A secret I want to share with you guys is how I can, even if tired or not in the mood to come up with ideas of adventures on the roll for my players. And that is steal movie or classical story plots and reshape it into the setting with it own twists.

Stealing! Thats cheating and so wrong!

If stealing a idea seems to be a strange concept, let me clearify and hopefull calm you down. It aint stealing as long you do your own nitch about it. Stealing a plot idea is sure time saving but you still need to put some work into it. The whole idea is to help you out as a GM to give your players a good time in those "oh my god I didnt prepared for I had so much to do" moments. And the moment people says "Isnt this the plot of movie X", you have been to obvious and need to put your own style into it.

Where to start?

Pick a story that is total opposite the genre you are hosting - its easier to do your own thing and mask it with the Star Wars setting. Something like a cowboy movie plot, like "The good, bad and the ugly" works fine for the Edge of the Empire setting (three groups of folk trying to get the same treasure) while a Doctor Who adventure would need a ton of more work.

Remember you just want the outline or synopsis of the story stolen, if you steal it scene by scene then you taking to much and your player will reconize the story. Just steal the plotlines and let the players create the details.

How do I transform the story?
As soon you taken a intresting plot, say to yourself; what would happened if the story was retold in the Star Wars universe? Is the enemy a bounty hunter insted or a sith? Perhaps a imperial officer? The love story could it happen in the group? Was is the possible outcomes?
If there is some important artefact, can it be a sith artefact or important machinery?

Example of adventures

The roleplayers are tasked by delivering important supplies to a outerrim outpost and also fetch important cargo back. Along the way they meet a old friend where they refuel and have the correct hypermaps. What they dont know is the friend backstabs them and shows them a longer path and manage to reach the outpost before the roleplayers. He kills everyone aboard and tries to steal the goods, when the roleplayers arrives - their "friend" tries first to bluff that everything is alright before trying to attack them.
Stolen from: Red riding hood.

A small farmer community is being harassed by local pirate gangs. The pirate comes four times a year and steals their food without imperials doing anything about it. The farmer travels to where the roleplayers are and begs for help, and offers them nothing but food for reward. If the roleplayer accepts, they need to train and build up defence for the farmers to bring the pirates into a trap.

Stolen from: Seven Samurai

Stranded on a distant imperial controlled planet and having a mission to transfer a important rebell freedom fighter off the planet, the roleplayers only way out is a old friend that have under world contracts in the city. The problem is the friend doesnt want to do anything with them. They need to either change his mind or find someone else to leave the planet.

Stolen from: Casablanca

A girl comes forth to the roleplayers with a ton of credits, she ask them to help her to escort her and take revenge on a couple of smugglers that killed her family. The roleplayers takes the ship and tries to track down the killers. The chase takes them across galaxy with scenarios tricking the empire, making deals with local hutt and at last discover the truth behind the smugglers dark past.
Stolen from: True Grit

We watched Escape from New York the other day, and I have an idea to create an adventure based on it.

A prison planet, someone or something important crashes there, the PCs must go in and get it, encountering all manner of criminal weirdos on the surface.

I need a plot hook for the session I will have with my old team next Saturday. It has to be epic, but I always have a problem with the idea. The team of experienced smugglers, bounty hunters, etc. heard about a job, big shot gangster putting together a crew....so they go to the Jabba's palace only to find Solo and Chewie walking out with that job, but nothing is lost, Jabba has something for them. Something I can run within 5 hours for a very experienced team. Or maybe Jabba wants to give us the same job, so he can find out who is the best smuggler and if Han fails, well he is indebted with Jabba... Some big Sabacc game as part of the session goes through my head, shady deal, double cross and Crimson Dawn...but I need the hook.

I believe that Stories are our real universal language, and your OP illustrates this perfectly. Great stuff

@NicoDavout I had a few ideas (hope you meant next Saturday - June):

--Rumor has it that the Empire keeps all the spice it's confiscated from the Outer Rim on a small, hidden asteroid in a remote sector. Naturally, the facility is heavily guarded. If it's true, hundreds of millions of credits in spice are there for the taking. Hope your team has a big ship...

--Somebody important to Jabba (cousin, uncle, favorite dancer?) has been arrested and taken to a maximum security prison on a heavily fortified world. Can the team get in to the prison and free the prisoner?

--A Rival hutt's convoy carrying {credits, spice, weapons, something else?) is said to be preparing for departure shortly. Can the team locate the convoy en route and steal it's cargo?

Lagspiked

@Lagspike

These are superb hooks, thank you very much. I have always a problem with coming with the hook, but once I have it, the ideas how to expand it just fly one by one.

So the spice around the galaxy is indeed confiscated and kept by each local governor, moff, whoever. In our case this particular moff or governor comes with an idea to sell all the spice he has confiscated to the criminal underworld. What is a better cover than setting a big Sabacc tournament in which each participant has to pay a huge deposit which in fact is a payment for the spice, but only the winner gets it. Jabba sends Lando who is short of cash to win the tournament, if he wins and brings Jabba the spice, he gets enough money to buy himself dozes of starships. But only a fool would expect that he can just go there, win and come back with the spice with all the cut-throat competition, so Jabba also sends our heroes along, bounty hunters/mercenaries, to protect Lando and the prize. The spice is in a huge container that serves as a floor for the tournament, it is rigged with the explosives that receives a signal from a chip installed the governor's body. If someone tries to kill him, they all going to die. Crimson Dawn also plans to take the spice, but instead of sending a player, they supply mercenaries to the governor who needs to secure the tournament and cannot simply use imperial soldiers except for a dozen of his most trusted bodyguards. Once the tournament is over and all eyes will be focused on the winner who will get the cargo along with the chip, the mercenaries will turn against the governor and players taking the spice and the credits. In case of any problems, the top Crimson Dawn lieutenant is there to help the mercenaries...

On the last session my team got themselves into troubles...like always. One PC decided to interrogate a criminal in a back alley and it ended in killing a squad of stormtroopers in the capital city on a desert planet (but it is not Tatooine). The planet´´'s commander put a lock-down and started investigating helped by the local crimelord who likes things quiet on this planet where imperials and him lives in a peace. The planet´s commander is rather odd guy, not very anti-alien and many of his direct superiors from his service met a sorry end in the big booms as he is an odd loner, he wanted to be transferred to the Outer Rim to study alien cultures. He is odd (inspired by an imp officer from one of the SWAJ adventures), but loyal to the Empire in his own sense.

The team decided to find one guy and frame him so they have killed him and the team´s "bounty hunter" brought the corpse (along with a stormtrooper helmet and a grenade that were stolen) to the imperial outpost. The base commander went out to talk with him, pointing that there was no official bounty yet and the BH has no license to murder, this was countered by the BH that there would be surely one and he just made their life easier. Cool/Negotiation check ended in 3 failures, 4 advantages and a Despair.

I discarded the idea about arresting the BH, it would be so simple. I want to move the story even with the despair and always prefer to use triumphs and despairs to create an opportunity for the new missions as it is the AoR game.

So what can this base commander wants? My idea is to make a proposition to the BH, which he cannot reject as he can arrest him and put a criminal record on his starship and the rest of the team and for now they have a clean record and can move freely in the sector. Since there are 4 advantages, the job although hard, unwanted, un-welcomed will have a possible payoff for them.

The base commander wants to have things under control on the planet and he knows about the gunrunner coming to the local crime lord with a big delivery. He wants to find out about the deal and then kill the gunrunner framing the crime lord and stealing the cargo. This does not permits the crime lord to strengthen, ruins his reputation for the future deals with other arm dealers and keeps the order on the planet. If the despair comes up, a group of the ISB black ops will also join the run to get the weapons.

But maybe someone has a better idea or hook? I want this to be a "private mission" for this base commander.

Thanks in advance!

This just came to mind:

The despair means they did not kill (to frame for the stormtrooper murder) "some guy" - they killed the gunrunner! Now they need to impersonate him and run the deal, ultimately stealing the guns for the base commander.

--Lagspiked

Grab yourself a couple of westerns (I humbly suggest 'El Dorado' with John Wayne), and take a few notes.
There's also a slew of TV shows that would work well for story ideas. Of course, everyone is going to jump up and down and say 'Firefly'! But take a gander at something like 'Cowboy Bebop', and 'Burn Notice'.