Another Galaxy Another Campaign

Threat Detected Coming Soon

2011-02-26T15:53:00.000-08:00

Coming soon! The 2nd podcast dedicated to the Star Wars SAGA rpg. Barefoottourguide hosts Threat Detected, a game that delves into the mysteries of the Dawn of Defiance campaign. Includes live gameplay action. Visit D20Radio and Threat Detected for all the goodness. Expected Release: First week of March.

GMing Large Groups and Star Wars Gaming Basics

2011-02-01T15:45:00.000-08:00

I left my comfort zone; set out to run a Star Wars SAGA game for people other than those in my home game. I packed a suitcase full of books and minis and announced a three-week run for the original adventure Corellian Diet Breakers. On the meetup website I said I’d allow six players. Many people new to that meetup group took an immediate interest in my game. They didn’t fully understand the importance of RSVPing, while I was too excited to have eager players to even consider turning away those without reservations.

So, there I was, running a new module for a brand new group, most who’d never played the game before. Nine players held character sheets. Several more people sat at desks in the back. Yup, I had a viewing gallery.

The problem: How do I keep the fast pace and excitement of Star Wars while being sure to involve twice as many players as the game recommends. I think this is an extreme version of the classic GM issue—effectively running a game so everyone is involved and vital, and so all the gamemastering tasks necessary don’t detract from the experience. Remember, in Star Wars, there are no small parts, only small actors… and they get crammed into a droid suit or dressed as a Jawa, Ewok or Ugnaught.

I learned a lesson from the summer meetup sessions. By paying attention to two key laws of Star Wars, giving them priority over everything else including the rules, everyone had a fun time, returning weekly for more.

1. Star Wars is fast-paced.

Don’t let social distractions take away from that. Keep moving through the initiative, even if players are talking. Be loud. Be enthusiastic. Keep threats coming at the PCs. By establishing an intense tone and pace, the game will sweep everyone away… and shut down the Chatty Kathys before they become a detriment.

Be organized and know your story. Have NPC breakdowns that list what each NPC’s feats and talents do. Have maps ready and dialogue scripted. I have a trifold presentation board, picked up at Office Max for two bucks. I pin the character sheets for each encounter’s NPCs to it, so I don’t have to flip through papers. You want the game to flow seamlessly. While PCs are rolling initiative, just tack up the pages and pull the breakdowns out of a folder. You’re ready to go before the PCs are.

By the way, I have my players keep track of initiative. It’s one more thing that gives them a sense of ownership and co-Gming, not to mention the way it makes them chomp at the bit, alert & ready for their next action… and it’s one less task I have to worry about.

Use the Star Wars Saga Index and Classes Excel files found here. It provides a summary of every power, talent and feat. It has an index for every NPC and piece of equipment. It tells you what book and page number you’ll find the information at. If a player has a question about a power, then I look at the Excel file open on my laptop and tell them what book and page to consult. Again, don’t do it for them. Make them responsible and part of the process; not just recipients of the GM’s song and dance, but equal partners in the storytelling.

If you do these little things, your game will flow quicker and maintain its momentum. Delegate responsibilities. Do your homework. It’s tedious for you beforehand, yes, but the end results are all that matter.

2. In Star Wars, every hero makes a difference.

From a lowly slave on Tatooine to a Wookiee scout, to a rambunctious astromech droid, every hero’s actions affect the fate of the Galaxy. In that vein, no PC should be left on the sidelines. What could a little slave boy do during a battle against a droid army inside a palace hangar? Hide in the cockpit of an N-1 starfighter? Not horribly exciting for the player… but if the GM tells the PC about the weapons controls just begging to be activated, it’s a whole new ballgame. He can start blasting droidekas into junk heaps. C3PO wasn’t a fighter, but he played key roles in battles by making deceptions that lured the enemy exactly where his allies wanted them. R2 always found a computer port to plug into. He gathered information, locked doors or jammed security systems. When he was away from a computer port, R2 used his sensor dishes to take sentry duty.

As the GM, you need to provide these tools for your PCs. If the astromech’s player isn’t asking about nearby computer ports, you need to ask him to roll a DC 5 Perception check and tell him there’s a port behind some barrels. Voila! Hopefully, the player will find some interesting things to do with the computer. If the player’s ideas have a snowball’s chance and will make the game more interesting, then choose a reasonable DC (lower if it will be extremely interesting), and give him a chance to be a vital part of the encounter. You have an ace pilot in the party? During the shootout on the dilapidated town’s main street, ask him for a DC 10 Perception check. If he makes it, he finds a rotting speeder bike. Put it three steps down the condition track and give it a quirk or two… but it still gives the pilot a chance to use his vehicular combat abilities instead of acting like a turtle behind cover. Plus, it makes the action more exhilarating. That’s what Star Wars is all about.

Pukunui asked me several questions about handling a larger group. He has seven in his Dawn of Defiance Campaign party. I forwarded his questions to Smuggler’s Paradise of the d20radio forums. He is an accomplished GM who plays in my Dawn of Defiance group. Since it’s difficult to effectively evaluate yourself or be aware of all your techniques, I asked Smuggler’s Paradise to answer these questions, telling what he’s seen me do as well as provide his own advice. His answers are prefaced with SP, and my responses are prefaced with BFTG.

1) How do you split your attention between so many people? Despite being a fulltime parent to two kids, I'm not all that good at multitasking and I tend to get a bit scatterbrained at times, especially with the pressure to perform on game night.

BFTG: I'm paranoid about this issue. I live in fear of neglecting players so they feel like it isn't worth their time, and they stop attending. I have a character crib sheet on my laptop that has each player's name, his character's name, his class, bullet points to his backstory and goals and a couple misc notes about enemies or allies he's recently attained. So, if they're talking to a droid, I'll ask the mechanic PC to make a perception check. If it's at least a 5, I'll tell him things he notices about the droid, like it has grinding servos that must be causing it pain. The PC might volunteer to fix the droid, gaining improved circumstances. In combat, I use minis and custom maps. Everyone sees their peril and acts. If players are silent because they’re tired or lost for ideas, I'll have them roll a DC 5 Perception check or just tell them things they notice that are up their alley, to provide them ideas for actions. When NPCs interact with the PCs, I divide their PC targets among the PCs, so the noble isn't always Mr. Social. I also have a free obsidianportal.com account for the group. I award 100 bonus xp for every journal entry. They can discuss their character's impressions on game events or provide backstory flashbacks. I pay particular attention to these, because they are PC ways to ask for plot hooks to their characters. For instance, I have a PC searching for his father's space transport. I need to work clues and hooks into upcoming adventures for this.

SP: Keeping things flowing can always be tough with larger groups since you never want anybody to feel left out or bored. One of the best things that I've seen Garrett do and that I try to do myself is to make sure that everybody has something to do in any given encounter or situation. You obviously know their character sheets from what you've said in question two, so when you make an encounter always try to keep in mind what skills people have so that you can add those to the encounter. This can often be subtle, like pointing out that there is a computer terminal in a room. While not overtly telling people that this is something they need to interact with, it should be a clue to a computer user that they might want to check it out and if they do, reward them for it by making it do something that aids in the situation. Not every situation has to fit every single skill or ability but more often than not there should be a variety of things available to the players. One of the best ways that I've found to keep track of this is to keep a small flash card or copy of a player's character sheet so I know what they are capable of. This way it is easier to tailor situations to certain abilities as well as beef up enemies or other things. For instance if one of your players is a melee monster that cuts through anything, consider giving a couple enemies better armor or DR (damage reduction) to counter act it. Going back to my previous statement, having another character make use of a skill check to take away the armor or ability can keep everyone involved and keep the game cinematic.

As for keeping track of everything yourself, one word: organization. If you find it hard to keep track of a lot of things, use notes. Plot points, enemy stats, encounter obstacles, and everything in between can be sorted for easier use. You don't have to completely rely on them but glancing at them every so often can keep you, and your game, on track. This is one of the things that I think Garrett has done very well. He has a lot of notes on the story and characters in it that I feel help prevent the game from slowing down.

Also, if you feel that some of your players are stealing the show, don't be afraid to turn to another person and say "what does your character think of that?" This keeps people going steadily.

2) Do you enforce time limits or anything like that? I've always asked my players to learn the rules for their characters at least, but they always tend to be a bit half-assed about it - none of them want to spend any time outside of game night thinking about the game, so no one ever bothers to do this. I've ended up doing everyone's character sheets for them and including all sorts of info on the sheet, as well as doing up quick reference sheets for each PC that has the full text for various abilities which they might want to reference during play ... but even that doesn't always help, so I'm considering enforcing my "time limit" rule (which I've never actually enforced for this campaign).

BFTG: I'm fortunate with my group on this. I don't touch their character sheets unless in play it seems like something is wrong. They level up themselves. I have the SAGA library available for them to look up ideas for feats and talents and character direction. They look up answers to their questions themselves. I take a 5 minute break or two during the game, mostly for me to use the restroom or get a rootbeer. This is social time, and it's well-used for that. If the group is in a gabby mood, I keep the game going through the chatter. Tense situations and combat wait for no man. This is Star Wars. There is almost constant action. As GM I believe it's my job to convey the Star Wars feeling. If I sit back and let the players lollygag, I'm not living up to my end of the bargain.

SP: This is one of the major problems that can crop up in campaigns: player interest. I think that the only way to really combat this is to do whatever you can to get your players to have some sort of invested interest in their characters. One of the things that I have absolutely loved about Garrett's game is his use of the Obsidian Portal site outside of the game. Garrett posts a summary of each adventure and encourages players to post their character's thoughts about what has happened last session. The most important part of this however is that he REWARDS people for this sort of roleplaying. I think that this is crucial to getting players to participate in any sort of out of game activities. Make it worth their while to come up with some unique thoughts. Garrett gives out 100XP for a post each session and that encourages me as a player to get those thoughts out there. Plus it can help players develop their characters and their relationships with the other characters that can even lead to more things in game.

As for getting people involved more at the table, have each person create a story for their character. While this doesn't have to be extensive, a short description of where they have been and where they plan to go can help a lot in making a player care more about a character and their abilities. Also, by encouraging players to make their characters part of another player’s background as well, they can make each character more meaningful to the story. Reward them for actions that play to their character and punish them (slightly) for actions that don't. If you have a player who is playing a Jedi and seeks to be on the Jedi Council and he is going around killing people relentlessly, then there should be consequences. But if he avoids confrontation then there should be bonuses as this would reflect his characters ideals. Dark Side Points and Destiny bonuses and penalties are a great way to handle this in Star Wars games and I've seen Garrett use both effectively.

As for time limits, I think this depends on the type of game you want to play. Some people have a hard time thinking of a reaction in a short time and I personally do not always like to curb them because of it. However, if you are trying to play an extremely fast paced game that is meant to be pure character, then a time limit can be very useful for getting gut reactions to situations. Be careful though as some players can get easily upset with this and can feel cheated out of thinking up a good action. I think a better way to get your players to know their sheets might be to present them with a situation that could be solved with one of said abilities. Then, if they don't react to it, ask them: "Don't you have an ability that could help you with that?" and when they see it ask them "ok, and what does that let you do?" This gets the players looking at their sheets and will get them used to the abilities that are on it.

Overall, encouragement is the name of the game. If a player tries to use ability improperly, don't shoot them down but rather give them an example of something that they can do at that time to the same ends. Be patient and keep things fun. If they want to do something ridiculous, let them. Don't let it break the game but definitely encourage them to be daring. I've seen Garrett use this several times and it has always gotten everyone more into what was happening at the moment. This will excite them about what they're doing and keep everyone having a good time and the game moving along, even in larger groups.

Star Wars Holiday Special

2011-01-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

I'm working on an original module to run for my three nephews, who are 12 and under. I sent them a box of gaming dice as part of the present. The module... it's a quirky little Clone Wars Christmas Special. I hope to run it at some Cons this season and publish it to the web next holiday season. Here are some video clips from it.

Make It Personal

2011-01-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

My last few entries delved into creating kick butt opening scenes with dramatic events, with consequences that keep the PCs reeling for several sessions. The experience of these sessions need to unite the party in spirit, so that when offered an opportunity to stick it to their enemy, the PCs will have no reservations. If done properly, your heroes will run to the mission sounding a barbaric yawp.

The only sure fire way heroes heed the call to adventure is to make it personal. In the OT, while the PCs were still shaking from the opening scenes, Luke’s uncle and aunt were killed by stormtroopers and his house was burned to the ground. Leia watched helpless as the Empire blew up her home planet. Everything these characters ever knew or loved was taken from them in a nasty gory way.

To pull off this type of trick, you need to spend extra time during character creation to discuss back stories, including what is nearest and dearest to each character’s heart. In my House of Wookiees Campaign, a player decided to play Marella, Bo Shek’s daughter. Marella’s father had been missing for several years, and she wanted to know where Bo was. Marella and the PCs survived an Imperial attack on a rebel base, got off planet and volunteered to return to the conquered base to rescue a powerful ally trapped inside a panic room. The PCs chased the ally onto the orbiting star destroyer and rescued him. In the docking bay, Imperial troops surrounded them, and the BBEG Inquisitor taunted the heroes by personally killing all their NPC allies. The Inquisitor recognized Marella and called her by name. He demanded she surrender and join him. After all, her father had, and was now under his control.

This caused Marella to freak out. Her worst fears about her father’s fate had come true. Once the PCs escaped, Marella was so full of hate for the Inquisitor she vowed to find her father and defeat the Inquisitor.

In my Dawn of Defiance Campaign, Tor is a Caamasi Jedi during the Dark Times. During this era, his home planet Caamas gets horribly bombarded by Palpatine’s New Order. During back story creation, Tor’s player and I decided it would be very easy for Tor to feel the atrocities his planet was suffering, through the Force. At a plot-appropriate moment in the campaign, I’ll have Tor make a Use the Force check to detect a billion voices crying out in terror… and they will be suddenly silenced. Then, Tor will find out that Darga the Hutt, who has antagonized the PCs (and vice verse), suggested the Empire bombard Caamas in order to get revenge against his adversary. Not only have I created a role-playing challenge for the character, which will feature difficult choices that will affect his future, but I’ll reinforce the PC’s desire to strike against Darga. Darga isn’t just a slimy filth-ridden criminal… he’s personally responsible for the death of most Caamasi. The Jedi will want justice. He won’t rest until he has captured his foe.

Make it personal. Find out what is closest to the PCs and crush it to sand or threaten to take it away. Fear of losing Padme is what ultimately allowed Anakin to be seduced to the Dark Side of the Force.

What do your PCs truly value above all else? A ship? Have a Star Destroyer blast it to zero hit points then pull it into its docking bay with the tractor beam. The PCs can use the escape pods, but the owner of the captured ship will go to the end of the universe to get his ship back.

Family? Recreate the scene in Gladiator where Maximus comes home to find his wife and son slaughtered and his house burned to the ground.

A planet? Unleash a bioweapon or fire the Death Star. Have the Vong make the planet uninhabitable. Just make sure the devastation is directly linked to the PC’s enemy.

It’s like a western movie. The bad guys push the hero too far. Then, the reluctant hero grabs onto the storyline with both hands and brings the fight to the bad guys. If you’ve properly bated the PCs in the beginning, the rest is easy.

I Can Take On the Whole Empire Myself

2010-12-19T14:29:00.000-08:00

A strong campaign begins with the ultimate bonding experience: a struggle to survive a catastrophe. Whether that includes an Imperial boarding crew blasting everyone on board your Corellian Corvette or the ambassadors you’re meeting to negotiate with trying to assassinate you with poisonous gas and a hundred battle droids, after blowing up your ship, all the players should be wide-eyed and aware their characters are in serious danger of dying.

It should not be easy to escape the fallout from the Kaboom! The PCs should be chased and harried for several full sessions with little reprieve. When it is all over, the PCs should have a greater awareness of the power and evil of the enemies they will battle over the course of the campaign. The experience should be so strong, none of the PCs will be able to walk away from the future call to action against this enemy. Han couldn’t leave the Battle of Yavin behind because of his experiences with Luke and the droids against the Empire.

In my House of Wookiees Campaign, the PCs are rebel recruits sent to a rebel training facility on a small liberal arts college campus. It all begins in an observatory, while the rebels are watching a holopresentation about the history of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. The Empire shows up and bombs the campus, making the giant telescope crash, crushing most of the recruits and causing the planetarium to be consumed in fire. The survivors (PCs) need to battle jumptroopers and climb a rickety burning catwalk to reach the planetarium’s roof. Even then, TIE fighters streak overhead. More jumptroopers show up, and the PCs must get the roof antennae working so they can call for help. The PCs are picked up by a student in a hotrod airspeeder and taken to a maintenance bunker where the surviving students weep over their losses. Some students guide the rebels to a satellite compound to contact a nearby rebel ship. More TIE fighters show up, trying to destroy the dishes. The PCs need to keep the facility intact long enough to retrieve the information about how to get themselves and the students charged to their care off planet safely. During the course of the escape, the PCs witness atrocities as stormtroopers blow away unarmed students. The experience is designed to be so intense that when the rebels step on board their command ship with the survivors, they are 100 percent committed to any mission against the Empire.

In my module Naboo Food Fight, things start out light. The PCs are visiting Uncle Rimk, a Gungan who runs a gumbo stand at the Theed Food Festival. They learn that the Queen of Naboo just enacted a law forbidding nonhuman species from public properties, including the food festival. Before the heroes even reach gate security, they are caught in a riot between security and nonhumans demanding entrance to the festival. Among the rioters is Chuchilla the Wookiee Monster, a wampa-sized creature who cannot resist the smell of fresh cookies. The PCs need to choose sides, rioters or security. They also witness security’s lethal tactics for handling the nonhumans. Once inside the festival, they learn Uncle Rimk has been locked in a sweatbox of a building to do the cooking, because the law forbids him from being on the public property. A human underling runs the uncle’s stand and skims a sizeable chunk of the credits. The security guards are also in on the scam. When Uncle Rimk asks the PCs for help, the PCs have witnessed enough brutality and injustice to make them want to help the uncle and strike against the corrupt officials.

The Dawn of Defiance Campaign has a weak Kaboom moment that does not sweep the characters into a series of adventures they are helpless to resist. It starts with the PCs stranded on a crumbling space station. Local snitches prosper by turning in nonhumans. A human woman runs up to the PCs, begging for help. She has been shot. Stormtroopers order the PCs to step away from the woman. I don’t think it would be unwise to step away from the lady. The PCs have their own problems. They have no reason to get involved. Even if the PCs help, the Empire is not a personified bane to the PCs’ existence. Even in the station’s climatic encounter, the Empire is reduced to the role of security guards. The true menace that should cause the PCs to be hungry to fight is lacking. By the time the PCs reach Alderaan, and Bail Organa asks them to do a mission for him, the PCs have not experienced enough firsthand Imperial atrocities to be instigated against them. Unless the PCs made the characters hungry to fight the Empire during character creation, they are more likely to say, “The credits aren’t that good concerning the risk. We’ll go run spice for a Hutt.” The campaign crumbles into dust.

On the WOTC forums, several motivated GMs have worked to rework the Dawn of Defiance Campaign. Nefandus did lots of revisions to create personal motivations for the PCs to want to help the girl attacked on the space station.

It’s been two days since the Freebird transport was impounded and its captain hauled off by stormtroopers, apparently for smuggling something. Before disembarking, the captain informed you that the charter company would send a replacement pilot to resume the next leg of your journey within a couple days. He was apologetic, explained that this was all obviously a simple bureaucratic error, and the franchise would pay for your lodgings at the station until such time as you could resume your ticket.

Captain: "Just turn your ticket and ID over to the station purser, and he’ll take care of it."

Not wishing to leave such a conspicuous trace, you lost yourself in the crowd in the hangar bay and entered the station.

A young woman named Maya, escorted by a twitchy labour droid with a lopsided gait, followed you. She asked why you didn’t want to stay in the hotel, and after listening to long silence and a few excuses, she squints her eyes.

“Look, I think I understand your predicament, and maybe I can help. Hotel or not – you are going to need a place to stay for a couple of days, off the books. Yes? Do me a favour, and I’ll do one for you. I’ve got to clean a bunch of parts, and maybe you can help.”
--------
You’ve spent a long day polishing droid parts and various odd jobs for Maya, working at a storage area for Mechanical Allies Droid repair shop. Operated by a Twi’Lek named San, it’s one of the very few businesses on Blue Deck run by a non-Human on the station that hasn’t been shut down by the Empire for some minor infraction, and in several cases, where the owners have been carted off by stormtroopers for suspicion of treason.

Maya warns you to stay wary of the civilians in black armbands – members of the COMPNOR snitches who watch for any sign of disloyalty and report it to Imperial troops in return for for payouts. With most of the former Separatists rounded up from the station, it seems they’ve widened their criteria lately, and often target homeless and non-humans.

So, you’ve been huddled in a steamy and decrepit warehouse that Maya has apparently been squatting in for a while. Broken droid parts are everywhere, and every dayshift, you stow your bedding foams under crates to hide them. You’ve been washing in the public washrooms – something not totally uncommon in a busy starport where flights are occasionally delayed.

This area seems to be safe enough for now – located well away from Blue Deck in the decrepit underbelly of the station, not much work has been done on it since the war, and it is falling apart.

“The rent is cheap!” Maya told you, but most importantly, she said, it’s off the books. You don’t need to check into a hotel, and you can lay low until your impounded transport is released to a new captain, to continue your journey.

Maya met you a few times for drinks at Gundark’s Cantina, a popular and noisy bar with a wide ranging clientele located on the posh Blue Deck Promenade. She was generous, – she sent you to buy the table drinks but gave you too many creds and wouldn't take change. It’s charity, but she always tries hard not to humiliate you. She just seems happy for the company, to hear more about you, but too often these have been dead end conversations, where you’ve all agreed to keep your secrets. While some of you have offered to exchange items of personal equipment, she’ll never take it. “No, these are dangerous times and I’ve got what I need. You keep that.”

After two days waiting, you find that the Freebird Franchise pilot doesn’t arrive. In three days, you find via the subspace news channel that Freebird has gone out of business due to unrelated reasons. You are stranded. On that same day, Maya shows up and is clearly distracted. She moves you out of your warehouse near Mechanical Allies, and through a maintenance hatch in the floor of a little-used service hallway. The hatch drops into a section of residential hallway in which the blast doors in both directions have malfunctioned, locking closed. She shows you into an actual apartment that she says belonged to a maintenance worker. It’s clean, recently lived in.

She says her boss found your bedding foam; and you should stay away from the warehouse, but meet her at Gundarks at 7.
-------------------

Gundarks:

It’s loud in here, with lots of lights and podracing videos playing, people milling and a Cantina band. Maya is late.

[here, I used another's idea and included an early encounter with the troublemakers from EpIV]
“Plo shook too loo” - a big alien says
“He says he doesn’t like you!” - a handsome man translates
“I don’t like you either!”

Pweeum! Pweeum! - the fight is interupted by blasters.

You hear blasters firing at the door, the shots slamming into near the rear entranceway. One of them catches a woman in the back and sends her flying! It’s Maya!

"Help me!" She says, staggering through the crowd, which is quickly running for the front exit into the Promenade and huddling in the booths, diving under tables and behind chairs.
No way are the PCs going to just let the troopers blast the life out of Maya. Nefandus has successfully captured the kindness and generosity of the Rebellion and personified it in the young woman NPC. I took this a step further when I ran the game, using the image of Dakota Fanning from Push as Maya. This turns Maya from a twenty-something into a preteen. She becomes your younger sister, someone you would not let get beaten and shot by stormtroopers. She is the defenseless young Rebellion being brutalized by the merciless Imperial machine.

This could hit or miss depending on how it’s handled. Remember, Star Wars allows for wipes and montages. Let the PCs have a few minutes chit-chat with Maya, then read the rest as a montage. Get to the Gundarks fight in less than twelve minutes.

However, I still don’t think there is enough Kaboom to guarantee the PCs will join Bail Organa’s Rebellion. The PCs need to witness the horrific face of the Empire firsthand. Perhaps they see stormtroopers doing target practice with nonhumans being turned in by the snitches. Maybe an Imperial officer is attracted to the mother in a refugee family and has the husband and kids killed and the woman turned into his sexual toy. It is through extreme atrocities that the players’ psyches will be irrevocably set to the action you desire for the campaign to follow.

I asked Nefandus for advice creating exciting effective campaign openings. He said:

My advice for campaign hooks... Off the top of my head.

1. Give the players a reason to be together - to be at the same place, to share a circumstance or predicament. Make that reason sustainable for at least several sessions, sufficient for other hooks to develop. Players should never wonder why their characters are travelling together.

2. Work with the players and their backgrounds to knit them to the hook. Provide parameters for player backgrounds.

3. If the plot is to be primarily GM generated (rather than sandbox style) make sure that there is no party conflict baked in that is so severe that there is no reason the party would travel together.

4. Start as close as possible to the first GAME choice - the first real decision with a consequence. Everything prior to that should be narration, including what they do as a group. The first group meetup isn't really going to be a choice, and chances are - not that exciting - so don't present it as a game choice (eg. "Do you talk to the sullen Jawa sitting on the bench?"). If they are going to meet up that way because the Jawa is a player character, then get on with it - just narrate it and move on.

5. Present the first game choice - the decision to get involved - as a no brainer. In DoD as written, it might be kind of stupid for the players to intervene in a random circumstance in which Imperials gun down a woman. But, if they were indebted to that woman, and if she provided them shelter, and if they had a grudge against the Imperials, then its a no-brainer. They will take the on ramp. Once they are involved in the plot, thinks pick up their own momentum - and that's the point of a hook.

Skill Challenges Live!

2010-12-06T06:15:00.001-08:00

I recorded audio from my last Dawn of Defiance session, a skill challenge I added where the PCs need to convince Darga they are not fugitives of the Empire. Demos tries to prosecute the PCs. This shows how I run the challenges and how they flow nicely. I added captions, kind of a GM's commentary on why I did what I did. The video is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0FN8ZfBIj0
Here are the complete notes I used to run this challenge.

Convince Darga You’re Not Wanted by the Empire Skill Challenge CL 8 Complexity 1

You’re mingling in the court, throwing some chance cubes… and losing more credits than you’d care to admit… when Demos saunters over to you, a wicked smile on his face. Three Gammorean Guards stand a pace behind him. Demos hasn’t said a kind word to you since you arrived. This can’t be good.
“Darga would like a word,” the majordomo says and waves you toward Darga’s dais. The guards make it clear you have no choice.
66 Translates for Darga. “Before my special guests arrive, I want to clear up an issue,” Darga says, looking at Demos. “My security specialist has brought to my attention you may have had problems with Imperial officials. Is this true?
Demos’s grin becomes almost as large as the Hutt.

Setup: The PCs need to convince Darga they are not a threat to him or to his business. Demos has security footage from the Felucian prison, showing the PCs slaughtering an Imperial officer and blasting stormtroopers. The quality of the holovideo is questionable at best, but the PCs’ names are attached to the file, listed as being wanted for questioning in the affair. The PCs need to defend themselves. Demos, on the other hand, will use every trick he knows to prosecute the PCs.

Suggested Skills:
Deception: 26
Gather Info: DC 23
Know: Galactic Lore: DC 18
Knowledge: Social Sciences: DC 18
Knowledge: Technology: DC 18
Mechanics: DC 23
Perception: DC 23
Persuasion: DC 26
Stealth: DC 26
Use Computer: DC 23
UTF: DC 31

Challenge Effects

Antagonist: Demos goes after each PC. If he gets 3 successes before the PCs, then he wins.
Degenerating: +/-5 next DC based on success or failure.
Recovery: Success by 5+ can be cashed in to cancel one of Demos’s successes.

Demos's character sheet
Igren Demos CL 8

Medium Human noble 6/scoundrel 2
Destiny 1
Init +10; Senses Perception +6
Languages Basic, Dosh, Gamorrean, Huttese

Defenses Ref 21 (flat-footed 20, with Flurry 16), Fort 18, Will 22
hp 42; Threshold 18

Speed 6 squares
Melee unarmed +8 (1d4+3) or
Melee unarmed +10 (1d4+3) with Flurry or
Melee lightsaber +8 (2d8+3) or
Melee lightsaber +10 (2d8+3) with Flurry
Ranged sidearm blaster +6 (3d6+4)
Base Atk +5; Grp +6
Atk Options Flurry, Point Blank Shot
Special Actions Disciplined Strike, Retribution, Telekinetic Savant 1/encounter
Force Powers Known (Use The Force +12) battle strike, Force slam, mind trick (2), move object, rebuke

Abilities Str 8, Dex 13, Con 10, Int 13, Wis 15, Cha 17
Special Qualities build lightsaber
Talents Disciplined Strike, Noble Fencing Style, Retribution, Telekinetic Savant
Feats Flurry, Force Sensitivity, Force Training (2), Linguist, Point Blank Shot, Skill Focus), Weapon Proficiency (lightsabers, pistols, simple weapons)
Skills Deception +12, Gather Information +12, Initiative +10, Knowledge (bureaucracy) +10, Knowledge (galactic lore) +10, Persuasion +12, Pilot +10, Use the Force +12
Possessions audiorecorder, lightsaber, sidearm blaster
I hope this helps everyone.

Once Upon A Time... Kaboom!

2010-11-14T14:28:00.000-08:00

Once Upon A Time… Kaboom!

It’s your campaign’s first session! Your players just finished building their characters. If more than 15 minutes goes by without something exploding, give up your campaign. Seriously, I’m talking about physics-defying fireballs causing great disturbances in the Force. I want your players’ jaws to drop and one of them to say, “But I just made my character.”

The situation surrounding the Kaboom should keep the PCs reeling for the next couple of gaming sessions. There should be a tiresome series of encounters with little time to lick wounds or make plans. Keep the PCs moving, hoping to survive.

Should you kill the PCs? Only if you want players to quit. However, you can have them knocked unconscious and captured. That is how the original trilogy began. The star destroyer blasted the bejeezus out of Tantive IV. Vader and posse mopped up the deck with the NPC rebel crew, driving the droid PCs to escape in a pod. The Leia PC was cornered and shot unconscious. I bet the players around the table were all yelling, “WTF!”

The Phantom Menace actually does a great job of creating a Kaboom with a lingering threat. Minutes after landing in the Viceroy’s command ship, the Neimoidians disintegrate the Republic Cruiser. Gas seeps into the room Qui Gon and Obi Wan are sitting in, and droids charge into the room, blasters firing. The Jedi race across the ship, trying to cut through the blast doors before the droidekas pulverize them. Finally, the heroes slip into a dropship and end up running from the droid army.

What’s the point of this player abuse? There are two reasons. The first: remind the gamers they are playing Star Wars. In a Star Wars adventure, the heroes do not answer a classified ad looking for caravan guards. Nor do they hang around cantinas until someone contracts them to explore a dungeon. Okay, Han and Chewie started their campaign adventure hanging around Mos Eisley Cantina waiting for adventure… but I consider them PCs late to join the campaign.

Chance and destiny capture the heroes. Star Wars is about typical people swept up by Galactic events. They must act or perish. Even in TPM, Qui Gon and Obi Wan went into the Viceroy’s ship assuming it was another routine negotiation. Then Kaboom! Adventure swept them away.

Secondly, you are providing the PCs with a firsthand demonstration of the power and ruthlessness of the enemies they will be battling over the course of the campaign. After running from the Kaboom fallout, the heroes’ psyches should be altered so that when they are called to make a stand against the enemy, they will not waiver from the challenge. They want revenge or to put an end to the evil they suffered under. And, they will likely have started to bond as a team through sheer need.

Let’s review the two trilogies. In ANH, the entire movie is made of the fallout from the Kaboom!... until the heroes reach Yavin IV and are asked to attack the Death Star. Until then, Luke and the droids were running from the Empire’s thugs. They thought they were safe when they got off planet on the Falcon, but by chance they ended up trapped in the enemy’s base. They did what they had to do to escape, and in the process they rescued Leia. Only when they got to Yavin IV were they approached to go on a mission. Only then did they have the choice to walk away from the destiny chance had put before them. Luke was affected enough by his experiences enough to volunteer and attack the Death Star. Han tried to deny his attitudes had been affected by his recent adventures. In the end, he returned to blast the TIE fighters off Luke’s butt, allowing him to destroy the Death Star.

In The Phantom Menace, Obi Wan and Qui Gon get aid from the Gungans, so they could reach Theed to help the Naboo and escape. They tried to outrun the blockade and took severe damage to the hyperdrive. The Tatooine adventures are an extension of the fallout from the initial Kaboom! Only when everyone reaches Coruscant are they free to make decisions unrelated to the Kaboom fallout. However, Padme and Qui Gon were affected strongly enough by their recent experiences they decided to end the Trade Federation’s occupation at all costs.

In the next blog entry, I will show the Kaboom fallout from several of my campaigns. Also, I will discuss the consequences of weak Kabooms.

Dark Destinies on the Net

2010-10-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

Star Wars has always been about community and family. Beyond the movies and books, it's a wonderful community of fans. In this spirit, I want to welcome to the web Dark Destinies, a blog which serves as a resource for fans of Star Wars Saga.
Please check it out at: http://gmdarkside.blogspot.com/p/others.html

Star Wars Film School

2010-10-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

A couple years out of college I made the reckless albeit inspired decision to make a feature film. This didn’t come from nowhere. I’d sort of made my own little films since childhood. Then, throughout my college career I gradually swayed from broadcast journalism to the starving artist world of indie filmmaking.

In studying screenwriting, I learned a very important lesson, one that I apply to designing Star Wars adventures: Show it. Don’t tell it.

I am a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which makes fun of some of the worst movies ever made. What unites an overwhelming majority of the highlighted films is that the characters in these films stand around theorizing in endless dialogue. These scenes can easily put you to sleep. What those movies should do is show dramatic scenes of the heroes discovering clues through active investigation.

Here’s an example. Roll that clip:

“I think the monster is radioactive, Sergeant,” the scientist ponders while sipping a gin and tonic, a cigar smoldering between his fingertips.

“Why do you say that, Doctor?” the Sarge asks.

The scene goes on like this for about a week.

The movie would be much more interesting if the Sarge and Doctor catch a glimpse of the monster as they were driving back to the lab. They leap from their jeep, cute spunky reporter in tow. Shots are fired. A wild chase ensues. They reach a farmyard. The cute reporter is grabbed by the monster. The Sarge picks up an axe and chops off the monster’s arm. The beast drops the reporter and escapes into the foggy night. The men bring the unconscious reporter to the lab (they never take victims straight to the hospital in these movies). The reporter’s skin is all disgusting and reminiscent of custard. She becomes violently ill. The Doctor realizes she has radiation poisoning… a type he doesn’t know how to cure. He’ll need to capture the monster and learn how to help the plucky custard-skinned reporter before the radiation sickness kills her.

Now, let’s adapt this example to a SAGA game.

The PCs sit in a room and talk about the monster rumored to be terrorizing the village. The scientist rolls Knowledge: Life Sciences and gets a 25. The GM tells the player, “You think the creature is radioactive.”

End scene.

Roll the clip for the cooler version:

The PCs are riding on speeder bikes near the village. They see the monster in the shadows and engage in a high speed chase through the forest. The spectacularly fast creature seems to fly through the trees. The PCs barely keep up as they dodge the trees. The forest gives way to a clearing and they reach an agri-processing plant, where giant droid harvesters deposit food on a conveyor belt, that takes the goods through a high-powered washing spray, through a forest of droid arms that separate the good parts from the bad with claws and blades. Finally, the vegetables are flash-frozen and crammed into a transport.

The monster leaps down and grabs the cute reporter, who is the sister of one PC and the love interest of the other. After suffering enough damage, the monster releases the now unconscious reporter and flees. The 21B droid in the med center informs the PCs the reporter is suffering from an unknown form of radiation poisoning and it doesn’t know how to treat her. The PCs will have to capture the monster and study it so they can find a cure.

Don’t let crucial information be learned by a simple knowledge check. There should be a battle and chase for every important plot point gained.

Also, the stakes need to be raised as the plot advances. In my example, the sister/love interest’s life is dependent on the PCs capturing the monster. The plot is now personal.

The beauty of a campaign is you have time to examine the PCs’ back stories and weaknesses. As a GM, it is your job to find out what buttons can be pressed to make the PCs squirm. What are their passions? What are their attachments (ask Anakin how that can be used to motivate a PC)? Then, work it into the storyline. Is it more effective to have a cool NPC gunslinger confront the PCs or to have a cool gunslinger NPC who is the brother of a PC, who betrayed the heroes, imprisoned the PC’s love interest and is now trying to gun them down and collect the bounty?

It was a great scene in ESB when Luke confronted Vader on Cloud City, but the scene would not be as well remembered if GM George hadn’t decided Vader was Luke’s father.

Make it personal. Make the PCs work for the details. Then, you’ll have a blockbuster campaign, not b-movie schlock.

Viper Attack

2010-10-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

The blog's been silent due to massive work on the "Naboo Food Fight" module, which I wrote for Buffalo MiniCon. The games went so well, I've been recruited to run the games at Rochester's Simcom. Hooray!
I've also been working on reworking the Dawn of Defiance Campaign for my group. Here is a video from "A Wretched Hive," as a swoop gang terrorizes a shanty town and extorts the PCs.

Convention Updates

2010-09-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, Cinefest 9/25/10 has been canceled.
Fortunately, I will be running two Star Wars SAGA games at the University of Buffalo MiniCon 10/9/10. The games include a Dark Side Jedi Hunter adventure called "Operation Overwhelming Justice" and a more whimsical module called "Naboo Food Fight." Slots for both games are available.
For information on the Mini Con and to reserve your slots go to http://minicon.ubsarpa.com/
Star Wars Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, Saga Edition

Cinefest Buffalo MiniCon September 25, 2010

2010-09-22T08:28:00.000-07:00

I will be running a NJO original module at the Cinefest MiniCon this Saturday, Sept 25th. Join me for "Centerpoint of Action." Also, they have the designer of Feng Shui as a guest. He'll be improvising a game at the Con. Check it out. Here's the skinny on the MiniCon.

Date: Saturday September 25th
Time: 8:30 am till midnight
Location: Rockwell Halls 3rd floor. Cinema gamefest HQ will be in room 305
Rockwell hall is located on Buffalo States Campus the address is
1300 Elmwood Ave
Buffalo NY 14222

Here's a google maps link to the location:
http://maps.google.co...

Events:
We'll be showing movies all day in the HQ room and we'll have our growing library of games from CRAGG's (that's buff states gaming club) and my collection. A large number of roll playing games will be offered themed to the movies you've loved over the years by some of the best GM's the BGS has to offer. The best part is all the gaming goodness and the movies are free and if your hungry we'll be having breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the lowest costs we can.

To register for the events and to let us know your coming head on over too http://www.warhorn.ne...

Fixing Encounters With Hazards

2010-09-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

In my last entry, I discussed changes I made to the first scenes of my House of Wookiees campaign, thanks to the skill challenge rules presented in Galaxy of Intrigue. I’d like to continue that discussion. Only this time, I want to show you how I improved the same encounters with rules presented in Unknown Regions.

Hazards.

For the first skill challenge/encounter, the heroes are in a bombed observatory trying to climb to the portal where the telescope had peeked through the domed roof. The PCs make their way to the roof, dodging the Imperial jumptroopers who emerge from the stairwell. As I worked on revising this encounter, I strongly considered tinkering with the insanely complicated rules I’d concocted concerning the cracked holoprojector display, which fills the observatory with refracted images of the Alliance orientation video. The broken holodisplay would make it difficult to determine reality from recording. In my first draft, this is how the rules worked:

House of Holos

The broken holoprojectors make it tricky to get around the observatory. The characters will have a difficult time recognizing what is real and what are refracted recordings.

The holoprojector shows each scene for three rounds before cutting to the next. When a character tries to make a perception roll looking in a direction, he takes a -10 penalty from discombobulation caused by the refracted hologram. Each round after the holovideo scene change, during which the character keeps looking in the same direction, the PC’s perception penalty decreases by five. This reflects the PC separating reality from the recording. As soon as the character looks a different direction, he returns to a -10 perception penalty. Other penalties may apply during specific scenes, as described below.

All the holograms affect the lower story of the dome. Once the PCs get past the first three catwalks on their way to the portal, the hologram penalties no longer apply. The exception to this is the scene showing the Star Destroyer blasting the refugee transport. This scene fills the entire dome and affects the upper level of the dome as well as the lower level.

The PCs may locate the holoprojectors (perception DC 15) and break them (ref def 12 2hp) to eliminate the refracted images.

PCs with the Use the Force skill can separate illusion from reality with a UTF check of DC10.

Scenes in the orientation holovideo; each scene lasts 3 combat rounds.

The PCs see a city street. A teenage human male stands between an Imperial officer and his mother. She clings deathly tight to her baby. The teen tries to shove the trooper back. The officer holds his ground and breaks the teen’s nose with his blaster. He follows up by shooting the mother in the head. Another stormtrooper kicks the baby beneath a passing troop transport.
A stormtrooper casually tosses a thermal detonator into a school. As burning children run screaming from the building, a stormtrooper squad competes to see who can mow them down fastest. PCs suffer an additional +5 perception penalty because the holographic fire creates concealment for anyone standing in the midst of the scene. Also, since there are many troopers in the video, targeting or identifying a jumptrooper from a virtual trooper incurs an additional -10 penalty.
Humans flee across a mighty bridge. An AT-ST rounds the corner and clears traffic with its blasters. Bodies and landspeeders fly off the bridge and into the river far below. The last round of this scene creates an additional -10 perception penalty because of fire and smoke.
In a cantina, a group of senior citizens barricade themselves behind the doors. The fridge and piled furniture separate them from the stormtroopers outside. A small window shatters, and the bar fills with fire. For the first two rounds of this scene, there is an additional -5 difficulty identifying holographic images of the cantina from the observatory’s fixtures. The third round is filled with fire, so perception is hampered by -15.
The scene shows an outside view of an Inner Core city hall. The city’s leaders have their hands tied behind their backs. Stormtroopers shove them towards the town hall. Troopers fire over their heads to startle the captives into a sprint. Once the people disappear into the civic building, a TIE bomber drops its payload on the site. For the first two rounds, identifying commandos from “holo” troopers causes a -5 perception penalty. When the bombs fall, the image swings around violently as the holographer runs away. Everyone needs to make a willpower roll DC 15 to avoid dropping one step down the condition track as the result of motion sickness.
Transports plow dead bodies into a bantha pen.
A fleeing transport is run down by a Star Destroyer and disintegrated in a hail fire of turbolaser bolts. Everyone needs to make a willpower roll DC 10 to avoid being startled by the Destroyer’s appearance. Failure moves the character two steps down the condition track. Characters on a catwalk who fail this roll need to make a reflex roll DC10 to avoid tumbling off the catwalk.

This was for the first encounter of the campaign. I think I would have scared most rookie GMs away. It gives me a headache to read it.

Using the guidelines found in Unknown Regions, the funhouse effect of the cracked holovid lens could be turned into a simple hazard.

House of Holos Hazard CL 1

Description: The cracked holovid lens causes the displayed images to be replicated in three places throughout the observatory’s lower level. This causes anyone looking directly at it to possibly confuse what’s real and what is holographic imagery.

Keywords: Optical, Mind-effecting

Attack + 3 vs Willpower

Damage: If the attack is successful, the target suffers -5 to attacks and any skill check the GM deems to require precise visual concentration. For example, Acrobatics skill checks would suffer a -5 penalty because performing acrobatics requires knowing the precise location of walls, floor and obstacles. Persuasion checks would not be affected because it does not require precise understanding of what is real and what is virtual in the room. A target cannot be affected multiple times.

Trigger: At the start of initiative, the Hazard attacks all PCs looking into the affected area.

Recurrence: The Hazard attacks at the start of each round of initiative.

Skills:

Perception: DC 14: As a full round action, the PC studies the area. On a successful skill check, the PC is immune to the hazard’s attacks for three rounds.

Use the Force: DC 14: As a standard action, the PC reaches with the Force to filter out the illusion from the reality. On a successful check, the PC is immune to the Hazard’s attacks for 3 rounds.

Oh my, this simplifies things and keeps the spirit of the Hazard alive. I think the best part of the Hazard construct is that it affects the jumptroopers as well as the PCs, creating fascinating possibilities of how this encounter might go down.

I lied. The best part about this Hazard is that I don’t get a headache from reading it.

It could be argued everything would be much simpler if I had just deleted the entire thing and kept the encounter simple. The problem with that is Star Wars is not about simple encounters. It’s a pulp movie, a space opera. It’s about taking things to extremes. If Vader and Luke confronted each other for the first time in one of Cloud City’s hallways instead of in the carbon freezing chamber and then on catwalks over massive pits, the scene would have lost a lot of its flavor. The obstacles helped make the scene cool.

A WOTC forum poster called this the Spielburgian method. “I do like to use the Spielburgian method of escalating action scenes - he often throws in one or more environmental factors into an action scene, which helps to build the task load for the heroes to a crescendo as the scene unfolds (though they often provide opportunities and new resources for the players too).”

If you’re like me and tend to overcomplicate things in your games, the Hazards guidelines are a great way to take some of the headache out of GMing. If your encounters lack the Star Wars flair, then crack the holovideo display, add a bottomless pit, and listen to your players groan, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

But they will have a childlike grin on their faces.

Skill Challenge Play By Play: A Tragedy in Two Acts

2010-09-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

I was asked to provide play-by-play of the skill challenge I built into the opening House of Wookiees encounter. I can’t as I haven’t run the encounter since adding the skill challenge. However, last Friday my gaming group had two fun skill challenges. For the last couple of sessions, I ran modules as a break from the campaign’s main plot. Friday’s module was adapted from the Living Force adventure “Coruscani Dawn.”

Backstory:

The PCs have been helping Mace Windu rescue captured Jedi. You read that correctly. In my campaign, Mace barely survived the fall from Palpatine’s window, and after years of healing and cybernetic surgery, he helped Senator Organa and others hide Jedi from the Empire’s wrath. The story begins with Mace finding seven Mandalorian iron boxes, sealed by Sith alchemy. They cannot be destroyed or opened without rare equipment and a ritual. Mace has a contact on Coruscant to help him open the boxes, which supposedly hold pieces of an ancient city built with the power of the dark side. Another box holds a powerful Sith artifact. When Mace walks out of the Sith temple with these boxes, a dark Jedi cult catches wind of what Master Windu found, and they attack. The Empire also discovers the artifacts have resurfaced and sends agents after them. Mace decides to separate the boxes and have a trusted transport crew each deliver a single box from Cularin to Coruscant. Hopefully, this will confuse the cult and Empire, and the boxes will get to their destination. Of course, the PCs are entrusted with a box.

There are only a couple of routes out of the Cularin system because of surrounding asteroid and comet belts. The PCs decided not to blaze their own trail through the asteroids and comets and to stick to the narrow, crowded space lane. Suddenly, their ship lurched as a Barloz transport tried to force its way past. The com crackled to life as the Barloz transport taunted the PCs. “Is that you, Grandma? I’m in a hurry, Granny. I’m on an important top secret mission. Yee-haw!”

“Identify yourself, Barloz transport,” Shaler demanded.

“This is Jek Porkins of the Bantha Ribs Buffet. I ain’t got time to chit-chat. Move it, or I’ll move you into that asteroid field.”

The module reads, “A hotshot pilot who goes this way is really going to have to give his ion engine all its got to avoid being caught at the rear of the pack, and if he manages to make it to the front, he finds himself racing another pilot for the far side of the comet cloud. If they really want to race, utilize the Generic Pilot from the rule book. Kindly remind the players it is one of their allies, and it is bad form to shoot their allies. If they end up stuck in traffic, gloss over this section.”

Well, that sounds like it involves a couple of pilot rolls, and the other players can twiddle their thumbs in boredom. A skill challenge keeps everyone involved. On the Order 66 Podcast forums I’d seen the stats for Jek Porkins, a fave from the movies. I wanted a lot of cameos in this module, so I chose to use him.

Who’s Who:

Before I go into the play-by-play. Here are the characters’ names and a brief summary.

Mac El Guapo is a middle-aged human scoundrel. He serves as the party’s sniper. Recently, he died in a battle with some dark Jedi. Mysteriously, he woke up from the dead, Force sensitive and tainted by the dark side. He’s also haunted by a Force spirit who wants Mac to atone and learn the ways of the Force.

Shaler is a human fugitive Jedi. He’s been getting by in the Galaxy as an information broker and freelance pilot.

Ssoy is our resident Gungan brawler. This Gungan has gone up against Gammoreans and even successfully grappled a hydra.

Winston, a teenage Rodian soldier, loves demolitions, destruction and big guns.

Garrett (moi) is their lucky GM.

GM: So, are you going to let Porkins past, or are you going to take him on?

Shaler & Ssoy: We’re going to kick his butt.

GM: Great. You’ve entered a [fanfare] skill challenge.

The players groan. This is a natural reaction to a skill challenge announcement.

GM: This is Complexity one, which means you need only three successes to accomplish it. But we’re using the antagonist special effect… which means you don’t have to worry about the skill challenge ending when you blow three skill checks. Instead, the skill challenge ends if Porkins gets three successes before you do. Does this make sense?

[Crickets chirp.]

GM: Everyone clear on how this works?

Winston, Mac, Ssoy and Shaler mutter something affirmative.

GM: Good. What other fun rules do we have this challenge? You have the Second Effort effect. That means, if you blow a skill check, you can still make it count as a success… however, your spaceship will drop a step down the condition track.

Mac: I have a bad feeling about this.

GM: That’s nice, Mac. Five points. [I award five xp for every clever line of dialogue that amuses me. A key element of a Star Wars story is witty writing.] Now, there is also a skill use limit. Only one of you can make a Pilot skill check… at least until everyone else has had a turn at making a skill check. Keep in mind a lot of the skills, including the Knowledge skills… if you use them successfully, they’ll give the driver a bonus on his Pilot check. So, you may want to hold off making that Pilot check until everyone has had a chance to do things that can give you bonuses on your flying.

Shaler: I get it. Okay, I want to make a Use Computer check to look into BoSS records to see if I can learn anything about this Porkins and his ship.

[Shaler is an established infochant and should be able to get to these records. Someone who has never tried to gain access to government records of this type would have a much more difficult time… and would probably need to spend several rounds on this attempt.]

He rolls and gets a 23. The predetermined Use Computer DC was 17. Success number one.

GM: The Bantha Ribs Buffet is not a registered ship, and the transponder information you are receiving from the ship is a fraud. You do find info on Jek Porkins. He’s wanted for making raids on Imperial convoys.

Shaler: So he’s probably on our side, delivering a box for Master Windu. We better not destroy him.

Ssoy: I’d like to make a Knowledge: Technology check to identify the kind of ship Porkins is flying… and figure out any weaknesses we can exploit.

GM: Great idea. Make a roll.

He rolls a 19, better than the predetermined DC 17. Success number two.

GM: It is a Barloz-class transport. [I pull up information and a picture on Wookieepedia]. Here’s something you can exploit… it has better engines for speed but is nowhere near as maneuverable as your YT-2400. [I have to confess I didn’t compare stats. I just made this information up. Honestly, I didn’t see any benefit to stalling the game so I could do a thorough comparison between the two ships].

Winston: Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow. I want to set it up so our ship dumps its trash and some spare parts into Porkins’s path… so he’ll be pinned between our ship, the trash and the asteroids.

GM: Interesting. I guess you’ll need to make a Mechanics skill check.

Winston rolls. He gets a 15. The Mechanics skill check is DC 17. I grit my teeth.

GM: Winston, do you think you should use a Force point?

Winston: I’m not letting him get ahead of us.

Winston rolls a Force die and gets a new total of 18. Success.

GM: Great. Toiletries, cables and waste from the refresher spews out the back of the ship, also managing to gross out Porkins.

I roll Porkins’s Pilot check as a reaction. He gets a 21, better than Winston’s 18.

GM: Porkins pulls his Barloz out of the way of the waste and narrowly rounds a medium-size asteroid. By the time he returns to the spaceway, you are clear of the asteroid belt and can make your jump to hyperspace, leaving Porkins in the dust.

Ssoy: That is a cool ship. I’m going to spend the time in hyperspace trying to find a good deal on a used Barloz.

This skill challenge was only CL 6. Most of the players are 7^th and 8^th level. This shouldn’t be a challenge they throw too many Force and destiny points into. It is just a fun little bit of flavor and team-building exercise before the main plot kicks into gear.

Porkins was only going to get a turn after each of the PCs went, so the odds were really good the PCs were going to beat him at this skill challenge. If the dice really failed the PCs, Porkins would have shoved past the PCs and sent them spiraling at an asteroid. I would randomly determine what systems went bust in the crash. The PCs might spend time fixing the ship, or they might go on without making the repairs. I believe the cost of failure for a minor skill challenge, as this one was, should be minor time and resources lost. They would fall behind on the mission, having to fix the ship. Plus, they would consume physical resources to patch the ship together. They might even have to pay someone to repair the ship back at Cularin or on Coruscant. This is nothing like the heroes losing limbs and catching on fire or having to face Darth Vader himself as a cost for failure. Those kinds of things are appropriate for high-importance skill challenges.

The second skill challenge took place after the PCs landed on Coruscant. They noticed blaster fire on a landing pad a couple hundred meters away. After looking at the ship through macrobinoculars, the PCs realized they had seen the ship leaving Cularin with them. It took a bit of convincing from the PCs’ Coruscani contact, Juno Eclipse, to go over to the scene of the blaster fight and find out if the Mandalorian iron box was still in the crew’s custody. It was not. A group of humans in black skin-tight clothing had ambushed the crew. A human female had been the first out of the ship. She was shot from behind and fell off the platform. A Wookiee was knocked unconscious with stun weapons. A Jedi who was traveling with the group was shot dead. Luckily, another crew member had been resourceful enough to fire a homing beacon onto the raiders’ speeder. The PCs took the receiver, climbed aboard a transport and gave chase, following the thieves into the lower levels of Coruscant.

The original module reads, “There is no good traffic lane leading down, in part because very few people want to go to the Undercity. It’s therefore a little tricky to dodge the other ships in the upper levels. This should be done via description, not dice-rolling.”

I think it is a lot more fun to give the PCs control over their plummet into the Undercity.

GM: All right, you’re racing at top speed, weaving through traffic coming at you from every direction and not seeming to care you’re there. Sounds like another skill challenge. Hooray. Who is piloting?

Ssoy: That would be me.

GM: Just like the last skill challenge, certain skills, including Knowledge checks can give bonuses to your piloting check, so you may want to hold off on doing that until the others act.

Ssoy: No problem.

GM: First, some rules. We have Catastrophic failure. Miss a skill check by ten or more, you get two failures for the price of one. Ouch. We have Recovery. Make a check by five or more, and you can cash in that success to erase a failure. Finally, we have the Degenerating special effect. When you get a success, the DCs drop by five. When you get a failure, they go up by five. Who wants to start the madness?

Shaler: I have the receiver, so I’ll make a Use Computer check to figure out how close they are.

GM: Great idea. Make a Use Computer check.

Shaler rolls. He gets a 20. I grit my teeth.

GM: Shaler, how do you feel about using a Force point?

Shaler: I feel pretty good about that.

Shaler rolls his Force point and gets a new total of 23. He just makes it.

GM: A Force point very well spent. There’s total chaos on the receiver, from all the electronic signs and tons of comlinks and passing vehicles with every conceivable electronic device adding to the cacophony of electric noise. But you are able to determine the thieves are not horribly far ahead. They’re down a ways and to the left.

Shaler: I relay that info.

Mac: I guess I’ll make a Perception check to try and eyeball the enemy speeder.

GM: That makes sense. With Shaler’s success, the DC is a little easier, which makes sense, since you know where to be looking.

Mac rolls a 21. He makes the check.

GM: They aren’t being too subtle, flying around every vehicle in their path… and the other drivers are sounding horns at them. You catch a glimpse of their speeder before it disappears behind a droid towing an abandoned speeder.

Ssoy: I’ll make a Piloting check to catch up to those guys.

Ssoy rolls a natural one on his d20. This is a critical failure in my games.

Ssoy: Oh no. A Force point won’t help, will it?

GM: I wouldn’t spend one if I was you.

Ssoy: Darn.

GM: Shaler is yelling, “They’re ahead to the left.” Mac is practically turning your neck for you to where they are. Too bad you were distracted. You fly right through a billboard. Crackle. Crackle. Crash. A cut out of an R2 wearing a chef’s hat, advertising Dexter’s Diner, winds up plastered against your windshield. It’s cute, but it isn’t helping you drive. The speeder also moves a step down the condition track. And hey look… that was a catastrophic failure. You get two failures.

Winston: Let me through. I’ll make a Mechanics check to fix the speeder.

GM: A wise move. Make a roll.

Winston rolls a 22. With the -5 to the DC from the two successes and single failure, he is successful.

GM: The engine sounds like it ate some of that droid’s cooking and is about to either die or vomit. You mess with some controls under the dash. For a moment, it sounds like the engine is dying, as the clunks become softer and fewer between. Then, the speeder rockets forward, and the engine purrs better than ever. Congrats. That’s three successes. You win. But the other speeder… there’s a bright flash as the speeder you were following plows into a walkway a hundred meters beneath you and explodes.

Ssoy: Did the box get destroyed?

GM: You can’t tell right now. You can find out next session, as we continue “The House of Wookiees Campaign.”

Winston (played by my old lady, Mari): You and your cliffhangers.

If the PCs blew the challenge, they would have crashed also, taking 6d10 damage. This would not take out any of the characters but would put them at a big disadvantage for the rest of the adventure.

Note the higher DCs. This was a CL9 challenge. It was designed to be harder and make the heroes spend force and destiny points to avoid defeat. I consider it to be of medium importance, as far as the encounter is concerned, and I wanted to get across to the players how significant this chase was.

I hope this better explains the wonderful world of skill challenges. If you have any questions, please post them, and I will try to promptly respond. Below, I am posting all the notes I had and needed to run these skill challenges.

Race through the Asteroids Skill Challenge CL 6 Complexity 1

Setup: Several pilots are running boxes containing dark side artifacts to Coruscant. One pilot, Jek Porkins races the heroes out of the asteroids first.

Suggested Skills:

Deception: DC 17

Initiative: DC 20

Know Galactic Lore: 22

Know Phy Science 22

Know Tech 17

Know skills will give next pilot roll +2 bonus

Mechanics: 17 (with know tech) 22 without

Perception 17

Perusasion 17

Pilot 27

Use Comp 17

Use Force 17

Special fx

Antagonist: only get failure when Jek gets success

Restricted Skills: only one pilot check per initiative round

Second effort: move ship down cond track -1 to turn failure into success

To the Undercity skill challenge CL 9 Complexity 1

Deception: Feint other drivers DC 23

Initiative: DC 18

Know Galactic Lore: 18

Know Phys Sciences: 18

Tactics: 23

Tech 18

Mechanics: 23

Percept 18

Persuasion 23

Pilot 23

Use Comp 23

UTF 23

Special fx

Catastrophic failure

Degenerating

Recovery

House of Wookiees Campaign Upgrade Part 1: Skill Challenges

2010-08-31T08:36:00.000-07:00

Another Galaxy, Another Time..

Winston, a teenage Rodian, sat uncomfortably in the plasma-like chair. He found it difficult to focus on the holovid program. Mon Mothma’s recorded voice detailed the history of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. There were so many odd beings around him… like the gray-haired noble in the dark cloak and the red-head human girl in the flight suit. Most frightening of all was the Wookiee. Its yellow eyes threatened to start trouble. If the Wook did, Winston would not back down.

Was it Winston’s nerves, or was there a rumbling? It didn’t seem to be coming from the holodisplay… although it wasn’t out of place with the graphic war footage showing the Kwymar Suppression.

Boom! Part of the roof collapsed. Winston sank into the heart of the plasma chair and floated helplessly as though encased in carbonite. Debris rained all around him, smashing the holoprojector… and most of Winston’s orientation class. The majestic telescope plummeted past Winston and vanished down the stairwell, taking out whole flights of stairs in the process. By the time Winston, the Wook, the noble and red-head forced themselves out of the impact-safe prototype chairs, Winston realized they were the only survivors. The Sarge was bent over backwards with the telescope’s mount impaling him through the chest.

More TIE bombers streaked across the sky visible through the elongated portal. What was that at the edge of the hole? A ladder? It was propped against a support beam now at a 45 degree angle, leaning against another beam, which vanished behind a computer bank. It was risky, though entirely possible to climb to the portal then the roof.

An annoying buzz filled the stairwell shaft in the center of the room, where the telescope had fallen and vanished. Winston blinked, staring downward. His mind swam among the refracted images surrounding him. The holoprojector lens had cracked and now, he looked through distorted views of the orientation video; what was real and what was part of Alliance History 101? He looked up to find himself surrounded by three different groups. Each one was comprised of an Imperial officer pulling a baby from its mother’s arms, then throwing the youngling beneath the wheels of an oncoming tracked transport.

Three black-armored troopers rocketed from the debris swirling in the stairwell. “Freeze!” the lead jumptrooper ordered as the other two raised their blaster rifles. Blue energy bursts fired from the barrels. The Wookiee howled and charged, intent to knock one of the jumptroopers down the stairwell. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get a grip on the jetpack-mounted Emperor’s minion.

The holovideo changed to show the interior of a cantina. A group of old men were blockading the door. Grenades flew through the windows and clattered to the floor like apples falling from a tree. All was consumed in fire. Winston raised his arm as if that would prevent him from getting burned, as if he really could get burned by the holovid. Blue blaster bolts streaked past him. That could really hurt him. He raised his blaster and put a hole in a trooper’s chestplate. The trooper fell backwards, vanishing down the stairwell.

“Get over here,” the red head ordered as she began to climb the computer bank. “Time to leave this party.”

**********************************

Imagine being the player running Winston or his companions. You struggle to make it from the observatory to the portal ladder dangling high above the duracrete floor. There is as much risk of being killed in this escape attempt as there is fighting the jumptroopers. You experience gripping moments as the red head slips and barely clings to the edge of the beam. You dive, sliding on your belly, arms outreached to catch the girl before she drops. The gray-haired man, you learn, was an engineer before he joined the Rebellion. He walks around the observatory, makes a couple of quick calculations on his datapad then instructs you and your cohorts to shove a toppled caf brewer between two support beams to gain a little more stability.

When you finally get through it all, as your green hands pull you up the ladder to the “safety” of the dome’s roof, are you going to be satisfied if the GM only gives you xp for defeating the jumptroopers?

I wouldn’t. But when I wrote the first scene of the House of Wookiees campaign, which the first part of this entry describes, I did just that. Back then, Galaxy of Intrigue wasn’t available, and I hadn’t yet played Dungeons and Dragons 4e.

When Winston and his companions fought their way out of the observatory at the unveiling of House of Wookiees, there still wasn’t Galaxy of Intrigue. During the inaugural session, the PCs made a dramatic series of climb checks on their way to the portal. There were a few by the skin of their teeth moments, but there wasn’t any inspired creative skill uses that serve as the cornerstone of a well-run skill challenge. No one tried to make a Use Computer check to move an overhead catwalk against one of the beams, securing the structure and making it easier to climb. No one made a Mechanics check to reinforce the beams.

Star Wars is about creative problem solving. Sometimes the heroes are successful, like when Han and Luke donned stormtrooper costumes and pretended to deliver Chewie to the detention block as part of a prisoner transfer. Sometimes they fail disastrously, like in the same scene when Han failed to deceive the security officers that “Everything is fine here”).

The other day I was reading Edge of Victory: Rebirth by Greg Keyes. He tickled me with his masterful understanding of Han and Leia’s dynamics. He really thrilled me with the creative solutions he provided his characters. For instance, the Falcon was floating powerless in space, having been yanked from hyperspace by a Vong warship. As Han worked to restore power, Anakin sealed 3PO in the cabin that had access to the waste removal tube. He ordered 3PO to physically push concussion missiles out the waste chute toward the massive Vong warship. Then, Anakin remotely detonated the missiles once they reached the target. Great thinking, kid!

As in the example above, skill challenges push players to think beyond obvious solutions. Using the observatory scenario, the easy to think of skill choices would be climb and jump. A great skill challenge will cause the players to stretch their creative muscles and hone in on their characters’ unique strengths.

In the movies, when there is combat, the characters play to their strengths. They don’t all pick up a blaster and hope to shoot better than the stormtroopers. Artoo is quick to find a computer port and shut doors on the enemy or open doors so his allies can make their escape. Leia provides covering fire for Artoo or other allies using noncombative skills in a combat encounter. Lando uses Deception to catch his enemies off guard, like when he orders the Wing Guard on Cloud City to ambush the stormtrooper patrol, or when he disguises himself as a guard in Jabba’s Palace and on the skiff over the sarlacc pit. Ben Kenobi preferred to use Stealth and Use the Force skill checks to go about the Death Star unnoticed to reach the tractor beam controls.

Here’s a non-Star Wars example. While playing Living Forgotten Realms, my character, Claethia the Bard, took part in a skill challenge where the goal was to catch the plague-ridden rats the mad man had set loose. I thought about my character. Was Claethia great at shishkabobbing them on a sword or arrow? Could she cast a sleeping spell? She was a bard. Bingo! “I want to do a Pied Piper,” I told my DM. I’m certain there weren’t any clarifications in the module about how to do this. We ended up treating it as a Persuasion check with some modifiers to account for the power of the bard. There were many great moments in the combat encounters that gaming session, but what I think a lot of players still remember about the game was the Pied Piper skill challenge.

The TIE bombers blast the observatory. Jumptroopers emerge from the stairwell. There’s a chase to the portal at the top of the observatory. The rebels scurry up beams and debris, all of which could collapse any moment. The way I rewrote this encounter, it will be much more exciting than a couple of Climb checks. It will challenge Wookiees to make astounding leaps and Mechanics checks to use their wits to prevent the whole thing from crashing down. Once everyone is finally safe on the roof… they will get well-earned xp.

Dawn of Defiance Video

2010-08-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

September 4, I begin running the Dawn of Defiance Campaign for the Buffalo Gaming Society. I am a huge fan of using video to show cutaway scenes and to establish the mood, and as a reward for success. Here is the opening video for the campaign, as created by me.

The Mandalorian Killed Katie Holmes

2010-08-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

In the Ghostbusters: Who Ya Gonna Call D20 Modern RPG book, Michael Tresca gives his take on finding appropriate adventure hooks for Ghostbusters. Read the tabloid headlines. Each headline is a potential adventure, combining absurdity with an ounce of horror or the supernatural. The same formula can be applied if you want to do a comic relief Star Wars mini adventure to break up the tension in your campaign’s main plot.

For the Corellian Diet Breakers adventure I wrote, I saw the tabloids ragging on Tom and a sad-looking Katie. I found myself thinking “those guys can’t get a divorce; it would financially destroy both of them.” Then, my mind went down that film noir dark alley. I thought, “What if they each hired someone to kill the other, so they’d inherit millions and get really good press for being a poor little widow/widower?”

So in the module, when the PCs visit a crime lord’s nightclub and are waiting to see the gangster, two of the PCs get dragged away respectively by my version of Katie (named Kat Hadz) and a henchman for the adventure’s Tom (called Chaz Barris). Both halves of the couple offer, “Kill my spouse in the next 15 minutes and I’ll activate this credit chip I’m giving you. Escape through a window in the backstage props room. There will be a speeder waiting.”

In playtesting, the mechanic-soldier turned down Kat’s offer, and the Mandalorian happily slipped Kat the poisoned cig.

The Tom-Katie encounter had nothing to do with the adventure’s main plot, but it allowed for character development, fleshed out the environment as far as celebrities and scandals are concerned and reinforced campaign themes about the elusiveness of good and bad, right and wrong – traditional film noir material. Plus, the players felt like they were not only interacting with Star Wars characters but roleplaying a bizarre situation with a flimsily transparent Tom and Katie.

Check out the latest antics of Jen Aniston, Lindsay Lohan and Nostradamus’s reinterpreted predictions. These people and issues are significant enough in our cultural consciousness to repeatedly appear on the front page of profitable publications. They must resonate with us for some reason. When you discover what their appeal is, you can transfer it into your game, where it will be equally fascinating or at least, good for a little vacation from high level intrigue.

Alternative Universe Experiments

2010-08-04T13:53:00.000-07:00

Remember high school science class? Do you remember those lab experiments where you lost half a grade letter if you didn’t start your report with the words, “The purpose of this experiment is to determine…?” You blocked that nightmare out of your head? Sorry to dredge it up. Let’s use the old science class lab form to help create your next long form adventure or campaign. With the scientific method and the manner of thinking it dictates, you will create the crux of your campaign.

The key to the scientific method is to alter a single variable and compare the altered scenario against a control group, where everything is kept status quo. In game terms, the control group is the Star Wars movies and widely accepted canon (the Clone Wars tv show, various games, comics and books). What you’re going to do with your Star Wars experiment is alter one variable in the canon and determine how it affects everything else.

The purpose of this experiment is to determine what would happen if Force sensitive beings banded together as part of a traveling Galactic circus. This brainstorm was inspired by the last season of Heroes, where superpower endowed individuals hid in plain sight as carnies.

The first thing to consider is how this what-if scenario would affect the Galaxy or how the Galactic situation of each era would affect our what-if. For the Old Republic, the circus could be a hunting ground, where Jedi and Sith try to abduct or recruit new members from the pool of powerful Force users. Imagine contortionist Jedi or lightsaber swallowing Sith! Some circus people turn Sith, others Jedi, They would eventually square off against one another, as brother fought brother during the American Civil War. I would have the final showdown back at the circus.

For the Rise of the Empire era, Jedi could try to take the performers’ children to the Temple for training. The Jedi sent to gather the kids vanish. The PCs are sent to track down the missing and find out what happened. Are the Jedi still alive? Were they captured? Did they run away with the circus?

The Dark Times and Rebellion Eras present an interesting scenario for heroes helping hide Force sensitives, using the idea of the underground railroad. Maybe the heroes must help convince the performers to abandon their circus home, because Inquisitors are on the way. Some of the Force sensitives refuse to give up their community. The performers agree that if one stays, they all stay. The Force sensitives and PCs must confront the Inquisitors and troopers at the circus.

In the New Jedi Order era, Luke sends heroes to try and recruit Force sensitives to join the Jedi Academy. However, Vong operatives have infiltrated the circus, posing as freaks. As the circus moves from system to system, the Vong operatives scout the Galaxy to aid the upcoming invasion. While visiting the circus and doing the recruitment drive, the PCs stumble on the Vong’s true motives.

With the help of your players, you can determine the story’s angle. Perhaps your players want to be the Inquisitors hunting down Force sensitives. Perhaps they want to be the undercover Vong operatives who have to neutralize those darn Jedi who learned too much for their own good. Maybe the players want to be the circus performers protecting their families from the Sith and Jedi trying to snatch the children and break up the families.

Next, it’s time to brainstorm set pieces. When George Lucas plans his movies, he uses this concept: design a series of locales with an idea of really cool things that happen there. Then, design the story to integrate these cool locations. One day, George might have been eating at Arby’s when he thought how cool it would be to have a fight on flat-bed like vehicles hovering above a pit where a hungry monster reaches out, pulling victims into its gullet. He may have been mowing the lawn when he thought how neat it would be to see a high speed chase through the airspeeder lanes above Coruscant, with characters leaping from vehicle to vehicle.

Those two examples are set pieces. We haven’t yet figured out how they fit the story. We only have a sense of location and some neat special effects. Get the idea?

But how do you come up with set pieces? Think about the elements of your story. Then think what cool stuff could happen. The circus setting includes the chance to battle some cool beasts. Between the cages, big top and transports there are plenty of interesting locations for eye-poppingly groovy fights. Plus, the circus travels the Galaxy, so the campaign can include multiple unique star systems. There’s also the possibility of space combat as the circus leaves or arrives at a system.

With the Force sensitive circus example, let’s brainstorm various set pieces. Make them as varied as possible. Don’t come up with all cool lightsaber fights or giant monster battles. Keep in mind, this is Star Wars, and that means space battles. Come up with at least one starfighter/vehicle battle/chase. Don’t whine. It’s part of what makes Star Wars Star Wars.

Let’s do some brainstorming.

I’m thinking of old time circus trains, like the one from the start of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. How about a chase on top of a circus transport convoy as the circus vehicles move through a planet’s atmosphere? Various beasts reach through the bars (the hull slides away so the crowds can get a peak at the beasts and consequentially want to attend the show) to snag the characters running on the roof.

I’m thinking of a clown car, a tiny automobile which impossibly spews out a hundred clowns. We could play on that concept by having the PCs think they’re about to fight a single small circus starship… but a hundred tiny ships impossibly pop out of the circus vehicle. Oops.

Can these set pieces be used in any era? Yes. Do I have any idea how these encounters fit the story? I don’t even know what story I’m telling yet!

By taking canon and altering a single element and creating a what-if hypothetical situation, you can analyze the effect of the variable on the era. Then, take this unique idea to your friends and run it by them. From their reaction, develop the angle you’re going to take. Finally, create a multitude of set pieces that can be used to craft the adventure.

Some people love the concept of an Alternate Universe, especially GM Chris from the Order 66 Podcast at d20radio.com. He wondered what would happen if Anakin Skywalker let Mace Windu slay Palpatine in the middle of Episode 3. According to Chris’s logic, the war quickly ends. Anakin grows resentful of the Jedi, especially Mace’s decision to exact justice without an arrest. Anakin resigns from the Jedi Order and raises Luke and Leia with Padme on Naboo. He becomes increasingly bitter, bad-mouths the Jedi and insists he train the children himself. Padme secretly takes the kids to the Jedi Temple, where they are accepted. Anakin blows a gasket and leaves Padme. He dies as a lonely bitter moisture farmer on Tattooine. Padme passes away soon after. Having lost his parents, Master Luke Skywalker seems to have slain a Jedi librarian, stolen a Sith holocron and vanished. When he shows up in the Outer Rim on a random security recording ten years later, the PCs are called in by Jedi Master Leia Skywalker to find her brother. Because there is a chance Luke has gone Sith, everything needs to be kept hush-hush, so the Senate doesn’t flip its lid.

Wow. What a cool story, and it all unravels from altering the single variable of Anakin allowing Mace to execute Palpatine.

Like many folks, I wish the prequels had been better. My ultimate prequel dream without altering too much of the story would involve Padme turning out to be Darth Sidious’s Sith Master. Palpatine and Padme both manipulate Anakin (what better position to be in to manipulate someone than to marry him), but Palpatine ultimately sets up Anakin to slay Padme.

Other GMs cling to canon and refuse to put the heroes in a situation where they could alter the course of accepted events. These GMs usually refuse to allow the heroes to rub elbows with legendary characters. Heaven forbid they somehow manage to kill Boba Fett. Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi wouldn’t be able to happen as written without the Fett!

I believe that by deciding to enter the Star Wars universe with your own stories and your friends’ unique characters, you have already made the decision to create a ripple in the water. You are contributing to the officially recognized, fan-made expanded universe. This is nothing to fear. This is what we always wanted… to be a part of the Star Wars universe. Why would we want to play a Star Wars rpg if we couldn’t make a difference in the fate of the Galaxy? Dream big. Don’t be afraid to mess with canon. Some of the most exciting ideas come from poking at a variable and studying the ripple effect.

The purpose of this experiment is to create a gripping take on the Star Wars stories and to give your friends’ PCs the chance to do great deeds and make a difference in the fate of the Galaxy…

Call it what you want. It sounds like an alternate universe to me.

Vic Mignogna : Vader Did You Know?

2010-07-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

Episode 1: Observations from a 2 Year Old Gamer

2010-07-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

In 1978 I took my first step into a much larger world: Star Wars gaming. There were no WOTC or West End Games products. The only dice I owned were for Yahtzee and Mousetrap. I had action figures. I had my imagination, and equally important, I had imaginative friends with action figures. Sesame Street building blocks formed the catwalks and walls of the Death Star. The couch formed the Death Star trench. Ross, Terry and I got together with our boxes of heroes and spaceships to form the coolest, largest Star Wars armies in St. John, Indiana.
My mother came up with the ingenious idea of using finger nail polish on the undersides of the figures’ feet to identify my toys as mine. In our neighborhood sandboxes and backyards, we were roleplaying before we were even in kindergarten.
I have run Star Wars D6, RCR and SAGA over the past 12 years with varying degrees of success, from my current special SAGA event at the Buffalo Gamers Society to a dreadful failed campaign where the player characters turned on one another so badly they trussed up one of their own, then engaged in a swoop race to get the one shuttle that would take them off the forest world and leave the rest behind to kill each other. Hopefully none of you will fail as badly as I did with that campaign. Star Wars Saga aficionado and master GM Donovan Morningfire wrote, “I think there's a written obligation in the Great GM Codex that cites every GM must have at least five such [boneheaded] moments in their GMing career.”
I’ve used what I gained from that failure ever since.
In this blog, I wish to explore the creative process of conceiving, designing, writing and executing longer-form adventures and campaigns, drawing from my work on the Corellian Diet Breakers and House of Wookies campaign.
At the risk of sounding like the guy behind you in the supermarket checkout line who wants to show you 30 minutes of cellphone video of his kid, who bears a remarkable resemblance to the Tazmanian Devil, let me tell what happened this morning. My wife’s great-niece, Abby, was over for her weekly visit. She is almost three and has a wonderful vivacious tomboy personality. I got her hooked on Star Wars through the “Christmas Tauntauns” video on youtube and Atomfilms.com. Now, she loves my beanie baby Jawa and adores wearing my stormtrooper mask. She regularly says, “Han Solo is a cutie.”
Today, Abby was playing with a stormtrooper action figure, not the Hasbro plastic one (for you protective parents ready to point out toy safety), the Just Toys rubber figure. She noted the appearance of the stormtrooper’s codpiece and declared, “The stormtrooper is wearing a diaper.” That made a lot of sense to me, given how prone they are to surprise and getting blasted to death. How practical of the Empire to make stormtroopers wear diapers, so when they expire and relieve themselves at the moment of death, there is minimal mess. The armor can be hosed off and passed on to the next trooper.
She repeatedly made the stormtrooper fall off my desk and hit the ground with a splat sound. At three, she had discovered the joy of railing kills. Most of you know the railing kill from low budget action films where bad guys are blown away on staircases or rooftops. They fall off the stairs or roof usually over a conveniently placed railing.
The stormtrooper must have fallen to his death 50 times. I opened my rpgdeck freeware and played sound effects of dying troopers, eventually finding a prolonged “Yowwwl!” Abby howled with delight, like Salacious Crumb dismembering a protocol droid. “I love when stormtrooper falls,” she told me.
I was reminded of the bottomless pits all over Star Wars Land. The place was designed for stormtroopers to fall screaming, so Abby and the rest of us kids could howl with delight. It is cool.
Which reminds me of the last game I ran. It was Part 1 of a three-part original adventure called Corellian Diet Breakers, run for the Buffalo Gamers Society. I had 7 players, more than I’d anticipated. Three of them played Jedi. The first encounter was a starship battle. The PCs had a single Surronian Conqueror-Class Assault Shuttle, which I’d already tweaked by giving it a blaster turret, so more players could be involved in combat. Besides two people shooting, one flying, one co-piloting, one working mechanics and another handling shields, there was still a lone Jedi, untrained in computers or mechanics using the Force to twiddle other people’s fingers. He spent a couple of combat rounds studying his character sheet, struggling to find something to do. Finally, he chimed in with, “Can I use Move Object to knock a starfighter into an adjacent ship?”
Several players were well-versed in the rules. They knew about ranges and modifiers, what the powers could and could not do. I knew his first level character would not be able to pull this off. But… I saw the excitement in the player’s eyes. I envisioned a vulture droid suddenly moving horizontally into the path of another. I could see the cool explosions. I felt the same excitement as the Jedi. Players immediately lobbied on why I shouldn’t allow this. I shook my head at them and said, “It’s cool and amuses me so much, he’s got to have a shot at it.”
I made up the DC number. The player beat it. The targeted ship took more damage than its remaining hit points. Kaboom! The ship it crashed into limped out of the collision and was quickly blasted to scrap. The next day on the Buffalo Gamer’s Society message board, the Jedi player wrote that his favorite part of the game was “being the most useful Jedi on the ship by Force pushing one of the enemy ships into another one. It was more than any other Jedi did on the ship.”
It felt like I’d made the right call, but it wasn’t until a couple nights later when I found a reply to my thread on the WOTC forums about running games with large groups I knew I’d made the right call. GweK advised me, “Make sure every player gets to do at least one cool thing per session.”
As GMs, I think that is the key to running a successful Star Wars game. If that means, saying, “Fudge it” to the rules, so be it. If it makes us as rabid with excitement as a two year-old watching a railing kill, then it’s the right thing to do.
Darth Draukaunus of the d20 Radio forums had a similar issue when a Jedi PC leapt up an AT-ST, cut through the entry hatch and took out the driver. I sympathized, because in the first SAGA game I ever ran, my Wookiee and Rodian PCs accomplished similar moves, climbing the legs then blasting the trapped pilot. Draukaunus worried if this was going to happen again if he placed an AT-ST in front of the PCs. This really interested me, because I solved the unbalanced aspect of my PCs marching into Imperial-held territory blasting away with the AT-ST by having an AT-AT show up and put the AT-ST-driving PC in his place. Many posters responded to the thread by saying, “Rule of Cool is very important.”
My wife played the Rodian marching the AT-ST back to its owners, blowing up speeders left and right before being penned in a courtyard with an AT-AT. She still talks about it. It is her defining SAGA moment. She would not be this into the game. It would not be near as epic to her if I had placed realistic DC numbers in front of her and her Wookiee counterpart, denying her the chance to conquer the walker.
In conclusion, when we’re GMing SAGA, and we’re faced with a situation where a player wants to attempt something so crazy it just might work, think about how cool it would be to see it happen. Does the thought make you and your players screech like a two year-old watching stormtroopers fall in slo-mo, or like me with a pile of action figures with nail polish on their feet? Assign a DC, and prepare for something epic to transpire.

Prologue

2010-07-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

George Lucas’s epic novel Star Wars begins with the words “Another Galaxy, Another time.”

A variation on those words, “A long time ago in a Galaxy far, far away” propels us into the movie that has shaped three generations.

As Gamemasters and authors of long form Star Wars Saga modules and campaigns, we have the opportunity to craft memorable gaming sessions that embody the Star Wars spirit. Through applying the ancient storytelling techniques chronicled by Joseph Campbell in Hero With a Thousand Faces and by creating breathtaking, action-packed encounters, we will deserve to preface our work the way the authors of the best Star Wars books and movies do. I find it daunting to write those words, because by doing so I am making a promise to my readers and players that what follows will live up to the Star Wars name.

Together we can learn to make campaigns that accomplish just that. The purpose of this blog is to explore the process of creating memorable long form Star Wars adventures. Throughout the upcoming entries, I will reference my progress through the House of Wookiees campaign, Corellian Diet Breakers, and other original pieces as they progress from flicker of an idea to final draft.

Let’s write those words magical together. Create a new Word document. Bust open a new notebook if you prefer (as I do) the pen and paper route. Take a deep breath. As you reach for the keyboard or put ink to paper, you can hear the lightsabers ignite. You can hear the blasters fire and starships soar overhead.

A long time ago in a Galaxy far, far away.

Now we’ve done it. I guess we’ll just have to tell one whopper of a tale set in our favorite Galaxy.

May the Force be with us.

Garrett Crowe