Bringing a campaign together

[vanir]

I'm about to take over GMing for our party and taking them through a campaign from 1-2BBY onwards.

It's a varied party listing, with PCs like a disguise artist who will make a great espionage agent, but also obvious aliens like horansi and a coynite, who tend to stand out trying to infiltrate something like an imperial academy.

We have some political intrigue planned and I want to do some secret agent work on imperial worlds, but while I'm still writing and developing our future adventures, adapting published modules and such, so that I have a campaign direction and plan for the party, one of the things on my mind is the chasm between humanlike and very alien looking PCs.

I like to try to personalise the adventure content to the players so they feel personally invested in affairs, and it makes an interactive gameworld.
Thing is between human and alien PCs there are obvious changes in direction and I want to avoid splitting up the party except for short sidequests, wherever possible so everyone can always be involved as a group.

How do some of the experienced GMs approach this? I don't want the aliens delegated to background roles of hired mercs or talking pets, I want them to become as personally invested in adventures and outcomes as human characters, but during this era the main protagonist is of course the empire, which will be playing the central role as we try to construct a rebel cell and build a small space fleet to take part in later battles between the rebs and empire.

Say for example if I do a Horansi adventure about some homeworld crisis, it sort of becomes something the humans fall to the background and the aliens take the lead, but then when it's over it switches back around when we face imperial customs etc.

I'm just looking for ideas of bringing the party together as such a varied collection of species, to get all equally involved in everything we do, and emotionally attached to each other so if the kasa gets captured say, everybody else is really cut up about it and goes to any length to get him back. You really need a lot of working together and bond forming there.

Open to any input. I'm working so much on stuff it's like a messy cupboard in my head.

[Bren]

[Guardian_A]

In this kind of situation, the first thing I like to do is get my group together to talk about their characters. After all, they know their characters better than you do. They know their hopes & fears & what drives them to their goals. Ask them how they want their group to get along, and what would bind them together in comradre. More often than not, my group comes up with ideas that I never would have thought of.

If you want your players to feel personally involved in the game, take the time to figure out what motivates each character so you can use that. Is it greed? Revenge? Honor? Something else?

There are two fairly easy ways to keep a group together for this kind of campaign. 1. THe Charlies Angels approach: Have an annonamous employer who is only interested in employing them as a group. and 2. The A-Team approach: Have them accused of a crime they may-or-may-not have actually commited so that they need to stick together to clear their name and/or for safety.

A common tragety can help keep characters together as well. Maybe they didnt know each other, but they were the sole survivors of an Imperial bombardment? Maybe their families were all dissapeared under mysterious circumstances (Taken by the Imperials for questioning?) Or some other event that would either give them a common past, or a common goal.

Life Debts & family ties are also possible ways to help hold your group together.

If you want to make sure that everyone feels included, make sure that each character has a nitch. Then take the time to make sure that each player has a chance to shine as each session plays out.

[garhkal]

[Bren]

[vanir]

Some great input there, I really appreciate it. Bren you're really good at this.

I completely overlooked the tracc'sorr as a device, I'll work on something suitable and creative to try to set the stage for that.

Where I'm picking up is ex-Ryloth where we've just helped a local official with some slaver problems at a starport/bazaar. Classical urban warfare job as hired mercs waving our fee for salvage rights on enemy combatants, and acting as ad hoc promoters for the rebel alliance. We have a handful of tough ships and our aliens are tough in combat.

We were contracted for that job at nar shadaa and while we were there loaded our cargo holds with some local contraband and trade goods at low prices. So after Ryloth we're headed to Vergasso (we picked up some star charts along the way), where we can unload the merchandise for a small profit (hopefully enough to cover running costs), plus excess salvage from the Ryloth operation and be exposed to new adventure hooks there (I have a couple of directions in the works and a few sidequests).

The party is trying to gain the notice of rebel leaders, acting autonomously at this stage with only superficial contact. We've helped agents in the past and expressed interest, we have a sabre rake who is a quixotic jedi, his lightfoil was the subject of an adventure in which it was rebuilt into a full powered lightsabre and he found rudimentary training by a jedi hermit in hiding (who left subsequently to remain in hiding). The rebel agents have seen our sabre rake, now amateur jedi padawan and are interested in the fact our group is interested in them.

That lightsabre of his has been seeing some action and rebel agents are considering if they don't recruit him, it's only a matter of time before imperials come for him. He's a bit ignorant and doesn't fully appreciate how seriously the Emperor takes the jedi purge, he considers himself of little consquence in a huge galaxy. This has been useful at least in gaining the notice of influential rebels operating in the outer rim.

You can see where even at the beginning one of my first concerns was not to neglect the alien PCs by say, revolving party direction around the Jedi, hard to do given they can be plot-overwhelming characters. Even in the movies Lucas handled it by sending Luke off to Dagobah in ESB, I want to try to keep the party together and appeal to its many themes in adventure creation.

We have some beefed up transports and a rebel cell, working through local agents assigned a small squad of fresh SpecForce recruits for training purposes with our party, ostensibly as a kind of test for later taking a more direct role in rebel activities against the empire. We are aware their Infiltrator Sergeant is obviously reporting back to his commanders what we're like in action and as a group, it's like an on the job interview. We were told however to simply go about our business as usual and the squad were just along for training purposes, their sergeant has final say on what they become directly involved with so most of the time they're just self sufficient passengers. We're on our best behaviour, the aliens seem to like them (our mashi horansi loves the infiltrators and has started styling his equipment after them).

We have a disguise artist in the party and one adventure hook coming up is some political intrigue involving imperial double agents working with the rebel alliance, within Tarkin's sphere based at Eriadu. The job will be to assist some imperial navy pilots defection to the rebel alliance (we're at about 1BBY at the moment), people like Wedge. That's to tie our party into the battle of Yavin later as I'm planning on us being involved. Our setting is a sort of alternate timeline/story of the OT.

Some of the elements involved is the Imperial rivalries between the moffs and governers, the grand moff whose region Fondor shipyards is in for example is a direct rival with Tarkin whose base of operations at Eriadu overlaps in the expansion region around Bacrana and inner rim at wroona, so imperial patrols in the heart of some major navy routes in those areas are in some disarray, allowing for rebel strikes on things like mining transports (the area sources a lot of minerals needed for places like the Fondor shipyards, which produces ISD). Put simply the Colonies Grand Moff and the Rim Territories Grand Moff are rivals, their respective fleet vessels have even faced off on each other on occasion over who has jurisdiction.

So amid a task of helping some imperial navy pilots defect, we've got some sidequest hooks of making starship strikes against imperial transports in the region. Like rebel corsairs there I guess.

Actually contacting the imperial-rebel double agent over the pilot defection I'll probably handle with the disguise artist taking the lead I suppose.

But I love the idea that I can treat it as an infiltration to the governers palace at say, Eriadu or somewhere in Tapani space, which as Bren said probably has alien guards and things like that so the whole party can be involved.
Really helped me there actually. Much better than what I had in mind (I was thinking more like a death star deal where aliens stand out too much).

Spaceship combat is easy and the aliens make great boarders, our Kasa Horansi and Coynite excell in close combat and we have a Farghul who sometimes joins the group (part time PC, rest of time NPC or off screen).
We also have a new PC that's an avian near human starfighter pilot with a 5d base mechanical and 7d starting skill in piloting/gunnery, even in a mediocre starship he'll kick butt and he's got a tough one (a custom build mercinary starfighter as it was appropriate to background and helped compensate for the rest of the party having more CP). That guy's going to really benefit us in starship combat, he'll probably take half a dozen TIE on by himself.

[garhkal]

What do they do when they encounter 'standard' imperial customs areas? How do they get the aliens through (especially the coyonite), or their weapons?
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Bren]

Typically aliens aren't illegal per se, Wookiees being somewhat of an exception, and armed aliens shouldn't be any more problematic than armed humans.

Coynites export mercenaries off planet. They are members of the Mercenary Guild of Coyn, so the Guild must necessarily have ways of moving around and getting people through customs legally so that they can do business. Also, the government of Coyn is currently pro-Imperial so the Empire probably has no problem with Coynites moving about as a rule. The players could forge work papers or a mercenary contract (if the Coynite will accept the deception) or alternately they could put an agreement in place with the Coynite to work for one of the characters, or as previously mentioned have a tracc'sorr relationship. One problem may be that I think the Guild won't take contracts from the Rebellion at this time, so the Coynite character is going against the planetary government and official guild position. But given Coynite's high value of honor, individual Coynites and even entire Coynite clans may be anti-Imperial or even pro-Rebel. All these have been issues or plot points in our house campaign. The Coynite PC has been exiled by the High King of Coyn and is no longer allowed to set foot on the planet...consequences.

For other aliens documentation (real or forged) of occupation as a bounty hunter, security guard for a company, or body guard for an important or wealthy individual can all provide cover for carrying weapons on more civilized or heavily regulated planets. Another option is that some planets may not allow armed alien visitors - or even armed human visitors.

[vanir]

I suppose you'd say the party are medium level adventurers at this point I'm taking over as GM, having already been in some noteworthy adventures, several party members have collected 3 FP so far, nobody has managed any DSP. The powerful aliens initially opened the door on some great contracts.

Partly due to ship modifications we've just acquired forged documentation recently so rigged up some IPKC licensing for the aliens (and a freighter captain's powered armour). We worked early on developing some streetwise contacts through the Disguise Artist's social circles and at Nar Shadaa, so that we wound up in touch with an expert (relatively) forger/slicer.

He jimmied up some BoSS fake registration, IPKC licenses and alternate identities, we had variable transponders installed at Nar Shadaa to switch ship ID when doing anything naughty. Our fake IDs which cost a pretty penny are entered into the centralised HoloNet system and should pass a cursory records examination by low level customs database uplinks. We're in trouble if we come across highly ranked ISB, Ubiqtorate or Inquisitorium however. In that case it would be a fight to the death anyway, we don't like them, or escape at all costs if outmatched.

Essentially we're only in real trouble if there's a Star Destroyer in system or at a planet with a major Imperial garrison base, we can probably fight our way out of anything else. We don't stay in one spot long enough for something like a special detachment to arrive in system tailored for taking care of us. The Coynite will even take low powered blaster artillery/vehicle blaster shots on the chest okay in armour and is capable of cleaving his way into an armoured speeder. He's really scary come to think of it.

We had some pretty big melees against crime lords and bounty hunters at Nar Shadaa and other places and between the Mashi sniper/infiltrator and Coynite with armour/sword we found ourselves walking through some pretty heavy troops. Both the Kasa Horansi and Coynite are near maximum Str and big boys at around 2.7m height.
Then our jedi has been training in lightsabre skill as a sabre rake long before being formally initiated to jedi arts, now with lightsabre combat maintained he has 10d+1 skill (inc. penalty keeping power up) and 8d+1 damage, with the ability to parry blaster bolts so that puts his combat value up with the Coynite, not to mention shock value of big aliens and a jedi with a lightsabre (he has plate scout-armour under a cloak and looks very combat worthy in action). For other party members we have handheld repeaters, armour and support weapons nominally kept in concealed/shielded cargo space, in addition to highly personalised sidearms and equipment. Some heavy illegal weapons/equipment was one of the reasons for going to Nar Shadaa.

We figure as a party, we can get past most imperial inspections on forged documents, any hiccups and we can route most troubles with combat value, the scale of commitment or level of bosses to take us down are generally the kind of thing we're going to see coming and can run from.

One of the biggest expenses we took as a party was setting a standard of high sublight and hyperdrive speed on our tiny fleet, all the ships are well armoured/shielded and very fast. One of our main current tasks is developing our ship crewing skills, we only have two PCs currently that are any good plus a third about to join the party (and will train others).

[Whill]

The difficulty of aliens infiltrating Imperial installations is a problem I run into, and the main reason for a personal pet peeve of mine. I tend to have players that want to play aliens. And not only do they want to play aliens, but they want to play aliens that I don't prefer in my game. Rejecting a lot of player species preferences tends to turn players away.

So over the years, I have added to my list of pre-approved species to accomodate, and even created a several species to cover various species types but also mantain balance. I currently have about 25 species that are initially presented as "available" to play. If a player tells me they want to play something else, I encourage them to first look over the choices carefully in case they can make their concept work with what is there. If a player still wants to play another species not on the list, then I refer them to a secondary list of about 20 more available species. If they still want to play something not on either list, then I consider it and sometimes approve it as a "exception" if won't upset game balance and I can make the character concept work in my game.

But all that only increases the problem. So many cool alien species to choose from decreases the odds of having a player that actually wants to play a human PC. Not only do we have trouble with Imperial infiltration, but sometimes I have player groups without even one player that wants to play a human. So it goes from some aliens in the party to deal with, to no humans at all! I had to beg one player group for one of the players to please step up and play a human, just to have one single human PC in the group.

So what else have I done? I have several near-human species available to play (in other words, suggested compromises between playing humans and completely alien charaters). And aliens are just plain discriminated against in the Empire, so the life of an alien PC is not always adventure. Sometimes it can be downright frustruating (although the discrimination can create other adventure possiblities). And humans get bonus starting skill dice (with only the usual restrictions to skill dice allocation) to "game balance" them out to alien species special abilities, making human characters more versatile.

I personally love the ol' trojan horse, pretend to be Imperials to infiltrate the Death Star type of stuff, which is why it is sometimes a sore point for me having too many aliens in the party to deal with. Granted near-humans can sometimes make it work, and some completely alien species are humanoid and can still fit in stormtrooper armor. Honestly I have included the necessity for largley alien groups to infiltrate and just let the players deal with the complications, leading to very creative solutions on a couple occassions.
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[garhkal]

[vanir]

I haven't been GMing up to this point, I'm about to take over as GM.

We rounded the party with PCs like the freighter captain template, whose powered armour (purchased and modified at Nar Shadaa, a reinforced set of smasher armour basically, worn when he leaves the ship), compensates for his almost complete lack of combat skills. He has good knowledge/perception/mechanical/technical base and plays the smarty pants of the party, he just looks the part in a fight but it's just equipment.

Our Mashi Horansi has a 5d base Perception. The Kasa Horansi is also at max Knowledge base, which is quite high, that species substitutes Dex for Kno among cat aliens essentially, they're surprisingly smart considering they look like giant weretigers. Our Disguise Artist is very well rounded in attributes. The Coynite has 13d/19d attribute die so has high Dex/Str (not maxed) and good Per but is also fairly rounded, nobody is at min attribute in anything. The Players using aliens wanted to get the benefit of the alien type, but maintain versatility, this was built into how attributes and starting skills were distributed.

Our Sabre rake cum Jedi has a 4d base Dex and trained with his Tapani House as part of character background in the template incorporated skill of Lightsabre and they get a Lightfoil as starting equipment, which uses this skill, so he started at 6d Lightsabre skill, got that to 6d+2 through adventures, then met the Jedi hermit and specialised in a Lightsabre form (makashi duelling form) so since then has got to 7D+2 in his specialised form (half cost skill specialisation). He only has 3d+2 Sense skill and few powers but his base lightsabre is so high due to his template type...

Basically he's so good with a lightsabre based mainly on mundane duelling skill rather than skill with the Force. His base Str is only 2D+2 and only decent attributes are Dex/Per because as a quixotic Jedi variation of sabre rake he gave up an attribute dice for Sense skill at game start.

Our Disguise Artist PC has some streetwise contacts which were the subject of a sidequest at Nar Shadaa to seek out a forger/slicer, which we did. It was one of our tasks there, another was ship modifications that included a variable frequency transponder.
We fleshed out some licensing requirements in an earlier campaign (a mercinary party), so developed the IPKC Imperial Hunters licensing for permit-required equipment, generally the best kind to get away with small arms and armour on most worlds and keeping anything very illegal in concealed/shielded cargo spaces until in use. There is also regional Hunters licenses for non-Imperial worlds, Security Enforcement licensing for permit-required starship modifications, we have a big list of various licensing you need for different things.

Imperial Governers and the like do contract independent (Imperial friendly) Mercinaries on occasion and there are writs, permits and essentially a form of limited paramilitary licensing those companies can use to prevent entanglements by low level bureacrats like customs agents, during the period of their contract and regarding performance of their duties for the Moff or whoever, but this type of documentation is dangerous to forge for obvious reasons, any local bureacrats with genuine authority, or front line military commanders are likely to scrutinise it heavily and seek confirmation.

Thankfully with our party the need for some human PCs was recognised, you're either going to have them in the party or you'll wind up with some NPCd in the party, unless you're staying out of galactic affairs and use a game setting that's localised or tangential (like a campaign in the unknown regions, dealing with the chiss empire or something).

Previous campaigns as bounty hunters and mercinaries left fond memories and although this one has more alien PCs than that one (some aliens were NPCd/henchmen but the party was humans in powered armour), the value of some central party members being human was recognised. The sabre rake was useful for his aristocratic leaning, the freighter captain for his versatility in non-melee, the disguise artist for his espionage capabilities. These hopefully should round out the party. As every player wants to be the hero however, it's not the easiest thing to convince one to play a techie or a comic relief that can't shine in combat.

I'm sure every GM appreciates that whilst the RAW is there to play an astromech droid, it's not really going to happen unless as a henchmen additional character played by the same Player, his main character will be a combat or piloting expert or something heroic in the Arthurian sense.

[garhkal]

Wow... those are some pumped up pcs.. especially mr coyonite at 19d starting attributes.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Blue Glowie]

There's also the possibility of the ISB using aliens as hired out or low ranking agents, if the PC's could somehow establish or con their way into that relationship. Think Garindan.

[vanir]