What kinds of considerations can be made in a base building campaign?

Question

My Edge of the Empire game has shifted focus away from traveling around taking odd jobs as the group has joined the Rebellion formerly. They have asked that I slow the pace of the game down so they can build things up over time and build a community, so I'd like to give them a large building and have them build from there.

What kind of challenges or considerations can I use to create a fuller campaign? I imagine that building interesting community NPCs is one step; such as visiting traders and smugglers, local merchants, and law. As for missions, I imagine things like securing supply lines, recruiting agents, and sabotaging/stealing Imperial technology is a must. But what else could be used?

Answer 1

One of the big changes when going to a base-building campaign is shifting your mindset from offensive to defensive.

Going on missions puts you on the tactical offensive, in classic D&D terms it's going to someone else's place to kill them and steal your stuff. Even village defense scenarios often involve the offensive approach of hunting the attackers down rather than letting them come to you. Even when you're on the tactical defensive (like in the movie Seven Samurai), you're still focused on attacking the enemy more than holding what's yours.

Once you build a base, a defensive approach becomes more important. Now you're the one with stuff to keep. Someone could send others on missions to attack you. You also have to deal with NPCs to keep the base running.

In general, moving to a base means increasing the amount of political maneuvering because you can't just kill all your problems; in many cases you have to deal with your current problems in such a way that doesn't negate your ability to deal with the same character the next time.

One of the interesting aspects of base building is that the same NPC can be an antagonist in one context and an ally in another. It makes for more depth and gets people thinking.

Possible missions/goals/scenarios could include: Explore the area to make sure there are no surprises nearby Convert an NPC antagonist to an ally by solving a problem for them

Answer 2

How about

• The "base" is an abandoned ruin that may or not be a large piece of alien technology. Most of it is perfectly liveable but in some areas there are large devices of unknown purpose, and in others there may be doors (hard to distinguish from wall decoration and ancient crystal machinery).

• Traitors! Have a bunch of NPCs join, but there are quickly clues that there is a traitor informing the ennemies. Or several traitors (one for the Empire, one for a nearby smuggler mob boss...)

• The PCs free a bunch of orphans about to get used for scientific experiments or whatnot. But what do they do with them? Do they bring them back to the base? But then they'll need to upgrade their infrastructure in a hurry!