Preparing Adventures

First, you're going to need an adventure. You can use one of the old West End Games published adventures, create one yourself, or make one up as you go along. This book contains seven adventures you can use immediately. You may want to glance at this scenario as you read through this chapter to get a feel for what a finished adventure looks like. If you're a bit more daring, you can skip to Chapter Twelve, "Designing Adventures," to develop your own scenario from scratch.

Reading the Adventure

Make sure you're thoroughly familiar with the adventure before you start playing. The players may not proceed through the encounters in the order they appear, so if you read only the first half of the scenario, you could find yourself vigorously flipping through pages trying to figure out what happens next.

You don't have to memorize every detail either—just know the basic plotline and structure of the story. If the players do something unexpected, like killing a major villain who's supposed to participate in the finale of the adventure, you'll need to know what you can do to alter the remainder of the story so that it still comes to a satisfying conclusion.

Character Cards

One way to quicken game play is to create gamemaster character cards. You can either copy the section detailing each character or write their game information on an index card.

As the player characters encounter various gamemaster characters, you can pull out their character cards so that you have all of their important information at your fingertips. In this way, you won't have to flip through pages of the adventure looking for a particular character's stats, especially if that character participates in more than one encounter.

This technique works especially well for campaigns where many characters play a recurring role. Also, if you wind up creating new characters on the fly (when the characters momentarily wander away from the scripted adventure), you can quickly jot down their information on an index card so that you have it for later.

You never know when the players may decide to return to speak with a particular character. If you haven't kept a record of his game information, you may have to guess—and you could be wrong, thereby shattering the players' suspension of disbelief:

"Didn't this guy have blue skin the last time we talked with him?"

Stock Encounters

Another way to save time during an adventure—and to save you from looking ill-prepared—is to create several stock encounters. These short scenes could be anything from a bar brawl to a chance meeting with a squad of stormtroopers checking IDs.

When your players decide to go somewhere or do something that you hadn't foreseen—and therefore hadn't written out beforehand—you can use one of your stock encounters to fill in the space while you figure out a way to get the characters back on track with the adventure.

Example

Your Alliance player characters are supposed to rendezvous with an Alliance spy at a spaceport on a remote world. When they arrive, however, they decide to first pay a visit to the city's starship parts shop, hoping to purchase replacement parts for their recently damaged freighter.

When you designed your adventure, you hadn't counted on the characters going anywhere on the planet other than the cantina where they are supposed to meet their contact. When the players state their intention, you quickly skim through your stock encounters and pull up a "Business/shop" scene that you haven't used before with this group.

In this encounter, you have the shop owner being harassed by a pair of tough-looking aliens. If the characters help the owner, they could get on the bad side of the crime lord who sent the toughs to collect the money the owner owes (which could provide a hook for the characters' next adventure).

It's a good idea to develop 10 or more stock encounters that cover everything from cantina scenes to bounty hunters to stormtroopers. The more you create, the less likely you'll be to get stuck in an adventure because the player characters did something—or went somewhere—unexpected. The Encounters section of the next chapter elaborates on this concept.

Setting the Mood

The wide array of multimedia elements created by various companies for the Star Wars universe allows you to quickly and easily get your players into the spirit of the adventure.

The Movies

The most obvious way to get a true feel for Star Wars is to watch the movies. The characters, the frontier of space, the heart-stopping sense of adventure and danger, the fantastic images and aliens, the battle of good versus evil—it's all there for you and your players to experience and absorb.

The movies also work in bits and pieces. If you're going to play a space battle during a gaming session, take the time to cue up one of the movies to a space battle and allow your players a few minutes to absorb the feel of the action, and then get right into the gaming.

There are many other films available that give a good feel for what it's like in space. From science fiction movies to space documentaries, any number of these can show your players entertaining visual images and help set a mood for an encounter or adventure. Head to the local library and you're sure to find something that will match the tone you want.

Don't overlook the current crop of computer animation available. There are a lot of beautiful and intriguing space scenes in these videos. NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have created a number of computer simulations of space flight, and many of these have made it to the internet. Another good source of video footage is documentaries and news reports—keep an eye out for those specials that could lend good footage to your campaign.

Another tool you can use is your home video camera. Creating a small set in your home is another simple trick to using video in your campaign. A simple black background, with painted stars or merely a curtain, can provide a backdrop for a simple set.

What better way to dramatize an intercepted video communication—and the beauty is you can cut the transmission off whenever you see fit. Also, you could use the camera as both a surveillance camera or spy satellite, setting it up to record either a group of friends acting out a scene or taking an overhead shot of miniatures set up to represent military deployments.

The Music

Playing music while gaming helps lend atmosphere to your adventures. We all know the familiar theme of Star Wars and all the other accompanying themes from the movies. Every major idea or character had its own signature music—and you know your players will react if you play Darth Vader's march during an adventure.

Music can play a big role in developing the atmosphere and feel for a situation. There is music out there for almost any mood. The most obvious place to start is the soundtracks for all of the movies since they are familiar to your players.

Soundtracks from other science fiction, fantasy, horror, and action-adventure movies and television shows can help set the mood for a night's gaming. There is a wealth of classical music to call on, with a variety of themes from joyous to malevolent. Some notables are Holst's "The Planets," a beautiful musical exploration of our solar system and rife with themes both menacing and haunting, or Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach (or "Thus Spake") Zarathustra" (the familiar sunrise theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Another place to look for good mood music is today's modern music. There are a variety of instrumental artists that can set any number of moods. There are also a number of "New Age" artists that produce a good variety of mood-evoking pieces. Keep your ears open and note down those pieces that interest you and might seem appropriate to gaming.

Rather than spending a lot of money on this music, a great place to find and sample new music is your local library. Take the time to check the music catalogs for titles that might be listed under "Space" and "Soundtracks." These usually have a better selection of music with the appropriate atmosphere. Don't be afraid to browse the classical section for likely musical candidates.

Collectible Cards

A great source of exciting visual images is the various collectible card sets. You can find pictures of Star Destroyers, Twi'leks, stormtroopers, exploding starfighters, major characters, planets, technology, and much more.

Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. If you can show your players what they've encountered, they can more quickly become engaged in the story since their minds don't have to spend that extra bit of time conjuring up an image of what you've just explained. Instead, the scene (or the elements in that scene) appears vividly before them without any effort on their parts. The plot moves more quickly and therefore your players become all that more enthralled by the adventure.

Illustrations

If you're the artistic type, or capable with a graphic design program (or just have a photocopier and scissors), illustrations can give more detail to any location, person, ship, alien species, or whatever concept you may need to illustrate. The old aphorism "a picture is worth a thousand words" works especially well in gaming.

If you can draw, creating what you need is easy. For those of you without the artistic gift, there are a variety of sources to pull from. With all of the Star Wars comics, Art of… books, trading cards, and illustrations from game products, you've got countless new characters, locations, and starships at your fingertips.

Beyond official Star Wars materials, there are a wide variety of science fiction and gaming magazines just teeming with pictures for you to put to proper use. With a little ingenuity, a razor knife or scissors and some tape or glue, you can create new scenes for your characters to experience.

Other sources—like newspapers, television program guides, technical and scientific magazines, various websites—can yield whole new visualizations and campaign ideas. A technical diagram of a new appliance, scanned, touched up, and relabeled, easily passes for a cross-section of a new experimental ion engine power damper; a map from this week's news weeklies, with new tags, makes for a new spaceport in the heart of a galactic metropolis.

Communications Media

Here's where you can get into some unusual props to add to your adventures. Some of these suggestions might seem a little unusual at first, but if you can get your players to go along, they can add to your gaming experience.

With the aid of a friend or two, a script could be recorded and played back at a later gaming session to simulate a conversation overheard by the player characters.

Also, the recorder could be used as a personal log stolen from a major villain, contain personal notes on a Rebel soldier's views of his compatriots (one of them being a possible traitor), or any of a number of things that a character would have occasion to record.

Smartphones could be used to keep a library of sound effects, images, and videos as well as musical themes. Of course, computers also come in handy here—if you can record and digitize the sound effects from the movies, you can program your phone to replay them on command, or with the right software you may be able to alter them for entirely new effects.

Walkie-talkies are more than childhood toys—they can be used as a gaming prop. Set up a friend on the other end to broadcast coded messages, or to act out the role of a surrounded ally, or to be a menacing villain taunting the heroes as their ship is strafed by TIE Fighters. The players could also use the radios to converse with "distant allies" and learn the results of current combats and rumors from other sectors.

The cellphone also works in this regard. Having a friend call at a designated time during your gaming session and working from a script can also add to the feeling of distance. If this conversation ends abruptly, say with blaster fire, well—who knows what the situation holds for the player…

Other Props

There are numerous other props available, including toy equivalents of equipment seen in the movies. Who wouldn't enjoy having their own blaster in their hand? Or perhaps a lightsaber? A quick trip to the toy store can yield any number of models and props. There are all sorts of alien ships, model kits, and other accessories that can add to your play.

Another overlooked mood creator is lighting and temperature. A darkened temple can be simulated by using candlelight instead of normal lighting. Turn down the thermostat a few degrees, turn off the lights, add a few candles and you have instant creepy ruins.

Up the temperature a few notches, throw in some animal sound effects and a few plants and you have a ready-made jungle setting, complete with that large hulking beast hiding behind the bushes. There are several online videos on hosting a haunted house, or various themed parties involving science fiction or "cyberpunk" settings; many of the techniques described in these videos have mood-setting gaming applications as well.

Starting the Adventure

You have several options for starting an adventure. The most common is the mission briefing introduction (especially if the characters are agents of the Republic, Rebel Alliance, or New Republic). The characters, who may or may not know each other, have been assembled by their superior for a meeting on their upcoming assignment. The superior gives them an objective, provides them with the resources they'll need to accomplish that goal, and answers whatever questions he can.

While this standard opening works in most situations, it can also get boring, especially since not much happens during this encounter. The characters just sit around discussing the mission. Nothing really starts to happen until they get on their way.

Of course, you could always add a little flare to your briefings. Perhaps a "famous" figure (like General Solo himself) is giving the briefing; or maybe it is during extreme circumstances, like during the bombardment of a base.

Using a Script

One way to liven up the beginning of an adventure is to use a script. You assign each player a part (Bob is Rebel 1, Jim is Rebel 2, Sara is Rebel 3, and so on). As gamemaster, you play the role of the narrator and any gamemaster character part (like the player characters' superior, for example).

The script usually brings the characters through an exciting or mysterious scene (or both) that launches them into the heart of the adventure. New players (especially those who have never played a roleplaying game before) immediately get a feel for how to play the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. The use of a script is recommended for inexperienced groups.

The main problem with this technique comes from the heavy-handedness with which it prescribes the player characters' words and actions. Experienced players often would rather retain complete control over their alternate persona, and so may shy away from adventure scripts. You'll have to see how your players react to know whether or not they prefer using a script (or you can just ask them before you start!).

In Medias Res

Another way to throw characters into the midst of the action is to start the game in medias res. The player characters literally begin play in the middle of an explosive or suspenseful event. Maybe their ship experiences a technical problem and the characters have to fix it before it careens into a planet. Such an adventure could start something like this:

Gamemaster: Okay, everyone ready to play? The Group: Sure. Gamemaster: OK. You make your last course correction to bring the starship into a landing vector—and then suddenly something explodes at the back of the ship. You begin to lose attitude control and start plummeting toward the surface! What are you going to do?

Such fast starts put the players immediately on their toes, thrusting them into the Star Wars galaxy before they even know it. Once they've dealt with their immediate problem, they're thoroughly enmeshed in the story.

Again, be careful with this technique. Some players may not like it, some may love it. Choose the one that works best for your group. And above all, vary your adventure beginnings. Nothing puts players to sleep more quickly than an introduction that exactly mirrors that last five.

Source: REUP:181