I blogged about this before, last year when I thought I was going to start a SW Saga campaign. it took a while to get it going, but finally tonight we are playing Star Wars. I’ll be running it, taking a small break from my 4e campaign for a few sessions, and then just run both in tandem.
We have a smaller group, as not all my players are interested in playing SW, so I predict the night will go by a lot faster, not only due to the lesser number of people playing but because the system seems like a faster system overall when compared to 4e.
So yes, expect the blog to take a bit of a wider scope now as I play and run SW. I’ll compare it to 4e, seeing how the systems are very similar, and I’ll share my real newbie experiences with it.
So the point of this post was to hilite some of the ways I plan to set the mood for SW. I have a bunch of sound effects on my laptop that I’ve collected over the years, stuff like stormtroopers, ship sound effects, lightsaber hums, droid sounds, that sort of stuff that’s a click away.
The players entered a cantina? I have a bar crowd sound effect mixed in with the cantina music. The old SW computer games are a great source of SW SFX, as they can be pulled right from the CD-ROMS.
Obviously, John Williams’ music is the ultimate soundtrack to play while playing SW, and I may have that on cue as well, although admittedly, my players have never really been into sound effects at the table. We’ll see.
I do plan to play them this video before we sit to play. I created this in Adobe After Effects. It’s the opening scroll to the first adventure in WOTC’s “Dawn of Defiance” campaign, playing on my tv. Check it out, although the camera didn’t grab the colors too well:
So yeah, these are some ways I think I can get the mood going at a SW table. Let’s see how it goes, it should be a fun ride. Hold together baby, hold together…. 🙂
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Steve
April 21, 2010
That is the bomb. I’ve been thinking about doing a starwars campaign after my current one ends… that just made me want to do it more.
Darkside989
April 21, 2010
I also made an opening crawl for my Saga campaign (http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/totor). Mine’s a little wordy, so it doesn’t match up perfectly with the music, but there’s always room to improve for Episode II. I do want to try to add a pan-down to a planet or ship or something as well.
But you’re absolutely right – Star Wars in particular can greatly benefit from multimedia and technology, and I look forward to seeing more of your ideas and suggestions as you get into your new campaign.
andrew
April 21, 2010
Saga edition is so much fun. My group just ended a campaign i had been running for the last couple of months. it’s run and gun anyways and we had an especially high action campaign that ended with a thermal detonator stand-off between the party and a hutt crime lord.
I found the Force to be too powerful, though. I had only one force user in my group and he could – by himself – tear through encounters that would have been challenging for the other three characters together. And it wasn’t really his fault (though he can sometimes be a bit of a power gamer).
The problem is that a lot of the force powers force checks work against defenses, which are based on character level. Using the Force, however is a skill, which means that if someone is trained and has focus, they get +10 in addition to half character lvl and charisma mod. What character’s wills, forts and reflex are high enough to beat off d20+14 (a 4th lvl character with a +2chamod) even a fraction of the time?
the DCs on a lot of the force powers need to be higher and the DCs to continue powers like force grip round-to-round need to be higher. or there need to be skill points (like dnd 3.5) and/or defenses need to be saving throws (adding the chance for higher defense).
the answer in a lot of cases was to just throw a high-powered force user or two back at them, but unfortunately we were playing during the “unleashed” time frame and so force users needed to feel rarer. star wars canon matters a lot to me =)
still, it was loads of fun to dm. and the players left wanting more (supposedly). but we had to move on to other games.
Tourq
April 21, 2010
That WAS cool. I would do that in a second.
I don’t know how long it takes you to put something like that together, but you should do that as often as possible… players appreciate that kind of stuff (and if they don’t, get new players).
-Tourq
Behemoth0089
April 21, 2010
Great video and yeah, let us know how does that work, because a friends and me wanna play SW RPG but don’t know how does it works
Katrina
April 21, 2010
I feel like that’ll be perfect for getting your players in the perfect mindset to be playing. I got a little shiver out of it, it looks so official.
If only there was such a strong audio/visual cue in other games for players to “get in the mode”…
Colmarr
April 21, 2010
Hmm. I can’t see the movie window for some reason. Perhaps I don’t have the appropriate Flash Player – it’s Adobe 10, right?
Geek Ken
April 22, 2010
*mumble* Stupid new-fangled video. Hrmph… music in the background for sessions. In MY DAY! We used IMAGINATION! We mapped stuff out on graph paper and pushed pennies around on a table. And WE LIKED IT! *grumble* Now get off my lawn!
Hee, an amazing intro for your campaign. I cannot imagine how this fail to get your group pumped up to play a session and get into the groove. I haven’t delved much into background music/sounds, or props much during my game. But I have to say this has made me want to dabble in it a bit.