Three years ago, I started a tabletop campaign of FFG’s Star Wars: Edge of the Empire roleplaying game. My hope was to give my players the quintessential Star Wars experience: a high-energy, star-hopping adventure with plenty of exploration, intrigue, and combat. I planned to incorporate the rebellion, the Force, and to let the players decide how they wanted to interact with the galaxy. I called this campaign Star Wars: Rough Edges.

A few months ago, that campaign came to an end. After sixty-six sessions, averaging about four hours each, and 1,255 earned experience points, the story we built together concluded. Now I find myself wondering—did I succeed? Did we tell the story we wanted? How did my plans and intentions change, as the players made decisions and I adjusted the narrative to match?

This kind of review is probably typical for most Game Masters, but I figure it might be instructive to others if I write it out here. Going over each major arc of the campaign, which I organized into six “episodes,” I’ll summarize the events of the story, take a look at the work I did behind the scenes, and then consider how the whole thing came together and what I could do to improve, next time.

To begin, let’s take a look at the cast list:

• Mara Bell, played by Priscila. A female Corellian human, Mara was raised by her father Marl, a well-known swoop racer also known as the Corellian Comet. She wants to follow in his footsteps, but he believes she has a greater destiny. They argue about this often, including the morning before he’s killed in a crash. Burdened by grief, she takes his ship, a YT-1300 called the Valkyrie, to explore the galaxy and find her purpose. She wears his soul diamond—his cremated remains compressed into a crystal, in a Corellian tradition—on a necklace around her neck.
• Vissica Cavisek, played by Karin. Cavisek is a female Selonian runaway—though she’s the crown princess of her den on Selonia, she’s devoted her life to the study of medicine. Her mother is afflicted with a wasting disease, which Cavi studies, but she dreads the day she’ll be asked to step up and become queen. Instead, she believes her little sister Retikel would make a better ruler, but she’s too young and the law of succession is clear. When her mother’s death seems certain, she flees the den and joins Mara Bell under the name “Leyli,” borrowed from a friend.
• BX-91, played by Olivia. BX-91, known as “Bix,” is a refurbished Clone Wars-era commando droid owned by Wylo the Hutt. He’s part of Wylo’s team of mechanical enforcers who were all rescued from the scrap heap. While his brethren are resigned to their fate, Bix hopes for freedom, and he manages to skim enough credits from his work to eventually buy his emancipation. He arranges a deal with Wylo: he’ll work in the galaxy and send back enough money to eventually free his compatriots. He then boards the Valkyrie.
• Ragei’zum’zrama, played by Cody. Going by “Rage” because it’s easier to say, he’s a male Chiss who was forced to flee the Unknown Regions as a child, after his family was killed in a failed coup. He grew up on the planet Bamaru, raised by a Quarren mechanic named Zyrus who fostered Rage’s talent for mechanics and computers. When he became older, Rage moved to Nar Shaddaa, where he found work in a Hutt-endorsed thieves’ guild called Prad Lay. Eventually, though, he was overcome with wanderlust and joined the crew of the Valkyrie.

And now, for the opening act…

Episode I: Frontier Souls

For each episode, I created a title crawl. Because YouTube doesn’t like me posting videos with copyrighted music, I’ll quote them at the top of each part:

It is a time of civil unrest. The GALACTIC EMPIRE, wary of news about a growing Rebellion, has sent troops to the Outer Rim to control the people through fear.

Concerned that the greater Imperial presence will hamper profits, crime lords across the galaxy are in a panic. Acts of violence are on the rise, and innocents caught in the crossfire have nowhere to turn.

In this crisis, small groups of renegades and outlaws struggle to survive. These frontier souls stand to earn their fortune or lose it all on the edge of the Empire….

Synopsis

The campaign begins with a call on the comm. A man named Redar Typhe contacts the Valkyrie, looking for Mara’s father. He’s a marshal on the planet Bamaru, and an old friend of Marl Bell—they used to be in CorSec together. This comes as a surprise to Mara, who only knew her father as a racer.

Bamaru has been targeted by pirates, and Redar believes the colony’s leadership is corrupt and complicit. He and his partner were investigating the issue, and his partner was killed just two days ago while following a lead.

Redar hoped Marl would be able to help him, but Mara tells him about her father’s death. Sensing an opportunity to fulfill Marl’s final wish for her, she volunteers her crew to come and help in any way they can. Redar hesitates, believing they’ll be placed in danger, but he needs someone from off-world because he can’t trust anyone on Bamaru. He agrees to her offer.

Rage is willing to go, as he grew up on Bamaru and wants to visit his old mentor Zyrus. Leyli also has ties to Bamaru, as she apprenticed there for a time while learning to be a doctor. Bix has no ties to it, but he sees it as an opportunity to get some work as a bodyguard.

Once on Bamaru, Captain Chalu of the Bamaru Marshal Service berates Redar for calling in the Valkyrie without authorization. She forbids the crew from getting involved and demands they leave. However, after Rage contacts Zyrus, the latter agrees to “hire” the crew as his assistants, as a pretense to allow them to investigate. They begin to gather information, but it’s slow-going as outsiders. They’re threatened by Cera Vamma, a pirate enforcer on the planet.

Redar’s house becomes their headquarters. One night, they notice someone sneaking around outside, and they ambush her. Her name is Eka Othaffin, one of Redar’s fellow marshals. They don’t get along—he thinks she’s a trigger-happy rookie, she thinks he’s a washed-up has-been—but it turns out she’s been investigating the colony’s corruption, too. She even has the information Redar’s partner was killed for: a list of  Bamaru’s councilors who have dealings with the pirates.

Meanwhile, Zyrus has come under threat for helping the crew. A group of thugs is sent to menace the Quarren, but the crew steps in and fights them off, killing one of Cera Vamma’s lieutenants in the process. Eka helps them make a self-defense claim, keeping them out of trouble with the marshals.

However, that turns out to be a distraction. While the crew was busy with the thugs, Vamma hit Redar’s house. The crew slices into Redar’s security system and discovers he’s been captured, with Vamma on record referring to a mining facility. Eka is able to tell the group that it’s located on Bamaru’s moon, and they plan an assault to break Redar out.

It goes well, and they make two key discoveries in the process. First, they uncover information in the facility’s computers that indicate the pirate leader, Jado Prinda, is really interested in the nearby Aeten system and only using Bamaru as a staging area. Second, they find another prisoner besides redar: Pakmi, daughter of Captain Chalu. She tells the group that she’s been kept as a hostage, and that she’s overheard the guards discussing the councilors who are involved with the pirates.

The crew decides to capitalize on this information. Rage fries the facility’s communications array, and they use the Valkyrie to destroy the only two shuttles on the moon’s surface, trapping Vamma and cutting her off from reinforcements. They return Pakmi to her mother, who immediately drops her stubborn attitude and deploys the marshals to arrest the corrupt councilors. Pakmi confirms that one of the councilors was being coerced—her “assistant” is secretly an assassin meant to keep her in line.

After subduing the assassin, the crew finds out from him that the planet’s governor has been involved with the pirates from the beginning. Captain Chalu orders the marshals to arrest the governor, but he’s already locked himself inside his residence, along with his family and loyalists. While she prepares a siege, Chalu asks the crew to return to the moon, arrest Cera Vamma, and find out what Jado Prinda’s plan is.

But when they arrive at the moon, they discover Jado has already returned. A battle between the Valkyrie and Jado’s gunship turns into a run-and-gun fight on the moon’s surface. Jado escapes, but only by leaving Vamma behind to be captured. To save her skin, Vamma offers the group information: that Jado was working for Wylo the Hutt but was quietly pocketing the profits, and that Wylo isn’t the only crime lord with interests on Bamaru.

The crew trades Vamma to Wylo to relieve some of Bix’s debt. They return to Bamaru and end the standoff by convincing the governor to give up, since Jado will now be on the run from the Hutts and won’t be able to help him.

Captain Chalu grudgingly admits that the crew did some good after all. She’s about to offer Mara a handshake when three Star Destroyers jump into orbit. As the Imperials blockade the planet, Eka reveals that she called the Empire after Redar was captured, thinking there was no way the group could succeed. She believes Bamaru will be better off under Imperial law.

Now trapped on Bamaru, the crew of the Valkyrie must bide their time until they can get away…

Behind the Screen

I should start by noting that I wasn’t a complete newbie when I started this campaign. Aside from years spent playing Dungeons & Dragons and Legend of the Five Rings, I started GMing games in college. My first campaign was a total conversion mod of L5R set in the Halo universe. It was the B-game for my friend’s L5R campaign, one that we played when he needed a break. I think it lasted around twenty sessions or so, spread out over four years.

I also ran Edge of the Empire when it was a beta, and again the year before I started this particular game. The latter even had Olivia, Karin, and Priscila as players. It wasn’t great, though. I was too focused on the idea of the players being able to go anywhere and do anything, to the point that I forgot to really give them something to do. The game imploded due to other reasons, but I still felt like I’d given them a poor experience. So this campaign began as a way to make it up to them.

Overall, I think this was about as strong a start to a campaign as you could ask for. Edge of the Empire has a mechanic called Obligation, which is used to track something from each character’s past that’s still a negative force in their lives. Using what the players chose during Session Zero, I was able to whip up a plot that involved everyone’s Obligations, which kept the players engaged.

And this was easily the second-most engaged my players have been, with the exception of the final episode. (Tune in next Friday!) They were on task the entire time, and we never had any detours. Of course, you expect that at the start of a campaign, but it was still remarkable. Episode I unfolded over the course of six sessions.

Probably the weakest part was how I brought the PCs together. The idea itself worked great—everyone needed to be tied to Bamaru, to explain why they would be willing to help. However, the way I insisted it be framed was a little hamfisted. I very much wanted the group to start together, which I decided meant “already a crew.” Really, with the disparate stories involved, it probably would have been better to have everyone get to Bamaru on their own and then get pulled together by circumstance, such as Redar calling them all together due to their skills.

It’s a little hackneyed, but it works great for a tabletop game.

I wrote a lot of background details, particularly expanding on relationships between NPCs, that never got used. One major detail was the presence of a Chiss colony on Bamaru. I think it was mentioned once, then it never came up again. There were also details about what Jado Prinda wanted in the Aeten system, but the PCs never picked up that particular thread.

(For the record: stygium crystals for cloaking devices. He wanted to set up a mining operation on Aeten II, then process them on Bamaru. They’d make him the pre-eminent pirate in the Outer Rim, and he could get out from under the thumbs of the Hutts.)

A lot of my organization was done through Google Sheets. I kept session notes in a column format, with one dedicated to the ongoing story and the rest to individual characters. The exact format changed a lot, as I added in “complication” rows and “reward” rows, but there was always a “setup” and “conclusion” section.

About halfway through Episode I, Priscila bought a Force sensitive specialization for Mara. When we discussed it, she expressed an interest in delving into using the Force, but for the time being she just figured Mara would consider herself “very lucky.” I made a few notes and shifted a couple NPCs around, and I planned on Mara’s Force sensitivity to start coming to the fore in Episode II.

Looking back on it, I’m satisfied with this episode. It isn’t reflected well in the synopsis, since my notes from early on are pretty thin, but everyone got a chance to shine. Mara emerged early on as the group’s de facto leader, and pretty much every action they took saw her take the lead—from getting Redar and Eka to agree with each other, to storming the moon base, to negotiating the governor’s surrender. It got to the point where I asked Priscila if she wouldn’t mind stepping back and letting everyone else have a chance to be in the spotlight. (She didn’t mind, and she did step back for a little while.)

Leyli/Cavisek had plenty of opportunities to put her Medicine check to use. Her desire to heal anyone who needed it, even the bad guys, eventually saw many people approaching her for help. Plus, the fact that she apprenticed on Bamaru meant she had roots in the community. She was in regular contact with NPCs, gathering information and relaying it to the group.

As the designated murderbot, Bix was the MVP in every combat encounter, but otherwise found himself with precious little to do. This, unfortunately, ended up being a recurring problem, to the point that in Episode III Olivia decided to retire the character and bring in someone who could do more than just fight. However, at this juncture, Bix and Mara developed a deep bond over their shared willingness to wade into danger together, which would pay off much later.

And Rage, with strong skills in Mechanics and Computers, was incredibly valuable throughout the episode. He’s responsible for getting into Redar’s security system, shredding the pirates’ system on the moon base, and turn their defenses against them. He ended up stealing a ton of valuable data to send back to his guild, as well.

The end of this episode was something I had in mind for a while. I knew that Eka saw the Empire as a good thing, and that she would reach out as soon as the situation got desperate enough. Having the Empire appear also served to raise the stakes and end the episode on a nice cliffhanger.

Episode II: “Storm in a Glass” picks up three months later. In that time, the Battle of Yavin occurs, plunging the Empire into a civil war. We’ll talk about how that shakes out in the next update.

May the Force be with you.