Alternate Realities

[K_Feldspar]

I usually run my campaigns in parallel with the story from the original three movies. From time to time I have them interact with one of the characters, or participate in action from the movies. Usually not Luke on account of since no one liked his whining in New Hope and they treat him badly because of it.

In any case here's a good story. I had a team of 5 or so players who were playing maybe 300 point characters at the time. I forget, it was years ago. The team went in to infiltrate, and sabotage some manufacturing plant.

Now, one of the characters was an old Imperial officer turned rebel. His name was Nigel, and he was the demolitions expert. Nigel had requisitioned quite a bit of dentonite for this mission. To prepare he went about setting up a back pack with the dentonite and a detonator.

I in my infinite wisdom decided I didn't want them to blow up the factory. So I had a surprise waiting for them. Vader was pursuing their jedi, and was there to capture or kill them.

I think the group had split up, but Nigel had just placed the detonite when Vader appeared in front of him. Nigel calmly said, "Oh, bother," and turned the tables on me detonating the bomb. I believe one of the other pcs said, "Absorb dissipate that!" Being Vader I was going to let him survive, he's more machine than man after all. Easy to get replacement parts.

It was then we remembered the thermite Nigel carried in his regular pack. That place went up like the fourth of July. I felt I couldn't bend the rules that much, after all Nigel had sacrificed himself to rid the galaxy of Vader. I did wind up bending the rules a little more though. If I played out the damage rolls right I would have killed the entire party.

Short of it was when Endor came around it was a more even slugging match when a larger rebel fleet showed up, and there was no Vader to make sure the 2nd Death Star was fully operational. As long as the players are ok with it I'll let them do pretty much whatever. As a GM I can pretty much wing the rest. Hope this long winded post was interesting for you.

[KageRyu]

That's cool as heck K_Feldspar. When I started running Star Wars I often ran my campaigns in tandem to the timeline of the first 3 movies. I gave the players so many oportunities to interfere with the plotlines of the trilogy it wasn't even funny (and if they had, I would have explored the outcome). Heck, in one game, it started out where the players bumbled in on a blaster fight between stormies and some other guy (rebel agent). The guy got hit pretty hard, and went down, the players, not liking the empire too much wasted the stormies, and rushed over to the guy. With his last ounce of strength he reached out with a data crystal in hand and said, "...Ambassador Leia...must get to...Alderaan..." and died.
Then the players bumbled so bad time and again...fumbled astrogation roll after astrogation roll (that'll teach them to put all their dice in combat skills)...almost got caught repeatedly, finally, after a grueling space chase, getting stranded on a backwater system, and nearly being captured by Vader Himself, they met up with a rebel contact who beamed the information on the data crystal to Ambassador Organna's ship... hehe
That was a whole lot of fun. And the whole time the players had actually No clue as to what they had UNTIL the moment the rebel operative said he'd transmit it to Leia over a secure beam! Then they slapped their foreheads, groaned, and made other coments along the lines of "duh!"
I love "infinity" campaigns. It's half the fun of playing a game set in your favorite movie or TV setting.
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[netjedi]

Some advice I can offer is to document the changes you are making either for yourself or maybe a player handout explaining to some extent what has happened and what has not. I ran an alternate universe campaign where during the great Sith Wars the Sith were defeated but not to the near extinction that happened and they have been a reoccurring threat to the Republic which still exists. Anakin left the Jedi order due to it being a corrupt organization under the control of the Senate and he formed a group called Templar Knights that is run by him and his two children and run out of Zonama Sekot. There were also a bunch of other changes like Yoda, Mace and Chewbacca running the largest organized crime ring in the galaxy called the Tribunal. In the end my notes of all the different organizations and player hand outs explaining the differences helped keep the continuity around and helped them understand where everything was going. It was a blast while that group lasted.
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"Dig it. Who's the man? I'm the man. I'm a bad man. How bad? Real bad. I'm a 12.0 on the 10.0 scale of badness." The Evil Midnight Bomber

Wanted Poster

[KageRyu]

[Argamoth]

Keeping track of stuff can be difficult, especialy when you have lots of NPCs running around doing their own thing.

[Volar the Healer]

[Jedi Knight Jael Weiss]

I might have already posted this a long time ago (it's been a while since I have posted here; sorry about that, but it's good to be back!), but you idea of an "alternate time-line" can be a lot of fun if done properly. Here's how it was done when I was a player back in 1992 in Georgia:

Our characters (I was a Jedi, we also had a Tech, a Smuggler, a Brash Pilot, and at least one or two others which I cannot remember what they were), got knocked into intergalactic space and encountered a massive droid planet that was bent on building a hyperdrive so they could travel to our galaxy and conquer it. We managed to destroy the hyperdrive they were working on, and in a series of good dice-rolling the hyperdrive caused the eventual destruction of the droid world. However, when our group went back to our galaxy, we rolled a complication, and ended up next to the Death Star as it destroyed Yavin IV. We then saw a live feed of the execution of Leia Organa and the declaration of the end of the Rebellion.

We decided to travel to Tatooine, and eventually we discovered that the timeline was messed up in that Luke Skywalker was with his aunt and uncle when the stormtroopers attacked his home and killed all three of them. From there, it was all downhill- Kenobi managed to hire Solo and Chewie, they get captured by the Death Star, Solo refuses to rescue Leia ("Better her than me" and no Luke to convince him otherwise), Kenobi gets the droids on-board the Falcon and dies at the hands of Vader, Solo gets the plans to the Rebel base at Yavin IV, collects his reward and leaves, and without Luke to fire the torpedoes & Solo running interference for him, the Rebel attack fails and the Empire is victorious.



The interesting aspect of this campaign, however (and one you should consider if you do an alternate-time line of some kind), is that each of our characters had a "counterpart" in this universe. The Brash Pilot, for instance, had a counterpart who was a ruthless and evil Fleet Admiral in the Empire, in command of his own SSD. I, of course, had a Dark Jedi as a counterpart, trained by a Dark Master named Thanatoosa.

Very fun! Unfortunately, I never did finish that campaign before I left there. Hope there are a few ideas here you can use!

Jael...
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"Of the making of books there is no end, and much study wearies the body..."- Solomon

[Trusty]

Our campaign is an "infinities" campaign. They are more fun!

In our campaign, the history is that Luke, Leia, Han, etc... never existed. But we follow the timeline up through the end of Dark Empire. Wedge Antillies destroyed the Death Star (without the help of the force, btw), Vader killed Palpatine for other reasons, etc...I made up ways around it. We play about 30 years after the events of Dark Empire. The Force is out of balance completely. Lightside, Darkside, and "gray" side Jedi are everywhere and while they are powerful, they are becoming more common(about one in a billion are force-sensitive, in the SW universe, that is a lot) and no one fears them. The galaxy is divided by sectors between the Republic Alliance, the Sith Galactic Empire (take that George Lucas, there still be Sith here) led by the resseructed Emperor, along with two Sith, and then there's the Mandalorians (led by twin grandkids of Boba Fett who's only purpose in reconstituting the Mandalorian Empire is to defeat the clones and wipe awaythat chapter of their family history; so they are mostly neural unless someone interferes with their goals of defeating the Clone "empire" . Anyway, those three factions lay claim to 80% of the sectors... Also in our campaign stormtroopers are no longer clones...because an old force sensitive clone reconstituted the clone army and their ships on Kamino, so they are wrecking havoc in the universe trying to gain sectors which pisses the Fett's off. And also, the Black Sun had also sent a lone R2 unit to Geonosis and restarted the Droid manufacturing and now a Droid "empire" is also wrecking havoc in our universe. And the Black Sun itself is in the shadows with hands in everything.

I too, want our characters to be the main hero's...but we've all agreed to play once a wek for three to four years at least, so we have started small (like Luke, Liea, Han, etc...), but as the characters progress, their involvement in the events of the galaxy will become greater and greater. Right now though, they are lowly tramps (and two are "Jedi") in the Minos Cluster.

The WEG stuff is so great in its writing and detail; and also flexability that Star Wars is a great setting for RPG'ing without needing the main story arc and still have great settings and material to work with. I see no reason why to use the main story arcs in our campaign. having played d6 both ways, "infinities" campaigns are always more fun.
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Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional!