February 26, 2013

Long Arm of the Hutt: Act 1 Recap

A couple days later than anticipated (busy Sunday, felt like crap on Monday), but I thought I'd do a recap of sorts of the Long Arm of the Hutt adventure that FFG has offered up as a free download on their website.  While the adventure was intended more to be used alongside the Beginner Box materials, it works just fine using the Beta rules.

To recap, the newly-formed band of heroes that are the PCs comprise the following:
- Dewryyhn, Wookiee Hired Gun/Marauder
- Neesa Eyan, Twi'lek Explorer/Trader
- R2-V05 aka "Vos," Astromech Technician/Mechanic
- Raith Bardo, Human Smuggler/Pilot
- Shodu Farr, Rodian Bounty Hunter/Survivalist

We almost had a sixth, but said player was put off by the utter lack of Jedi or Force material, and so chose to wait until FFG actually published said material.  Sounds like he's got a long wait ahead of him...

I'm actually not going to do a full recap, as that would take too long and frankly I'm really not feeling it.  We didn't get through all of Act 1, ending the session with the party reaching the New Meen Mines and in need of some recovery time after a surprisingly rough fight at the Old Lylek Den.  They did spot the Gand sniper, but Raith proved his piloting chops by flying a madman's course that made it hard for the hunters to draw a bead on them, which enabled them to get past the hunters without their speeder getting damaged.  Seeing as how the hunters had cover, it proved to be a tough shooting match for most of the group, though Shodu was doing pretty well thanks to his having purchased an extra rank in Ranged (Heavy) and rolling a pretty good number of successes on each roll.  Oddly enough, quite a few Advantages went to effectively giving Dewie some cover fire so that he could get in close with his vibro-ax, and once he did, things got messy pretty fast given the sheer damage output he had, thanks in no small part to the low crit rating of his vibro-ax.  I opted to downgrade the NPC hunter's armor from laminate armor to heavy clothing so that they wouldn't be quite as tough to take down, as only two of the PCs (Dewie & Shodu) really have any serious combat skill, though Raith did score a couple of Triumphs with his heavy blaster pistol... before rolling three Threats and running out of ammo; boy was he glad for that extra reload the party had found when rummaging through the Krayt Fang at the start of the session.  It still proved to be a tough fight, as the bad guys had cover, though it didn't quite matter as much once Dewie got within melee range, as his vibro-ax's low crit rating enabled him to drop a bounty hunter on each swing, though he did inadvertently make things tougher on Raith and Shodu as they were now firing into a melee (luckily no Despair results came up on that challenge die).  End result were five dead bounty hunters (4 humans, 1 Gand), and the party snagging a decent blaster rifle that could be sold or bartered at a later date, as well as some heavy blaster pistols that B'aru thought might come in handy for the people of New Meen if things got violent (which they probably will).  It was kind of neat to see Shodu engage in something of a sniper war with the Gand, ending the fight with a critical  that the player described as blowing right through the Gand's crude sights before literally blowing his mind with the awesomeness of the shot.  Since the Gand was a rival/henchman, and a critical injury drops them outright (at least going by the Beginner Box rules), I didn't see a need to enforce the proper rules for critical injuries.

There was quite a bit of roleplaying this session, which is largely why we didn't get quite as far as I had initially thought they would given how quickly we got through Escape from Mos Shutta.  The players really took the opportunity while exploring their new ship and resolving the various issues found to begin to flesh out who their characters are and not just what they can do.  To be fair, part of the delay also was in the players trying to decide on how to spend the 20 XP awarded to them for successfully completing Escape from Mos Shutta.  They were also eager to check out the local market at Nabat, leading to some fun RP'ing there as well as giving Nessa a chance to indulge her character concept as a Twi'lek trader-baroness in the making.

Nobody's Obligation came up, something the PCs were glad of.  Their destiny pool was pretty bad though, with only a single Light Side token compared to four Dark Side tokens, and I did put those dark side tokens to good use during the bounty hunter fight to make the PCs' shots a bit more difficult, particularly Shodu's given his two ranks in Ranged (Heavy).

So, it was a fun session, which is what really matters.  We're slated to finish off Act I sometime next month, and everyone's looking forward to it.  It's an interesting mix of characters, though I did feel kinda bad that Neesa and Vos didn't have a whole lot to contribute to the bounty hunter fight beyond supporting fire (namely using the Assist maneuver), though Vos did get a clever idea to use his scanners to allow Shodu to get a fix on where the Gand sniper was (Perception check, allowing the Rodian to upgrade his dice pool by one on a success).  Hopefully I can incorporate more role-play hooks for Nessa, as I really don't want the only female player in the group to get bored and decide she doesn't want to play anymore.

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