Designing Adventures

The Star Wars Roleplaying Game has been around since 1987. There are a lot of published adventures out there—certainly enough to keep a group of players entertained and busy for years. But sooner or later, the creative bug will bite, and you’ll want to cook up adventures of your own. After all, who knows what your players want out of an adventure better than you? You are in the position to give them exactly what they want.

Six Steps to Creating Your Own Adventures

Come Up With a Good Story Idea

When you run your first adventures, you should concentrate on coming up with an interesting story. Try to devise a story that is interesting to yourself and your players—whether you want to tell stories about Separatists fighting the Republic, Rebels fighting the Empire, smugglers trying to make an honest (?) living, traders building up trade routes, bounty hunters tracking dangerous criminals, or scouts searching out new cultures.

The Star Wars Roleplaying Game can handle these types of stories.

Develop a Plot Around the Idea

With a basic story created, break it into a series of episodes and scenes. • Episodes are major portions of a story. • Scenes are the individual segments within each episode and contain major events, encounters, and challenges that drive the story along to its conclusion.

In brief, consider episodes to be like acts in a play or chapters in a book, while scenes are each individual scene that will take place during an act or adventure.

Translate These Episodes Into Game Terms

With the story broken down into manageable chunks, you can decide how to use the rules in your game. Rather than concentrate on the rules at this time, remember this maxim:

Only use the rules you want to!

The Star Wars game works on a simple principle: everything—from shooting weapons, to flying starships, to trying to use medicine to heal someone—works in the same way. Pick a difficulty level and a difficulty number that corresponds to that difficulty. Then have the character roll the relevant skill or attribute against that difficulty. If they beat the difficulty, they have succeeded at the task.

While there are many rules that add more detail and take into consideration all kinds of special circumstances, all of the rules boil down to this standard mechanic for accomplishing tasks.

In other words, if you just pick difficulty numbers and have the characters roll their skills against tasks, you are using the core of the game system without getting bogged down with a lot of rules.

Make Final Preparations

After you have mapped out how you will use the game rules, it is time to make final preparations: • Make more detailed notes on any gamemaster characters you want to use. • Prepare scripts and other handouts for the characters. • Draw maps and prepare miniatures if you are going to use them.

Create Player Characters

Next, get together with the players and help them choose and prepare their characters.

Create an Improvised Star Wars Movie

After that, you are ready to play Star Wars. When you are running your first adventure, the basic key is to have fun no matter what happens. Try to keep the adventure’s pace fast and exciting so the players stay interested, ham it up when playing gamemaster characters, and play the game as fast as possible—even if it means taking shortcuts with the rules.

Above all else, make sure the players are having fun and get a sense of accomplishment, and there’s nothing to assure that like having the characters be heroes and overcome incredible odds.

If you skim the rest of this chapter, you will find that each section is devoted to a specific facet of adventure creation and play. You should feel free to look over the rest of this chapter at your leisure and incorporate the ideas and suggestions as you see fit.

The following sections include more detailed information on settings, encounters, and campaigns. For now, however, it’s time to get your first adventure ready. Read on…

The Story Idea

The story idea is the hook you hang your adventure on. The easiest story ideas are snippets of a plot you can blow up into full-blown adventures with a bit of work: • A nefarious pirate hijacks the character’s ship. • A young child is looking for her mother. • An old pilot buddy wants the characters’ help. • An old asteroid miner tells the characters a story about a mysterious ship he saw hiding in the local asteroid belt. • The character’s ship is grounded in a dockworkers’ strike as an Imperial search team nears…

Other ideas can come out of news stories, books you have read, movies you have seen, or from just about any other source—from conversations to something that happened to you on the way to the mall.

Maybe you read an article about the effects an asteroid impact on Earth would have on the planet. Could this be spun into a Star Wars adventure? Sure. Toss in an undeveloped alien species living on a doomed planet, and well-intentioned Rebel characters can become heroes in a hurry (especially if the grateful species can contribute badly-needed resources to the Rebel effort).

The idea doesn’t have to be complicated. Just as an oyster makes a pearl from a single grain of sand over time, you can build up a simple idea into a more complicated adventure—one layer, one step, at a time.

Brainstorming

It isn’t always easy to come up with a good story. Sometimes, you might sit there, staring at that blank sheet of paper, knowing that your players are counting on you to get them up to their hips in danger in just a few days. What to do?

Time to jump-start the creative process by brainstorming. Clear your mind, and start jotting down every cool concept that enters your mind, no matter what it is. Write down everything you can think of. Then, try to use these phrases and ideas to come up with a few plot threads that can be built into a story.

Here are a couple of ways you might get started:

Flesh Out an Element

Pick an element from the Star Wars universe. Don’t limit yourself to the movies—branch out and consider the novels, comics, computer games, radio plays, and so on. Anything will do.

Then think of a way that introducing that element into your game might create conflict and excitement. What can you add to the adventure to increase the fun?

Example: Kristen is desperate for a fresh new idea for an adventure. She remembers the Jedi Holocron from a Dark Horse comics series. The Holocrons are ancient holo-recordings left by the Jedi of old for their students. Most were destroyed, confiscated, or hidden when the Empire came to power.

What if the characters were to stumble across one, maybe unawares? That idea is okay, but it needs a bit more.

What if the Holocron was not from a Jedi, but an ancient Sith master? Kristen starts to get more interested. Could the temptation to use Sith powers for good provide her Jedi player some great roleplaying opportunities? What if the Sith artifact is already being sought by agents of the Emperor? Maybe Dark Adepts are already closing in on the characters, preparing their evil plans…

Create a Vista

Remember that first breathtaking glimpse of Cloud City? Of Coruscant? Sure you do. Those were carefully-crafted shots designed to establish the character of those locations, and to create interest in what might happen there.

Writers and directors often settle on locations and scene ideas by visualizing them, gradually adding detail to their mental images until the places are as real to them as their own backyards. You can use the same technique to get moving on a story idea (it is also a useful exercise to try after you have the adventure planned out—your descriptions will be much more detailed and convincing).

Visualize a cool vista or visual element. The more unusual, quirky, or spectacular it is, the easier it will be to mine for story ideas. Once you have your vista fully formed in your mind, start to ask yourself questions about it: • Who lives there? • What are they up to? • What will happen to the characters if they go there?

In answering these questions, you will begin to close in on a host of story ideas.

Example: Kristen comes up with a really cool visual element—a group of Droid Tri-fighters flying up a sheer, rough cliff face. The cliff is literally thousands of meters high and is bathed in a bright orange sunset.

As the fighters reach the top of the cliff, there is a castle, with grand spires and a massive wall ringing it. As the fighters climb higher, the “camera” reveals that the castle is on a huge plateau which is pitted with craters and that there is a massive sandstorm creating a gigantic cyclone scores of kilometers away.

What kind of people live in the castle? How about a sect of Gamorrean scholars? Not the typical beastlike grunts we saw in Return of the Jedi, but the educated elite of the species, who live disciplined, isolated lives as monks.

Okay, that’s different, Kristen thinks. That’s a start. What might interest the characters here? Maybe records of an ancient Jedi chapter house thought to be in caverns not far away?

Not bad—she can tie this into her prior idea of the Sith Holocron. Why are the droid fighters swarming the fortress? Are they here because of the characters, or have the Gamorrean monks decided to openly defy the Separatists?

Maybe a new leader has emerged among them, who is more interested in keeping faith with the society’s beliefs than in colluding with the Separatists. Maybe there are two camps in the castle, one of which plans to betray the other to the Separatists.

Lots of chances for political intrigue here, which Kristen’s players enjoy.

Kristen decides to drop the Jedi chapter house and go with this idea. Maybe the characters have been invited to the castle because the monks want a treaty—or the ruling faction does. The rest plot to bring down the order by bringing in the Separatists…

As you can see, a single dramatic image can quickly grow into a multi-session adventure.

The Master Character

Coming up with an interesting gamemaster character is another good way of sparking story ideas. We’ll talk in depth about developing gamemaster characters in a few chapters, but for now, run with the idea of concocting a mover-and-shaker—not a minion, but someone who will definitely alter the characters’ world when he or she walks onto the stage.

This person can be either a good guy or a bad guy, but in a pinch, the bad guy option is better. By making your master character an antagonist with strong motivations and goals contrary to those held by the characters, you create conflict—and that leads right to story ideas.

Example: After a bit of thrashing about, Kristen begins to develop an Imperial poet she names Nacrotis. Nacrotis is not simply a poet, but a favorite of an influential Moff’s court—he is a man with considerable power.

Nacrotis is an extremely eccentric artist who is indifferent to the suffering of others. To him, the great art of poetry is more important than the lives of the little people.

His specialty is slipping unnoticed into the stable lives of his “models,” gradually gaining their trust and confidence by doing them small favors and lending a sympathetic ear, and then using his influence and power to destroy them bit by bit, all the while documenting their pain and despair for the enjoyment of the Moff’s associates.

He takes great care in selecting his next “canvas,” and likes to take on people at all levels of society.

It is easy to see that several adventures could be created around Nacrotis if he should settle on the characters as his next subjects!

Use Other Stories

We’ve already mentioned that story ideas can be drawn from movies, books, plays, news stories, and so on. Raid these sources for ideas—altered a bit and repackaged as Star Wars adventures, they often take on new life.

You can try science fiction or fantasy novels, movies, and comics, but other genres yield good results too, and may not be as familiar to your players. Read other types of fiction, like detective stories, espionage, or adventure stories.

Use plots from old movies—or from literature (Alexandre Dumas is a good place to start). And, of course, there is the richest source of ideas imaginable—the real world: our planet’s history and current events provide endless story ideas.

If you are really stumped for a story idea, running through the headlines of old news online can yield some real gems (many news websites archive old news stories for several years—these are especially good sources).

Example: Kristen browses through old news articles online looking for ideas. She jots down a few promising leads: • Hong Kong is about to be reclaimed by China. • A petroleum company has been experimenting with extremely deep oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. • An op/ed writer wonders whether the English “Chunnel” will be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

These look like they might yield a fairly interesting adventure if blended together a bit.

What if the adventure takes place in a world adjacent to the Corporate Sector Authority—a world now ruled by a local business consortium, but which is due to fall back under full Imperial rule within the year?

Kristen wants the world to produce something interesting enough that the Empire would be interested in stepping in and nationalizing local industries, but not so much that it would violate its own laws forbidding such action. After some thought, she decides that local high-tech firms have developed a series of efficient and fast hyperspace engines.

To provide the necessary fear of Imperial intervention, she rules that the world is sympathetic to the Rebellion and was on the verge of selling its new engines to the Alliance—the Imperials are not aware of these plans, but would quickly discover the truth if they started to poke around.

Okay, so far so good. Next, Kristen decides that the settled world in the system is a water world with very little land. Most settlements are floating islands anchored to the seabeds, while underwater transport tubes link the cities together.

To protest the coming Imperial intervention, some of the more violence-prone locals plan to sabotage the underwater tunnels and floating cities to cover their involvement in the plots.

The Rebel characters will be drawn into this plot when they come to the world to inspect the new engines—at the same time an Imperial government team shows up to do exactly the same thing!

As you can see, Kristen didn’t directly adapt all of these news items into the final plot, but elements from each have been incorporated into the story, even if only peripherally.

Talk to Other People

Your players are your best source for story ideas. Note during gameplay what sort of adventures and plots interest them. Note what goals and interests they establish for their characters. Ask them if they want to fight any particular type of villain or visit a specific place.

What you learn by taking these actions may spark a story idea—one with the added bonus of being of great interest to your players!

Example: During the course of the game, Vince happens to mention that his character, Ace, first realized that he was a born leader when he led all of the other kids in his town to safety after the Empire attacked it.

Kristen comes up with a glimmer of an idea—what if one of those kids ended up crossing Ace’s path again? Ace might be visiting a new world when one of his now-adult friends appeals to him for help. Ace is sure to help an old pal!

What kind of trouble might the pal be in? Maybe he’s in debt to a loan shark; maybe his daughter has disappeared; maybe he’s on the run from Imperials…

Keep It Simple

Star Wars uses the word “epic” a lot to describe the setting. Fortunately, while some great Star Wars adventures have their foundation in complex, intricate plots, a lot of great adventures are built from the most simple of plots.

Your first adventures should be relatively straightforward: • The characters are hired to deliver a cargo of spice to a certain location. • They are asked by Republic high command to rescue someone captured by the Separatists. • The characters are mistaken for wanted criminals and end up on the run from bounty hunters and the Empire. • The characters learn there is a valuable piece of equipment lost when a ship crashed on a distant alien world, and there is a valuable reward for whoever retrieves it.

Remember, there are no “bad” plots; some are simply crafted and integrated into better stories than others. You should feel free to use your favorite plots from other stories or today’s headlines.

When you first think of a story idea, chances are that some scenes, characters, settings, and equipment will spring to mind. Write down all of these ideas in note form so you can flesh them out in later stages of adventure preparation.

Flesh Out the Plot

When you design your first few adventures, you should use the Star Wars movies as a pattern and stay close to the style of the movies in regard to plotting and drama. The easiest way to do this is to break your basic idea down into a series of episodes and scenes.

Often, this will require adding a lot more information to the story. For example, if your basic plot involves the characters having to retrieve a piece of equipment, this is a fine idea, but it needs to be fleshed out.

First, you’ll want to know how the characters find out about the part. This should be the first scene of the adventure, and if it involves a lot of action, so much the better. This scene must also drop some hints to the players—rather than telling them exactly where the part is, the characters will have to find someone who knows where the ship crashed. This first scene also allows the characters to get to know each other.

Next, the characters will have to find out where the part is. This allows the characters to do some investigative work—they will have to find the person who knows where the ship crashed, or break into a computer system to find out this information. This next episode is a great time to introduce the main villain, which is most likely the Empire or one of its minions. The characters should be racing against someone else to get the part so they can’t be leisurely. This adds an element of pressure to the adventure.

The next episode involves the characters racing to the crash site. This can be as simple as jumping into hyperspace and coming out in the right system… but that isn’t Star Wars. Instead, the characters may have to take part in a raging space battle, duking it out with the forces of the Empire as well as the people they are chasing. Likewise, when they emerge in the system, they will still be racing against time.

The next episode involves the characters having to find the wreck. Typically, the characters should face some natural or man-made hazards, like dangerous animals, hostile natives, competing scavengers, earthquakes, or storms. If you want to wrap up the adventure in one session, you can have the characters find the part then and there… or the part could be missing, with the only clue being strange tracks in the ground leading off into unknown territory.

Getting the Right Tone

The experience of actually being in one of the Star Wars movies is what you want to recreate during your game sessions, and the easiest way to do this is to incorporate some of the things that you enjoyed most about the movies into your adventure.

For example, you can set parts of your adventure in locations drawn from the movies, such as Naboo or the forest moon of Endor, and you can have the characters using equipment that they will recognize from the movies. You can also have characters from the movies, such as Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, make “guest” appearances in your adventure.

You have to realize when you begin preparing an adventure that you will never be able to account for every possibility. The players will always find ways to take courses of action that you did not predict.

The best way to look at your preparations for a game is as a sketch on which to base the adventure, not as a full illustration. Your end product is the game session, not the maps and diagrams, the gamemaster character stats, or the starship designs. What is most important is that the game session and the interaction between you and the players is successful.

You don’t want to put so much energy into preparing the adventure that you have none left for the game.

Plot Structure

The point of breaking down Star Wars adventures into episodes and scenes is to emphasize the fact that the story is more important than mere dice rolling.

Each episode is a major portion of the plot, such as retrieving a vital piece of information or confronting a major villain. Each scene is something within an episode that propels the characters to the major plot point of that episode, and each scene gives the characters something to do.

Once you have broken down your story into episodes and scenes, you will realize that there are certain locations, events, and characters that you have to detail. For anything the characters will meet, you will have to have a few ideas written down so you can use the item or character in your game.

Episode One

The first episode in your first adventure should explain how the player characters meet. Such an episode would parallel the introductions of Luke Skywalker to Ben Kenobi and to Han Solo and Chewbacca, possibly taking place on a backwater planet similar to Tatooine (or even on Tatooine itself) and occurring in a setting similar to the Mos Eisley cantina.

With the possible exception of some minor excitement, such as a barroom brawl, or an encounter similar to Luke’s encounter with Ponda Baba and Dr. Evazan, this episode should center around roleplaying, not combat or skill use. Very little die rolling should be necessary.

This type of episode will give you and the players a chance to become comfortable with the game without having to worry about the technical aspects of the rules.

This type of episode will also allow the players to start playing immediately, because they can skip the final stages of character design—personality development—and, instead, use the first episode of the adventure to develop the personalities of their characters.

As the characters attempt to learn about each other—swapping stories, boasts, and lies—the players will learn more about the personalities of their own characters.

You might also use this time to allow the players to make a few final adjustments to the skill levels of their characters. However, after the plot of the adventure has begun, you shouldn’t allow them to make any skill changes.

Episode Two

As soon as possible, the adventure should have the characters in a starship and traveling to another planet. Space travel is intrinsic to the feel of the Star Wars universe.

Think about the list of locations that were visited in the movies: Tatooine, the Alderaan system, Yavin, Hoth, Dagobah, the Anoat asteroid field, Bespin, and Endor. How long does Luke or Han or Leia stay on any one planet? Not very long. And your players—who want to be just like Luke, Han, and Leia—won’t want to stay in any one place very long, either.

The travel episode should introduce the characters to some of the oddities of the Star Wars universe, perhaps by meeting some unusual aliens in the starport, or involving the characters in some sort of conflict, such as having to blast their way out of the starport.

This episode can also give the players more information about the plot. If the characters found Imperials chasing them, at this point they may get one or two clues that explain why they are in danger.

To parallel Star Wars: A New Hope, in the second episode (or act) of the film, Luke meets Obi-Wan Kenobi; Luke learns that his aunt and uncle have been murdered by the Empire, and then begins to find out that the droids he and his uncle bought are really valuable.

Episode Three

Action! The players aren’t going to want to spend all of their time seeing the sights—they want to be heroes! Once they’ve arrived at some exotic location, you need to give them something exciting to do.

The action should be straightforward: a rescue mission (Luke’s rescue of Leia on the Death Star), a search and destroy mission (Luke’s destruction of the Death Star), or simply having to blast one’s way through an obstacle (the Rebels trying to evacuate Hoth with the Imperial fleet in orbit above them) will get the players involved.

The characters will be exposed to some personal danger and will have to act without hesitation. Of course, in this type of episode, the actions the characters will have to take will be obvious.

Beyond

The next few episodes should alternate between action, space battles, interaction, and problem solving. Each adventure should include at least: • One episode where the characters get involved in a ground battle • One chase • One space battle • One episode involving problem solving (such as hacking into a computer) • One episode involving interaction with other inhabitants of the Star Wars universe (ranging from swapping stories, to learning background information, to gambling, to haggling)

Normally, the final two or three episodes will involve the most intense confrontations and the most dangerous battles. • The first episode should have minimal danger. • The second episode should have a little more danger or tension, followed by a few scenes where the tension level is reduced. • The third episode should involve greater tension and danger, followed by a briefer break. • Each episode after should have higher stakes, more danger, and more action, with briefer rest breaks. • The final episode should contain the “pay-off”: the characters are thrust into the final confrontation and the finish of the adventure, where—for good or bad—the story is resolved… for now.

This kind of build-up and letdown will get the players involved and excited about the story.

There shouldn’t be too many surprises in your first adventures. The lines between good and evil, and right and wrong, should be very clear, and the players should have many choices that will lead them to success.

Locations

Don’t worry about detailing locations that you don’t expect the player characters to go to. You don’t need a map for Anchorhead when the characters will most likely go straight to Mos Eisley.

There is always a chance that the characters will—for reasons plausible only to themselves—go to Anchorhead instead, and that you will have to improvise an episode in Anchorhead, but there is also just as likely a chance that the characters will do something totally unpredictable—such as go hunting for Krayt dragons—which you would have had to make up anyway.

It helps to have a map drawn out for the important locations in an adventure, but remember that often no one but you will see that map. It doesn’t have to be perfect—in most cases, a ragged sketch, combined with a short paragraph that captures the feel of the setting, will be sufficient to keep you from forgetting any of the necessary information.

Remember that you don’t need a detailed description of every location on a planet—just the ones that are important to the adventure.

For example, you’ve designed an adventure set on Endor. Just because the player characters are going to travel from Bright Tree Village to Blue Star Lake doesn’t mean that you have to prepare a map of the entire forest of Endor. If there is no reason for anything exciting to happen during their journey, then you can simply cut from the characters’ departure from Bright Tree Village directly to their arrival at Blue Star Lake. The “in-between” sections of your adventure do not have to be detailed.

Gamemaster Characters

When you are preparing gamemaster characters, you shouldn’t worry about determining all of their statistics. The only statistics that are important are the ones which the gamemaster character is likely to use during the encounter.

If the Gamorrean guard is only going to whack at the player characters with his vibro-ax, then there is no need for you to determine his bargaining skill, or his beast riding skill. All you need to worry about are his combat skills—melee combat and melee parry—and his Strength.

If it becomes necessary during the game session for the Gamorrean to ride a beast, then you can give him a beast riding skill at that time.

As usual, there are exceptions to this. For characters that are very important to the plot and with whom the player characters will interact extensively, or for characters who will become recurring characters in your campaign, it is usually worth the effort to develop a detailed character description. This will allow you to more thoroughly develop the personality of the gamemaster character and allow your portrayal of that character to be more realistic.

You should also remember that some gamemaster characters will not need to be detailed at all. There will be many times when the player characters will interact with gamemaster characters in situations that will not require skill rolls.

For example, the player characters come across a crowd of Humans standing around the corpse of an Imperial officer. The player characters might start asking questions of the bystanders in order to attempt to find out what happened. You don’t need to know any of the skills of the people in this crowd—all you need to know is what they might answer.

It might also be possible for you to “cheat,” so to speak. When you need a background character—to add color to a scene, or to give the player characters a prod in the right direction—you might be able to pull a character directly from one of the Star Wars movies or another piece of source material.

For example, you decide that the player characters have become too relaxed while sitting in a restaurant on Berrol’s Donn, and you want to shake them up a bit, but you have nothing prepared. You might try saying something like this:

“A Rodian bounty hunter—just like Greedo from the first movie—walks into the restaurant. He doesn’t take a table; he just stares at you for a moment, checks something on his datapad, then slowly backs out of the restaurant, never taking his eyes off of you.”

The characters may never see the Rodian again, but they will spend the rest of the adventure wondering when he is going to pop up out of the bushes and start shooting at them.

Rewards

The last thing you need to do in plotting your adventure is to decide on the rewards for successfully getting through it.

Generally, each player should earn between three and 15 Character Points, depending on the contributions he or she made to the adventure. See “Running Adventures” for guidelines on Character Point awards.

In addition, consider other potential awards. To some characters, money is important, and a profit on the adventure is one possibility. Hints and tidbits about where to find a master for Force training, or an exclusive hidden shadow-base where smugglers can get top credit for their goods, may be more important to others.

Translate These Episodes Into Game Terms

When thinking about the Star Wars rules, remember the most important rule: this is supposed to be fun, and ignore whatever gets in the way of having fun.

When you are gamemastering at first, the key is to simply set your difficulty numbers and have the characters roll against that number. Don’t worry about all of the modifiers and other factors that are pointed out in the rules. You are trying to run a fast, action-packed adventure, and the best way to do that is to run the game as simply as possible.

The purpose of rules is to help you figure out what would happen in the “real” Star Wars universe. Therefore, make your best guess about what you think should happen based on how well the characters rolled. Try to make the results as interesting and dramatic as possible, while still making it possible for the characters to succeed and be heroic.

Don’t worry if occasionally you feel that you have to stop the game to look up a rule, or back up the game and replay a section where you made a mistake. The players will be patient and understanding as you learn the rules if it leads to an exciting game (and they should also be thankful that you’ve volunteered to learn the rules so that they don’t have to).

However, be careful that your desire to “do it right” doesn’t impede the progress of the story. Always try to keep going forward.

Setting Limits

After you play several short games with the basic rules, and gain a thorough understanding of those rules, then you will be able to begin adding the more complicated and detailed rules.

For example, you may want to limit what’s going on in the first few adventures—for example, not allowing Force users at first. As you gain experience with how the game system runs, you may want to start using the more detailed Force rules or starship and vehicle chase rules. They add a layer of complexity to the game, but also give you more detailed results.

The Skirmish Method

If you want to get a better understanding of the rules, you may want to use the “skirmish method.” Instead of running an entire adventure, you might want to get one or two players together just to run a detailed combat between characters, a starship battle, a chase, or a battle between Force users.

This gives you the advantage of being able to concentrate on just one aspect of the rules without having to worry about how it affects the adventure. Because of this, you can also replay situations that are particularly difficult for you until you become completely comfortable with the rules.

Streamlining the Rules

There are several areas where the rules are more detailed than is necessary for beginning adventures. One of the prominent rules areas are those revolving around the chase and movement system. Here is a quick way of showing how you can streamline those rules.

When you run a chase scene, you will usually want the feel of gameplay to reflect the fast and dangerous feel of the chase itself. To begin with, you should reduce the situation to its basic elements. Think to yourself, “What is most important here?” In a chase, these elements are: • Why is the chase happening, and how would it be finished? • How far apart are the vehicles? • How fast are the vehicles? • Have both operators kept control?

Everything else about the chase, from when the chase ends to combat during the chase, is based on these factors.

The best way to set up a situation where the rules can be streamlined is to have only two participants in the chase with vehicles that travel at the same speed. Then, the chase is simply a matter of matching driver skills against the terrain and each other.

As an illustration, look at this example of a chase between two Aratech 74-Z speeder bikes.

Example Chase (Streamlined)

A player character named Riza is piloting the lead bike. She is being pursued by an Imperial Scout Trooper.

The “why” of the chase is simple: the Imperial is chasing Riza to capture some Rebel scum; therefore, the Scout Trooper will chase Riza until he captures her, or is injured, or feels that it’s too dangerous for him to continue chasing her.

Riza wants to get away or stop him—the chase will be over if she can escape, destroy his bike so he can’t chase her, or stop him in some other way.

Both bikes have identical speeds and laser cannons with identical ranges. The gamemaster decides to speed up the chase scene by streamlining the rules in the following way: • The chase will only be run at point blank, short, medium, and long ranges. The vehicles will start at short range. Since a speeder can make four moves per round, each move will count as a range. For example, if Riza makes three moves in a round and the Scout Trooper only makes two moves, Riza has made one more move and goes from short to medium range. The gamemaster rules that if Riza can go beyond long range, she has escaped. • The terrain for the whole chase will be Moderate. The gamemaster picks a difficulty number of 13. • If a character misses a movement roll by 1–5 points, the character just makes one less move per round (if he said he’d move two times, he’d only move once). If the character misses the roll by more than five points, he crashes the bike. • Rather than make rolls for all four moves every round, each character will only have to make one roll for movement each round. However, in Star Wars rules, every time a character acts more than once, the character loses −1D per extra action from all die rolls. Therefore, if a character is making four moves in a round, the character rolls against the terrain difficulty of 13 with a −3D penalty. • The Scout Trooper’s repulsorlift operation skill is 6D and his vehicle blasters skill is 5D. Riza’s repulsorlift operation is 6D+1 and her vehicle blasters is 3D+2.

Round One: Riza declares she will fly full speed through the forest (four moves). The Scout Trooper does the same. Both roll against terrain with a −3D penalty. If both succeed, the bikes stay at short range. • If Riza succeeds but the Scout Trooper fails, distance increases one level (short → medium). • If Riza fails and the Scout Trooper succeeds, distance decreases one level (short → point blank). • If both fail, distance doesn’t change.

In this case, both succeed, so the distance doesn’t change.

Round Two: Riza declares four moves again. The Scout Trooper fires and makes four moves. Since the Scout Trooper is now firing (another action), his penalty increases from −3D to −4D.

The gamemaster resolves firing first. The Scout Trooper’s shot is at short range (Easy), but with a −4D penalty for the five actions. The shot misses.

Then they roll movement. The Scout Trooper succeeds, but Riza misses her roll by 1. The Scout Trooper gains one range band and closes from short to point blank.

Round Three: Riza declares evasive zigzagging through the trees. The gamemaster rules the maneuver increases the movement difficulty from Moderate to Difficult, and the Scout Trooper must also roll Difficult to keep up.

Like a dodge, Riza may substitute her maneuver roll as the difficulty to hit her bike. Since the vehicles are at point blank range, the Scout Trooper also attempts another shot.

Again, firing is resolved first. Riza rolls her maneuver. With the increased difficulty and the −4D penalty, the Scout Trooper’s shot fails.

Now movement rolls: Riza succeeds (barely). The Scout Trooper fails his movement roll by seven points—crash!

Riza’s speeder bike disappears into the trees as the Scout Trooper’s bike explodes into a ball of flame and debris…

While this may seem complicated, it is easier than using the fully detailed rules because it is “instinctive”—once you’ve learned the basic rules of Star Wars, this chase is very similar in execution.

The rules judgments are based on making fair calls about what would happen and what makes for an exciting chase. You must trust yourself in these situations, since going to the rulebook for a reference will slow the chase down and reduce the tension of the scene.

In this example: • Instead of stopping the game to find modifiers for Riza’s maneuvers, the gamemaster estimated they would raise the difficulty by one level. • Instead of rolling for every movement, the gamemaster rolled once per turn. • Instead of tracking precise timing and distance for firing, the gamemaster resolved combat actions at the beginning of the round.

This dependence on estimating and guessing means that this method of play isn’t as detailed as the method in the rules, but streamlining speeds the game and—if you play fairly—can be just as exciting!

Source: REUP:196