Game Day: Setting up a KOTOR Campaign

As my group’s D&D Dark City campaign winds down, the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game is ramping up. This week sees the group off because of a combination of family colds and Celtic Fest (which, given the rainy weekend forecast, will likely result in more colds, but I digress) but we’ve spent last few days thrashing out the KOTOR campaign.

With Saga Edition rules and KOTOR campaign guide in hand, we’ve figured out some of the basics.

The Old Republic Era takes place about 4,000 years before the Battle of Yavin, and is divided into five major events, the Great Sith War, the Restoration (recovering from the Sith War), the Mandalorian War (in which the warrior cult invades the Republic), the Jedi Civil War (in which the Sith invade, as depicted in the KOTOR video game), and the Dark Wars (per the second KOTOR game).

Despite loving the KOTOR games, we want a chance to establish our characters in a time period when there are a large number of Jedi. We also want to be able to play out some of the tough decisions the Order faces leading into Mandalorian Wars. Do they stand with the Jedi Order and not aid the Republic? Or do they join Jedi rebels Malak and Revan who take the fight to the invaders?

The thought is that we will span the two eras, starting the campaign in the waning days of the Restoration, and then letting the Manadalorian Wars unfold. We expect there to be two to three Jedi in the group, and plan to have them associated with a semi-independent Jedi enclave, rather than the Jedi High Council on Coruscant.

At least two other heroes will be owners of the group’s starship (well, owners insomuch as they’re the ones who will be making the loan payments on the ship…), with a freelance starfighter pilot tagging along. In order to simplify financial bookkeeping, we’ll be having the Jedi enclave foot the loan payments and fuel costs with their travel stipends. Our goal is to have the starship serve as a sort of travelling home, as was the case with the Ebon Hawk in the KOTOR video game.

Starting character level kicked off a goodly debate about how many credits higher level characters should start with. It turns out that the Saga Edition book doesn’t offer any guidance on that, so I whipped up a chart based on the 10,000 credits per level gear/credit reward that the average party is supposed to receive (assuming credits divided between 4 players, and max starting credits).