Is This A Good Story Arc?

[The Jedi Master]

Came up with this to get a campaign started, getting the characters from being Fringe rouges to being Rebels. Want to know what you all think of it. Don't worry--the players don't have Rancor Pit accounts.

It has been a week since Yavin. The PC's are the crew of a smuggling ship just trying to get by in a crazy galaxy. They get a seemingly simple run to some planet or another (Tatooine, maybe?) that pays surprisingly well, in advance. They take it, and the trip is uneventful (except perhaps one skill roll to introduce the rule of thumb), but when they get there they get into trouble with Imperial Customs. Turns out, they were carrying crates of heavy weaponry--something that a simple bribe can't wave away.

They are now on the run and have a bounty on their heads. They are aided by a young mechanic, who agrees to help them lie low for a while... in exchange for passage to the planet Demar, in Brak Sector (see Flashpoint!: Brak Sector). After getting their ship back from the impound yard (annoying the Imperials and getting the bounty raised), they manage to escape.

The PC's probably plan to drop her off and be done with it, but of course their ship breaks in a critical way, and repairs are too expensive to get them from commercial services. They find the mechanic, and again, she offers them free repairs, if they help her out. At this point, they find out that she is an orphan looking for her parents. They raid an Imperial base for the necessary parts (again, annoying the Imperials) they fix their ship.

They hop from world to world, each adventure bringing them a little closer to the mechanic's parents (and annoying the Empire even more, getting the bounty raised to astronomical levels). They probably run into several bounty hunters, from incompetent Team Rocket-style thugs to Boba Fett level predators.

Finally, after a tip-off from Ti'mere's InfoServices (again, see Flashpoint!: Brak Sector), they find the parents. As it turns out, these are not the actual parents, but actually Imperial spies who planted all the evidence. They take the mechanic in for interrogation and leave the many, many stormtroopers to capture the PC's.

After a prison break adventure, in which they fail to rescue the mechanic, they must join the Rebel Alliance to launch a raid on the prison and save the mechanic. After the epic battle sequence, the mechanic thanks them and joins the Rebellion herself. She is still looking for her parents (providing a potential future adventure hook if she finds a more reliable lead...).

Thew! That was a lot. What do you think? How would you improve it? If you could find a way to playtest it for me, even better!
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This whole Empire business could have been avoided, Yoda...

[Urban Spaceman]

I like the basic idea, and how you are weaving it throughout several adventures.
However, I would personally worry that the story is about the NPC Mechanic, rather than the PC's. If they don't like the NPC (for whatever reason, Players can be fickle!), then they might resent doing all these things for her. They may even suspect she causes them problems in order to bring them in to her debt when she solves the problems for them.

Can you find a way to make the PC's invested in the Mechanic and her story (assuming she is an NPC)? Is there any way you can link some of her story, or that of her parents to the characters backgrounds?
Maybe they know the parents, and so would love to help reunite them all?
Or the parents are well connected in some way (Rich/Criminal/Imperial), so the players think that they could make the ever increasing Bounty go away as a thank you for the safe return of their daughter?
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"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

[shootingwomprats]

Daniel here.

I feel you're railroading the players into joining the Alliance. What if they don't want to?
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Don Diestler
Host, Shooting Womp Rats
The D6 Podcast
http://d6holocron.com/shootingwomprats
@swd6podcast, Twitter

[DougRed4]

Overall I like it, but my initial thought was close to Urban's. Is the mechanic going to be a Player Character? If not, perhaps she should be a close relative (sister, twin, spouse?) to guarantee player buy-in.
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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

[The Jedi Master]

Hm, I didn't think of either of those. Clearly, I am not a Jedi yet. Yeah, now that you put it that way, she does feel like a badly shoehorned GMPC. I'll have to be more graceful about it. As for the railroading issue, I probably won't know that until I start playing. I can easily adjust the campaign if it turns out to be an issue.
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This whole Empire business could have been avoided, Yoda...

[Urban Spaceman]

My players have started off outside of the Rebellion, and haven't yet decided to seek them out. They quite enjoy being in the middle somewhere, and it gives us lots of story options.
However, if/when your group ends up moving towards the Rebellion, you have a number of great ideas there for how to do it. Good luck, and have fun.
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"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

[Lane Arroway]

When you said the mechanic was looking for her "parents" I thought that was code for orphaned rebel trying to get back to base. I think that should be the point of the mechanic. She fixes the ship then they owe her one. During a wild adventure taking her back "home" they find themselves right in the thick of a rebel operation, perhaps even a major battle about to take place. This is just like Han and Chewy's situation after dropping off Luke and Leia. Do the pcs stick around and help out the rebels? Or do they leave after getting their money? Even with a bounty on his head, Han stuck around.

I guess the real question here is, do your players even want to play rebels?
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"This job is 90% talking to people and 10% shooting at them."

[The Jedi Master]

Actually, that might be a good way to solve the railroading issue. I wish I had thought of that. Thank you.
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This whole Empire business could have been avoided, Yoda...

[Kytross]

It's not serious railroading. First off, the mechanic is offering them quid pro quo and actually helping them. My players like helping npcs that help them. Second, she's not joining the party. Third, talk to your players and let them know the end scope of the story.

This 'game' we all love so much is communal storytelling. I find it helps the players get involved by knowing what the end goal is. They don't need to know every detail, and shouldn't, but let them know the end goal of the story. It doesn't even mean they'll hit that end goal.

Here's a few examples:

ANH: To help the Alliance to restore the Republic
ESB: To strengthen the Alliance and find a way to strike at the Empire (failure)
RotJ: To rescue Han, then, to finish Luke's training and destroy the last Death Star