Star Wars ‘D&D’ modules: What would it look like?

[Starbeard]

Ever since stumbling upon AD&D in the 2000’s, I’ve been loath to give up the ‘set piece’ dungeon crawl and loose ‘sandbox’ hex crawl formats that are baked into early D&D. I no longer need to create big story arcs, I don’t need to care who shows up game to game, and I don’t need to worry about whether my own imagination is enough to keep the players interested. These outweigh pretty much all the pros of narrative adventures to me.

However, SW is clearly focused on adventure narrative. Is Star Wars as a setting actually conducive to the ‘old school’ kind of game? For example, what if B1, B2 and X1 were translated into SW modules? How would that work?

The concept of regulated character advancement isn’t there in D6 Star Wars—and even if it was, what ‘treasure’ would the players have any incentive to pursue anyway? It’s not like you’ll find any Galactic Credits in the ancient ruins outside of Anchorhead.

[Falconer]

I’m just going to pop off some thoughts.

You could have a sector map (perhaps Minos Cluster, or Elrood Sector, or Corporate Sector, or build your own) and just have that be the operational area of the campaign. Start the players on one planet and let them loose to go explore wherever they want.

You could have a rumors table. That’s always a great way to give the players multiple ideas of places to to go if you’d rather not railroad them.

You could model your campaign after the Han Solo Adventures, in other words, a smugglers’ campaign where they take jobs, complete some, fail others, get stuff stolen from them by pirates, get dragged into local intrigues, are always on the edge of being out of fuel, the ship is always in need of repair and, if not, can be constantly upgraded over the course of the campaign (or different ships purchased). It could be a bit like Firefly except with cool aliens, and monsters, and ancient ruins (yeah why not—see the third Han Solo book which is a literal treasure hunt), and the Force. Even in this paradigm you could have idealistic rebel types who are natural allies along for the ride or who just “happen” to meet up with them all the time. If the rebel players represent a small, scrappy rebel cell that doesn’t have a lot of resources — i.e., they’re not being sent ships and equipment from Yavin, but they’re really on their own — then it’s up to them to make money, find/steal/buy equipment and fighters, and quietly spread the word about the Rebellion and sabotage the Empire in whatever small way they can.

The X-Wing novels also provide a couple of models for a RPG campaign, despite being set in the New Republic era where the good guys are very well funded. In The Bacta War, Rogue Squadron has resigned from the New Republic military and has set out on a private campaign against an Imperial warlord. They build their own secret base on an asteroid somewhere, they gradually build up their small fleet of fighters and eventually ships, and just in general rather than fighting back against some dastardly evil scheme, they completely are in the driver’s seat the whole time, coming up with missions and ways to take down that particular warlord’s seat of power. Even better perhaps is Wraith Squadron, where the titular squad is on a black ops mission to take down another warlord. They acquire a Corellian Corvette which they modify to be a mini carrier for their small squad of fighters. They pretend to be pirates, and go around on all kinds of fun adventures taking down imperials. I highly recommend both books.

[Yora]

Oldschool D&D is a game that is really build entirely around the mechanic "gold = XP". It's not a "roleplaying game" as we understand the term today, and in the beginning it wasn't even called that. It was a "Fantasy Adventure Game". The meat of the game is basically a dungeon raid. You go in, get around obstacles, and get out with as much gold as possible without dying. It wasn't even designed as a game about defeating enemies, but about using whatever means possible to get the monsters' treasures. The original sandbox campaign is merely an extension of this. In addition to chosing which dungeon levels to go to and which corridors to take, players also have the additional choice of which dungeon to go to. The whole "wilderness" was really just additional obstacles between getting the treasure and bringing it home.
Of course you can always expand on that and add more NPCs insid and outside of dungeons and give the players more options to interact with the world. But in the end, it's really still a rules system about getting more experience points. Later editions ditched the treasure hunting aspect and instead made it that "defeated enemies = XP", which mechanically highly incentivised players to seek out fights with weaker opponents whenever possible.

The Star Wars setting does not work that way. Star Wars is fundamentally about story, not about leveling up. Which is precisely why I think the d20 Star Wars RPG(s) by Wizards of the Coast were a mistake. (As any other d20 RPGs of existing fiction were a mistake for the same reason.) If you want to run an oldschool D&D style campaign with dungeon crawls, I really see it work only with a party of scoundrels whose main goal is alway to become rich. And of course you can award them character points in the process just like in any other Star Wars campaign. Doing stuff makes characters stronger. Any stuff.

Now when it comes to the "Roleplaying sandbox", which never really was a D&D thing, I think the best approach is actually to start with a rather simple setup and then making up the details as you go along. Star Wars has the huge advantage of being a very well established setting with well understood "rules" of how things work and people behave, and with huge amount of information on lots of places that is simultaneously rather general and nonspecific. Making up new material as needed on just a week's notice is relatively easy in a Star Wars campaign.

Another huge factor that sets Star Wars apart from other settings is the ease of travel. With a hyperspace jump you can get from any one point to any other point extremely quickly (if you go by the movies and commonly used maps of the galaxies, even the greatest distances should be covered in a matter of hours) and there is no chance to have any encounters in hyperspace. At the press of a button, you're in orbit of any planet you want to visit, and from orbit you have the means to land your ship in any location on that planet you want to visit. If you have to park your ship in a star port, you can get to your final destination with a quick speeder ride. In short, getting to any place in the galaxy is trivially quick and trivially easy. The only thing that matters is knowing which place you want to go.
And because of this, I think a Star Wars campaign has no use for maps. The only maps you'll ever need are the insides of buildings or "outdoor arenas" for fight scenes. And since most places in Star Wars are massive, you don't even need full maps for the insides of buildings, just for a few selected rooms. Take for example the entire adventure on the Death Star. The only maps you need are "Hangar", "Guard Room", "Cell Block", "Retractable Bridge Room", and if you want to "Trash Compactor".
And why do you go anywhere in Star Wars? It's to meet someone, or to steal something. You're not usually interested in places, but in someone or something inside them. Han takes the Milennium Falcon to Bespin not because he's in any way interested in the planet. He goes there because Lando is there. The heroes have no interest in Jabba's Palace, they go there because Han is being kept there. So for setting up a "sandbox" for Star Wars, I would always approach it under this paradigm: "You don't go to visit places, you go to visit people." Your map is not a geographical image of where planets are located in the galaxy and where locations are located on planets. The map you need shows the connections between NPCs. You go to NPC A to tell you where you can find NPC B, who tells you where you can get Object C. Who knows where to find important NPCs and important things? And who knows the people who know these people? This is what you really need to for a Star Wars sandbox and what you should prepare.

I've been working on a sandbox type campaign for the last month or so and what I am doing is to have three "main villain" NPCs who each have a plan that is a threat to the rest of the galaxy. From these three NPCs I am expanding on who their main henchmen are who are doing the actual work. And then I am adding various neutral NPCs who are the kinds of people who would have dealings with the villains and henchmen or who would be informed about them. Crime bosses, fences, smugglers, mercenaries. And then I add them to the network of connections. I also add some NPCs that the players might go to help for, like a Jedi council or the admiral commanding the fleet of the sector they are in. Or other bad guys who would enjoy to see the main villains fail. My plan is to have the players navigate this map of connections to interfere with the plans of the three villains in whatever way they feel like. When the campaign starts, I will ask the players to all make characters who would want to take action to stop major threats to the Republic or of the Dark Side. Otherwise there wouldn't be much of a game. It's a simple agreement. There are no mechanics that incentivise and reward certain behaviors like looting treasure or defeating opponents. The motivation of the players and their characters has to come from the understanding that they want to be heroes in this kind of events. They can go to whatever NPC they want to go, tell them whatever they want to tell them, and do whatever they want to do. And as GM, I will then see what I think the rest of the galaxy will be doing in response to that.

But in a break away from "traditional" sandbox gamemastering, the NPCs will not react in whatever would be the most logical way for them. In a Star Wars game, I will make them react in whatever way sets up more opportunities to dramatic and cinematic action scenes. I don't just want the setting feel like Star Wars, I want the actions of the players feel like those of heroes in a Star Wars movie. It is not my job to be an impartial judge. It is my job to a facilitator who gives them opportunities for awesome heroics.

[Falconer]

Hmm, I will disagree slightly. Han goes to Bespin because, “Where are we? - The Anoat system. - Anoat system. There's not much there. - No. Well, wait. This is interesting. Lando.” Now therefore Wikipedia will tell you that “The Anoat system is a star system located between the Hoth and Bespin systems on the Ison Corridor.” And I think I agree with you insofar that Han is probably not looking at a graphical map but at a computer readout listing options A, B, and C of where he can go. However, maybe it’s just the “visual” way my brain works, but at least as GM I really need to have a visual sketch of where these places are in relation to each other, and based on that I can rattle off the sort of info that his computer is listing.

I mentioned in another thread running Starfall and how it was basically the Death Star scenario. Well, I loved having the schematic of the whole ship (the players have to find a working console before they can access it!), and I wish it were even more detailed and offered more areas (red herrings?) in case the players decided they didn’t want to go the way the module predicted they would. Actually at one point they were debating storming the bridge. A “sandbox” GM should ideally be prepared for these sort of unexpected decisions on the players’ part by knowing enough to wing it no matter what they do.

[Yora]

Jul 12, 2018 13:41:24 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Hmm, I will disagree slightly. Han goes to Bespin because, “Where are we? - The Anoat system. - Anoat system. There's not much there. - No. Well, wait. This is interesting. Lando.”

But here is the most important line: "Lando is not a system. He's a man." He does not say "hey, there's a planet with a suitable garage nearby". He says "hey, there's a guy who I know nearby." Bespin becomes the destination of choice not because of its facilities, but because of a single person who might offer assistance.

There are countless planets in the galaxy that a ship could travel to just as easily as to any other. But whenever you chose to go to a planet, it's because you want to meet someone there. Thiking of them as "planets" is actually a bit strange and out of place for Star Wars. Whenever someone travels to a planet, they are almost always only interested in one single location on that entire planet. Once the characters get what they need from the person they were looking for and continue to their next destination, it's almost never on the same planet. In Star Wars media, planets are overwhelmingly portrayed as a single location, or two locations at the most. First location to park your ship and meet the local guide, and then the second location where your goal is.

If our goal is to create an experience that reflects Star Wars movie, then we need no maps of planets. We need maps for the interiors of buildings and for "outdoor dungeons" that look like they are out in the open, but are actually just really small clusters of points of interest connected by invisible corridors.

[Starbeard]

I agree about handling planets. Very few Star Wars stories involve much more than 2 or 3 places on a planet: where the characters land, where they end up, and maybe a pitstop between the two. Of course, we could also say that the same thing is true of the stories that inspired D&D: Conan, Barsoom, even The Dying Earth stories about Cugel the Clever are handled that way if you take each chapter to be a single set piece story. So I guess the question is whether Star Wars games should replicate the sensation of taking in a Star Wars story, or if it should be a game inspired by Star Wars themes. There's no right or wrong answer to that, I think.

[Falconer]

I do agree 100% that the genre convention of each planet basically having one site of interest should be adhered to.

But I would say the leisurely RPG format allows for a lot more wandering than the terse movie format. In that sense, if I’m adventuring on the Death Star, I’ll probably want a more gritty experience of taking repulsorlifts, climbing shafts, creeping down corridors, jumping down from catwalks, all that sort of stuff. I don’t prefer to just “cut” to the set pieces. Similarly, I’m going to want to spend a little flying around in space, fighting off completely random pirates and Imperial TIEs, checking out dead end leads (maybe a planet where I thought I would find “a guy” but I was wrong), and stuff like that. One of the strengths of a RPG is that story arises from the players’ actions and from completely random circumstances that couldn’t be foreseen by the GM (in fact, that is the ONLY kind of story that my players tend to be able to recall afterwards), so, there’s got to be a lot of room to breathe, I think.

[finarvyn]

Jul 12, 2018 13:23:03 GMT -6 Yora said:

Now when it comes to the "Roleplaying sandbox", which never really was a D&D thing, I think the best approach is actually to start with a rather simple setup and then making up the details as you go along. Star Wars has the huge advantage of being a very well established setting with well understood "rules" of how things work and people behave, and with huge amount of information on lots of places that is simultaneously rather general and nonspecific. Making up new material as needed on just a week's notice is relatively easy in a Star Wars campaign.

You have some interesting ideas. Not sure how I feel about them, but I'll take some time to ponder.

I'm not sure what you mean about how a "roleplaying sandbox" not being a D&D thing, however. In the 1970's, after spending months doing nothing but dungeons, my group slowly expanded our campaign and it was very much like what I understand the "sandbox" campaign to be by current definitions. We had rules for wilderness encounters, we had characters wander and explore as desired, we had various plot hooks planted where players could pick and choose a destination... how is that NOT a sandbox?

When I ran an OD&D Star Wars campaign in the 1970's it seemed a lot like the Star Wars universe to me, but was very D&D-like as well. Characters might spend weeks exploring Tatooine and fighting Tusken Raiders, running missions for Jabba the Hut, interacting with folks at Mos Eisley, that kind of thing. I had mapped out that part of the planet just like a D&D world and players explored it.

The Death Star was basically a mega-dungeon. Sure, I didn't need to map the whole thing out like I might have with a traditional dungeon, but parts were mapped out as my players spent time undercover trying to steal data from the Empire and stuff like that. Almost like playing Top Secret, only on the Death Star.

I'm just not sure that Star Wars "has to be" people-centric.

[boot]

D&D certainly has a one-two punch of addiction for players. It offers a roleplaying aspect, and it offers--what people call in the computer game industry--"drops", which are all the little goodies PCs find (as in that +1 dagger, that potion of invisibility, that scroll of protection, etc.).

The D&D player experiences enjoyment from the journey of roleplaying and through the more mechanical benefits where the character is improved. I remember my players always jumped around with glee, big, silly smiles on their faces, when their characters went up a level.

Other roleplaying games are really only about the journey--about the roleplaying experience. The "drops" are not part of the deal. For example, Classic Traveller is like this. Though there is an experience system, it is nothing like the constant improvement that D&D characters get through "drops" and XP advancement.

For the most part, Star Wars is an RPG like the latter. There is an advancement system in both 1E and 2E versions of the game, but it's no where near as strong as that seen in D&D.

Game Masters who run Star Wars games, coming with players from D&D games, have to de-emphasize the aspect of "drops" and advancement and re-emphasize the experience of playing through the story, the journey, and the joy of roleplaying.

[Starbeard]

Interesting ideas, a lot of food for thought.

Okay, so what if a Star Wars game really did play out like D&D, maybe like Finarvyn's games in the 70s?

Tangentially, it sort of reminds me of the Star Wars MUDs I used to play casually off and on in the 90s and 00s. These were definitely hack 'n slash dungeon crawl games focused on exploration, loot and levelling. Incredibly un-Star Warsy in execution, but the Star Warsy magic was still there, because they were made by enthusiasts who were passionate about bringing the Star Wars universe into the MUD scene. And sure, you'd find imperial officer characters running around with lightsabers, or you might get beamed aboard the Enterprise, or wander into an entire zone themed around Indiana Jones or Earthsea or something, but that tongue-in-cheek quality was part of what MUDs were all about, and it's also no different than what you might get in a D&D game.

One idea I have is to draw up a map of Tatooine, essentially just the area around Anchorhead & Mos Eisley. Fill it with ruins, secret Imperial operations, rebel cells that they have to uncover if they want to join (or sell out) the alliance, and all manner of adventuring sites. New characters are unaligned and adventure where and how they want—after all, in B2 the characters don't start out as part of the Castle or the Caves, they just show up and make what they can of the situation. One driving impetus for adventure could be to save up enough money to buy passage off that miserable planet, after which more of the same can be found in nearby systems.

[Yora]

Jul 13, 2018 5:52:08 GMT -6 finarvyn said:

I'm not sure what you mean about how a "roleplaying sandbox" not being a D&D thing, however. In the 1970's, after spending months doing nothing but dungeons, my group slowly expanded our campaign and it was very much like what I understand the "sandbox" campaign to be by current definitions. We had rules for wilderness encounters, we had characters wander and explore as desired, we had various plot hooks planted where players could pick and choose a destination... how is that NOT a sandbox?

My view is that people wanted to have open ended story campaigns and D&D was the rules system they were familiar with, so they made D&D do that job, with reasonable degrees of success. But this arose from the situation that D&D was the rules they had and then they adapted their ideas for what they want out of a game around those rules.

But the way D&D is designed, the entire incentive system that rewards "success" and the way mechanics suggest how the game should be played ("when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail") is working against it. With the first editions being a very lightweight system, you don't have to fight the system very much to make it work for a story campaign. But the system itself does not want to go that way by itself. It is the consensus of the players and GM that forces the campaign to take such a direction.

Other games that came later are actually rather different. They were not created with the approach "how would we change a tactical combat game of treasure hunting to give us an experience more like X", but instead with "we want to get an experience like X. How could we design a system from scratch that through its rules unconsciously nudges players to play that way because the mechanics make acting in such ways the most efficient way to play".

In short, the rules of D&D are not designed for this, but there are other rules systems that are designed specifically for that purpose.

For example, I consider the keys of a Star Wars experience to be sneaking around dangerous places, sudden chaotic firefights, and thrilling daring escapes while blasters are fireing everywhere. To emulate the feel of the Star Wars movies, a game should consists of lots of movement and quick thinking improvisation and gambling. For that you need mechanics that let you solve tasks quickly, have characters who are very versatile, and have a combat system that is forgiving enough to let you try daring stunts without a high threat of instant death. Early D&D is much better at the first two than later editions, but still very much the opposite at the last one. The most successful way to play early D&D is to avoid combat at all cost and take a lot of time and preparation to carefully overcome each obstacle safely. But in a Star Wars game I want the opposite. Charging guns blazing and seemingly miraculously escaping unscathed is what I consider the key to recreating the Star Wars feel.

The Star Wars d6 RPG covers these things with having basic attributes that all characters possess and having multiple degrees of injury right from the start after character creation. Characters can't soak a lot of damage, but the first hit isn't likely to kill you. When you have a third level character with 5 hit points and the average enemy is dealing 1 to 8 damage on every hit, the mere possibility to get hit is a huge danger.

[boot]

Jul 13, 2018 12:19:33 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

Okay, so what if a Star Wars game really did play out like D&D, maybe like Finarvyn's games in the 70s?

Actually, you don't have to look far to find a Star Wars game that does play something like D&D.

I'm talking about the computer RPG Knights of the Old Republic, by Bioware.  Those two games were based on the d20 system (WotC's Star Wars game), so there is the strong reward of advancement in achieving enough experience to gain character levels.  And, the computer game had lots of drops in the form of credits or cyber enhancements or temporary injections that work like D&D potions.

I suppose if one wanted to play a D&D version of Star Wars, he could do a lot worse than starting with the d20 Star Wars game from WotC.

[Starbeard]

Your observations are really thought provoking Yora. I agree that we’ve got two basic styles of action here: 1) tactical SWAT missions with everybody’s finger permanently poised on the ‘Bail Out’ button, and 2) improvised swashbuckling missions where individual initiative wins the day.

Star Wars up through the 90s almost always prioritized the latter. You can find cases of the former, certainly—the attacks on the Death Stars, the Endor generator mission, most of the Rogue Squadron books—but even here the best laid plans always get derailed, and it turns into improvising your way out of a mess. The Empire on the other hand are strictly tactical: just think of the invasion of Hoth, Darth Vader’s capture of the blockade runner, or the fleet making a carpet sweep of the asteroid belt to smoke out the Falcon.

The D&D combat system does encourage conservative play at the low/mid level range, which goes against SW action. There might be ways to get around that conceptually, though. We can assume that Star Wars stories are high level by default. Or we can assume that PCs get way more hit points than their D&D counterparts.

Or (and I think I’m leaning toward this): we often talk about the abstract nature of D&D combat, where a round equals a minute and every attack roll represents your characte’s probability of gaining a telling advantage amidst the cut-and-thrust action that’s taking place—so we should think the same thing about abstract Star Wars combat. When characters are in comba, it’s assumed they are shooting, ducking, diving and all that, whether or not they hit or even attack. Characters who don’t make an attack roll are still shooting everywhere, they just aren’t going to deal damage to anything . So in that case the attack roll becomes an abstract probability of the barrage having a telling effect that round.

That’s mostly tangential to the point, but it occurs to me that both the D&D and D6 systems can benefit from looking at combat this way. If characters are in a combat situation and nobody is declaring an attack on either side for whatever reason, it doesn’t mean they’ve stopped firing, it just means nobody will deal significant damage. It’s up to the referee, then, to determine how often and at what probability stormtroopers will get to make attack rolls, and to address the issue of suppression (even if they aren’t making attack rolls, being shot at by a squad of stormtroopers has got to make you want to put your head down).

Just some random side thoughts.

[finarvyn]

Jul 13, 2018 14:30:11 GMT -6 Yora said:

For example, I consider the keys of a Star Wars experience to be sneaking around dangerous places, sudden chaotic firefights, and thrilling daring escapes while blasters are fireing everywhere. To emulate the feel of the Star Wars movies, a game should consists of lots of movement and quick thinking improvisation and gambling. For that you need mechanics that let you solve tasks quickly, have characters who are very versatile, and have a combat system that is forgiving enough to let you try daring stunts without a high threat of instant death.

I guess our OD&D experiences are very different from each other, because I feel that OD&D works fine for all of this. The secret (for me) is that I improvise stuff a lot. I didn't bother with a skill system but let my players try things and decided if it was logical that they would be skilled at it; things like basic piloting and shooting a laser pistol were assumed, but if you wanted to try a tricky maneuver I'd make you roll for success.

In my OD&D games I try to rush characters up to level 3-4 or so and then let them slowly advance until level 7-8. OD&D has a decent number of hit points in those level ranges, so a character could take a few "hits" (loss of hit points might not equal actual damage, but instead could be near-misses) before they went down. Luke wants to swing across the chasm he makes a dex roll, so that's how I would handle those daring stunts.

I dunno. I ran a game like this for several years using OD&D before the WEG Star Wars game came out, and I never felt like my players were cheated out of a solid Star Wars experience.

[finarvyn]

Jul 13, 2018 15:02:52 GMT -6 boot said:

Jul 13, 2018 12:19:33 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

Okay, so what if a Star Wars game really did play out like D&D, maybe like Finarvyn's games in the 70s?

I suppose if one wanted to play a D&D version of Star Wars, he could do a lot worse than starting with the d20 Star Wars game from WotC.

I bought copies of the d20 Star Wars games with the hope of using their stuff to revive my OD&D Star Wars campaign but I found that there were just too many details. Any time I take a 3E style rulebook and try to trim it down to OD&D-level, I find I almost have to rewrite everything. But I kept a copy because I liked the concept, even if I never played d20 Star Wars.

Also, the newer rulebooks had info for Darth Maul (who is my son's favorite character) and other stuff from the prequels and my old OD&D Star Wars notes didn't have any of that stuff in it. At the time that seemed really important to have, but after more than a decade of not using that stuff I suppose it was a bad investment.