Help me create a story for my Adventure.

[Enderborn]

So me and my friends want to have an RPG set in the Empire era. We want it to be a series format and I'm the Gamemaster. I'm having trouble coming up with a story though. Im really open to anything but we want it to have a bit of a Rogue One vibe to it, so don't suggest an idea that relies to heavily on the force. Any ideas?

[shootingwomprats]

Starting a game can be daunting and everyone approaches the creation of their sessions differently. But there are some universal suggestions I can make.

1. What if the focus of the game? Are they working for the Alliance? Freelancers? Criminals? Are they meant to be heroic?

2. Establish who they to one another. How do they know each other and why do they choose to work together?

Developing an episodic formula?

1. Start the session in the middle of an action scene. It doesn't matter what it is: flying through an asteroid field, running from locals, speeder chase, whatever.

2. End the session on a cliffhanger. This is critical. Typically this works when there is a big plot change, dramatically appropriate moment, introduction unexpected information, bad guy, etc.

You should take a look at how long you want to play as well. I would suggest a 3-4 hour window.

What should an adventure include?

Chase sequence, starship sequence, interpersonal skill, some fighting, perhaps a mystery.

Lastly, this comes down to style. Don't sweat the small stuff. No one wants to roleplay every single hour of every day for their character. Skip the boring stuff and work from scene to scene, cutting to the important or exciting stuff.

I know that's not much but I hope it helps you get your head wrapped around this puzzle in the best way.
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Don Diestler
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[Sutehp]

Have your players drawn up any characters? And how familiar are they with Star Wars? Have they seen the movies, and if so, which of them? (This may seem like a silly question, but there are some of the Unclean among us; you wouldn't believe how many people I ran into last year when TFA came out who said they had no idea what Star Wars was.)

It's alot easier to build a story when your players have at least somewhat-fleshed out characters; you can use the backstories of the characters to try and find some tie to all of them.

But if you're just doing something along the lines of Rogue One, then more than likely your characters are part (or all?) of a Rebel cell fighting against the Empire somewhere in the galaxy. I always liked the idea of a SpecForce campaign, being part of a highly trained elite combat unit that is sent by Alliance High Command to do the missions that only a small elite squad of Special Forces soldiers could do. See Rules of Engagement - The Rebels SpecForce Handbook.

If your troupe is composed more of the proverbial "ragtag bunch of misfits" type characters, then instead of being SpecForce troopers, they might be SpecOps operatives instead. SpecOps units tend to have alot more autonomy than SpecForces; their basic orders are "do whatever you can to make trouble for the Empire, but don't get caught and don't do anything that might cause problems for the Alliance later. Otherwise, anything goes." Problem is, unless your players are playing experienced characters, SpecOps operations can get real dangerous real fast, so much so that your players might have to draw up new characters every once in a while. If you're wanting a Rogue One-esque camapign this is probably the closest thing in WEG to it. See Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments of the Rim pp14-21. Pay close attention to the "Note to Gamemasters" insert on page 15.

Here's a plot I just idly came up with: Your characters have access to a light freighter and are part of Rebel Alliance Ordnance and Supply (OaS) and are assigned to make a supply run to an Alliance safe world, but are captured while on the way there. Now they have to find a way to escape before their pilot (and any other PC who might know the coordinates of the safe world) is interrogated. If the characters manage to escape but the Empire still gets the location of the safe world, the characters have to help evacuate the safe world or at least get a warning out. This only makes for one adventure, not a series, but that's what I came up with on the fly. I suppose the rest of the campaign would involve finding and setting up a new safe world for the survivors....
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Sutehp's RPG Goodies
Only some of it is for D6 Star Wars.
Just repurchased the X-Wing and Tie Fighter flight sim games. I forgot how much I missed them.

[Enderborn]

Yes my players have created players, they are a minor jedi, wookie, outlaw, bounty hunter and an ewok. Two of the players ( playing the Bounty Hunter and Ewok,) are big Star Wars fans, they've watched the films many times and has played a couple of the video games. The player playing the Outlaw is pretty much an over all geek, he's seen all the movies but I'm not sure if he's used any of the other media but I bet he has. The other two are kind of in the middle. The one playing the Minor Jedi had only seen the Movies a couple of times but once I told him we were having a Star Wars RPG over the weekend he rewatched all the Originals and read the rogue one visual dictionary. His brother who is playing the rookie has seen the films but I'm not sure about what else.
I had a tiny idea for a spark of a story.
So none of my friends could play the mobile Star Wars Uprising game for various reasons but we were all interested by the plot (Some us didn't have good internet at our houses but most of our phones couldn't handle the game). I liked the idea of a star system isolated by the Empire and left to their own devices to start their own rebellions. So thats what I'm leaning towards.

[Sutehp]

[Zarn]

It is crucial for you and your players to sit down and do a Session Zero.

Basically, a Session Zero is a session where you and your players sit down and talk about tone, themes, playing styles, and so on. If one of your players want you to have the ruthless tone found in, say, Rogue One and/or Empire Strikes Back, while another of them wants to have the somewhat less dark Star Wars: Clone Wars (the new one, not the Genndy Tartakovsky one), you need to discuss some form of compromise - or make your choice explicit.

For instance, if your players' characters end up being gearheads and start building the fastest repulsorlift vehicle they can, any idea for trying to start a rebellion in a local sector or system would likely go right out of the window. Also, if all of the characters are Force Sensitive, the game would likely develop very differently from a situation where just the Minor Jedi is Force Sensitive. Just to pick two options from an infinite set of possibilities.

You have a lot of options when it comes to setting your game somewhere. I might suggest the Minos Cluster (from Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters) as one possibility for adapting something to your seed of an idea.

Personally, there's two characters that need a good reason to be there, and that's the two furballs - the wookiee and the ewok. Both are species that are rare - wookiees because of Imperial enslavement, ewoks because of being technologically primitive - so you probably need to be extra careful when building a backstory for those two.

I think you also need to be careful with when you're setting your game. In particular, whether your game is before the Battle of Yavin (as found in A New Hope) or after the Battle of Yavin. It helps you determine how organized the Rebels are, and whether they're Rebels or the Alliance, basically. (Technically, the Corellian Treaty was signed two years before the Battle of Yavin, but that continuity is strictly speaking not valid any longer.)

The rebels seen before the events of A New Hope seem more desperate and less organized as compared to those seen after having blown up the first Peace Station - this is something that can be used to set the tone of your games and can be important for your Session Zero.

Also, consider that wars are fought logistically. This means that if you get more materiel to the battle than what your opposition does, you have an advantage. Perhaps your sector has some resources or some unique research and development programs that can be liberated to help the battle against the Empire? An X-Wing production line, or perhaps something to introduce a fatal flaw in TIE fighters, having battle droids being built with Rebel control codes hardwired into them, and so on and so forth?

[Enderborn]

Alright I got some more questions that I will answer.
So how did the fur balls get here?
Well in the case of the wookie, he was kidnapped by the Bounty Hunter but while being transported to a slave market the Bounty Hunter ran into some trouble and the Wookie saved him. The Bounty Hunter offered the Wookie freedom in exchange for being a partner, the Wookie agreed.
In the case of the Ewok.
The Minor Jedi was running from the Empire and decided to lie low on a certain Forest Moon. There he found a Ewok outcasted from his village for "Witchcraft" which was really just his inability to control his force powers. The Minor Jedi decided to take him with him so that he could be trained at least to control his powers.
As to how these Characters were all gathered in this sector.
The Outlaw was part of a band of scavengers who ditched him in the sector recently. The Minor Jedi and The Ewok went there because they heard rumors of a abandoned Jedi Academy on the planet Kyben within the Sector, Once they arrived there they realized that it had been completely destroyed by the Empire but they decided to hide out there. By day they run a local Cantina, by night they study the force. The Bounty Hunter and Wookie are their because they often work for a local crime syndicate based there.
Where is this set anyways?
Well Ive decided to create a whole new star sector for this game since the players won't be leaving the sector anytime soon. Im calling it the Ilis Sector. There are five planets on it including the planet main planet Kyben and its single moon. On one side runs a asteroid belt.
I've decided to set the game directly after A New Hope although the players won't know that because the blockade will have been set up to suppress knowledge of the destruction of the death star.
Ive done some more thinking, watched a few episodes of Star Wars Rebels for inspiration and watched a lets play of Star Wars Uprising and heres my rough idea for where I want this series go.
In the first Adventure the group will only be a ragtag team of misfits and the sort who are sent on a mission to investigate a mining colony that has stoped reporting. The team arrives there only to see it has been destroyed by the Empire and is being searched. Long story short the team acquires a datatape which they are to bring back to their bosses at the Warui Syndicate (who owns the mining colony). The team narrowly escapes the mining colony and arrives back on Kyben it seems all is fine until the Empire storms the teams docking bay.
Thats how the first Adventure will end I think.
From their they will (hopefully) escape the Empire in the next adventure and take the datatape back to the Wairu syndicate. On the datatape is a list of Rebel sympathizers and possible sources of resources for a rebellion. You see the last owner of this datatape was working at the mines and planing on starting a rebellion until the Empire killed him and was searching for the tapes. The Wairu Syndicate doesn't want to directly start a rebellion but does want to help fight the Empire since its bad for their business. So the Wairu Syndicate says that they would be the first supporters of a Rebellion in the Ilis Sector, but only if the group would start it and lead it. From there if they want to grow the rebellion the first, Chapter I guess you could call it, would be the group running around the sector gathering resources and growing their rebellion until they eventually draw the attention of the governing forces and discover the destruction of the first death star.
So feedback is appreciated.

[Sutehp]

A few questions:

If your characters are a "ragtag bunch of misfits" who are being sent to investigate a mining colony that has gone silent, why would the Wairu Syndicate send them in particular? How are the PCs holding themselves out as a group? In short, why is the Wairu Syndicate hiring the PCs as opposed to, say, a random group of people on the street? What makes the PCs people the Syndicate would want to trust or hire to investigate a mining colony gone silent?

Also, why would a legitimate mining company want to overthrow the Empire? Sure, the Syndicate might hate being taxed by the Empire, but if a company were found to be conspiring against the Empire, the Empire would just seize all of that company's assets through legal action. Or the Empire could just nationalize the company outright by seizing all of its assets, throwing out (or outright enslaving) the employees and putting Imperial officers/sympathizers in charge of the company. There's no profit motive in opposing the Empire; you don't get rich by joining a revolution. (And every business is started for essentially one reason: to make money. A business might be created to provide worthwhile goods or services, but it needs to make money to survive.) And since the courts in the Empire are all either corrupt and/or filled with Palpatine's judicial appointments, the Syndicate wouldn't have any legal recourse to legally save any of its assets if it did engage in illegal (i.e. subversive/revolutionary) actions.

Now if the Wairu Syndicate was a front/shell company for the Rebellion, that would be another thing entirely and might solve both problems at once...
_________________
Sutehp's RPG Goodies
Only some of it is for D6 Star Wars.
Just repurchased the X-Wing and Tie Fighter flight sim games. I forgot how much I missed them.

[Zarn]

Seems like you're starting to get a grasp on things. I must say that the bounty hunter needs to be an amazing individual, and probably anti-slaving, in order to get the wookiee to agree working as a partner.

I should point out that it seems you're confusing the term 'sector' and the term 'system'. A 'system' in this context is a solar system, i.e. usually one system primary (a sun, basically, though there can be all sorts of exotic variations on that) and probably one or more planets - an asteroid belt, a rogue planetoid, gas giants, whatever.

A 'sector' is a somewhat arbitrary sector of space containing multiple systems. For the Empire, sectors were placed under a Moff, or sector governor. Several sectors could be grouped into an 'oversector', and would then be governed by a Grand Moff.

The Ilis Sector likely has a lot more than five planets in it - you probably want to map stars (or similar system primaries) first, and then add planets to each primary first. From what you mentioned in your post, you then have the Ilis Sector containing several systems, one of which contains the planet Kyben.

Also, note that Endor wasn't the only place where Ewoks was found per se - at least 'Ewok Jerky' was an item at a diner on Abafar. One assumes that Ewok Jerky wasn't made of Ewoks, but by Ewoks, or using Ewok spices and tradition.

If you want to get weird, you could easily make something like a 'lost tribe' of sorts. What if one or two tribes of Ewoks were relocated from Endor to another forested moon or planet as a zoological attraction of sorts? And then perhaps whatever strange, slightly insane Hutt running the cartel died, or the cartel itself floundered, and then the Ewoks were left to their own devices on the forest planet or forested moon?

I agree with letting the syndicate have Rebel leanings. It's perhaps slightly early for it to be a straight up front for the Rebels, but having the management and so on in the syndicate starting to explore how they might aid the Rebellion is a cool twist.

You also need to provide a reason for them to travel. If the Minor Jedi and the smaller furball is running a cantina, they would need to have a reason to travel. I would suggest the frabjous duo is in debt to the syndicate, and the syndicate strongly suggest they provide their particular skills in exchange for reducing the debt on the cantina.

You probably also want a few NPCs, perhaps a few droid NPCs, that can run stuff while the player characters aren't there. Perhaps a Yuzzum (the Ewok and the Yuzzum might be able to talk) is both the musical talent and the guy that takes over when the Ewok and his Jedi sidekick goes traipsing off. A couple of serving droids and perhaps an autochef (illegally hacked to produce lum and other alcoholic beverages, of course), and there you go.

Bonus points if the players of the two cantina entrepreneurs can manage to provide some floor plans and so on.

The Outlaw might be a regular at the cantina in addition to whatever else, and the wookiee and bounty hunter might occasionally moonlight as bouncers at the cantina in exchange for some considerations on their bar tabs.[/list]

[Zarn]

Ok, I've got some specific suggestions on how to set this up.

The focal point here is the cantina. It'll be the mechanism on how you can introduce new characters and whatnot in your campaign - similar to how 'Allo 'Allo always had the small café as a character in the tv show, or even how Cheers had the location as a character, more or less. (Yes, I know I'm indirectly saying I'm old, but bear with me.) If a character bites it, a new character can be introduced.

After a while, you've probably outlined a few of the clientele of the cantina, and they can then be 'promoted' to PCs if and when you need to do that.

The syndicate is the primary provider to the inhabitants on Kyben. The syndicate is not real big on the Empire - but as long as the ore keeps flowing, the syndicate is mostly left alone. The syndicate provides law enforcement, health services, and so on to the independent prospectors and ore haulers that are providing the syndicate with services.

The cantina has a fairly big secret. Or rather, is sitting on top of a fairly big secret. There's an extensive, semi-natural cave system beneath the cantina... and down there, there's a particular wall that has an old, durasteel door in it with no obvious lock. And that's the entrance into the old Jedi Temple. You might even set it up as an Indiana Jones type thing, where they steadily explore the puzzles of the Jedi temple.

Perhaps the Jedi temple isn't a Jedi temple. The Jedi are simply the most well-known Force using traditions. And it doesn't need to be black and white, like Jedi vs Sith. There's also the Tyia, for instance, whose Thuwisten emphasize the peaceful aspects of the Force. Perhaps the temple also had Jedi visitors, but was much, much older. Like Kwa and their Infinity Gates type much older.

Anyways, the syndicate is in a precarious position. It can't keep its independence - such as it is - from the Empire without delivering ore. Yet the Empire has set up a perimeter on the hyperspace lanes out of the sector and tax the traffic heavily, and this is difficult for the independent contractors within the sector. The ever-present threat is if the Empire decides that they can do better than the syndicate in the sector, they will go in and seize power. But still, a few of the Syndicate members have Rebel sympathies and leanings, and are looking for ways to aid the Rebellion.

The most developed systems in the sector are likely Syndicate franchise takers. Each member of the syndicate is boss of their own system. While the leader of the Syndicate franchise in the Kyben system is fairly lenient and benevolent, others may not be so inclined. Perhaps they exploit their workforce, or set up pirate or privateering operations - perhaps independent ore miners work the unsyndicated systems and sell their ore to a variety of Syndicate systems... but if some pirates were to seize the cargo before it was delivered to a Syndicate system, there's nothing to pay for, right?

Also, having unclaimed or 'wild' systems in the sector means that you can introduce unknown or unexplored sectors. There might be Dark Side systems in the sector, perhaps nothing more than a red giant and a tomb world, containing the dark secrets of Sith or worse.

You might have a Verpine enclave or perhaps a Killik lost tribe working with technology that is almost incomprehensible by the standards of the galaxy at large. Or some other old, insectoid race. Perhaps they built the 'Jedi' temple, and then forgot about it because of some war or cataclysm in their distant past. Perhaps that's why the Ilis Sector has so many systems with extensive asteroid belts - maybe there was a war with someone or something where a planet cracker was a good idea. A proto-Death Star, if you will.

[Enderborn]

So the Cantina.
I thought the Cantina was a really great idea and it seems you guys agree. So for a background for the Cantina I was thinking this. So, early before the Clone Wars their was a Jedi Academy for younglings on Kyben. Once order 66 is executed the Academy was abandoned but a Jedi Knight wanted to preserve it for future generations so he gathered a small team of his friends, four other Jedi, to defend the temple. The team was smart though and realized that if they lived in the academy it would make them a big target for the Empire, so they built a small Cantina and underneath they built their living quarters complete with a living area, Bedrooms, A Kitchen, and a meditation Chamber. When Darth Vader finally learned of the Academy he immediately rushed to it. The team assembled to await him in the temple knowing they'd been found out. Vader quickly killed them all and investigated them. The locals told him that they all worked and lived in the local Cantina. Thinking that the team lived in the Second Story of the cantina Vader immeaditality ordered a bombing strike on it and left to get back to a battle that he had to leave to come there.
I also thought that the Cantina would be a good idea for a small one off adventure for when some of the players can't make it. Say only Three or Four players could make it so we could do an adventure around the lines of " Resources are hard to come by for your Cantina, because of the Blockade. A black market deal has came up for a certain beverage that has been hard to come by" and it could turn out as a trap by Imperial Customs Officers to find out who has been buying illegal materials. I don't know its just an idea.
As to the Syndicate.
The Syndicate owns the mine and makes quite a bit of credits of the mines. The Wairu syndicate is actually a somewhat corrupt organization. They take bribes, engage in gang wars, and run illegal opperations such as death matches and have pod races through busy cities. The locals give them a pass though because they provide safety and healthcare to their employees, which most of the locals are their employees.
After the Empire formed a new blockade they replace weak and ineffective governors and leaders in the sector with more experianced and ruthless leaders. The Empire cracked down on Rebel sympathizers and the Wairu Syndicates illegal activities which hurt there cash flow. The Rebel sympathizer on the Mining Colony was working alone for the time being and was only beginning to think about starting a revolution after the blockade.
The Wairu Syndicate would start making a lot more credits if they could only expand there business beyond the blockade. The Wairu Syndicate doesn't want to put there name on a Rebellion but they would like to at least break the blockade. The Syndicate would agree to give the group the list of Rebel Sympathizers, only if the group would lead the Rebellion and be the face of it.
I do like the idea of wild spaces, and some mysterious planets. Especiouly the Sith tomb world.
It would make sense for the Cantina to be in debt to the Wairu Syndicate because they would need money to keep there Cantina stocked during the blockade.
As to why this specific group is being sent to investigate the mining colony.
At one point before the the mission, the group proves themselves to the Wairu Syndicate leader by saving his life.
So yeah i'd love to have more comments on this I am going to put together a more complete story and will tell you it by the end of today.