This weekend, I finished typing up the first version of our setting bible for the Sundog Millionaires campaign that I talked about back here. We’re experiencing a few delays in getting to the character creation part of the festivities, so the document is not complete – I expect to add a few more entries ((Like one on Sundog, the characters’ ship, but they haven’t decided what kind of ship it is, so that’s blank right now.)) for things that get created during character creation.
But I wanted to get the setting bible out to my players to make sure we didn’t lose the momentum and the excitement that was generated during the game creation session, so I sent it out only partially complete.
I have to say, I’m pretty pumped about this setting the group has come up with. It has a bunch of cool Star Wars stuff, but also some neat tropes from other science fiction ((And action/adventure sources.)) sources, so it’s not plain vanilla Star Wars ((Nothing wrong with plain vanilla, but I prefer that the characters have room in the narrative to put their stamp on things.)). Sure, we’re playing during the Imperial period, but it’s much earlier than the movies – more the time of the Dark Times comic series, which is less constrained by readily-available sources. This means that there’s plenty of space ((See what I did there?)) for the characters to carve out their own stories and decide what’s important, rather than being either tied to or overshadowed by the canon narrative.
An important note about canon, both for the audience and for my players: I know a fair amount – not a huge amount – about the Star Wars universe, expanded and otherwise, and I’m a decent online researcher ((At least for the level of information you need to run a game.)). However, I fully accept that there are others in the audience and among my players who know the stuff far, far better than I ever will. I am not going to worry about canon. I am going to use whatever seems fun that I discover, and make up the rest. If I tread on the toes of those who care deeply about some aspect of the universe, well, that’s just the way it’s going to be. I’m not going out of my way to break from canon, but nor am I going out of my way to follow it.
Govern yourselves accordingly. 😉
I am far more interested in the world my players created, and in how they got excited during its creation. I had to rein in a couple of folks from talking out an entire story that would be more interesting to play through than just have in the background. I had people throwing out ideas for the game left and right. I had people starting to get excited talking about what characters they made. And everyone cheered when, in the final minutes of the session, they picked the name of their ship and thence the name of the campaign.
Man, I love collaborative game creation.
Anyway, for those who are interested, I’m linking to both the setting bible and the Obsidian Portal wiki for the game. You can find them both below.
One last note about the bible: I’ve put in a bunch of pictures that I have collected over the years from the Internet. I didn’t keep track of the sources, and so have not credited the artists, nor obtained permission to use them – I didn’t know I’d be putting them in anything public when I collected them. I just thought they were cool.
If you see some art in the document and you know who it belongs to, please let me know. That way, I can ask for permission to use it, and credit the artist if they grant that permission, or remove it if they don’t. This isn’t the best way to gain permission, I realize. I apologize for that. I should have kept better track of the sources of the pictures when I collected them.
Anyway, here are the links I promised:
Good luck for the campaign ! I myself am running a Star Wars campaign on a heavily modified pathfinder system. Between each arc, my players and myself talk about what was great and what was wrong with the mechanics; and we continue to evolve them. That’s really interesting from a design perspective.
btw, about the number of species you talk about in a previous post : Wookieepedia list around 1300 sentient species !
I ran a Star Wars game on the original West End Games system (which I modified slightly) years ago, and had a lot of fun. More recently, I worked on a conversion of the Feng Shui system for Star Wars… still haven’t quite finished it, but I did get to run a one-shot and I have to say, it’s a pretty good fit.