One of the things that I love about Star Wars is the vast amount of time that the galaxy has existed. Yes, the official lore is pretty bare bones right now, but there is a vast repository of knowledge and lore to be found within the legends of the Expanded Universe. From the halcyon days of the Old Republic to the galaxy wide conflicts of both the Clone Wars and both Galactic Civil Wars to the intrigue of living and operating in the Dark Times or under the rule of the One Sith Empire, there is so much that a GM can never fit everything that he wants into a single game.
Or can they?
Several years ago I started a campaign that began as a thought experiment. Sadly, it never saw completion as I had several players drop out due to other commitments leaving me in quite a lurch (you’ll understand why when the concept is explained below) and the game had to be shelved. But I still think about it a lot and wonder about dusting it off with another group of players at some point. I originally ran this in Saga Edition, but it would work just as well with Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion/Force and Destiny. In fact, given the more narrative focus on the game and the ability for the players to directly affect the narration, it might work better.
This game really begins and ends with the players. Each of them creates five characters. They will play these characters in five or more of the major eras of the Star Wars universe. When I ran the campaign, I had characters set in the Old Republic, the Clone Wars, the Dark Times, the First Galactic Civil War, the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, and during the reign of the One Sith Empire. The characters in the Clone Wars were the same characters in the Dark Times, advanced in age and experience. The main concept of creating these characters is to come up with a legacy – a common link between all of the characters that will somehow culminate at a single point.
For example, one of my players decided that she wanted her characters to create and follow their own unique Force Tradition, and so she created five Force users that either bucked the Jedi trend off the bat or would have done so through play. Another decided that he wanted to found his own clan of Mandalorian warriors and so his characters were all based around the Soldier class and the Mandalorian. Another character decided to take a more literal look at the term legacy and decided that his final character was going to be the result of centuries of research and study that the other characters pioneered – a droid that could touch the Force (I was always about the rule of cool over everything else, and this was just too cool of an idea to pass up). Regardless, there should be a connecting legacy between all of the characters in some way. Whether or not the individual characters accepted or bucked against that legacy was irrelevant.
The game itself started by focusing on individual plots in the character’s respective timelines while I wove an overarching meta plot into place to bind the characters together in more than just their legacy. I was preparing to introduce a series of hyperspace portals that were capable of transporting humanoids instantly across the galaxy without the need for a ship. This series of portals, unearthed on a system of planets deep in the Unknown Regions was going to be a staging area for a long forgotten sect of the original Sith to invade the rest of the galaxy. These Sith were members of the original race that had been stranded eons ago in a generation ship that, while still functional, was damaged beyond repair in a hyperspace malfunction and was no longer capable of moving. And so they set themselves up as gods within the system, developing their dark side abilities to uplift the native species into their servants.
The initial arcs had to do with the players getting to the system in question deep within the Unknown Regions. The characters in the Clone Wars found themselves there after the Battle of Saleucemi when their ship’s hyperdrive was damaged in battle and they found themselves jumping to an unknown destination. The characters in the Legacy Era found their way to the system while tracking down a Sith Lord that had escaped them numerous times and had been a thorn in their side fomenting gang violence on the planet they were calling home. The Old Republic characters were part of an exploration mission within the Unknown Regions.
Having the characters involved in the same area not only allowed me to develop a new area for them to explore throughout the eras, but gave me some amazing framing devices. I was able to end one session in the Legacy Era with the players aboard a decrepit space station orbiting the planet they were above – the same station the Clone Wars characters themselves had boarded years ago. Deep in the station’s memory banks was the security footage from their time aboard the station. The next session the Legacy Era characters got to watch what the Clone Wars characters had done as that session played out.
I was really quite proud of this campaign idea, and I’m sad that I didn’t get to see it play out longer, but when I lost 10 total characters that were so interwoven into the metaplot, it was hard to figure out how to carry on or introduce more characters into the mix. Maybe some day I’ll find a group dedicated enough to dust of this campaign with. Maybe it will get revisited in a different fashion. It’s hard to say what the future holds and what my own gaming legacy will ultimately be.
Ben Erickson
