Stormtrooper Fatigue

[Bradywan]

I have a question for all my fellow GM's out there, how much/many of the Empire's resources do you use?

I'm working on a campaign, and I'm trying to avoid a situation I've been in before. Basically, in a previous campaign, all we fought were Stormtroopers. Every encounter we had was a squad of Stormtroopers. Boarding a freighter? Squad of Stormtroopers. Trouble in the cantina? Squad of Stormtroopers. Opened your rations? Stormtroopers inside.

How many GM's use the full range of Imperial forces? Yes, Stormtroopers, but what about army and naval troopers? COMPFORCE, ISB, Imperial Customs? Do your players even care? Or is an Imperial Encounter, an Imperial encounter?

I'm already planning on using Black Sun in lieu of generic pirates, not to mention Hutts, The Tenloss Syndicate, and several bounty hunter guilds (The Mantis Syndicate, House Renliss, etc) to keep things for already being too Imperial.

How do you guys handle Imperial encounters without too many Stormtroopers, and do your players care? This is only my second post here, please be kind

[shootingwomprats]

In my games characters don't get Stormtroopers very often. I use all of the Imperial resources, they have fought against techs, met scientists, farmers, security/MPs, officers, naval, army, pilots, all of it. They key, even in a Rebellion Era game or similar, is not to tailor all your adventures around a heavy Imperial presence. They can run into space security, city law enforcement, gangs, private security forces and so on.

Not every encounter has to be man vs man. There is man vs creature, man vs unknown, mystery, environment, culture, tons of things you can stage your encounter around.
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[garhkal]

Where it makes sense, i use army troopers, compnor troopers, naval troopers, ISB agents, and customs officials. Unfortunately some encounters will always have stormies!
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[TyCaine]

I agree with SWR and do similarly to garhkal

In my SWU Stormtroopers are the elite shock troops, yes you may occasionally get a rookie batch (though in my SWU you rarely get full squads of Rookies) but for the most part Stormies are what comes down the pipe if you really stuck your foot in it.

My players tend to encounter Army or Navy troopers more than anything as the main Empire encounter force, with ISB and CompForce thrown in for good measure, if they meet stormtroopers they are generally in smaller numbers but are a force to be reckoned with and are generally met with comments from my players along the lines of "oh s#!t!".



T.C.
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"For every person with a spark of genius, there are a hundred with ignition trouble."

[DougRed4]

Stormtroopers in my game are pretty common. But they've also run into Shadowtroopers (elite stormtroopers dressed all in black), a Dark Jedi/Inquisitor and his minion, bounty hunters, other security forces, Imperial custom agents, ISB agents, and many other adversaries.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[atgxtg]

Good job Bradywan,

It's important for a GM to keep things lively. If you feel that Stortroopers are becoming overused, find something else to use instead.

You could use reguarl army or naval troops on some encounters. In the films they often used a mix of Imperial troops. Another possibility could be to use some sort of special squad. One way to keep the bad guys from becoming bland is to personalize them somewhat. For instance, if one of our campaigns a PC sort of embarrassed a particular Stromtrooper officer, who them became a reoccurring NPC bent of vengeance. From that point on it wasn't just running into Stromtroopers, but which ones. I watched a perfectly great Con attempt go right down the drain when it turned out the trooper being conned already knew just who we were.

Another possibility is to have the Empire hire some local muscle to help, especially on fringe worlds. For instance, during the rebellion there are only about a squad of Stromtroopers on Mos Eisly, so I could see the Imperial hiring out some local toughs or bounty hunters to help deal with a dangerous band of rebels. And many planets probably have local police and military forces that you could use in place of the generic stromtroopers. If you mix of their appearance, equipment and methods you can keep your players on their toes and interested.

In one campaign I played in, we went to a planet that was kinda like the Old West but with blasters and aliens. The local law enforcement officer was a Sheriff, who was actually a pretty nice guy. He caused us more problems than a legion of stromtroopers , since we couldn't just blast him.

[Thx1138]

I have had my characters work alongside stormies and imperial forces, to take down a common enemy, mainly a crime lord who had managed to take over a planet and imprisoned the characters and imperial officers. The imperial officers realized that working with the players was better than nothing. Even the storm troopers realized it was better to fight with rebels than die in prison. You can do a few different things, just make it interesting.

[Bradywan]

Thanks for the replies all, I appreciate it. Everyone is offering good advice. I think I'm just traumatized. I truly did half expect everyone to say "Nope, we just use Stormtroopers"

Whew! Thanks!

Do you all do groups of 8, with each trooper mapped out? (like 2 heavies, 1 with a grenade launcher, a techie one, etc) Or just Stormies right outta the book?

[garhkal]

For me a squad is 10 men. Two 4-man fire teams, an officer and a 'grenadier'. Whether that grenadier is a heavy weapon specialist (light repeater), or a grenadier (grenade launcher or missile launcher) depends on what i am having them do.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Savar]

The weird part i just looked up storm troopers.

Imperial army troops have better stats.

[garhkal]

I have mentioned that before. Regular army troopers and even naval troopers seem to have better base stats than storm troopers do. So either A) there was a screw-up somewhere, or B) those stats listed already take into account the armor dex penalty.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Raven Redstar]

You could add in some zealous COMPNOR troops for some extra fun. Crmcneil came up with some additional Compforce types to round out the tedious nature of just having Assault troops.

http://rancorpit.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5379

I like these, and I'm thinking I might come up with some stats akin to Guardian_A's massive NPC collection to add to my ranks of possible baddies to toss at my PCs.
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RR
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[Zarm R'keeg]

[garhkal]

[RyanDarkstar]