Wednesday, August 26, 2026

One Year before the Comms Array

I just realized that it's been almost a month since the one-year anniversary of running Operation Lamplighter. I think this is the longest I've been running a regular campaign in my post-scholastic life, and it feels really good to have been spinning the plates for this long (and to hopefully keep going!). The crew just accomplished a major heist in their last session, and so I'm trying to do the legwork of keeping the sandbox active and interesting before their next session this coming Saturday.  
Doug Chiang, "The Art of Rogue One"

One of the things that has helped me in keeping the campaign going has been immersion and the confidence in spinning my own take on the material. One of the areas I struggled when actively running Legacy of the Bieth was doing setting design work simultaneously with adventure design, and needing to accomplish both in a tight timeframe to keep a weekly cadence going. This would have been easier were I not being  precious about my special snowflake of a setting, obviously -- so running in Star Wars, with a kickass sector designed by someone else, has helped ease some of that design burden and let me focus on both immediate adventurable material. 

In some ways, the designs I was reaching towards with some of my LotB work (downtime, espionage play) are finally getting a chance to live properly in Star Wars. I'm regretful about not having more time to work on Legacy of the Bieth and develop my own work further, but I do feel like running Operation Lamplighter is definitely sharpening my skills for what exactly I want and need in useful material, and helping dull some of the overdesigning that I'm definitely prone to for f20 materials.

Game Statistics (this one's for you, Jenx!)

Sessions Run: 34
Total Players: 11
Max Players in Session: 6
PC Fatalities: 0
Major Objectives Accomplished: 6
Rebel Cells Under PC Control: 7 (6 directly, and one off-planet)
NPCs Operatives in Group: 19
Spaceships Acquired: 8 (three freighters, one Gozanti-class cruiser, four export-class TIEs)
Space Stations Acquired: 1
Mining Guild Sector Payrolls Acquired: 1
Imperial Captains Assassinated: 1
Traitors Assassinated: 1
Maximum Character Points Earned by a PC: 46