Star Wars: Light of the Cauldron

Star Wars: Light of the Cauldron

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It is a time of relative peace in the galaxy. The GALACTIC REPUBLIC is celebrating a time of prosperity three hundred years before the troubles of the Empire and the Death Star. But even in this prosperous time, In the Aurelan Sub-Sector, word has reached the Jedi Enclave on Kobiwal of an auction of ancient artefacts. The background of these artefacts is unclear, but rumour has it that some of them may be related to the Jedi or Sith Orders. Master Torkuran has commissioned the Jedi Investigator Jorge Garner to look into this matter, and the Investigator in turn has requested the assistance of others. Those others now assemble on Kobiwal...

Game Notes

Genre: Star Wars

Activities Planned: Jedi Stuff (diplomacy, investigation, maybe some fighting)

Supplement materials: GURPS Basic Set will be the only requirement. Previous experience with Star Wars RPG materials will assist with providing equipment. GURPS Space, and Spaceships may be of some use. GURPS Powers will be of use for modifiers for equipment and abilities.

Plot: There will be an ongoing plot (or several lines of plot in fact). Given the role that players will be taking on, they will not be expected to keep track of the major plotlines, but situational plot-awareness will be important (decisions will be made based on player/ character understanding of the situation).

Power Level: Players have 150+50 points available. Additional points will be awarded at the end of missions based on degree of success and role playing.

House Rules: See notes below.

Style: This game will be held to a reasonably serious level. While there will be dark and gritty moments for the most part it will be aiming for a realistic level of seriousness; there will be moments of humour as well as dark ones. While players will be endangered this is intended to be ultimately survivable.

Status: Open & Recruiting



Characters

Players have 150 points, plus 50 points in disadvantages. This limits includes racial templates and professional template. Racial templates can be player-produced or GM-provided for a number of major species from Star Wars; the GM reserves the right to modify player created racial templates within reason.



Players take on the role of Jedi Knights, or other individuals associated with the Order such as Antaran Rangers, bounty hunters, pilots, etc, during a period roughly three hundred years before the Battle of Yavin and the rise of the Empire. The Jedi Knight template is below. Jedi Knights are deemed to be competent, but not of sufficient level to officially train a padawan.



Dark Siders are not permitted as player characters. Any player falling to the Dark Side (Dark Side Points >= WILL-4) will be declared an NPC. Redemption of such characters may form a secondary plot arc should it occur.



Grey Jedi (Force users trained as Jedi but only peripherally associated with the Order) are permitted but take the Grey Jedi template below rather than the Jedi Knight Template. Read the section below regarding the Light Side and Dark Side before choosing this.



Players may take up to 3 LSP or DSP as part of their starting character sheet (see below).

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There is a lot of emphasis on Jedi and the Force in these rules. There is no requirement for players to take on the role of Jedi; there is emphasis on them because most of the rules are new. Whatever happens, you are working for the Jedi Order, but beyond that your role is your own choice.

Some useful notes about skills, character ideas, and abilities:

• Pilot/ Starfighter pilot: an NPC pilot and ship will be provided. If you wreck it, you have to replace it. If players wish to own their own ship then this is fine and it can replace the GM provided one if you can afford it. There is not currently any starfighter action planned; bringing one along opens up options, but players will need to co-ordinate such things as ensuring that there is somewhere suitable to store the starfighter if the pilot wants to travel with everyone else between systems (the GM provided ship has space for one such fighter).

• The Pilot skill has the following specialisations (replacing the default GURPS ones): Light/ Medium/ Heavy Aircraft, Starfighter, Light/ Medium/ Heavy Transport, Medium/ Heavy Warship.

• History, Geography, Hidden Lore, Area Knowledge, Current Affairs, etc, all include most of the following specialisations: Jedi Order, Sith, Republic, Aurelan Sub-Sector (this is the two hundred star area that the campaign will initially be based in).

• Players should consider the Player Paranoia post for any character and the Jedi Code if playing a Jedi of any kind.



Equipment is purchased at TL8 prices; tech levels in Star Wars are all over the place, and so TL8 is used as the campaign standard. For most equipment this won't make a difference and TL9 or TL10 sensor packages or medpacs (for instance) can be purchased at their base price rather than a TL modified price.



Blaster weapons are created as follows:

• Take a normal TL6-8 weapon from GURPS Basic or High Tech

• Reduce RoF by 50% (round up, minimum 1)

• Increase damage by 1d and change damage type to burning

• Double magazine size

• Increase cost by 25%

• Come up with a suitable name



Lightsabres use the following template: Damage 8d(100); Reach 1, 2; Parry 0; Cost illegal, variable; Weight 2; ST 3. A Jedi automatically gets a +1 to their skill when using a Lightsabre that they produced themselves. A lightsabre can be used to parry attacks, including blaster fire using normal rules for parrying; a lightsabre-parry technique is available which defaults to 0 and is Hard. Melee Weapon (Lightsabre) is a DX/A skill which defaults to other sword skills at -5.





House Rules

Knowing what you are doing

There are several areas where GURPS rules assume that an ability confers full understanding of what is going on and how it works. Two major areas that I have noted this are healing and mind-affecting/ reading.



Healing is not something simple, and even the most powerful Jedi healer can only heal what they understand. Anyone wanting to use such abilities will require some kind of First Aid, Surgery, or Biology related skill in order to diagnose what has happened and determine how to repair the damage. Success will otherwise be based on a default roll.



Mind-affecting/ reading is not something simple, even through the Force. People rarely, if ever, think coherent thoughts, and have their own symbology and iconography attached to such thoughts. Any use of Sense/ Mind, Communicate/ Mind, or Control/ Mind should not be expected to work miracles; think about the films: when Darth Vader says "so, you have a twin sister," he doesn't actually indicate that he knows who it is or anything like that. That level of sense-impression/ intuition is the limit that reading will work at without some kind of mindlink.



Damage

How damage is handled in GURPS is somewhat ambiguous sometimes. As with healing, it is largely assumed that unless specifically targeted such damage is generic in nature and can be fixed generically.



For the purposes of this game minor damage (1-2 HP) will be treated as such. More serious damage will be treated based on the type, position, and severity of the damage, potentially leading to additional issues in the forms of temporary disadvantages. For instance 2d of damage from a high-speed projectile might penetrate and go straight out the back of a character, leaving only a small hole but tearing up internal organs in the process; improper treatment could lead to the character having the Increased Life Support disadvantage (for a dialysis machine or similar), or a pacemaker (presenting an Electrical disadvantage) depending on where the damage occurred.



Healing/ Regeneration

More for regeneration than normal healing; regeneration lets you heal quickly not correctly. Barring some kind of invulnerable skeleton which forces your flesh to conform to the correct shape, your body will heal in the fastest possible time, to the shape that it currently has. If that means that a bone doesn't reset itself correctly, then you'll be stuck with Lame (for a leg) or low DX (limited to a hand/ arm) or Difficulty Breathing (for a lung that heals with a rib puncturing it) or similar. A First Aid/ Surgery roll will ensure that things are back in the correct place as best your TL is able. Similarly nerves will reconnect themselves, but not necessarily in the correct place (I know of someone who had surgery on his cheek and the nerves leading to his saliva glands reconnected themselves to his sweat glands instead). Likewise, internal damage will heal as best it is able; depending on the position and type of damage, internal organs may heal partially or incompletely.

Star Wars: Light of the Cauldron