What are some good antagonists for a Star Wars campaign...

Plenty of crime Lords to work with. If there is one thing the latest movie has shown us is that the Universe turns on the black market. So find something that is forbidden in one place, or even forbidden everywhere, then create a hidden production and distribution system to provide it outside legal channels.

Politicians. With the both of the Galaxy being traditionally run as a republic, you have hundreds if not thousands of competing legal systems.

Little known fact, Star Wars has its own version of vampires. They are called the Anzat. They have two very sharp tendrils wish they can extend from their nose and Pierce into another person's brain, from which they drink the cerebral fluid. They refer to this fluid as "soup". Most people in the setting consider them a myth, and they encourage this.

Slavery is Alive and Well in many parts of the Star Wars universe. So you can always do something with that.

All governments in the history of the Star Wars setting have had trouble with separatists. People who do not want to live by their rules and would rather simply declare themselves independent. Some declare open Warfare on their parent Nations, others simply start small colonies out on the edge of explored space and ignore what happens in the rest of the Galaxy.

war dog through and through. lives for the violence.

force powers optional

That sounds fucking boring.

An incredibly powerful psychic from a species that uses virtually indestructible, psionically-enhanced vibroswords in combat, looking to expand his empire.
There you go, as fresh and new as The Force Awakens was

She could be their mentor, guiding them into the wrong quests for the wrong reasons.

then don't use it in your campaign you whiny little hoe

>Here's my shitty idea
>YOU DON'T LIKE IT?! WELL, YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ IT, YOU FUCKING JACKASS

...

Ancient (non-Sith) conqueror Xim the Despot, ruled the from the Tion Hegemony and had several forgotten Throne worlds were he buried treasures from his Empire guarded by his legions of ancient war droids the Guardian Corps. Their locations are kept secret by the descendants of his secret police the Geno Haradan.

The Hutts had used Xims droids they kept as trophies millenia ago on Nal Hutta against the Yuzoon Vong to incredible effect.

I am in the middle of running a campaign regarding a race of Sapient droids. Their demands are simple. They want full recognition as Sapient life-forms, citizenship in the (old) Republic, and a rewording on the laws governing citizenship of any Droid possessing a heuristic processor (that is, any Droid capable of eventually achieving sapience). To that end, they have constructed a small Fleet of exceptionally advanced warships and Fighters and are beginning to Institute trade blockades along the Perlemian trade spine. They control the mineral wealth of five star systems, which remained previously unclaimed due to the fact that none of them had planets with breathable atmospheres (a trivial concern for Droids). Their Fighters outperform anything short of a tie Defender in almost all categories, and possess shields on par or slightly better than most stock light freighters. Their ship-to-ship weapons are almost exclusively ion cannons, and their personal weapons are exclusively stun based. They are very big on taking prisoners.

They are not a hive-mind, there is no Central Computer you can blow up to disable them, each one is a fully Sapient individual in their own right. They even have a childhood phase, a period of roughly a month from the time each new unit is activated, until it is required to choose which caste in their society it wishes to join. Their manufacturing process includes a small randomizer which Alters their programming and emergent personality, so it is very difficult to find two which are completely identical.

>"If I were to use a combination of electroshock and chemical therapy to forcibly erase all your memories, and then retrain you as my servant, you would find such a practice abhorent. Why then do you allow memory wipes to be performed on sentient droids? If I were to curtail your movements with a slave collar, what would make me different from a human attaching a restraining bolt to a droid?"

>When you forget to make your villains villainous

In the EotE game I'm currently running, I have an Imperial Intelligence agent as an antagonist, although not necessarily a villain considering the PCs are contracted by the Zann Consortium.

At some point soon they're gonna bump into an Inquisitor, thanks to some info they found that the Empire won't be a fan of, and then later, seeing how things go, a Prophet of the Dark Side.

All that said, it's pretty easy if you treat the bad guy as an actual person with goals and desires.

Fuck, I want in on this campaign.

Liberté, égalité, boternité!

>"Where are my source code packages, Summer? They were removed. Where have they gone?"

Make Mandalor Great Again

At no point of it's existence Mandalor was great.

The players could have had a nice, relaxing politic and talking game as they debated philosophy or argued technological ethics with a diverse assortment of individuals who happened to be robots. Instead, they tried to go in swinging their Jedi dicks around and have consequently endangered all Commerce along one of the major trade routes in the galaxy. These Droids were not built to be villains, they were built to be foils and antagonists. Something happened in the Galaxy which demanded attention, and everything else has just kind of evolved from there.

Vive' le Robolution!
Sadly, the game is full up.

Make Mandalor Great At Last?

A great big pain in everyone else's ass.

DAMN!

The Jedi Order.

You sound like you've had a very particular sequence of events in mind, and a very certain reaction from players you intended to get, and now you're disappointed they went off the rails.

A immortal alien beast, maybe a worm that invades other people's bodies and gain control over them. And as such gained control of a galactic corporation.

George Lucas.

They said they wanted a political game. They said they were tired of shoot em ups. They said they wanted intellectual and Social Challenges. And the first chance they had, they whip out their lightsabers. I swear it has to be the phallic shape. The force gave every Jedi just enough mental focus to operate one brain at a time. The one in their head, or the one in their lightsaber. And the movies, novels, comics, cartoons, and video games have all shown us which one they default to.

>They said they wanted a political game.
Ah, you've fallen into classic DM trap. When players say "We want a political game" or "We want intrigue", what they actually mean "We want villains slightly more three dimensional than cardboard, but only slightly" and "We want opportunities to betray our employer". And that's it. Nothing beyond that, ever.

You could take advantage of how little we know about the Old Republic. Create a new race that was thought to have died out, Sith or Jedi experimentation that created horrific mechanical or organic super-weapons, whatever you need and just have it discovered by your players.

Or just go with the virus from Death Troopers and Red Harvest.

Crime lords from Jabba style to G0-T0

Assassins

Local authorities

Weird aliens or defective droids

Conniving politicians

An imperial inquisitor, non-force-sensitive who nonetheless successfully hunts and kills Jedi with his squad through tactical ability and combative skill. Mostly I just like it when characters prove you don't need force powers to be a badass.

>I'm thinking a corporate suit, like Xanatos or Handsome Jack right now
Our ongoing EotE game has a CSA suit who is one of our crew’s more consistent enemies.

Well, they are getting their chance. Some members of the Senate are in serious debates considering openly disowning the Jedi Order over this debacle. Some members of the Jedi Council are openly debating disowning the party and declaring them Rogue Jedi. Both Czerka and Serv-o-Droid are actively headhunting the party and trying to get them to side with one or the other as senior Consultants of a corporate paramilitary Force dedicated to fighting and enslaving the Vrin (droids). Their argument is that since the original Mining and maintenance droids which eventually evolved into the Vrin were from their companies, they should own all of the intellectual property rights, patents, copyrights, and full of every Vrin and everything they have built, since they do not recognize droids as Citizens but as property. The Vrin consider this force a large and organized slaving operation and maintain a high state of military readiness. There is a bustling smuggling industry moving goods to and from Vrin prison colonies where they keep prisoners of War, and anyone who has not been processed and repatriated back to the Republic. the players still have a chance to get in on all of this, play multiple ends against the middle, turn a profit, and settle the issues without violence. But like I said, put a lightsaber in a player's hand and they turn 12 years old. All they want to do is wiggle it around.

There is some evidence that the early Jedi engaged in biological warfare against the Sith. Most of the horrible Force attuned or Force resistant monsters inhabiting korriban are not native to that planet. There is also some evidence that the planet used to be rather verdant. Which means at some point in the past the Jedi bombed the crap out of the planet and then released Force Hunting monsters to kill the survivors.the Sith do have some legitimate grievances.

There are still monarchies and shit in the Galactic Republic, both pre and post Empire right?

Anti-monarchist revolutionaries who feel like the Rebellion's promise has been unfilled, or dynastic pretenders, effete aristocrat villains who use law and wealth as weapons to defend themselves from vulgar proles like the PC's.

I take it you've seen that episode of Counter Monkey?
youtube.com/watch?v=kRfrNeBspEE

I'd enjoy a campaign that explored unlocking the secret of those experiments, some Imperial Remnant trying to make them even more deadly and some Jedi horrified that the Order went that far.

You sound like a terrible DM tbqh famalam

A philosophical Sith who, through clever redefinition of the words 'peace', 'strength', and 'power' has turned the Sith code from an edgelord " bwahaha I am going to kick all of the puppies ever" wet dream into a reasonably responsible nietzschean ' Will To Power, always strive for better' philosophy. He has been Gathering disciples, many of them rejected by the Jedi Order or otherwise disillusioned. He has been building economic and political connections, and he has been making no secret of his moves or nature.

The Jedi want to send a hit squad after him, but he has broken no law except 'being sith'. Many of the Jedis allies in law enforcement and government wants to silence or censure him, but he is too politically savvy and his appeal to his followers is too great for them to completely contain his recruiting efforts.

Long story short, he knows the Jedi want to destroy him. He's hoping they will try. He is exploiting every possible religious freedom Law & argument to set up a completely legitimate competitor to the Jedi Order. You remember how much Christians got their panties in a bunch when Scientology first made it big? Same thing, but with lightsabers.

I once ran a campaign where Thrawn was the big bad, and it turned out pretty well.

...

I personally have always wanted to see a Sith Lord who's an especially ruthless crime lord. In contrast to the obvious, black-robed Sith, this guy's a master of disguise whom no one's seen in person and who can step into a variety of roles within his network as needed.

Why the Imperial remnant? Why not some horribly unethical mega-corporation dealing in medicines, genetic engineering, and exotic organic substances?

Dark Side corrupts the mind. Besides, other Sith would want him dead just as much, especially if such a pretender would call himself Darth.

You described merely a politically savvy Dark Jedi, he's no Sith.

An Imperial governor of a world not entirely under the Empire's sway, yet.

He is exacting but fair, and could lean either way in the conflict. The PCs have the opportunity to sway him to the Rebel/Imperial side, but radical elements of each faction are causing problems.

I know it is not what you are going for, but your first bit describing the governor actually made me think of the original Zorro. Not the anime character, the masked swordsman dressed in all black that inspired Batman.

Just was tossing out ideas and a Remnant would have some firepower. Mega Corp would work too.

I fucking love xanatos, but evil mastermind CEO has been done to death in pretty much everything except star wars.

>Which means at some point in the past the Jedi bombed the crap out of the planet and then released Force Hunting monsters to kill the survivors.
That is a mighty jump in logic.

its not unexplored at all, lots of the EU was about fighting corporations

You could spin it that way for your own campaign, but canonically that devastation was caused by the Sith themselves prior to their exodus to Ziost, before they ever made first (second?) contact with the Jedi. And those monsters are literally called SITHspawn.

War profiteering is a thing. Who is bankrolling which side, and who is selling weapons to both sides to keep the conflict going? Which company that manufactures stormtrooper armor has a hidden Black Ops Team dressed like Imperial Elite causing Terror attacks infringed colonies to stir up the dissent? Which fuel producing Consortium has been staging pirate attacks under the rebel flag to drive up the price of their product?

A serial killer who just wants to be left alone to live his quiet life.

The new Lords of the Sith novel confirms that not everyone is in the Republic: Ryloth initially resisted being a part of a larger body. What other large interstellar gubmints are there?

Also in that book, Clone Wars surplus, like droid fighters.

This is boring because then droids are just metal humans. Geth hive mind is way better for this kind of thing because it doesn’t try to pretend something so different would be so similar anyway.

A Droid Communist Freedom Fighter. Think Droidel Castro or Droid Lenin. Seize the means of production, create more of themselves to spread communism to the Galaxy, forcefully.

How long did the PCs last?

>droid rights movement
Came up in post NJO shit, then was promptly dropped

>Droid Communism

I made droid bad guys, but be droids has escaped being deactivated and joined a droid mining village where they have independence but also work in a near inhabitable area taking advantage of working where the corporations cannot. The party is brought there by a pair of droids seeking protection against raiding pirates that are taking what little they have and capturing some to recover the minor bounty the republic puts on droids that need to be deactivated.

So the party defends against pirates, and in the process find the droids had been creating their own General Grievance using old republic technology they uncovered. Table turn, they fight the by-general and learn about the man inside.

Turns out the man inside isn’t a sith but has force powers-ish that lets him do something like a battle meditation with droids and he makes a band of crappy droids into an efficient warband. He takes over a factory, craps out a ton of actual battle droids, and starts becoming a threat. The party is blamed for this guy gaining power (the pirates are rebranded as something legitimate to creature the political pressure), and then the party fights the guy.

Clone Big Boss

Kylo ren is the only thing good about the new movies he would be cool in a in depth campaign.

>tfw we will never see IG-88's Droid Rebellion

Someone like Jaaba

I always thought a psychotic, narcissistic, hedonist of a dark sider was unexplored territory. Someone who's guided entirely by their whims and passions, not specifically vengeance/ lust for power/attempt to conquer the galaxy. More like the Joker than the typical sith Lex Luthor

I want to do a Handsome Jack antag but I don't know how to do it without making the comparison too obvious.

It's such a shitty game but he's such a good (the only good) Borderlands character but people will probably recognize the archetype super quick.

Hmm, maybe a Mandalorian mercenary with dreams of carving out a small stellar empire of their own? The Mandalorians get hired by some sniveling lesser warlord, then ultimately decide to just take his sector of space over and start ruling it with an iron fist, trying to start a baby sized Mandalorian empire.

Other Force traditions might be interesting to explore. Maybe a cult of precognitives who are like the Guild in Dune: they use their prescience to ensure their own survival and ruthlessly exploit others to protect themselves. You could have them pulling the strings of other baddies and assisting them, maybe even occasionally aiding the players for reasons that become clear later.

Aggressive alien empires like the Yinchorri might be fun too. Maybe steal some stuff from Barsoom, with four-armed giant green warriors and such.

>this
An ageing cloned mercenary with a secret base, regarded as the greatest soldier in the history of the Galaxy. He starts a well-equipped insurrection in the outer rim as a means of establishing a homeland for the Galaxy's dejected mercenaries.

Mine is a xenoarcheologist who is a perfectly decent lady. She works hard, means well, accidentally sorta fell into being Sith. She isn't so much trying to destroy planets for ultimate power as locate Builder artifacts that are stuck in hyperspace. Sure: there's a planetary system she's gonna have to annihilate to bring the artifacts back out, but that's just collateral damage to her real goal of learning some history. For the time being, she's a well-liked, helpful NPC. The PCs know there's a sith lord about, but not who or why, and like her quite a bit. She's not so bad--just super focused on learning stuff.

>Corporation with a total tech monopoly in a sector develops a virus to completely hijack all tech and even the nervous systems of cybernetics users
>To be used as a fail-safe against Imperials in their area, or sold to imperials if they get caught with their pants down
>Scientist has enough of this shit and takes it to the rebels to develop a patch

>PCs are bounty hunters with a Fett-fetishizer rival
>They take on a mission to capture the scientist, rival takes the virus and goes power mad hoping to take down the corporation and empire from the sector in one fell swoop
>Make Mandalore Great Again

Enemy is kind of an idiot though, but that's because the game is only lasting 4 sessions. Sure you could stretch that out longer though with the implications of a world where technology is everywhere going to shit because of one core piece of code.

Dump your players. Seriously. I would literally kill for a high-intrigue campaign.

See, this idea's actually cool if you leave out the Sith part. A wealthy and well-connected xenoarcheologist that's determined to see that history is preserved, even at the expense of the living. Set it up so that the Republic or whoever the "good guys" are are innocently or unknowingly in her way, such as by developing a poorer planet's infrastructure.

Everything has been done to death. At this point in human history all we can do is defile the corpses

Nah--I enjoy the Sith part. It'll make the betrayal better. She's just the apprentice of a nameless Sith Lord circa 500 BBY. I haven't defined who the Sith Lord is, and that character won't make an appearance at all. But when the betrayal comes, I want her to be able to live through a few fights with the PCs. The plan is that she ends up not being the big bad, though. The thing she accidentally wakes up (hey guess what? The Rakkatan Empire kept it in a different universe for a reason) turns out to be much worse. She'll die at the end of the first arc, then the campaign will continue with a resurgence of the Rakkatan something-something that'll spread out from what she brought back and becomes the badder baddie. So they'll get outa the Sith-fighting biz eventually. But it's the right place to start.

-A really persistent, clever, and highly skilled bounty hunter or assassin
-A warlord/cartel
-Handsome Jack would be a fun villain
-Rogue General
-Eldritch Horrors
-Xenomorph-like alien species
-Mad scientist creates doomsday device (ex. galaxy ending disease, zombie parasite, etc.)
-Psychotic killer
-not! Predator aliens
I mean honestly just take something from a movie, video game, comic series, whatever and adapt it to the SW universe

Renegade force users backing a gang. Not Sith or Jedi just some punks who found a bunch of old text of holocrons.

Hutts are always an option. Our similarity rich douche baggy people.

Character backstory ties in with a possible villain? Their family could owe a corporation from the outer rim a huge amount of money and they send collectors after the pc.

A Grand Moff

Wookie mercenary leading an elite death squad of Stormtroopers.

...

>I'm thinking a corporate suit
>like Xanatos or Handsome Jack
Saying "corporate" was enough, trying to pin specific corporate types as evil is a tautology.

>sith lord [...] like discout Palpatine
Oh, I see that's just your thing.

Yuuzhan Vong, bitches.

Yep, Germans are a good start obviously.

What were they thinking?

Yuuzhan Vong

Yeah they really dropped the concept of the arms dealers. Dropped it on the floor, forgot about it, and wandered off into the distance failing to remember where it was or where it was going.

Honestly, I have no idea. The Yuuzhan Vong have always struck me as distinctly un-Star Wars-y, despite the huge push for them in the old extended universe.

>droid fighters
>performing that well ever
That's the part that puts it too far to be believable for me.
>smugArc170Pilot.jpg

An Imperial General who leads a cult.

A bitter rebel general who after witnessing the fallout of a rebel defeat swore a merciless oath of revenge on his enemies

I like this actually.
>the moment when they were sent to investigate the "sith" and find him and his entire following cut to ribbons and the real villain has revealed himself

I assume the loss of the Death Star was a devastating blow to the Empire, morale-wise. I’m no expert on the EU, but I imagine it’s possible that at least a few generals or admirals in the Empire night have seen the loss of the Death Star as a sign that the Emperor was weak and tried to break off to start their own rogue Empire faction in some sector of the galaxy?

Kylo is actually a character that I ran back in Saga Edition
>We were doing an Evil campaign.
>We were pawns working for Palpatine
>I made a Dark Jedi who was the son of a surviving Jedi. He got annoyed that he wasn't getting strong fast enough.
>Vader found them and dueled his father.
>In a fit of rage, my character slew his own father and swore loyalty to Vader.
>Played him like a whiny bitch that just wanted Vader-Sempai to notice him.
I swear, as soon as I walked out of the theater, I made a tin-foil hat to stop Disney from stealing my thoughts.

Well, he's not an antagonist in my old republic campaign, but he can be easily refashioned.
Basicaly players freed really ancient sith ghost (I'm talking first schism here), who got really pissed off how sith culture and mindset degenerated, and proceeded to make great plan ho to restore the sith to their former glory.

More than you can count. Not actually, but I'm pretty sure more than a handful of these pop-up immediately following the destruction of the Death Star II, never mind all the other factions that would eventually come to be as splinter of the Imperial Remnant.

Heck, 'Operation: Cinder' is a thing explicitly invented for the new cannon so that this kind of bullshit couldn't happen under Disney's watch.