I picked up the Battlestar Galactica RPG more for the space-combat rules than anything a few years back.  I liked the show, but was — like many who have bought the game — unsure how to fit a campaign into the existing canon of the new show.  Here are a few ideas, some mine, some cribbed from around the gaming blogosphere:

1.  Another rag-tag fleet:  this is the option I went with.  There is a lot of chaos and confusion during the attack.  Galactica is operating primarily in the area of Caprica during the War, and they have limited intelligence on what’s going on during the miniseries.  The fog of war is thick.  They were unaware of Pegasus and vice-versa for almost a year, series time.  It’s understandable there could be whole battlestar groups out there who got to the fight too late, or were in some way incapacitated for the day or so between the fight starting and the rag-tag fleet bugging out.

2.  Post-apocalyptic ground campaign:  the Cylons bug out at day 280.  you just have to make it to that point before this could be a game solely about survival, with a few groups of humans fighting over the scraps of civilization, technology, food, etc.  Bleak, but doable.  We had a ground group in our campaign that eventually gets rescued by the surviving fleet, but they not only fought Cylons, but other panicked and hungry humans, there was a Road Warrior-esque series of car chase/fights, and some creepy exploration of abandoned cities.  There’s plenty to make of this setting, post war.

3.  Break canon.  Do it your way.  Next time I take a crack at this setting, I’m putting the colonies in differing star systems, just to make it more interesting.  I’ll allow the players to take on the lead characters.  After, the Cycle of Pythia just keeps a-rollin’.

4.  Put them in the fleet and do civilian survival adventures.  Black market troubles.  Maybe a private eye type character running around the fleet trying to solve mysteries or help people a la Ed Woodward’s The Equalizer.  You can find ways to have real adventures that matter, without having to climb into a viper.

My big suggestion:  start the campaign a few months to years before the attacks.  When doing character creation, give them families and friends, and use them! I created a whole neighborhood in Caprica City they lived in, had several of the players either working together as colonial marshals of law enforcement types.  They had adventures that were separate of the coming attacks, and an assortment of family troubles, one had a kid, there were things going on to make the world, the Colonies REAL.

Then in the middle of one adventure, the Cylons hit.  One minute they’re pursuing escaped felons in the mountains outside of Caprica City, the next there are mushroom clouds going up over the city.  they lost those friends and family members, their homes, their cars (one was mourning her dog.)  And it allowed them an in to the feelings and actions of the people in the show that some of the viewers didn’t have, because we don’t really see life before the attacks until the final few episodes.

Surprisingly, this campaign seems to have some real legs for my group.  It’s worth a shot if you have people into the show and the post-apocalyptic genre.