This is a role-playing campaign designed around the FATE v3 rules, which can currently be found published in the RPG Spirit of the Century. This is a deviation from the canonical history of the Star Wars universe, inserting a Galactic Sith Empire between the fall of the Rakatan Infinite Empire and the founding of the Old Republic. (I had the idea for this campaign long before I discovered that the deep past of the Star Wars galaxy had already been fleshed out in the Expanded Universe detail.) This is the story of the overthrow of the Empire and the formation of the first Jedi Knights from disparate groups of secretive Force users.
I read a lot of hard science fiction (and even have a rusty BS in Physics) and want to be able to use ideas from that realm in the space fantasy setting of Star Wars, or have good, internally consistent reasons for them not to show up. You’ll find a lot of things on this site that are noncanonical explanations for how things work in my version of the Star Wars universe; these are ways to make things consistent and convenient for me as a game master and storyteller, and not meant to serve as a reference like the fine databases at Wookiepedia, TheForce.net, or the Star Wars Databank, nor to attempt extreme accuracy to the films like the work of Dr. Curtis Saxton. You may also find technologies that don’t exist elsewhere in the Star Wars universe, simply because I see them as consistent with the galaxy’s technology and culture; I’ve put much thought into keeping the more disruptive technologies (like molecular nanotechnology) out of the picture, as they wouldn’t result in anything that looked remotely like Star Wars.
I’m also changing the history of the galaxy antedating the Old Republic. I’ve noted these below in Deviations from Canon.
The following are principles I’ve identified for telling a Star Wars story:
This is not the galaxy that Luke Skywalker knew. Tatooine has beach resorts and Ewoks are brain-eating savages. The rule of law is a quaint curiosity studied by archaeologists and historians.
I am noting down things that may be useful for telling Star Wars stories in other eras— the days in which the dueling academies were significant could also be an interesting era for roleplaying.
Fault-tolerant distributed systems are more resilient than big, centralized monolithic projects, but galactic technology makes the economies of scale pay off in a big way. We’re accustomed to projects with a relatively short lifespan (measured in years to decades) that will be technologically obsolete by the time they wear out. At the equilibrium technology level of the galaxy, it’s reasonable to build major public works to last for thousands of years (a philosophy that arose through natural selection in the millennia in which Coruscant was developing in pre-hyperspace isolation).
Besides, distributed systems are easier to take over incrementally. The Sith prefer to have big, centralized infrastructure that’s easy to guard and hard (but meaningful) to conquer.
So when you think Star Wars, think big. Power plants are massive stations with immense reactors where the energy of suns shines forth from behind powerful force fields, feeding bulky superconducting power conduits that stretch across a continent. With interstellar transport being relatively inexpensive, the same efficiencies that lead to building large cities while getting your produce from farms in outlying regions lead to dozens ecumenopolis worlds attracting labor while thousands of agricultural worlds supply goods. Even the planets are an expression of this: Dagobah is a big swamp, Tatooine is a big desert, Hoth is a big snowfield, Coruscant is a big city, and Kashyyyk and Endor are big forests with really big trees. And Palpatine’s Empire is very fond of superweapons that can threaten to destroy planets and send stars nova.
The Force tends to bring people to places where they can make a difference, for good or for ill. This provides an excellent in-game reason to go off on tangents: just provide something that advances the plot as a reward, even on something completely unrelated, and it makes sense in character for this to be all part of the way the Force connects things together. Force sensitive characters are also good for nudging with intuition that a particular tangent might be useful. In general: when stuck, follow side quests and see what happens.
It’s #1 on the Evil Overlord List:
My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not
face-concealing ones.
So why do the Sith provide face-concealing helmets
for all their enlisted men?
It comes down to the basic primate need for observing another person’s face to better understand them. People with their faces concealed appear sinister and troubling. They can see this reaction in others, and they feel more powerful. This gives quantifiable results: it’s easier to keep a population pacified with faceless minions. In game-mechanic terms, it’s a bonus to intimidation checks and morale checks for millions of the troopers who are out there enforcing the will of the Sith Lords. The potential penalties caused by allowing the occasional malcontent to penetrate security by putting on captured armor are drastically outweighed by the advantage of keeping control over billions of slaves.
Similarly, killing your rivals and enemies out of hand are #3, #4, #6,
#7, but #11— I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I
will feel no need to prove it by ... leaving my weaker enemies alive
to show they pose no threat.
— is more complex. When there
are millions that want to be evil overlords themselves, killing
your enemies out of hand could make you look like you’re worried
about them. Leaving them alive is silly, though— that’s
what the arena is for.
Civilization is thousands of years old on most planets; Coruscant is an extreme example, where the lower levels last saw sunlight 70,000 years ago. Planets have had a long time to accumulate history, and are rife with secret passages, secret societies, obscure ruins, and forgotten tombs.
Canonically, the Infinite Empire of the Rakata lasted for 20,000 years and eventually collapsed in 25,200 BBY in the Rakatan Civil War. This was followed almost immediately by the Expansionist Era, when Corellian scientists first developed a network of hyperspace cannons and eventually a full hyperdrive from fragments of Rakatan technology. The Jedi come about after the Force Wars between the followers of the Ashla and Bogan on the planet Tython, and participate in the Unification Wars that founded the Republic.
I’m taking liberties with the Pre-Republic era, putting a 5000 year Sith Empire between the fall of the Rakata and the birth of the Republic. I’m putting the life of Xim the Despot in the days of the Sith expansionist phase; the Sith conquered the Tion Cluster decades after his death.
Dates in the New Republic are from the Battle of Yavin in A New Hope. Dates in the Old Republic are from the signing of the Galactic Constitution (Republic Year/Before Republic); dates in the Sith Empire are from the proclamation of the Sith Galactic Empire (Imperial Era/Pre Empire) by Haymakh. The founding of the Republic will stay at roughly 25,000 BYA; non-Republic events that provide a useful backdrop for the Sith Galactic Empire are pushed back by 5000 years.
I’m also overriding any physics and biology that I can’t manage to rationalize.
The lightsaber does not exist at the start of the game, but it is quite possible that it will be invented about 18,000 years early.
Healing should take hours with assistance from the Force and days without it. It should be possible to overcome the penalties from wounds by using the Force or abusing stims, but there may be a price to pay afterward.
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.— Isaac Newton
There are a lot more references than these; I am only listing the ones that I make use of in designing and running the campaign.
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