I'm hoping to begin a single player campaign soon. Yes I know there will be issues. I have a story arc developed that will help with some of the issues, but need some help.

I don't want my player to try to roleplay more then one character. That sucks the life out of roleplay in my experience and it turns into rollplay. What I do plan on is giving the character a droid sidekick for needed help. The player will typically get to control his sidekick, take his turn, etc, unless the droid is out of communication with the player. I think the extra character being a droid will keep the player into character with his, "main". It will be more like Luke the PC with his "henchman" (old D&D term) R2D2.

Obligation. How should I handle this? If I leave only the player's main character with obligation, then every time it will be his obligation that will come up. Give the droid some sort of secret obligation the player doesn't know about?

Will it become too much of a hassle to add a party character controlled by the GM? I really don't want to do this. I go back to the droid sidekick which will be a combo NPC/PC with the player typically controlling what the droid does unless I want to add some input. I really don't wish to be controlling an NPC character every single session unless I have to for encounter balance. I may have an NPC join from time-to-time when needed, but don't want a permanent party addition I'm controlling.

I'm hoping that the weakness of Minions will allow the lone hero to still be able to encounter groups and not constantly facing single adversaries for fear of overwhelming him.

Thoughts and suggestions?

I'll report back later on my ideas for a story arc for this loner campaign.

Obligation. How should I handle this? If I leave only the player's main character with obligation, then every time it will be his obligation that will come up. Give the droid some sort of secret obligation the player doesn't know about?

Well techinically his obligation won't always come up. IF he has 25 obligation you roll a d100 and 1-25 it does and 26-100 nothing happens.

I would give the droid a small amount of obligation but only if it hasn't been with the PC for a long time, IE it's a new purchase/acquisition. Probably like 1/4 of what the pc has.

However I don't think there is a huge issue of you playing the droid. I'm playing a character in my family group and unlike other RPGs it doesn't feel like I'm cheating the story or the group. Combat is really quick, my longest is probably 4-5 rounds and thats with delayed reinforcements and a lot of bad rolls. I've seen others post similar experience. That said, in the past I've been a fan of using short term NPC helpers, which I did throughout the Red Hand of Doom (great 3rd edition campaign) and if you use it well can be a good way to bring other hooks in to the campaign later.

1. Having a companion character in a small party is a great idea, and droids are perfect for this.

2. In combat, the player directs the companion with its sheet in front of him -- just like a second PC.

3. For RP, the companion's voice is that of the Game Master's. If the player wants the companion to do something out of combat, he should order him via the game master like any other character, but it's okay for the player to make the skill checks. The point is, ultimate authority is with the GM, unlike the PC, and interacting with companions will make up a big part of the RP for a small party.

4. No obligation for the companion. You have 1 player, 1 hero. Keep the spotlight on him/her.

5. Keep "tonight's guest star" on your side of the table in all ways. Make their combat rolls, if you must, but otherwise have their successes and failures be part of the "script" -- you can drive scenes with their ups and downs, giving your PC a chance to shine or fail miserably. If he/she is going to be involved a lot, maybe that person should become the new companion character.

3. For RP, the companion's voice is that of the Game Master's. If the player wants the companion to do something out of combat, he should order him via the game master like any other character, but it's okay for the player to make the skill checks. The point is, ultimate authority is with the GM, unlike the PC, and interacting with companions will make up a big part of the RP for a small party.

The leadership skill could be used to modify help this I would think.

Thanks for the suggestions folks!

I will post my campaign notes shortly. Be kind, they are just notes not intended to be a well written write up....

My player will be my teenage nephew. The wife declined. I like sandbox campaigns, but with big picture story arcs planned from the start. I'm calling the campaign, "The Haunted" for obvious reasons below. My questions or notes are in red italics . My personal canon includes the movies only as a base. I have no problem adding EU elements, but only parts I agree with. I thus am not constrained by what happened in the EU.

Player Character History

This could change somewhat based on input from my player. I have no idea what career he will choose, for example. I'm calling the player, "Miner" for now.

What the Player Knows : The Miner’s father runs a “clan” of belt miners from a small asteroid base in a remote system. The miners pay some dues to the intergalactic Mining Guild to operate, but don’t always pay the proper amount, misreporting their hauls to get by. The Miner’s mother died when the Miner was young back near the end of the Clone Wars; he has no memories of her. Father said she was killed in a mining accident and has always stressed the importance of “triple-checking” when on an operation. “Space is empty, but full of things that can kill you, son”. Father has several cybernetic implants. The Miner has a sister and “Aunt Karuh”, the love interest of Father. The younger sister calls Aunt Karuh mother, but the Miner never has.

Miner's exact job within the mininig clan will vary depending on what career he chooses. The clan will have need of varying careers: Security thugs, technicians, pilots, explorers/prospectors, etc.

The Truth : The Miner’s father was Obi-Wan Kenobi. Is this too outrageous? Should I choose some more obscure Jedi? It really fits with the rest of the story, don't give up, read on. His mother was another Jedi whom was secretly pregnant with Obi-Wan’s child. Obi-Wan never knew. Mother ran off during Order 66 and ended up being taken in by Father, a young belt miner, and hidden. Mother gave birth while hiding with the asteroid miners. When Miner was less than a year old, an Imperial Jedi-hunting party led by one of Palpatines’ first Emperor's Hands, located Mother and assaulted the mining clan's asteroid base. Mother was killed. Father was horribly injured, leading to his cybernetic implants. Father then raised the Miner as his own son.

The campaign will begin a short time before Episode IV. A slight adjustment from the suggested timeline of Edge of the Empire, which has the Death Star already destroyed. I would rather introduce news of the Death Star's destruction during the campaign itself. Miner will still be part of the mining clan, with a home base at a crude asteroid station. He won't have a personally owned ship at the start of the campaign, but will have access to one through the clan.

Fringe Era

These are just general notes, since I like a sandbox style campaign.

• Companion rusty old belt miner robot with a pre-programmed smart ass attitude.
• Primary ship is a mining transport. It is dirty, banged up, has a "mining laser", and a small one-man mining craft that can double as a small fighter with the proper modifications.
• If injured horribly, Father could donate cybernetic parts.
• The mining clan includes someone (a robot?) skilled in crude cybernetic surgeries due to the dangers of the job.
• Adventures against a rival belt mining clan within the Mining Guild.
• Red Sun is secretly allied with the rival belt mining clan. A Vigo within the Red Sun has been using this belt mining clans’ bases of operation as fronts due to their out-of-the-way nature, especially for pirate operations. The Vigo ( which one? ) has now started using this as a step to attempt to take over leadership of the entire Mining Guild. There are already some officials in the Mining Guild that are on the Red Sun's payroll.
• Receives his first clues that Mother was killed by the Empire?
• Receives his first clues that Father is not his real father?
• Father shows him the location of an old, empty asteroid mining base in a different system. He says to keep its location secret, but fails to say why.

Rebel Era

• The Miner's clan base is discovered by Imperials, attacked, and destroyed. Father is killed. Sister and a droid or so escapes with Miner. Miner takes Father’s body with him to properly bury him. Though morbid, this could be a source of free cybernetic parts and a key plot element (see below).
• Takes up residency in the old empty mining base that Father showed him before. It shows signs of an old battle within its corridors, even with skeletal remains and equipment left behind, never pillaged. The asteroid was the clan's home when his Mother was tracked down by Imperials and killed.
• The new asteroid home is haunted by a ghost. Miner catches glimpse of the ghost from time to time. This is his Mother, in Jedi ghost form, testing to see if he would be a good enough person to be trained as a Jedi.
• Feels a strange loss just before the Imperial Death Star explodes. Obi-Wan his real father just died.
• Unknown to Miner, an alarm is set off at the mining base, set there decades ago to alert Imperials if someone returned (hoping to catch more Jedi). This alert will send first some weak military assets to investigate due to the alarm being around 2 decades old and no longer important. The military assets will even take some time to arrive due to more important matters being a priority. Later, an Imperial Hand may be sent if anything suspicious was reported by the Imperial Naval vessel that visited (or it never reports back).
• An Imperial vs. Rebel battles occurs in the system. The Miner takes in the Rebels and hides them or in some way assists them. This starts his first connection with the Rebel Alliance.
• If Miner ends up with a cybernetic implant from Father, it will have a chip and communicate with him with old recordings left by Father. Father may tell the true story of Mother and how his cybernetic implants were not due to mining accidents, but the Imperial attack that killed Mother.
• Miner may help getting Mining Guild contacts for the Alliance for blaster and starship fuel.
• Miner's base may be used as an outpost or hiding place for an Alliance team.

Jedi Era

• Ghost Mother reveals who she is. She also reveals where she tossed her lightsaber within the mining asteroid upon her death? (see below for another possibility). Ghost Mother had learned some aspects of transcending death from Obi-Wan, but not completely so. She can only appear upon the asteroid near her death place, nowhere else.
• Ghost Mother reveals that Obi-Wan was his father. Does he appear with her?
• Jedi training from his Ghost Mother. Is this possible?
• A quest to discover and obtain his father's lightsaber? EU has it located at Vjun. I could use this or place it on Darth's Star Destroyer for a stealth adventure.
• Continuing adventures for and with the Rebel Alliance.
• Hunting down the Emperor’s Hand that killed Mother for revenge and to retrieve Mother’s lightsaber (if not already found at the asteroid base).

Bumpity bump!

The Clone Wars series, I believe, touches on Obi-Wan's previous love interests a bit. You might consider scouring Wikipedia to find some of them.

I think this idea is pretty cool. If you don't care about trying to keep canon, then you can kinda go crazy with it. If you do, you'll just have to be careful with what exactly you do.

The Clone Wars series, I believe, touches on Obi-Wan's previous love interests a bit. You might consider scouring Wikipedia to find some of them.

I think this idea is pretty cool. If you don't care about trying to keep canon, then you can kinda go crazy with it. If you do, you'll just have to be careful with what exactly you do.

Thanks for the suggestion. Love interestS?

Canon for me are the movies. I add only parts of EU that I happen to like, so it's no problem changing anything about Obi-Wan that we don't see in Episodes I-VI.

In that case, go for it. If you think it would make a good story (and I certainly think it will. Imagine when he finds out about it!) then go HAM. Just make sure that your player playing it isn't a huge stickler about sticking to the EU 100% of the time beforehand . Maybe explain to him that you might tamper with EU canon a bit beforehand, just in case.

Personally, I'd drop the Obi-Wan connection. For a freshly attuned force-sensitive, the destruction of the Death Star itself may be enough to give that 'odd' feeling. If you need a personal connection, link by way of an older friend of his that went off to join the Imperial Navy a few years ago, who, as it happens, was stationed on the Death Star in some minor role (a TIE pilot, or minor technical crew, or whatever). Either way, it's not like he's going to immediately get a news feed saying how the Rebels just blew up the Empires secret, planet-killing battle station. He'll have to draw conclusions about what happened on his own.

Other than that, I like the idea, but be sure to prep some other connections on the off chance that your nephew *doesn't* want to play a force-sensitive type.

My nephew is a Star Wars fan, but I don't believe he has read ANY EU stuff. No problems there.

I know that he will jump at the chance to add a force-sensitive specialty. I can check that problem off too.

My original plan was not to use Obi-Wan, but two obscure Jedi parents who had a secret love affair. But, there was the "ghost" element I wished to add. Going by movie canon, the spritual form to "transcend death" started with Qui-Jon, who then taught it to Yoda and Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan we find later had passed the same secrets along to Anakin. So, with that list I could easily surmise that Obi-Wan had passed the same secrets onto whomever he was having a love affair with. I thought of making a new Jedi that Obi-Wan could have taught the same secrets whom then passed the secrets on in his own love affair. But that got complicated (hey nephew here are two more Jedi you've never heard of that can transcend death too!) and was a big stretch. It was more believable for me to stay with Obi-Wan and his secret lover who only partially learned the secrets and thus is stuck near her death place.

I think he'll get a kick out of it being Obi-Wan, especially if you aren't worried about too much EU canon.

As for force ghosts, there have always been some around. It is conceivable that other people strong in the force could still manifest themselves to those important to them, like in this situation, if you did want to make them different Jedi.

I still want to add a nemesis that begins as a friend. I like the idea of having someone the player has trusted from the start to surprisingly turn on him later in the campaign. I want this person/being to be inserted early on. I don't want to introduce a new good guy in Session 6 to have him "surprisingly" turn on the player in Session 8. More dramatic to introduce him early in the campaign, but I don't have a good idea yet.

My first idea was his robot companion, but I'm not so sure, that would be too much since his companion will be an important part of his character. If he had to "kill" his companion, it could ruin the character he developed. I suppose it could be attributed to some dormant programming that the player could later reprogram?

Another thought was the younger half-sister. Also being the child of a Jedi (their mother) she could end up being force sensitive. Later in the campaign, she could be turned to the Dark Side by the nemesis Hand, leading to an interesting future confrontation. She could also be used to tempt the player to the Dark Side himself during the later part of the campaign. You always need that big temptation thrown in at some point. "Join me brother! There is power in the Dark Side, the Emperor could make us both Hands! Imagine the power we could gain!

I still want to add a nemesis that begins as a friend. I like the idea of having someone the player has trusted from the start to surprisingly turn on him later in the campaign. I want this person/being to be inserted early on. I don't want to introduce a new good guy in Session 6 to have him "surprisingly" turn on the player in Session 8. More dramatic to introduce him early in the campaign, but I don't have a good idea yet.

My first idea was his robot companion, but I'm not so sure, that would be too much since his companion will be an important part of his character. If he had to "kill" his companion, it could ruin the character he developed. I suppose it could be attributed to some dormant programming that the player could later reprogram?

Another thought was the younger half-sister. Also being the child of a Jedi (their mother) she could end up being force sensitive. Later in the campaign, she could be turned to the Dark Side by the nemesis Hand, leading to an interesting future confrontation. She could also be used to tempt the player to the Dark Side himself during the later part of the campaign. You always need that big temptation thrown in at some point. "Join me brother! There is power in the Dark Side, the Emperor could make us both Hands! Imagine the power we could gain!

Another alternative for the trusted ally turned villain is to go with a patron of some sort. Imagine being hired by a senator, known to associate with Bail Organa. He's apparently on the up-and-up, and everything for the first half-dozen sessions or so point to him being a straight-forward, trustworthy guy. Then comes the big reveal that he's *actually* had you working *against* the interests of Bail Organa and the Rebellion, setting them up for discovery and capture through subtle machinations.

Of course, having the sister be secretly Force sensitive and get turned to the dark side is an especially devious way to go. While he's away from the ship at some point, she's wandering around the port and 'finds' a dark-side holocron, which slowly corrupts her. (It's actually been left as 'bait' by the Hand, who senses that she could be a useful tool.) She, as much as anyone else, knows that it's not safe to let anyone know you're Force sensitive. Not even family, and the holocron reinforces that notion, and further teaches her how to hide her abilities from other Force sensitives.

When she's initially revealed as the nemesis, she's probably much more powerful than the main character, and almost certainly better prepared for anything that happens.

I like both of these Voice, thanks.

In past campaigns, since I only pick and choose EU, I've often had players do small things that connected them to the movies. For example, during my SAGA campaign, the players stumbled upon an out-of-the-way moon and irradicated a small number of pirates who had a secret camp outside some ancient ruins. I never mentioned the name of the place. Later, they joined up with the Rebellion just before they fled Dantooine. When the Rebels had to flee Dantooine, they needed a place to stay. One of the players took the bait and told the Rebel commanders of some ruins they had discovered in another system. When the star maps were opened, the name of the nearby gas giant was Yavin. The players suddenly realized they were the ones who had led the Rebels to their Episode IV base.

So, having them accidentally working for the wrong side early on would be nice. They could discover that they were unwittingly the ones who revealed to the Empire the location of their base on Dantooine, for example. I'm not going to use that one exactly, but you see what I mean. It could be another reason to full-on join the Rebellion since they will feel they've not only been wronged, but wronged the poor Rebels.

Created a mining ship for my player. I put it in another thread here .

After picking up Beyo nd the Rim , I decided to use it as an excellent source and future adventure. I'm going to use the, "Wheel", as a nearby shopping stop introducing some of the politics of the station to the characters. I may even place the characters' starting homebase in an asteroid in the same system? If not, in a very nearby system.

I'm going to use Reom and IsoTech as the characters' stop for black market items. Yiyar Salvage I will morph into Yiyar Salvage & Mining , to make it a rival mining clan of the characters.

I'm thinking of making an adjustment to the Beyond the Rim adventure. The players will have already met the key players at the Wheel. At some point the players will be leaving the Wheel when there is a sudden shut down, either thrusters or the hyperdrive, soon after take off. While the ship plunges towards a star/planet, there will be a dramatic moment as a character has to leave the leave in order to make repairs. They will find the message pod lodged into a heat sink vent, causing the minor damage and shutdown. They will need to find out what it is themselves, or take it to IsoTech leading to the Beyond the Rim adventure.

For those that have run the adventure or done more then the glance over I did, do you see any problems?