S&W Episode 3rd Edition: A New Setting

I've been thinking a bit about RPG stuff lately. Specifically about super hero RPGs. After all, we've been playing quite a bi of Sentinels Of The Multiverse recently. In addition to which the spectre of actually trying to get an RPG going has been mooted, and I've actually had some positive feedback on the notion of running Overpower. Which is gratifying. It's always nice when you manage to do something that people actually enjoy. So, on the way to work one morning I was thinking about setting ideas for games, when I had a REALLY good idea. One of those rare ideas you have where the more you think about it, the more sense it seems to make, and the less you can believe that someone hasn't already thought about doing it.

What if you ran a super hero game set in the Star Wars Universe?

Sounds crazy, right? But think about. What are the key ingredients of the super heroic theme? Well, you have a small group of individuals with abilities above and beyond those of the average population who use those abilities to fight crime. The level of crime can be anything from shoplifting ninjas or whatever it is that Daredevil get's up to most evenings all the way up to that one time Thanos killed 50% of all living creatures in the entire universe in a failed effort to impress a girl.

Gaze into the face of romance!

In addition to this the heroic minority are seldom, if ever, officially sanctioned, and often will be considered criminals themselves by the forces of law. They'll come into conflict with the forces of organized crime, with armies of faceless cannon fodder and with the occasional demented individual with a similar abnormal level of power.

Is any of this sounding familiar? Shall I make it easier for you?

I mean, both Peter Parker AND Luke Skywalker are spurred onto their path towards becoming a hero by the death of a father figure called Ben. And Star Wars doesn't need  you to choose between mutants and magic as a source of powers, because the Force is basically both at once. And they're plenty of technology, aliens and mad science kicking around to take up any slack.

I mean, it pains me to admit this but if someone REALLY wants to play as Star Wars Iron Man you could technically have a go at making Mandalorians not suck. I'm not honestly sure how though, so it's probably best avoided.

Much like the Sarlacc. Although we all know how well Mandalorians do at avoiding those.

No, it's really force powers that I'm seeing the most potential in. Especially baring in mind I was considering this in light of Overpower, which is all about not quite being in full control of ones abilities. This is something that's always portrayed as being important in the movies, although not really explored in any great detail.

So, the way I see things working is like this: We're setting it some time after the prequels, but before Return Of The Jedi. The important thing being that the Empire has long wiped all trace of the Jedi out. Nobody really believe in the force any more. We'll set the game on a city planet similar to Coruscant or Nar-Shadaa. Pretty much a cross between the two in fact. Imperial controlled, but plenty of scum and villainy to deal with. Plus we probably don't want much risk of the Emperor taking a direct interest in anything, at least at first. We'll call this planet Arka-Metropol, but only because Marvel doesn't bother with much in the way of original locations.

So we'll have a corrupt and self serving Moff and various crime lords all vying for power and basically making everyone else's lives miserable in the process. And into this we throw the party. Now, maybe they're young people with newly emerging force abilities, but I personally favour highly unethical and illegal experimentation to really get that super hero vibe. A dodgy scientist who may or may not be working for any number of shadowy interests is kidnapping people and pumping them full of artificially cultured Midichlorians or something. Most don't survive the procedure, some go mad or develop horrific deformities. But our player characters of course survive and gain some sort of powers.

It wouldn't be the first time somone's tried this. It wouldn't even be the 50th.

You can explain most sort of powers with the Force. Super strength and speed? Jedi do that shit all the time. Flight is just a specialized version of telekinesis. And of course there's the mind control and directed energy blasts and everything else that the really dodgy force users get up to.

SO. MANY. RAPE. JOKES.

Now, obviously the party won't be starting out with a full suite of force powers, They should have one or two unique applications each with a bit of room to expand once they get the hang of them. And of course by setting a bunch of characters loose with super force powers but no real clue how to use them you're quickly going to develop all sorts of potential for interesting dramatic explorations of that whole light side / dark side thing.

Assuming of course you're players are up for roleplaying complete ignorance of the fact that electrocuting a bunch of innocent Stormtroopers to death might be a bad thing. Because as we all know the average RPG party abhors mindless violence.

Pictured: The average D&D hero on his way to the shop for some milk.

But of course it doesn't end there. After all, in addition to the various existing power blocks all seeking to take advantage of the increased numbers of force powered weirdoes there will also be agents of the rebellion showing up to take advantage of the chaos (exactly which side of the terrorist / freedom fighter divide these guys will ultimately fall on being as yet undecided) as well as the spectre of a bit of official Imperial oversight showing up in the form of some properly trained dark side types.

Of course, being one of those city planets there's also all sorts of other things that can be going on beneath the surface. The sub-levels basically being one giant dungeon, populated with who knows what.

There's a rumor that when they get to big people flush their pet Morlocks down the 'fresher.

Just think, maybe there's some ancient Sith tomb buried down there, which is why our resident mad scientist picked this particular planet for his base of operations. Or maybe it's a Jedi master, frozen like Captain America. Maybe there's a few and someone has been farming their blood for experimental purposes. Who knows? I certainly don't. But there are myriad POSSIBILITIES.

For example you could have a protocol droid called ROM.

Now, obviously this is only a rough framework. It has to be really, since I a) don't want to give too much away in case I actually want to run this one day and b) haven't really decided on a lot of things yet. I'm sure there's plenty of stuff I haven't covered, but hopefully this is at least enough to illustrate the idea is viable.