Welcome to the HoloNet Uplink, citizen. This series focuses on Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars Roleplaying Game, with content aimed mostly at the Gamemaster. Threats, adventure seeds, rules supplements, and more are all to come for those who access The HoloNet Uplink.
I’ve got a confession to make. I love charts. Absolutely love them. Whether it is old school Dungeons and Dragons, Dark Heresy, or the trip down memory lane that is the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, charts are an absolute inspiration to me as a GM.
But wait a minute. Aren’t charts the kind of boring, old school GMing that the narrative dice system ought to be rejecting? For me, random charts are a great tool to provide some inspiration and guidance. When you do not have anything specific in mind and the entirety of options provided by the rich Star Wars universe become daunting, it can be a great aid to creativity for some narrowing down to happen. GMs should not be beholden to chart results, instead take or leave the results as you please as they are simply there as another tool in the toolbox.
Armed with that context and understanding, I offer a few small charts to inspire creating interesting Imperial bases. Imperial bases are classic Star Wars adventure locales and therefore can provide excellent mileage for campaigns on from all three SW RPG lines. It must be noted that the following charts do not provide exhaustive lists. Not only would it be very challenging to catalogue every possible base purpose, location, and status or special circumstance, I also wanted to ensure each chart used either percentile dice or straight d10s as they are a part of the Narrative Dice system. Feel free to bust out your d10s and roll along.
Imperial Bases
Determine the purpose for the base or roll 1d10 and consult the below chart.
| d10 | Base Purpose |
| 1 | Data Vault |
| 2 | Propaganda Broadcast Facility |
| 3 | Shipyard / Repair Facility |
| 4 | Garrison / Barracks |
| 5 | Academy |
| 6 | Supply Depot |
| 7 | Hangar / Vehicle Bays |
| 8 | Research Facility |
| 9 | Headquarters |
| 10 | Detention Centre |
Determine the location type for the base, or roll 1d10 on the chart below for an exotic location.
| d10 | Exotic Location |
| 1 | Asteroid Base |
| 2 | Repulsorpad in gas giant atmosphere |
| 3 | Within an urban center |
| 4 | Space Station |
| 5 | Underground / cave network |
| 6 | Underwater |
| 7 | Ice base |
| 8 | Deep in the jungle |
| 9 | Sea side |
| 10 | Volcano base |
Determine the status and any special circumstances for the base, or roll 1d10 on the chart below.
| d10 | Base Status |
| 1 | Abandoned |
| 2 | Taken over by criminals |
| 3 | Taken over by Rebels |
| 4 | Fully operational |
| 5 | Fully operational |
| 6 | Fully operational |
| 7 | Short staffed |
| 8 | Over staffed (regular personnel + trainees) |
| 9 | Under construction |
| 10 | Commander is corrupt |
Using these three elements you now have the seed of an Imperial base adventure location. Use this seed as inspiration to develop the location further, or roll again if the results are not to your liking.
Samples
I rolled a few times on the above charts as a test drive. The results are written up below. It is entirely possible I could have come up with these ideas without the use of the charts, but I must say after rolling the dice I was immediately inspired by the below combinations in a much more reproducible manner than having to come up with something cool from scratch.
Stratis Base
Seed rolls: 9 – Headquarters, 2 – gas giant, 6 – fully operational.
Deep within the breathable atmosphere layer of Ord Ibanna floats the secretive Stratis Base. Hidden within the eye of a massive storm system found in the gas giant’s southern hemisphere, Stratis Base serves as a covert command and control facility for Imperial forces in the sector. Pilots dread the treacherous approach to Stratis Base, as deviation from the set course exposes spacecraft to violent winds, threatening to throw ships down to the crush zone of Ord Ibanna’s atmosphere. The secrecy and danger in approaching Stratis Base is all by design to protect the reclusive Moff of this sector.
DeepNet Access
Seed rolls: 2 – Propaganda broadcast facility, 6 – underwater, 2 – taken over by criminals.
Below the tropical waves of Rishi lies what is now known as DeepNet Access. Now a pirate HoloNet access point, this facility was once a covert propaganda broadcast center used by COMPNOR in an effort to pacify the Abrion Sector. The Empire abandoned the facility years before the Battle of Yavin by intentionally flooding it. Rediscovered by a band of freelance prospectors searching for exonium deposits, coordinates for the facility changed hands several times before enterprising slicers discovered much of the HoloNet equipment had survived the flooding. Now DeepNet Access serves as an invite-only retreat for only the most elite members of the slicer community.
Are you feeling the old school chart cool? Roll 1d10 on each chart and post your creation in the comments below.
Christopher Hunt
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LOVE this sort of stuff, and this is no exception! These kind of charts are super handy: please please please make more!
Glad you enjoyed, guess I’ll have to make more now! Any requests?
I love stuff like this. Like you said — it’s not a hard rule, it’s just a place to get some inspiration and find combos you might not have thought of on your own.
I did a couple test rolls and came up with:
– An abandoned imperial academy deep in the jungle
When I thought about the look of the place, I thought of the trapezoidal, metal-brualist style of a lot of imperial installations, then covered that in vines, and suddenly the academy has a lot in common with the bandar-log city from The Jungle Book (the recent live-action version, where it’s sort of perched on a plateau). Why was it abandoned? What’s there that the PCs want? Who or what is living there now?
– A short-staffed detention center under the ice
Star Trek VI, anyone?
Short staffing makes it a good time to strike if you want to free some prisoners; or maybe they don’t need a big staff, because anyone who escapes is just dooming themselves to an icy death.
– Underwater shipyard, still under construction
This is the most bizarre idea I generated. While aquatic-capable starships are a thing, planting a shipyard below the surface is counter-intuitive. But that just means the answers to “why” are more interesting! Is it a secret facility that uses the water to conceal itself, or is there something on the sea floor that it wants access to? Does it use special submersible transports to bring in workers and materiel and ship out the final product, does it have a surface-access elevator, or does the whole massive shipyard surface to let one ship go and take on a new one? Maybe it’s a mobile shipyard that cruises through the undersea trenches while constructing or repairing the most secret of secret projects.
Nice! Excellent development from those random prompts! Reading along your comments for Underwater Shipyard I thought the same thing – okay that’s just silly, unless there is a really good reason. Your answers to the “why” are some phenomenal adventure seeds.
This is exactly the reaction I was hoping for.