Community

Dec 1, 2011 -- 9:31AM, barefoottourguide wrote:

I hope some of this helps.

More than you know - that really makes the front half of the game complete. Now to assimilate it into my notes and put my own touches on it.

Thanks man!

***EDIT***

So I'm considering how to get the players past the Star Destroyers, through the dust cloud and planetside. Knowing them, they'll most likely arrive not directly at Nizon and under the guns of the Arkanian Dragon like the module assumes. No, they'll most likely drop out of hyperspace well outsystem, slowly sneak in, get sensor readings and the lay of the land before rushing in.

In fact if they see transports leaving the planet, they very well might assume that transports are also in-bound from time to time. They might come up with the idea of trying to slip into an in-bound transport's sensor shadow and make planetfall without being shot at using the transport as cover. Actually, it;s kind of clever idea - and honestly that's a plan they're not beyond coming up with.

If they slip in like that, I'll have to come up with a contingincy to seperate them from their ship. Perhaps stressing the sheer volume of imperial fighter patrols? That if they go in guns blazing, it'll be an uphill fight.

Keep us up-to-date about how it works and what further changes you make.
Garrett

Cool. Ecu was the victim of some hazard attacks and got taken out by a turret gun. While the PCs fought in the foundry (one PC almost killed by the molten hazard), the kid got revived and taken for who knows why reason to the top of the construction by the officer to be tormented before being tossed off. The PCs made short work of the officer and his small retinue.
I like the taking the kid to the elders thing. Nice.
Garrett

So last week our Champions GM got sick and couldn't run the game, so we jumped back to Star Wars since I had this game ready. And things went ALLLLL wrong, at least from a "follow the game as proscribed" standpoint.
 
The players managed to get to the planet with care and planning and running silent, so no fighting on the way down (and it felt cheap to do arbitrarily throw a dogfight at them) so there was no crash, no hard landing. They just hid the ship out in the desert about 6 hours away in a grotto somewhere. I figured that there was plenty of fighting to come soon enough, so I let them get away with this non-fight one.

Once down planetside, I kept the encounter with the blade scorpion but I dropped monster menacing Bart Chrome. Instead I combined the two, and had the Scorpion (and stone mites) going after Bart's R2 unit - I knew that they'd be more sympathetic to a droid in trouble than a crashed smuggler in trouble (I have a weird group). That also has the added benefit of keeping the tag-along NPCs down, since astromechs don't do much in the way of fighting. Although I did keep Ralrtobuck, separated from the R2 when their ship went down - so he'll feature later in the story.

As a side note - once the players figured out it was stone mites, they got into ultra conspiracy mode, thinking that the Empire was up to no-good behind the scenes. While the Empire is always up to no-good, it was fun to see them sweat over a non-related encounter.
 
The first encounter in town, having the Empire just start harassing the players out of the blue, seemed a bit forced. So the players ran into the patrol, but the Imperials didn't abandon their mission (stop looking for the kid) to harass them. They just kept their heads down, shuffled through the checkpoint papers in hand and played it cool - well, all the way up to the point where the Empire found the kid and tried to gun him down. Seriously, no self respecting Player will let a bunch of imperials murder a kid right in front of them.

So then encounter wasn't so much a chase through the streets, but a short and brutal gunfight - hell, the players were able to gun down the 10 or so imperials (and one Zabrak) in one turn. The Empire couldn't have run after the kid even if they had tried!

So the kid took them into the sewers and showed them to his hidey-hole. I dropped the encounter with Elders, figuring that a star-stricken kid with hero worship would be able to impart anything that the Elders would have to say. "Well, the elders think that Sartok was selling us out to the Empire - but I know better! He's a real hero. What do they know, they just sit around and talk and plan all day".

And here's where the game went completely off the book. The players were really concerned about setting off alarms or raising red flags. So instead of heading to the prison to rescue Sartok and the Wookiee guns blazing, they were being sneaky. One of them went and got herself captured so they could have a man on the inside - so she assaulted one of Scout Walkers (and actually got pretty far along before the Empire captured her). Meanwhile our slicer used the datapad that the kid stole from the Officer to get into the Imperial networks (and rolled really, really, really amazing - far beyond any difficulty number to beat the high end firewalls that the Empire had in place). There she was able to insert another member of the team into the duty roster and get them access to the motor pool so they can transfer prisoners from site to site.

While our slicer was in the system, she said - "so is there anything Sarlac Project related that I can get my hands on?" I told them there were a couple of errant emails, but nothing solid. There was a separate server, probably where the super high security information was - but it physically wasn't connected to the external network. "Fine, can I get myself a work order from the IT department?" she said, followed by another gorgeous forging roll. Next thing I know, she's bluffing and coning her way into the Imperial headquarters at Marter's Plaza, stealing the physical hard drive and sneaking her way out.

Since things were going too smoothly and I wanted some excitement (plus a good stopping point, since it was getting late),  I decided to move up a cut scene event from later in the game, where Vril Vrakth (who I've re-written slightly to give him a history with the player who let herself get captured) was going over the reports of the day, and spots the report on his old friend. Realizing that he's got a Huntress (a Jedi-ish warrior monk order) on his hands, he turns on the red alerts!

And so the players manage to get to the prison, bluff their way through transferring Sartok and Ralrtobuck and started to get away from the prison JUST before Vrakth and his goons descend on the facility. They should have a few moments before Vrakth figures out what happened, but not much more than that.

So, they have the Sarlac information and are on the run from The Empire, and they're placing the mission (find out everything they can about Sarlacc) over the game objective (light the fires of resistance amongst the Nazren). Depending on the mood of the players, I might have Sartok go "look, My people are on the verge of rising up, we just need someone to set things going. We could use the help of warriors like you!" and just start the riots right there as they flee town. Or I might cut things short, let them escape with the data. This means that they'll have a really small window for the next chapter before the Empire figures out what's going on - it'd really dial up the pressure if they go that way. I'll have to give it some thought and perhaps plan for the players going either way.

Yeah, it does take care of some strange plot points, doesnt it. So I'm thinking I might just go with a big fight from here on out, with a running speeder chase and flight offworld. The players have said "We'll help your people, but the mission HAS to come first", so perhaps I might return to the remainder of the chapter at a future date.

That or I might use the Empire being distracted chasing the players down and trying to get the drive back as the opening the Nazren need to throw off their shackles. So while they escape out of town, all hell breaks loose - so instead of all these encounters on the way into Marter's Plaza, I'll run them in a revised, reverse order. Stuff like "You might want to quickly deal with that commeunications dish you see in the distance before things get far enough out of hand that they call for support from orbit" and that sort of thing.

This is going to be fun. . . . (: