a cross between the history outline of the those sources and from old WEG sources primarily, but I would only be using them as an outline and not as the Law.

I plan to run it as a sandbox where the party has a lot of pull in regards to the outcomes of the story. I will allow character concepts from all official sources, and I will allow concepts from unofficial sources on a case by case basis.

The challenge for me is that for those who don't much about the system. The game is broken down into three different subsystems, Edge of the Empire (EotE), Age of Rebellion (AoR), and Force and Destiny (FaD) each with their own story conceits into their character creation rules. They all have a ten step process to character creation but have different design conceits. In EotE, it is assumed that the party would be a team of independent operators trying to make a living in a galaxy that doesn't make it easy. AoR assumes that the party would be working directly as part of Rebel Alliance military structure. FaD assumes that the party of are a team of Force users trying to evade the Imperials while trying to live up to the standards of their beliefs. I am starting with EotE as the starting conceit of my campaign; so, working it in is the easiest, and special consideration will be used in working in the other sources.

I won't go into every step of character creation but will only deal with the steps that require decisions from me, and those are steps 1, 2, 4, 5. and 10.

Steps 3 and 4 are choosing the characters career and starting specialization respectively. This is the easiest to deal with. I am allowing all careers and specializations from all three core books and their career expansion books. I will consider era specific careers and specializations on a case by case basis, and the same is true of any official sources.

Step 1 is determining background. The players will have to work out as individuals and as a group why their characters are together. I think EotE sources are the easiest to deal with as they represent the starting point, but FaD offers only a slight challenge. A Force user in hiding could easily choose to hide either among freebooters or among rebels. AoR is another matter. Why would an individual who is active in overthrowing the empire be hanging out with a bunch of freebooters? I have several ideas, and I can imagine anyone with experience with character creation can come up with ideas of their as well. I am only bringing this up because it is something that needs to be considered.

One note: It would be easiest of the players can come up with background ideas that will allow them together before the beginning of play, but the starting action of the adventure does start in a tavern; so, a “the meet in a tavern” scenario will work and players will at least come up with a reason why they would be at that particular tavern at the particular time and why they might choose to team up with a group of strangers they just met.

Step 2 is what I call determining the character impetus. That is, why does the character do what he does? In that way it very much resembles an alignment. Each of 3 core books present a different impetus. EotE has obligation, AoR has duty to the Rebellion, and FnD has morality. Each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Obligation is an impetus to earn money and power such as a debt to crime lord or a family member in the clutches of a powerful enemy. Duty is the particular type of missions you feel pulled to when working for the Rebellion. Morality reflects your position to relative to the Dark and Light sides of the Force. All three have benefits and drawbacks as they raise and lower during play. Both obligation and duty are the most similar as they both affect the characters interactions in the physical universe and morality's biggest affects only effect how the character interacts with the Force.

How I am going to deal with this is that players will choose one of the impetuses at character creation based on how they see there characters rather than which source they used for character creation; so, a character made from EotE, AoR, or FaD can choose the impetus from the other sources; so, you could have smuggle who is already dedicated to the Rebellion starting out with a duty or AWOL ex-Imperial tactician starting out with an obligation. Any characters starting out as a Force user will automatically start out with morality, and if a player is creating his character as Force sensitive, he could start out with Morality. As there is no immediate benefit, the character that chooses this option would start out with a Force Rating (1). They can't use this Force Rating Force powers or anything, but they can use it to qualify them for specializations that require a Force Rating of 1 to gain entry. At which point they would replace the (1) with a 1. Other players who want to become a Force user would have to spend time in a specialization that grants a Force Rating of 1 as part of its package before moving on.

A word of note: AoR assumes that the duty is specifically towards the Rebel Alliance. For my campaign, duty could be applied to any organization to which the player might loyalty. It could be the Rebel Alliance or the Rebellion in general or to a rebel organization not associated with the Rebel Alliance.

Another word of note: Duties and obligations can be gained and lost during process of play as can morality once a player decides his character is Force sensitive; so, in a long running campaign, a character could hypothetically wind up with all three.

Step 10 is choosing the starting group resource. This obviously can only be done as a group prior to play. For EotE, the player have to decide between a variety of freighters to be the team's ship, and they would have to work out details like who owns the ship, who is the captain and the crew, and who is just along for the ride. AoR offers the players a base of operations, a Lamda class military transport, or a number of Y-Wings equal to half the number of players. FaD offers a mentor, a holocron, or a small personal transport. I would allow players to choose from any of the three options, but I would strongly recommend an option that includes a shared ship for most campaigns.

Thoughts, opinions?

"Hmm... sounds good, sounds good... Wait, start in a tavern? Nevermind, I'm out!"

I'm joking, of course, but I've never liked that trope.

You're talking live play, right? Unfortunately, that is not something I am able to do, though I wish you the best of luck and will be glad to offer advice or suggestions.

It's a bit too light on details for me to really give much in the way of suggestions, though that description does a pretty good job and as someone experienced with the system, it doesn't sound like I'm being talked-down to, you're just giving a good overview of the game and how you are personally handling it. Much of my GMing has been with players new to the system, so that's something I appreciate.

Your way of handling the Morality with the "Force rating (1)" is clever, and I like that.

My thoughts on this were well filled-out and expressed in another thread, but sadly I cannot remember where to begin looking for it. I'll attempt to sum it up here:
I would caution that you need to have at least, I'd say, 3 Duties or Obligations for either mechanic to be fully viable. Morality works much better on an individual basis.
My suggestion would be that each player pick two mechanics (or in the case of Obligation, double up on one) at the start of the game. So: Morality and Duty, or Obligation and Morality.

Last thing I'd suggest is a general pitch for the game. If you are waiting on the characters before you can do that, then nevermind. For my games, I usually get a general campaign concept before I try to start a game so I know what I'm looking for and can pitch the game as such. I think having expectations set (or at least a ballpark) going into it is best for all involved.

As far as non-live roleplaying, I have done roleplaying via email and via message board. I liked it. It really pegs my love of writing, but the action can be to drawn out.

Regarding the lack of detail, as I am going the sandbox route, a lot of the detail would have to be dealt with democratically during the session 0.

Sounds like it is really geared towards being inclusive and for the players. Really agree with and like your style.

If you are interested, Rise of the Separatists has a section on how to deal with multiple core books and different methods for dealing with a mixture of obligation/duty/morality. I created a custom one (as the book states it is not all inclusive of all options) that works well for my group who is familiar with obligation (even though duty would be more fitting).

6 minutes ago, Sear_Clone said:

Sounds like it is really geared towards being inclusive and for the players. Really agree with and like your style.

If you are interested, Rise of the Separatists has a section on how to deal with multiple core books and different methods for dealing with a mixture of obligation/duty/morality. I created a custom one (as the book states it is not all inclusive of all options) that works well for my group who is familiar with obligation (even though duty would be more fitting).

As it looks like the books are coming back up for sell, I might have to put that one high on wish list.

18 minutes ago, Balorna said:

As it looks like the books are coming back up for sell, I might have to put that one high on wish list.

They are worth it if you want a few new mechanics to try out especially for large scale combat.

Regarding the "meeting at the tavern" trope, I am using the adventure out of the EotE core book as the basis for my opening story. It starts with the characters arriving at the setting. One or more characters has particular business in the only watering hole in town. The remaining characters are along for the ride. They encounter some foreshadowing along the route to the tavern. At the tavern they have an encounter that sets up the investigation phase of the story. And, so on. I will, of course, modify the details to reflect the player choices. Ultimately, I did not write the core of the story; so, I didn't actually write in the trope.

That being said, I am an old school gamer and have a love/hate relationship with old tropes. I get tired of seeing the same tropes over and over again, but I also feel nostalgic towards them. Besides, the option is to only replace it with another trope or one that is just variations on the theme.

Additionally, there aren't that many options available in order to bring together a team of adventures, especially for the RPG medium. There is the " a priori team" favored by most modern RPG's where the team came together prior to the adventure is explained in the backstory. There's the "the summons" where the group is brought together by a third party. There's "strangers on a train" where the characters just happen to travelling together. The last one I can think of is "the heroic meeting" where the heroes happen to individually come across the same hazard that needs to be dealt with collectively. Which ones are best would be dependent upon the genre and nature of the story being told. (Note: I came up with the names of the categories on my own and they may or may not be valid in regards to professional literary terminology.)

Some thoughts have occurred to me while thinking on my campaign ideas. The early Rebellion would probably have elements made up of some groups who fought on the side of the Separatists and others for the Galactic Republic during the Clone Wars. It seems that should create some animosities that would create some obstacles to early attempts to unite rebel factions into the Rebel Alliance. Does the era book for the period between the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy discuss those issues, or would I have to completely come up with my own ideas on how that should be handled?