Living Force

Living Force was a shared RPGA campaign setting for the Star Wars role-playing game from Wizards of the Coast. First released in 2001 and available for RPGA members only, the campaign ran for five "seasons" in nearly five years, taking place during the Prequel Trilogy of the Star Wars saga.


 * Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Heroes were limited to one vehicle and one droid at a time, later expanded to one astromech droid, one other droid, and one vehicle. Characters were totally incapable of keeping bikes or support droids on their freighter, but other players could transport their bikes on another's freighter.
 * Asteroid Thicket: One surrounded the Cularin system and is explicitly the remains of a single planet. Modules varied on if it was realistically sparse field but a navigation hazard, like the one from Empire Strike Back or somewhere in-between. This seems to an in-universe variation depending on what part you're in and when, but it's not made explicit.
 * The Artifact: Guidelines mentioned characters that reached 13th level were retired and couldn't be played anymore. There wasn't enough experience points in the entire campaign to reach 13th level, even if a character played every module (which wasn't possible due to some modules having rather low maximum allowed levels) and got perfect experience from all of them. This was a left-over from other RPGA campaigns with more modules and special modules that could be played more than once.
 * Doomed by Canon/Downer Ending: Occurring during the prequels and ending with Revenge of the Sith while having force users so critical to the campaign made this inevitable. In particular the final module offers player characters a choice of joining an expedition to take down Darth Vader, which every player taking it knows won't end well.
 * Early-Bird Cameo: While not a cameo per se, Almas and villain Raik Muun were used in the Dawn of Defiance campaign later.
 * Forgettable Character: Inverted, Zav Zerivax can't remember any player character regardless of their previous interactions.
 * False-Flag Operation: Happens in the first module.
 * Good Bad Bugs: When Jedi Master was opened up for player use, the special requirements were waived. These were the only thing that kept non-Jedi out of the class and they forgot to implement something to keep Force Adepts from entering the class in their place. A character could be a Jedi Master without actually being a Jedi. Star Wars D20's replacement, Saga Edition, made this official by introducing the Force Disciple prestige class, which was a variant of Jedi Master for Force Adepts.
 * Grand Finale: Season 5
 * Let's You and Him Fight: The end encounter for has the players in a fight with some recurring and background characters. Unusually this fight can be avoided if any of the player character played a module with these characters (thus recognizing them) or are Jedi and recognize one of their fellow students and try to talk their way out of it.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: As in most RPGA modules of the time, the adventures were officially retired after around two years of activity. Thus, this is the only way to get a hold of the modules today.
 * Marth Debuted in Smash Bros: Since all of the modules were out of distribution at the time of the fourth module of Dawn of Defiance, several of those who played were unaware that Raik was a villain fought (and told outright in the module to be killed) in the Living Force campaign five years earlier.
 * Among Millennium Falcon's vast list of Shout Outs to earlier expanded universe works, Nirama of the Cularin system is mentioned briefly as having paid for some upgrades to what would become the Falcon and responsible for having its then owner killed for working with slavers.
 * Missing Episode: At least three modules for the final year got as far as play-testing, but were never released. The names and some rewards (gleaned from character sheets of play test characters. Ilum-ination in particular would have awarded a hue-shifting lightsaber crystal.) are all that is known about these. With their non-existance, all but one module of the final year are critical to the meta-plot.
 * The Obi-Wan: One of the supplementary articles during the Clone Wars portion of the campaign had this, as Jedi characters had to roll a die during their first Living Force session after publication. If they failed the roll, their master had been killed while fighting in the war.
 * One-Dollar Retainer: Multiple modules for the campaign have notes that having asked for things like "nothing less than one credit" do not count as having demanded a reward for the purpose of NPCs that take a negative view of such.
 * Point of No Return: Character that played the Decisions trilogy, which closed out year 4, could not play any earlier modules.
 * Retcon: Early modules mentioned a "Republic Military". This was openly retconned (with an out of character article explicitly stating the change) into being the planetary defense force of a neighboring system that the Republic has asked to help protect Cularin.
 * Those Two Guys: Force adept duo San Herrera and Nia Reston appeared in various modules and support articles.
 * Time Skip: The entire system jumps forward seamlessly 10 years to coincide with the time skip in Attack of the Clones, reappearing as though (to the inhabitants) nothing changes. During these 10 years the rest of the galaxy thought the system lost.
 * Villain with Good Publicity/Anti-Villain: Nirama, the crime lord of the Cularin system. He has a reputation for keeping out violent crime, especially slavers, and not lying (At least directly). Even the Jedi Masters suggest pupils at least hear what he has to say when offered a job. The modules weren't exactly clear what criminal activity he is involved in beyond smuggling (and the only shown instance is for avoiding tariffs), fencing and loan sharking.
 * You All Meet in a Cantina: The first module, once again. Many of the future modules also started in cantinas and this trope could still apply due to the way RPGA worked (each session might be your character's first time meeting the other players').