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Disclaimer start...
Yes I haven't posted before, but in my defense I've had this blog site reserved for over a year. Firstly thanks to Niki for inspiring me to blog, if she can get three out per week regularly I can too. OK...maybe not three, but she's starting to make me look bad. Another encouraging thing is the amount of role-play related blogs online. Seems people are really into reading about the topic. Hopefully something comes of all of this. Now onto my first post.
Disclaimer finished...
A Star Wars SAGA campaign I have been preparing for a while has just started running, and I attempted to get it going with a bang. This got me thinking as to how the most memorable Star Wars movies have started. The first thing that came to mind is they usually start off in the thick of the action, often in combat. This technique is apparently called In Media Res, or in the middle of things. I've attempted this technique a few times and it can be quite fun to have everyone make characters then when they are finally ready to play you can set them scrambling for the dice by shouting ROLL FOR INITIATIVE.
As a brief summary the Star Wars campaign mentioned above is set in the Knights of the Old Republic era, specifically around the time of the KoToR2 video game. The PCs are a sexy young human female played by my fiancee, who's learning how to be a Jedi from one of the few surviving masters, and a gentlemanly Duelist Elite droid called QX-21 (Quixie for short) that styles himself on Zorro.
I kicked the game off with the PCs being passengers on board the Spoilt Princess, a military surplus freighter that's currently under attack by a Sith warship. The captain of the freighter and the Jedi master were currently off the ship so it fell upon the PCs to rally the crew and defend the freighter from attack. Once they fought off the boarders they needed to make an escape into a nearby nebula where they could hide until they worked out how to pick up their captain and the Jedi master.
After running the session I felt starting off in combat worked quite well and felt very Star Wars. The boarding crew was dispatched fairly swiftly by the two PCs and gave the right sort of tension right from the beginning. It also left a few unanswered questions to use in later sessions. Why were they being attacked? What were the captain and the Jedi master doing off the ship? How will they rendezvous with them without alerting the patrolling Sith warship?
Some of the things that didn't work well was how easy it was for the freighter to escape. I've never run a campaign with PCs in a ship larger then a space transport before and man are military capital ships (even a small one like the Spoilt Princess) tough. The poor Sith interceptors didn't stand a chance. Luckily the threat of a pursuing Interdictor warship did more then enough to scare the PCs into the nebula.
I think I'll end this post by asking you (the reader) how some of the campaigns you've played/ran started? What worked well and what didn't? Leave your messages in the form of a handy comment.
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Firstly, I am really happy that I inspired you.Secondly, my best rp sessions have been with u! Your a great GM :P I like the intense story and I only died once in 4 years :D
ReplyDeleteI didn't like dying that one time. Maybe you can work on that. jk.
Great blog, I will follow.
Well first let me admit to being quite fresh to world of RP.
ReplyDeleteThat does sound like a very exciting start to a game. One other interesting thing about all of the Star Wars movies, is they all begin in space(which you did)
Well once when playing a Star Wars RP session we began with the heroes on a ship trying to cut open a door to meet each other. That was quite an exciting beginning, having everyone running around and making alliances on the fly.
keep up the good blog.
ps. Captchas to post are getting harder and harder, try and read "aunmaten" in weird bent writing :P
Hey you are right about all the star wars movies starting in space. I forgot about that :)
ReplyDeleteLol I hate captchas too
@Windu: Thats not quite the way I remember it starting...but I do remember running that one. Glad you enjoyed it.
ReplyDelete@SnowPony: Glad you're gonna follow my blog or I'd unfollow yours. :-P I'll keep in mind that I'm not allowed killing you off. I do try so hard to avoid it.
@Both of you: Captcha text is very important or how else would I be able to prove your not all robots.
@andrew but we are all robots. You are the last human left. You are the battery running the system. This is the Matrix
ReplyDelete(Now to just convince the wachowski brothers to pay me $10m for writing their next plot :D )
I liked the Mage campaign where we each had our own personal introduction to magic. Also the one where we all began in the cell block of an imperial starship, but that might have been because I was a droid with magnetic feet...
ReplyDeleteI miss our Exalted campaign but sadly the internet in my room is still not functioning. :( I hope you have not given up on it, because once I get it working I'd very much like to continue.
Those were some good campaigns. I haven't given up on Exalted, just waiting for you to be ready to step back into it. :-)
ReplyDeleteMe too :(
ReplyDelete