IMHO, interesting and varied characters add greatly to the gaming experience no matter what game you play. Star Wars, or more specifically Knights of The Old Republic, is no exception (just go easy on the “Muppet” races). Here are the characters that are in my current campaign. Not a goddamn Muppet in sight (unless you count the Wookie. But he’s kind of an evil Wookie).
Garvin (Paul): is a Khil (bald and having many tentacles hanging from his face that sound like chimes when he talks). Garvin is of the Noble class, and his wealth talent has him raking in the cash (something like 5000 creds each level he gains). He is also a Force User. I started him out as a college acquaintance of my major, regularly appearing NPC.
Kruk (Andy): is a Feeorin (big and strong guys with dreadlocks like The Predator). Kruk is a Mandalorian from the recent wars, although he hasn’t admitted such to the other players. He is a Soldier class that Andy is meticulously choosing combat skills for, making him a run n’ gun type commando fighter. Fairly anti-social to others outside the immediate group, he has his item shopping and other errands done by other characters because he doesn’t trust himself not to put the hurt on some shoppie who talks to him wrong. I had thought Andy was going to run this guy as less of an asshole Mandalorian for some reason, but he has proven to be fairly cold blooded, killing a foe who had surrendered and was prone on the ground. I expect more brutal violence from this character in the future. BTW, this was the type of character I was hoping for in the campaign; something aiming it more at hard Sci Fi than just another dopey Star Wars storyline.
Totha (Little Ben): is a Bothan Scoundrel (goat dudes) and general agent for the Bothan Spynet. He travels around looking for interesting tidbits to report to the ‘net. Is an excellent shot and so far seems not to miss what he aims for. A Bothan spy is kind of handy for the GM; he is constantly feeing info to his superiors, and gaining info from them in return. Macguffins can be easily inserted in the game this way.
Rookieen (Dan): is a Wookie soldier, but is no “nice guy” like Chewbacca. So far the rumor is that Rookieen has worked as a slaver capturing his own kind. Yep, a Wookie traitor (Wookies are a slave race during this time period). Rookieen is a typical Dan “The Power Game Man” character; arrogant, anti-social, and prone to violence. With Kruk the Mandalorian and this evil Wookie around, I expect to throw lots of combat the groups way. Combat is hella fun in this system. Not a ton of room for abstraction, which is a nice break from AD&D old school.
Rokran (Big Ben): is a 20-year old Zabrak (Darth Maul’s race) Jedi from Coruscant. Like Andy, Ben is leaning towards well-studied optimization, become powerful fairly quickly through his (somewhat broken) Jedi powers .
Lucia (Terry): a 15 year old Cathar (cat people) Jedi, who was sent to the Dantooine Enclave as a child after the brutal attacks and atrocities of the Mandalorians several years ago. Sort of a Jedi bumpkin compared to the metropolitan Rokran, Terry has not had much of an eye towards optimization of abilities, but is just picking stuff that appeals to her for the characters (she seems to be leaning towards lightsaber combat specialist). As Lucia is Cathar, it will be interesting to see how she feels about Kruk when/if his Mandalorian background is revealed.
Note that all the characters that were created are non-humans. That set up an interesting dynamic right off that bat. Even in this time period humans are dominant.
The Jedi characters had special reason for being around where I started this first game, but all the rest just ended up, for one reason or another, at the Muunilist space port. The Muuns are the banking clan, as shown in the Star Wars prequels. I had no idea if they existed in the KOTOR period, but decided that they would have some galactic banking, loan, and law services set up even though the Intergalactic Banking Clan status of the planet was thousands of years away.
I had Kruk and Rookieen just being mercs who were slumming it at space port waiting for a job or whatever, and the Bothan also just hanging around sniffing for interesting happenings to report to his superiors. Garvin the Khil had a computer tech gig at one of the Muun universities, where he met and became friends with a student, Solomon (my regular NPC for this part of the campaign).
Solomon is an NPC and sort of the catalyst of the main adventure. He appears to be a good looking young human male (more or less) with blood red hair and sort of “mood ring” eyes. Solomon is a student of Ancient Galactic History and Languages, and he would bring all the characters together by offering them bodyguard jobs to protect him as he went to potentially dangerous places to look for clues to the historical stuff he is interested in (old ruins and ancient caves in wildernesses).
I expected the characters to be on Muun for one full game tops, but there ended up being so many fun things I could do with these PC’s before they hit the spaceways, we actually spent 3 games doing things there. The characters have fought andrenal junkies (adrenals are stat-boosting drugs very common in the KOTOR video game that inspired me to do this campaign), brawled in the cantina, gambled, had a gun battle with well-armed and violent poachers out in the mudflat outback, and got mixed up with a conflict between gang members with The Exchange (galactic Mafia), and thugs in the employ of The Hutts who were encroaching on Exchange territory. I’ve had the opportunity to use a Darkside Maurader (force sensitive soldiers with no force training who channel the force through battlefield rage) in a couple of fights. One fight had the Maurader crash a stolen truck into the spaceport ground shuttle some characters were on, and engaging them in a brutal gunfight on the street in the blocked traffic.
The two Jedi were around just by happenstance because they were on some kind of Jedi errand to the planet. The Cathar catgirl Jedi is young, and when she got involved in drinking and gambling at the cantina with the other PC’s, she indulged like any teenager would. It will be interesting to see if she continues that behavior. I have to give her plenty more opportunities to party it up in the future to see if she bites. Partying hardy is the path to the dark side!
Next: The players are on a space flight that crashes and nobody could possibly survive it. Do they? Stay tuned.
