Darkstryder Variations

[Wisconsin Wookie]

Good morning everyone. I have long read and appreciated the material on this site, but have only recently joined. After a long lay-off, I am hoping to get back into roleplaying more frequently.

To that end, I am planning on running the Darkstryder campaign. There's a lot to like in there and it will be a change from what my group has done in the past. In reading the forums, however, it appears that many are not all that crazy about the Darkstryder technology. I too am a little skeptical and am looking for alternative ideas. That aspect of the story seems just a bit too far out there. Anyone have any suggestions? What have other GMs done with that? Any ideas would be appreciated.

Also, one other related question, and if this needs its own thread, let me know. In the Darkstryder manual, the authors discourage force users in the campaign. Has anyone gone against that warning and if so, how did it turn out?

Thanks.

[Guardian_A]

I've played the Darkstryder campaign twice, the first time as a player and the second time as the GN. We went with the story "as-is" the first time and it went just fine. Since the technology only works in proximity to Kathol, it ends up completely nerfed once the characters leave the region. If your players dont mind the strange tech, then the storyline is fine, as-is.

The second time I played the campaign, I decided to spice it up a bit by using Sith artifacts and tieing it in with the rebuilding of the Jedi Order. With two of my players running aspiring Jedi, the Sith technology held a dark and seductive fascination for them. The Sith Holocron that "spoke" to them was a lot of fun. "I can teach you young Jedi, I contain Jedi teachings, . . . . I can help you learn what you need to survive, . . . . . " or "What do you really know of the Sith? Only what you have heard from the Jedi? Let me teach you the truth, . . . . "

As for discouraging Force users in the campaign, . . . . see above. And yes, it worked out beautifully. The first campaign we ran had one low level force user, we didnt have any problem in that campaign either.

[Bren]

Have the box, but never ran it. I didn't have the right group for it. Our main group already had long established characters that we wanted to continue to play, so I needed a new group that was likely to be around long enough to have a chance to finish the scenario. That group never materialized. From what I recall, it looked interesting and fun. And the ship has a nice cobbled together feel that I like, though I still don't see how they can possibly fit all those fighters and shuttles on or in a corvette size hull.

I know some people are put off by the multiple characters, but we have done that in many systems for decades. It started in Call of Cthulhu for in part to provide a mix between action and research characters and in part to have back ups in the event of sudden character mishap. We continued when we ran Star Trek (sent in between OldShow and NextGen) so that all players could have both a command/bridge staff PC, someone to go on away teams, and supporting characters. Also, since the players were running the ship there were a set of bridge, engineering, and medical slots that needed a character and the GMs perferred having players making those decisions and doing the character design. It left the GM free to create the adversaries and allies of the ship and crew. Really in a sense the players were playing the ship as an wholistic entity consiting of the vessel and her crew. Which became even more the case when we moved to a ship with a Self Aware computer. Really when running entire ships either players need to run multiple characters or the GM ends up running most of the ship (which seems suboptimal to me).

I assume the warning on force users is so that the pregenerated force sensitive character is not upstaged, out angsted, or otherwise made irrelevant.

[Wisconsin Wookie]

The second time I played the campaign, I decided to spice it up a bit by using Sith artifacts and tieing it in with the rebuilding of the Jedi Order. With two of my players running aspiring Jedi, the Sith technology held a dark and seductive fascination for them. The Sith Holocron that "spoke" to them was a lot of fun. "I can teach you young Jedi, I contain Jedi teachings, . . . . I can help you learn what you need to survive, . . . . . " or "What do you really know of the Sith? Only what you have heard from the Jedi? Let me teach you the truth, . . . . "


I am definitely intrigued by the idea. Can you give me a little more as to what you did? Was there a Sith temple and/or Sith Lord involved?

Also, in this case, did you replace the pre-generated characters with player-created characters?

[Wisconsin Wookie]

I know some people are put off by the multiple characters, but we have done that in many systems for decades... Also, since the players were running the ship there were a set of bridge, engineering, and medical slots that needed a character and the GMs perferred having players making those decisions and doing the character design. It left the GM free to create the adversaries and allies of the ship and crew. Really in a sense the players were playing the ship as an wholistic entity consiting of the vessel and her crew. Which became even more the case when we moved to a ship with a Self Aware computer. Really when running entire ships either players need to run multiple characters or the GM ends up running most of the ship (which seems suboptimal to me).

I hadn't thought of that, but that is a great point. Did there seem to be a "right" number of characters per player? At what point was it too many?

[Guardian_A]

I'll see what I can remember about the campaign. Its been quite a while.

The cast of characters were the same as they appear in the DarkStryder campaign. Each of the characters were allowed to build their own characters from scratch. The only details I gave them about the campaign ahead of time was that it was going to take place in a backwater part of the galaxy and it was going to deal heavily with Force related artifacts.

When we started the campaign, it played out around the same time as the Corellian Trillogy, and the two Force users from the group were young students from the Accademy on Yavin IV.

The Darkstryder Fortress was a Sith Temple, and the Darkstryder Artifacts were turned into Sith Artifacts. As the campaign progressed, it became more and more common to stumble across a peice of Sith lore or some form of Sith weapon

As for a Sith Lord, yeah, I ended up replacing the DarkStryder creature with a Sith Lord of similar power.

The Artifact of Aaris turns out to be a powerful Sith Holocron. Once the one or more of the player's characters pass their willpower check and recognize the artifact as the source of the crew going nuts, the Holocron seems to go dormant. The Commander of the FarStar decides the object is to important to destroy and decides it should be kept in safe keeping onboard the ship. Later in the campaign any Force sensitives on the ship start hearing it talking to them. The Holocron also acted as a good way to stear the players back in the right direction on the occasions when they overlooked an important clue or element of the story. When anyone tries to access the Holocron, it proves uncooperative or misleading. However, should any of the Force sensitive characters on board the FarStar be interested in learning from it, it will provide a wealth of Sith knowledge. The temptation proved too much for one of the players, . . . . . That character nearly went down a very dark path.

In a nut shell, I tried to keep the storyline as intact as I could, only making adjustments as needed to shift the focus from the DarkStryder technology towards Sith lore instead. It was actually a very easy conversion.

[Bren]

[garhkal]

Add another one into the "Got the box, never ran it" group.
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