I've got an idea for a campaign, or at least extended series of adventures for Age of Rebellion. I imagine that the PCs learn over a series of adventures that the Empire is building a new class of dreadnoughts. Further they learn that the lead ship of the class, the Bellator , is already earmarked for Darth Vader's personal naval force, Death Sqaudron. As they learn more about the ship it is clear that the Bellator poses a clear danger to the Rebel forces. The Bellator's combination of great speed and firepower could pose a great danger to any naval force or evacuation transports that it encounters. So, the PCs are made part of an operation to... Sink the Bellator!

Mostly I'm not sure how to structure the adventures leading up to the climax. I want the PCs to steadly learn more about the Bellator and the threat it poses to the Rebel Alliance.

While it's certainly no masterpiece, I suggest you direct at least some attention to the Dawn of Defiance campaign for the Star Wars: Saga Edition RPG. It was released as a series of ten free PDFs, but you might have to do some searching or digging to find copies online now.

Minor spoilers to follow:

A significant portion of the campaign revolves around the players discovering the development of a major new imperial vessel- a Super Star Destroyer- and attempting to sabotage or delay its progress as it is built. For the first few missions, the players are gradually made aware of a major Imperial project in the works. Eventually, as they begin to follow leads, the players are able to trace the construction project to its source, but by then, the ship is almost completed.

You would have to make some major adaptations to use it in an Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion campaign, but it's a great source for inspiration.

Another great source for inspiration in a "shut down the secret Imperial weapons program" type of game is the PC game Dark Forces , and the Dark Trooper Project. In that case, the player is learning more about a weapons program, not a ship, but the types of missions and "discovery" of capabilities in the aftermath of Dark Trooper attacks could lend themselves well to the framework of your campaign.

You know, I probably should have thought of those. Thank you.

No problem! I take it you drew your inspiration for this campaign from the real-world Bismark?

Somewhat, yes. Partially, I wanted a way to include the Bellator-class in my game.

You would have to make some major adaptations to use it in an Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion campaign, but it's a great source for inspiration.

Not all that much work - I ran it under D6, and I found I was doing more work adjusting problems with the story than building game mechanics.

So what problems did you have with the story of Dawn of Defiance?

I can't speak for Desslok, but my biggest gripe with it was (what I perceived to be) lazy writing. Most people agree that Module 4 is bizarre, has nothing at all to do with the main story, and can easily be skipped. One of my biggest gripes (and my players' too) was when a Villain of the Week was inexplicably resurrected (no, seriously, even the module doesn't give any suggestions as to how he was supposed to have survived) after being pretty dramatically "killed" by my players in a previous session. I understand the "no body no death" rule, but this was pretty ridiculous.

That, and there's a great deal of logical and storytelling leaps that require the GM to fill in the gaps on his own, or lead the players by the nose in order for them to get the information that the module assumes they have. Your own experiences and opinions may vary.

I can't speak for Desslok, but my biggest gripe with it was (what I perceived to be) lazy writing. Most people agree that Module 4 is bizarre, has nothing at all to do with the main story, and can easily be skipped. One of my biggest gripes (and my players' too) was when a Villain of the Week was inexplicably resurrected (no, seriously, even the module doesn't give any suggestions as to how he was supposed to have survived) after being pretty dramatically "killed" by my players in a previous session. I understand the "no body no death" rule, but this was pretty ridiculous.

The bit about killing the villian in part 4 I got around by making it completely over the top. Giant Eldrich monsters, bottomless pits, waterfalls of lava and when they "killed" her, she toppled over into the abyss into the darkness - and I finished up the description of the finishing blow with ". . . and nobody could have possibly survived that!"

It made her return in episode 7 no less improbable, but it had more of an impact when she showed up hideously scarred and extremely cybernetic later on. Less hand wavy- and more "oh crap - she survived all that?"

I will agree with the lazy and illogical writing - at least in places. For example, at the end of Episode 6 (I believe), they have traveled to Imperial Center, infiltrated a high security Inquisitor complex (and blew up same), stolen the plans to the Macguffin and learned a mole that's about to undo the entire rebellion. Episode seven opens with the rebels in hiding on the planet, and the text says "Let them catch their breath, heal their wounds and figure out what to do next".

Hell no. They have the Macguffin, have to get back to the fledgeling rebellion to stop disaster and are being hunted by some of the Empire's top agents. Under no circumstances should the GM allow the suspense and action drift slowly to a halt like that when the game should be racing ahead at top speed, a train about to careen off the tracks at every curve. I wound up trimming out about half of episode 7, moving some of the encounters to episode six and kept the pressure up until the Wham Moment at the end.

Little issues like that - motivations for bad guys that don't quite make sense, occasional plots twists out of nowhere, characters that could be better served introducing them earlier so they have more impact when they die, issues that needed to be foreshadowed better and that sort of thing. It's not a catastrophic mess or anything, but the GM will need to tweak here and there.

motivations for bad guys that don't quite make sense, occasional plots twists out of nowhere, characters that could be better served introducing them earlier so they have more impact when they die, issues that needed to be foreshadowed better and that sort of thing.

Are we sure this a WEGd6 adventure, and not George's leaked script for the prequels?

Dawn of Defiance is a Saga Edition adventure, not d6.

I've been looking over the first several adventures, and I'm not sure if I want to directly adapt DoD. I might cherrypick ideas from it, however.

Dawn of Defiance is a Saga Edition adventure, not d6.

I've been looking over the first several adventures, and I'm not sure if I want to directly adapt DoD. I might cherrypick ideas from it, however.

That's probably the best route to take, honestly. For all of its problems, it's great material for inspiration.

If I recall. Part of the reason why DoD was written was one of the writers wanted to demonstrate how a Saga game would play out. So he wrote the outline of his story, pitched it to his boss and got approval. Possibly the biggest contributing factors for its inconsistent writing was it's tight deadline-which was never met-and the fact that a lot of the work was outsourced to freelancers. The same writer didn't write all the modules, and naturally, the writing became inconsistent because of it.

As an outline, it's a very solid story (aside from chapter 4 - but whatever). Its only when it gets down to the details that it starts to lose the focus. But at the high level - investigation, criminal underworld, a personal nemesis to overcome, a big Macguffin to defeat, fate of the galaxy riding on the climax - it's a very Star Wars-y Star Wars game .

It seems to me that these adventures would be to a large degree mystery adventures with many of the difficulties that implies. Of course, the PCs won't necessarilly need to interpret the clues, since they'll have Alliance Intelligence for that. However, unless they are given very specific directives they might miss things that are important to pick up on. So I'll take the advice I've seen on writing mystery adventures to write the adventures, things like the "Three Clue Rule".

I don't have my notes anymore (cursed hard drive crashing!) but I don't recall any particular episode being all that mystery heavy. It was all pretty straightforward "Get into this hutts organization and hack his computer records to find out where X is going" or "Sneak aboard this train and infiltrate this party to contact Y" and so on - and then of course the last 3 or so episodes dominoed into the next one pretty neatly, so very little "Plot is here" arrows were needed..

No, I meant my campaign might be mystery heavy. Of course, the alternative is having the higher ups tell the PCs exactly what they're looking for.

Lets see if I remember how it went down in my game. . .

Episode one was extensively re-written and the defection of Admiral Varth came to their attention from an information broker.

Once Varth was rescued, he was the connection to the Hutt supply line and pointed them to further investigation that way.

Based on what they found at the Hutt's place, they followed up on Bespin on their own initiave.

Episode 4 was tied in via a unrelated plot thread from their past

Five was handed out by their commander after data had been sifted from episode 3

A recovered hard drive from episode 5 pointed towards the Inquisitor center on Courscant (and I combined those 6 and 7 into one big episode)

I don't remember how I got the second half rolling. There was a long break in the story arc, so was probably "we got a hot tip" from their commander. From that episode, events started rolling pretty quickly and no further "Go here, talk to these people" prodding was necessary.