Roll the End Credits

My "Star Wars: Imperial Fist" campaign came to an end last night, somewhat earlier than expected. Fortunately, it ended on a really good last session, making for a rather satisfactory resolution to what had been, ultimately, a somewhat disappointing campaign.

So, briefly, some wash-up:

What Went Well

• Despite everything, I do think the campaign had a fairly strong concept. I don't think I'd run this campaign again, as I'm inclined to think it probably works better as a one-shot, but it wasn't bad.
• The use of the 4e-style stat-blocks was a success, and made for much easier preparation work. That said, I think they're probably still a bit over-powered - SWSE characters just aren't as powerful as 4e ones. Likewise, the switch to a character-based "healing value" was a good one.
• Some of the action scenes were pretty good.
• The character of Gooti, in particular, was a highlight. The notion of a made Jawa with a jetpack and an explosives fetish was totally bizarre, but in a good way.
• The last session made for a very satisfying end for the campaign.

What Didn't Go Well

• The big issue was the stability of the player group - we started with a group that was about the right size, but with one player who just couldn't make the commitment, then we added another player, and then lost one, ending with three regular players but a different set than we started. That hurt.
• The campaign had some significant teething problems when the PCs were totally mismatched to the first adventure. Ah well.
• Disney decided to gut the Expanded Universe canon. This shouldn't really have impacted on the campaign, but it did.
• The combination of the above really gutted my enthusiasm for the campaign.

Lessons Learned

• Don't over-plan the campaign! I was probably locked into too specific an idea of how it would be before the start, meaning that when the PCs didn't quite mesh with my pre-conceived ideas I got quite disheartened. More flexibility on my part would probably help this - that, or being clear up-front that it's an "adventure path" campaign rather than a "sandbox" would do it.
• Watch out for the group being spread too thin. At present we have something like 4 campaigns going at once. This is great for the group as a whole, but it means we don't really have bandwidth for another campaign starting up. Better to wait for one to end, thus freeing up players, or to wait for new members to join the group. Or, perhaps more suitable, is to put out feelers, and if not enough people attend the start session to give the thing a miss for the time being.

What Would Have Happened

For all that I talk about the campaign being over-planned, the outlined plot was always somewhat nebulous. The original theme for the campaign was going to be "divided loyalties", with both PCs and NPCs shown to have conflicting loyalties - to the Empire, to their team-mates, to their crime boss, and so on. At one point, I intended to have an inquisition on the Restorer, probably just after it was revealed that one PC was himself Force-sensitive.

Originally, the central mystery of the campaign was going to reveal that the Emperor was himself a Force-user, explaining some of the odder events in the background, but also leading to the Imperial Fist team suddenly having to go underground as their superiors decided to take them out for knowing too much.

At the same time, I was working towards revealing a genuine Jedi plot to assassinate Daala and Tarkin by bombing the Restorer, with the PCs thus scrambling to stop them. I wasn't entirely sure whether this should happen before or after they had to go underground; the latter being more interesting, but harder to pull off.

After the campaign was refocused, all of that disappeared. Instead, the intent was going to be that the party had to spend some considerably time tracking the Dracul through various means, such as through the Tibanna gas, tracking Delurin's former aide, investigating the disappearance of IF2, and so on. In this case, it would be up to the players to plan their approach in a fairly "sandbox-y" way. Obviously, all of that also went by the wayside when Malik's player dropped out and I decided to bring it to the close.

One last thing: early on I also had the notion that I would drop in a mysterious prophecy to the PCs... and would never explain it. My intent was to then run another Star Wars campaign in a few years, set after the Legacy era (about 200 years post-RotJ), probably called "Twilight of the Force", and reveal the meaning of the prophecy then. Obviously, that never happened. "Twilight of the Force" might yet happen at some point, but I don't currently have any plans in that direction, especially given what's currently happening with the canon.