New life in an old campaign - help!

[Mojomoe]

Heya, folks!

So, I'm running a campaign with a group that I've been playing with for 15-20 years. We just recently returned from a break of ~10 years, picking up the same characters right where we left off (a little older and wiser ).

We've had three good adventures in the new campaign, having them run cargo and get mixed up in all sorts of shenanigans, keeping them on the run. I'm about to start the next big adventure, and ideally I'd like to infuse some fresh excitement into the campaign, really make things new and exciting again. This is where I need your help.

I'm curious how some of you who have run long-term campaigns have managed to keep it fresh. In some ways this is like a good marriage; the simple answer would be, "end the campaign, start over with new characters." BUT, my goal is to keep the current ones going and make us all feel a little more alive and excited.

Here's my problem: My characters have done it all. I've got an expert pilot, a jaded pirate, and a galactically-ranked slicer (8D+ in computers!). They've: Fought for the Rebellion, battled AT-ATs at Hoth, helped set up the base at Yavin, been involved in ancient prophecies, uncovered secret Jedi temples, fought, killed, and resurrected Dark Jedi, had limbs cut off, lost friends, gained and lost galactic bounties, overthrown Imperial sector lords, undermined crime bosses, double-crossed Jabba the Hutt, outrun Imperial Star Destroyers (not the local bulk cruisers, mind, I'm talkin' about the big Corellian ships now), had four-way lightsaber duels in the middle of a hurricane with a Force ghost, discovered long-lost twins, and been cloned by the forces of evil.

Sooooooooooooo.... The next time their cargo run is ::shock!:: a load of Imperial contraband, or the Rebels they're working for are actually part of a crime syndicate, it just doesn't have the bang it once did. Short of sending wave after wave of Death Stars at them (the worst kind of escalation!), I need to figure out where to take these fellas!

Some things that have occurred to me: They've been on the run or leg down for many of their adventures. Perhaps it's time to begin pre-planning? (though it has to be their idea...). The pilot could start a squadron, the pirate could start a syndicate, the slicer could begin trading in Imperial secrets. At this point I'm willing to try some risky stuff - love interests (always dangerous in an RPG setting), letting them drive the plot a bit...

Thoughts? I'm open to just about anything!

[shootingwomprats]

Well the first thing that comes to mind, it take away their base. Strip away all of there support, be it people, equipment, etc. Have those very same people turn on them. For example: someone or something has maneuvered and trumped up charges that the group are in fact traitors or whatnot. In order to clear their names they must first escape then find out how to prove their innocence.

If you go this route you strip away their contacts and much of the direct help they would get even from friendly connections. You cast them adrift in the mean old galaxy where their notoriety for once its now a hindrance.

Essentially you are taking everything that they have earned, turned it on its head and now using it against them. Just some food for though.
_________________
Don Diestler
Host, Shooting Womp Rats
The D6 Podcast
http://d6holocron.com/shootingwomprats
@swd6podcast, Twitter

[DougRed4]

Some great advice from shootingwomprats.

Ordinarily I'd say there's a million plots one could do with SW, but you do seem to have explored a great variety of stuff, and most of it sounds like a lot of fun, too!

I personally find SW a little more limiting in what you can do with it, compared to, say, Star Trek, where things like zombies, time travel, or evil dopplegangers from another dimension fit nicely. Once I even did a cross-over sort of adventure for Trek where our characters faced off with orcs and a troll from Lord of the Rings (a holodeck tale); I like Wars better than Trek but it is more limited.

That said, there's still a ton of different stories one can do. Espionage or mystery or high-tech slicing or epic space battles. One session we had fun by sitting around playing sabacc (I mocked up an actual sabacc deck), and later that session they fought a Dark Jedi. Another time they infiltrated and sabotaged an Imperial facility while the other half of the group blasted the base from above it (with their ship).

It sounds like you've covered a lot of different types of adventures. In my long-running (23+ years) supers campaign (being modern, it too probably has a wider array of options than Star Wars), we continually introduce new PCs, which gives everyone a feeling of freshness. We've never really been stuck with it, either, as the canvas is big enough for it that there are endless story ideas to explore (see my sig if you want to read over some of our adventures for either Wars or V&V).
_________________
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

[aegisflashfire]

Make it more personal. Make one of the players a mole, or coerce them, hold a loved one hostage or give them moral gray areas to wrestle with. It doesn't have to be bigger; just needs to hit home more.
_________________
http://swfallingstar.podbean.com
GM of Falling Star: D6 Star Wars Campaign Podcast

[Mojomoe]

These are great suggestions I'm seeing here!

DougRed, are you saying you cycle in new player characters over time? Do you cycle the old ones back in after a while? Do you make the choice to change it up, or do the players? One thing we've done with some success is transition PCs into GM characters, then I as the GM will play them in the same spirit while the player tries on a new character. We've only done it a few times, but it's relatively successful.

I will say that I'm amazingly proud of our long and storied campaign and its characters. Especially our continuity, which considering we started so long ago, is immaculate and multiple adventure threads and characters are interwoven beautifully. A long-crafted campaign really is an amazing thing!

Shootingwomprats, I really like your idea of putting them on the run, sort of Jason Bourne style. Since they're used to relying on their luck and connections, putting them at odds to that might be just the thing to spice it up. My group is also very wary of plot twists, since they're seen and done so much over the years. I know the thing that makes for good drama is attachment to other PCs, and I occasionally find it difficult to build that attachment when they're hesitant to trust anyone new - and for good reason.

Perhaps another thing to do is to challenge their humanity, as it were. I know I've got a veteran pilot and a gruff pirate, so having their innocent cargo run turn out to be contraband is not likely to spark them. However, if the innocent contraband they just sold turned out to be slaves, or something really distasteful - keeping in mind with sullying their reputations, or marring what ethical code they have left - that might just do that.

Anyone have success touching on these hot button issues? Poking player morality is often a tough one - especially considering in a recent game, our pirate pushed a cargo container full of unarmed Stormtroopers off a cliff 'just because.' I had to threaten him with a dark side point - I don't think it'll be very easy to trigger his Morality Clause (TM).

[garhkal]

If you have that skilled a slicer in the group, perhaps every company in the Corporate sector, every hutt org, black sun etc would be after his butt to either work with them or deny his level of skill to exist that could work against them.

But with that much experience in the gruop, i don't really see much chance you can 'keep it fresh' for them.
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[atgxtg]

If they've done it all then I guess it is time for a change.

How about you prep for the Battle of Endor and run the fall of the Empire? Then you can stop their been hunted (for a time) and let them be famous heroes for a bit. Heroes who naturally are called in to help establish the New Republic.

Getting rid of the same old Big Empire, Small Rebels thing will definitely give the feel of a major shift in the campaign. It opens the door to all sorts of adventures that weren't possible before.

And the nice thing is that even after Endor, the Empire is still out there, so you can bring it back down the road. Or even bring it back as multiple factions.

[DougRed4]

[Ral_Brelt]

Another option to consider is a droid revolution. It could start small and simple in current adventures... the auto chef starts making bad food, or a traffic control droid goes 'on the fritz'. Lay out clues for the party...ramp up as time goes on. Maybe a training flight has compromised R units that fault the nav data and dump the wing into a nebula with high rad levels that kill the pilots but leave the machines okay. Set some nasty high DCs for your slicer to deal with, and then hide the truth behind another lie...let the PCs think its the Imps...lead them to a 'secret base' with the idea it has to be a hard target kill op....only to find out its a rebel cell that was gettin close to discovering the droid mastermind. They're twitchy...use that against them...play with the players, not just their characters.

[garhkal]

His slicing is high but is his droid programming high as well? If not, that droid uprising mentioned above by Ral_Brelt would be a great way to hit them.
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[cheshire]

[lurker]

[Bobmalooga]

Years and years ago I watched (back to back in a theater double feature mind you...) Event Horizon and Lost in Space and I used a combination of those two plots: A hyperdrive mishap caused the ship to pop out of hyperspace well off course and the players had to figure out not only how to get home, but where they were going to come up with the usual stuff like Fuel, food, water, medical supplies... I got 6 months worth of games out of that and had made all the players write out a list of items they carried on their person at all times or in the ship stores. Money became useless when they ran into civilizations that weren't part of the Empire, food became useless when they realized none of them could tell if something was poisonous or not...LOL.

My other favorite tactic is to steal the smuggler's ship...
_________________
No matter where you go, there you are...