Star Wars Imperial/Rifts Coalition campaigns

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CRKrueger

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Anyone do any? :grin:

Rifts Coalition campaigns are a little bit easier I think as Earth was torn apart by magic, hostile aliens as well as actual demons and devils and even Cthulhoid type entities exist. That innocent looking mutant with a copy of the Necronomican can very well summon Azathoth, so "Sweep and Clear" as humanity's only method of survival has an arguable position.

Same kind of thing with the Imperium. Sure they suck, but the entire universe is out to get them :gunslinger: and that's not even counting Chaos. :devil:

The Empire however is a little harder to justify. Sure there's the whole "Peace and Prosperity Through Order" kind of thing, but they're not really under a massive dimensional otherworldly supernatural existential threat.

An Empire campaign would have the same problems any military campaign would, namely chain of command and strict duties. You'd probably have to go with commandos, intelligence operatives, someone with some freedom of action, which then perhaps lets the characters bend the rules, walk the line, etc.

I've run Coaltion campaigns, but not Imperial ones. Never even heard of someone running an Imperial one, really.
 
I've played in an Imperial campaign under D6 Star Wars. Our characters were Imperial spies who eventually defected to the Rebellion.
 
In b4 the lock :clown:

On a serious note: no. Always used the CS in Rifts as bad guys; individual soldiers might be good but I played the Coalition as a whole as an out-and-out totalitarian state.

Rifts Sourcebook 1 (the original – never read the Revised version) actually boasts a pretty good debate on the implications of good people working for a force of evil. Hannah Arendt it ain't but 13-year-old me could grok the nuance.
 
I know you’re joking (kind of), but Lawful/Evil is what it is, right? :devil:

Part of the problem with The Empire is due to the Sith, they are the supernatural existential threat I guess. :shock:

Still, I can imagine a huge Law Enforcement load on the Empire with smugglers, Hutts, Corporations and Banks, corruption, etc.

Imagine Outland as a Czerka Mining Colony with the Hutt’s muscling in and your group are the Imperials sent to keep order. :grin:
 
CS campaign would be rather easy to do. In a way they are not unsimilar to the Imperium of 40K: kinda evil, but will defend humanity at all costs. And with the Coalition you have a plethora of options at your hand, because they have been fleshed out so thoroughly.
 
Anyone do any? I've run Coaltion campaigns, but not Imperial ones. Never even heard of someone running an Imperial one, really.

Imperial Campaigns! Love them.

I normally don't play in the movie-era of Star Wars. I almost always run my games in the Old Republic era. Reasons being - the Sith Empire is fantastically scary. It has elements of Vampire antediluvian horror (the Emperor of this era is truly scary and godlike - Palpatine would be middling in power compared to the Sith on the Dark Council at best), and they are resisted naturally, by the Republic. But what is more interesting is the totality of the galaxy is not carved up so evenly.

There are dynamics in the Old Republic era Empire that simply don't exist, namely the Sith Order that sits atop of the Imperial bureaucracy is closer to a feudal confederation once you dig a little below the surface, that shares an immensely powerful military bureaucracy that is often at odds with itself. It's acknowledged by Imperial Intelligence (quietly) that the Sith Religion is often the largest impediment to the Empire overthrowing the Republic entirely.

So there are plenty of straight up military and non-military conflicts possible. I usually play in the time period of the Great Cold War - which can go hot at myriads of points in various planets where the Empire and the Republic are vying for dominance or trying to woo the populace of a specific planet to their side. Then the Hutt Cartels are super-powerful in their own right. And the various criminal organizations - Black Sun Syndicate, The Exchange being the two obvious ones outside of the Hutts. Corrupt corporations all vying for/resisting Imperial influence.

So campaign types - if you're going full military, there's Ship-based military stuff, where the PC's serve on a ship which you flesh out accordingly. And you do a kind of Imperial Battlestar Galactica/Star Trek type game - especially if you like doing ship-combat, or ship-boarding/ blockade exercises. etc Or you can have the PC's stationed on a planet where you're going to stage various military actions that could (i.e. should) lead to a potential hot-war with the Republic. One of the the games I ran was that the PC's were part of an Imperial affiliated mercenary company (comprised of former Imperial Commandos) that specialized in de-stablization of Republic worlds. This meant I could leverage the whole military-aspect of a traditional Imperial military campaign, while letting the PC's play fast and loose in the wild dealing with sabotage missions, infiltration/exfiltration, kidnapping, assassination, defense/attack programs in the name of the Empire. I just give them objectives and a list of options (or better if they have the PC's capable of it - doing the recon themselves and creating those options). Once those objectives are completed - your unit is reassigned to a new sector with a new set of issues to deal with.

Imperial Intelligence - never gets old. This pretty much allows you to have all the best options of Cold War intrigue set on max. Because literally everyone and anyone is out to get you, while here are plenty of myths and secrets in Imperial Intelligence to lead the PC's through a terrifying labyrinth of intrigue. It allows you to deal with literally anyone and everyone - including partnering up with Republic intelligence against mutual enemies, assassinating rogue elements of the Imperial machine. Finding treachery at every turn is the name of the game.

And you'll note I never mention actually playing a Sith... That's just icing on the cake if you choose to go that route.
 
I have actually ran two Rifts Coalition campaigns, one planned and one accidental. Neither went as planned. The first was a typical Rifts mercenary campaign, and I had no plans of running a Coalition game, it just morphed into one. The player leader was a doppelgänger. They were working for a Coalition colonel who's base was a Death's Head Transport, and once they were alone with him and his bodyguards and they killed and replaced him. I took a time out and restructured the whole game. After much mayhem, they ended up crashing the transport in an assault on Atlantis and that was that.

The second game was a planned Coalition game with the players being a team of CS commandos deep behind enemy lines. My hope was that they would bond with some DBs and go rogue. They did not. They were really jumpy and just shot at anything that moved. The cyber knight NPC never saw what hit him.

I would try the second one again.
 
Good or bad in any campaign's a matter of perspective. The one hurdle in running an Imperial campaign is, as you said, it's a lot more strict in organization and methodology. Your characters aren't militia scraping by, but part of an organized military force with rules to follow. There's less room for what you can do, and you'll need answers to players when they ask why they can't call in a reinforcement battalion or orbital strike on whatever tough objective they're going for, and unless you play them as Imperial partisans or mercenaries, they're going to be bound by regulation, code, and duties significantly more than they would in most other groups of that era. With that said, an Imperial game in the style of XCOM or a guerrilla war on a world occupied by Rebels or pirates are more than doable if you've got the right group.
 
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