A New Beginning for a retired character...

Wow, three blog posts in a single day.  You'd almost think I didn't have anything better to do ;)

Well, the prior post (GamerNationCon: An Opportunity Missed...) covered the downer part of the past few days, namely all the cool stuff I couldn't be a part of due to my flight plans being scuttled due to weather.

This one is instead going to cover the cool stuff that happened.  You see, while I wasn't able to make it down to Dallas to get my gaming fix in, I was still able to get plenty of gaming in this past Saturday.

As Thursday was winding to a close, I got an unexpected e-mail in my inbox.  The GM of a pre-existing EotE campaign that I'd tried to join (it was an utter disaster due to the GM not acting sooner to keep his more assholish players in check, particularly when they started harrassing the one female player that was new to RPGs in general) had passed along my contact info to another chap that was looking to start up his own Star Wars campaign.  Again, it was an entirely new group of folks I didn't really know all that well (I knew a couple from very casual interaction at the FLGS, including the GM), but as the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Besides, it wasn't like I had anything better to do at that point.

Talked with the GM, and got the ground rules on building characters.  Standard starting XP budget, an extra 250 credits for gear, players had the choice of Obligation or Duty, and any official material that FFG had released from either EotE or AoR was allowed, but no homebrew material.  While he's got plenty of GM experience, this would be his first time running FFG's Star Wars system, so he wanted to keep things from getting too wild, which is perfectly understandable, as "homebrew RPG material" can be viewed as code for "horribly unbalanced and broken power-gamer material."

My first question was would he allow a Force-user PC?  He thought about it, and said that he'd allow one, but that no way was he handing out a lightsaber, which I replied was not a problem as I had an old PC that I could very easily re-work into a starting character.  Matter of fact, a few weeks prior I had already re-worked said character to be a rules-legal starting character (including the part of only having the usual 500 credits to work with).  I sent him a PDF of the character sheet, and so my initial EotE PC, a teenage street rat named Valin Starsmore was reborn.  The only real difference was that Valin started out with a blaster pistol instead of a light blaster pistol and an extra stimpack.  It didn't make sense for him to be connected with the Alliance, so I took a Bounty obligation to reflect that the ISB is very interested in bringing Valin into Imperial custody.

Valin Starsmore got his initial start as character for West End Game's Star Wars D6 2nd Edition Revised & Expended system, modifying the Young Jedi template to remove Alter and re-distributing the Attribute dice into an array that wasn't quite as one-sided.  Sadly, the game that I was to play that version of Valin in never got off the ground, and so he went into my file of "characters that have never seen play."  Well, when I got my copy of the Edge of the Empire Beta, I set about looking for prior characters that I could see about re-inventing for this interesting new system.  Now I've a long-standing tradition of my first PC in any new Star Wars system being a Jedi of some type, often with the surname of Morningfire, with my online name being taken from the longest running of those, a Jedi Knight of the Rise of the Empire era named Donovan Morningfire (started as a Jedi Guardian under the OCR, was converted to RCR, and then finally re-imagined for Saga Edition).

Seeing as how FFG had opted to hold Jedi PCs until the third book in their Star Wars RPG product line, it didn't seem right to create a new Morningfire that wasn't a Jedi.  As noted, I was going through my file of "characters that have never seen play."  And there was Valin, a teenage street rat with a noted sweet tooth and very much lacking in self-confidence, with a note that the ISB had a warrant out for his capture as "person of interest" due to being a possible Force-sensitive and connected with his mentor (who had been a Jedi apprentice when the Jedi Purge kicked off back in D6, and was re-imagined as a Padawan that'd escaped Order 66).  And so Valin was remade as a Smuggler/Scoundrel/Force Exile for a one-shot game that Cyril ran.

And he was fun to play, even if he did a real hatchet job on trying to hit on Gizmo, Nateal's Twi'lek Bounty Hunter/Gadgeteer whom she had admitted "Presence of 3?  Yeah, she's pretty hot, busty too."  It was painful I'm sure for the other players (Wayne even noted that his character was ready to come over and show the kid how it was done), but given Valin's almost-crippling lack of self-confidence, it made perfect sense that he'd do a horrible job of trying to impress a hot chick; I've come to see Valin as being a prime example of Adorkable.  His only real Force ability in this incarnation was that he "could see things before they happened" and had a degree of hyperawareness (watch the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies and note the scenes where Robert Downey Jr's Holmes is alone), with Valin's problem being that while he "saw everything," he wasn't always able to properly filter and process that information.  The adventure was fun, and while it ended on a possible hook for further adventures, that never really came to be.

Well, some time later, Cyril was going to start up an EotE campaign after his Saga Edition campaign came to a close.  Once again, I took up the role of Valin, only this time replacing Force Exile with the Jedi Initiate from my Ways of the Force, and adding the Move Power and an extra talent from the Scoundrel tree to his stats being the major changes.  Other characters were Priska, a Bothan Colonist/Scholar (and later re-worked into an Explorer/Archaeologist when Enter the Unknown came out) and Chavbagga, a Wookiee Technician/Outlaw Tech, as well as a Chiss Hired Gun/Merc Soldier that called herself Erina and an archeological assistant droid (Explorer/Scout) whose name I don't remember (sorry Rikoshi).  Sadly, that campaign came to an abrupt end due to GM burnout and some personality conflicts that one of the replacement players caused within the group.  It's been put on hiatus, but as much as I'd love for that campaign to resume, I'm not holding my breath.  Still, I was able to advance Valin a fair amount as well as test out the talent tree layout of my Jedi Initiate, which in turn lead me to make some drastic alterations, the point that I felt it'd be better to just remove that spec and replace it with Force Emergent instead as I wasn't sure what the next form of Jedi Initiate would look like and it wasn't fair to the GM to keep revising my character every so often.

Well, Valin saw new life this past Saturday, and was just as much fun, particularly as the rest of the group came across as very self-assured and assertive (if a bit violent) so it was an amusing contrast.  However, Valin did prove he's no slouch when it's time to get violent, and even managed to land the finishing shot on the major antagonist with the guy's own (dropped) heavy blaster pistol.  The GM ran us through a slightly modified "Escape from Mos Shutta" adventure from the Edge of the Empire Beginner Box, mostly as this was his first time running the system and I was the only person at the table with extensive experience with the system (a couple players had played the Free RPG Day adventure, but that was it).  We've got quite a mix of characters in this group, though there is a slight bias towards combat-savvy types, which makes sense as the GM had pitched this as ultimately being an "Rebel Special Mission Group" campaign, though he's admitted that he'll likely be sticking to published adventures until he's comfortable enough with the system before creating his own adventures.

One of the more amusing things to come out of that session was that one of the other PCs, a youngish female Mirialan Hired Gun/Demolitionist that goes by the name of "Jynx" took quite a shine to Valin, finding him and his sheepish personality to be "rather cute," and thus taking a few opportunities to flirt with the young Force-user.  Also, she definitely saw Valin use the Force to pull that heavy blaster pistol to his hand, so Jynx knows that Valin's not just a self-professed "street rat" with a very acute awareness for danger.  The session ended not long after, so we'll have to wait until next time to see what she does with that knowledge or if it changes her perspective on Valin.

On the off chance anyone's interested, here's Valin's character sheet, reflecting his abilities at the start of this new campaign:

Valin's Story:
An orphan for as long as he can remember, Valin grew up in the foster care system, being transferred from one home to the next home; as such, he never really had a sense of belonging anywhere.  That all changed when the groundskeeper at the latest foster care center, a middle-aged man named Cori, recognized Valin's nascent Force abilities for what they were.  Cori helped the youth understand and begin to control his fledging powers.  But when Cori was taken into custody by COMPNOR agents, Valin fled out of fear that he’d be next, spending the next several months living on the streets.  With only his wits and Force-enhanced reflexes to rely on, he did his best to avoid drawing attention to himsel, even as he kept looking for someplace to belong.  But he hasn’t forgotten what little he’d learned from Cori, and tries to conduct himself in accordance with the Jedi Code as best he can in these dark times of Imperial rule…

As the above shows,he's not a powerful Force-user by any stretch of the imagination.  With only the basic abilities of Sense and Move available to him (and though I did consider replacing Move with Enhance, I'm glad I stuck with Move given how the adventure played out).  We'd earned 25 XP during the session, which I spent thusly:

+1 rank in Ranged (Light)
Purchased the Sense Control Upgrade to allow him to upgrade the difficulty on an enemy's attack once per turn.
Purchased the Toughened talent from Force Emergent.

Tales from the Edge of the Empire: Escape from Mos Shutta, Part 2

When last we left our erstwhile heroes, they had just stepped out of the frying pan that was the fiasco at the spaceport control, leaving in their wake four demolished droids, an unconscious Overseer, and a bunch of terrified station workers, and into the fire of being in the crosshairs of several members of the Empire’s elite stromtroopers corps.

Now, for those folks that are veterans of other Star Wars RPGs, stormtroopers are generally held to be the cannon fodder of the Rebellion Era, as a low-level hero can easily tackle a single stormtrooper, and high-level heroes can plow through squads of stormtroopers without breaking a sweat.  Not so much in Edge of the Empire, where a group of three stormtroopers can be a dangerous encounter, and two such groups even more so.  And I was afraid that my players were going to try and defeat all the troopers, particularly after the Wookiee's player asked "So how many whacks do you think it'll take for me to hew through them all?  Two, maybe three?" (remember that he's never played EotE before and this was the only encounter to use minion groups).  But they decided to simply deal with the ones blocking their path to Trex's ship and their ticket off Tatooine.  The Wookiee's player found out it only took him one whack, as Raith did a decent job of softening one up (just missed dropping the trooper by two points) before the Wookiee charged in.  Oddly enough, the stormtroopers rolled well enough to act third in initiative, and Shodu acted first to try and create a distraction for the other group that was further away, using the Triumph on his attack roll to cause the crowd to panic as bits of sand-baked masonry fell amidst the people on the street.  The stormies moved up to get better shots (started at Long Range, putting them at Medium with most of the group except Raith, who was now at Short Range due to using his turn to move closer), and to the party's surprise these stormtroopers actually hit their target, which turned out to be Dewie (Wookiees with vibro-axes in hand seem to rank as high-threat foes, and I knew that he'd could take the damage without much too problem).  And then Dewie discovered the fun of minion groups, in that if you can dish out enough damage, you can take down multiples of them in one go.  A vibro-ax is pretty nasty weapon in EotE, as it pretty much ignored the stormtrooper's Soak bonus from their armor, and with a Brawn of 4 and the Feral Strength talent, that Wookiee can deal a lot of damage in one swing, and with it's low Crit Rating, triggering a Critical Hit (which auto-kills a minion) is alarmingly easy.  Realizing exactly what they've done, particularly at Neesa's cry of alarm, the PCs immediately beat feat towards their destination.

I was initially thinking of giving the chase rules from the Beta Updates a spin, but in light of Shodu's Triumph-fueled distraction, I just called for an Easy difficulty Stealth check to allow the PCs to slip away and dodge any Imperial pursuit, which they all made quite easily, even little Vos who mildly beeped and chirped away from the scene of the crime as though nothing were out of the ordinary, a nice comedic moment after a couple of fight scenes.

So without further Imperial interruptions, the PCs finally make their way to Docking Bay Aurek, only to find a pair of security droids, only these two look a good deal more worn than the ones guarding the spaceport control.  The party decides to have Shodu and Dewie “hang back” and let the other three try and bluff their way in.  Well, Nessa works her verbal magic and convinces the droids that she’s there with her astromech and assistant (Raith) to install the HRMI, with the cost of the part to be paid to her as Vorn’s representative, and the docking fees being covered by Teemo in return for a favor owed at a later date.  The droids let the trio inside the docking bay, causing Shodu to mutter “I don’t like this…”, a sentiment to which the Wookiee growls his assent to.

A bit surprised, Trex comes out of the ship, and is even more surprised to see three strangers just a few meters from the Krayt Fang’s boarding ramp.  Nessa begins to go into her spiel, but is cut off violently when Trex slashes her across the face with his claws, her loud scream of pain and surprise making it clear to the PCs that they aren’t going to simply be able to waltz away with the Trandoshan hunter’s ship after all.  I should probably mention that so far, only Raith, Shodu and Dewie had used stimpacks (1 for Shodu, 2 each for Raith and Dewie), with everyone except Neesa and Vos carrying a few points of damage from previous fights.  So they’ve got a few bumps and bruises, but no serious injuries, barring the critical hit that Dewie took earlier.

Initiative gets rolled, and Raith is the first to react, drawing his blaster and shooting Trex pretty much at point blank range, but the shot fails as the party is quite alarmed to discover what should have been an easy shot (Short Range) wound up being a lot harder, and the smuggler misses the Trandoshan pretty badly.  Shodu wastes no time and easily wastes one of the two droids standing guard before hustling into the docking bay, and Dewie is close behind, pausing only briefly to batter the other guard droid into the adjacent wall with his vibro-ax.  Unfortunately, Trex has two more droids for back-up, and they’re the next to act, moving into firing position and blasting at Raith and Shodu, who both take a few more points of damage.  Neesa draws her own blaster and tries to jam it down Trex’s gullet, even spending a Destiny Point to at least let her roll a Proficiency die on her attack roll, but to no avail, though she is able to distract the Trando long enough for her to slip out of his claws’ range (only got 2 Advantage out of the roll, which she spent on a maneuver).  Finally Trex gets to go, and he draws his own heavy blaster and tries to plug Raith, but the wily smuggler manages to duck out of the way at the last second (spent a Destiny Point to upgrade Trex’s difficulty, which proved a good thing since all the Trando wound up with were Advantages, which he used to move back towards his ship and give himself a boost die on his next action).  Finally Vos gets to act, and in a display of bravado the little astromech whirls about and finally manages to score a hit on one of the two security droids!

Cue the following round, and Raith takes another shot at the Trandoshan managing to clip the hunter, not doing any real damage but scoring a critical hit that’s more of an annoyance than anything (rolled a 2 on the percentile dice).  Shodu wastes no time in finishing off the droid that Vos did some damage to, even giving the little guy some extra encouragement (by way of a boost die since he didn’t need to trigger a critical hit).  The Aim action came under fire on the FFG boards as not being all that useful, but it proved pretty darn useful for Shodu, allowing him to make shots that might have been tricker for him, especially as he lacked the useful combat talents such as Point Blank or Barrage might have provided.  Nessa is the next to act, taking another shot at Trex but failing horribly, though she does generate enough Advantage to give Raith and Shodu a boost die on their next turns.  The remaining droid acts next, and tries to take down Shodu, but fails miserably (even after I spent a Destiny Point to give it another Proficiency die).  Dewie decides that the Trandoshan needs to go down, and charges at Trex… only to whiff horribly (net result of nothing on the roll).  Trex takes exception to this, and blasts the Wookiee in the gut, getting a Triumph and lots of Advantages and Successes (both difficulty dice came up blank), enough for a critical hit and to disarm the Wookiee.  Rolling on the crit chart in the Beta, including the +10 from Dewie’s prior critical injury, ends with the Wookiee being knocked prone and suffering a lot of damage as a result; he’s not out, but one more shot will probably punch his ticket, and I have Trex use his maneuver to pretty much gloat over the grievously injured Wookiee’s form.  Vos goes last, and while his shot doesn’t hit the droid, he does generate some advantage, enough to give Shodu a boost die and a free boost die to the next PC to act.

This time, Dewie is the first of the PCs to act, and after staggering to his knees, he lets loose with a mighty bellow that causes the walls of the docking bay to shake.  With both fists clutched together, he clobbers Trex in the chest with a powerful double axe handle, spending the party’s last Light Side Destiny to upgrade his check, and scoring three Triumphs on the roll!  Using these to trigger a critical hit two additional times, he rolls high on the percentile, and with blood spewing from the Trandoshan’s maw as the sounds of Trex’s rib cage shattering fill the docking bay, sending their adversary to the ground in a messy heap.  Fists held to the sky, Dewie (and his player) lets loose a triumphant roar that probably woke the neighbors and scared a whole bunch of small animals.

Almost as an anti-climax, Raith takes down the last droid with a critical hit of his own (the 3 Advantage kind, not the multiple Triumph type), and the heroes quickly scramble up the ship, with Neesa helping to apply the last of the Wookiee’s stimpacks as Shodu aides the gravely injured Wookiee up into the ship.

Raith wastes no time in heading for the controls, and is slightly relieved to find that Trex had the ship on standby, apparently expecting to leave shortly after realizing the ship was no longer in lockdown thanks to the groups’ earlier actions at spaceport control.  He barks a suggestion that Vos get busy installing the HMRI, otherwise they’re gonna have a real short trip.  Neesa joins the smuggler in the cockpit just in time for her to spot a group of stormtroopers entering the docking bay, likely drawn by the commotion of their fight with Trex, and a couple of them setting up what looked to be a heavy repeating blaster.  Raith bellows for everyone to buckle up as he floors the repuslorlifts and the Krayt Fang lurches up out of the docking bay and away from the stormtroopers, causing a few snide remarks about the smooth flying.

However, as they rocket away from Tatooine and into the inky black freedom of the stars, the ship’s sensors detect a problem… four TIE fighters, closing in fast, with one of them nicking the ship’s hull and causing a few warning lights to flash.  Shodu and Dewie quickly scramble into the gunnery stations, taking control of the ship’s pair of quad laser cannons, bringing them online as Raith shows just how good of a pilot he is, using evasive maneuvers as he opens up the ship’s ion drives to try and get them into range for a jump to lightspeed.  Vos is easily able to begin installing the HMRI, rolling a lot of successes and only needing a second round to finish the installation.  The TIE fighers roar in for another pass, but Raith’s fancy flying prevents the Imperial ships from dealing any actual damage.

Vos finishes installing the component as Raith plots a hasty hyperspace jump as he continues trying to evade the TIE fighters; luckily he’s made enough trips to and from Tatooine working for Teemo that he knows a few nearby systems that they could safely hop to (a good role-playing invocation of his Galaxy Mapper talent), with Neesa doing what she can to assist (pretty much just a boost die, but every little bit helps at this point).  Meanwhile, the Rodian and the Wookiee open fire with the quad laser cannons, and while Dewie has no luck, Shodu is a skilled enough marksman that he’s able to draw a bead and take out one of the two wings of TIE fighters in a hail of laser fire, but the other two are able to score a few hits, causing Raith to bemoan the damage to his new ship, a remark that draws a disbelieving look from Neesa.  But with one final surge from the engines, the Krayt Fang clears the gravity well of Tatooine and makes the jump to hyperspace, escaping not only the TIE Fighters but the grasp of Teemo the Hutt, bringing the adventure to a close.

Okay, if you’ve read the Beginner Box adventure, then you’ve probably spotted quite a few things I did differently from how the adventure plays out.  First was the immediate introduction of the Destiny Pool; as most of my players had already played an EotE adventure, they were familiar with Destiny Points, so I saw no reason to hold back on them.   I also implemented Obligation, though with a hand wave for why everyone in this group of strangers was suffering for Raith’s Debt Obligation coming up.

For the Gamorrean encounter at the beginning, I ran that them as-was, mostly so that I could get a feel for just how powerful these characters could be.  I’d say the PCs were a bit more potent than the pre-gens, likely due to having a few extra skill ranks and some talents rather than pumping all their Starting XP budgets into raising their Characteristics.

For the security droids, I added 1 rank each of the Adversary and Point Blank talents to make them a bit more of a threat to the heroes, but not an overwhelming one.  And the presence of the human bounty hunter was completely unscripted, as I wanted to increase the tension and pressure a bit on the players, as things had been going a bit too smoothly for them.

The stormtrooper fight was also run unaltered, as stormtroopers can be a deadly enough opponent when operating in groups.  Not that these really were given how deadly Dewie could be with that vibro-ax (there was a good reason I had Trex use his Advantages to Disarm rather than increasing the effect of his critical hit on the Wookiee).  When I ran this adventure for my Wednesday group, they pretty much fled as the stormtroopers got to go first and surprised them with not only being accurate but also able to dish out some hefty damage on a hit, something they weren’t ready for.
I also really roleplayed out the scene with Vorn, as the PCs were generally enjoying it and Shodu’s player was busy placing the order for dinner, so he didn’t mind not being directly involved.  And while the PCs probably won’t ever learn this, it was Vorn that tipped of Trex, telling the Trandoshan that a bunch of ship-jackers had made off with the HMRI and would likely be trying to take the Krayt Fang.  The other problem was that I figured Trex was canny enough to be suspicious when his ship was suddenly taken out of lockdown, and he knew better than to openly accept a “gift” from Teemo.  Neesa’s Deceit check to fool Trex was one of her few failed social rolls, aside from the Despair mentioned above that triggered the combat at spaceport control.

For the fight with Trex, I used the standard security droid stats, figuring that they were a bit more worn down, but gave the Trandoshan a rank in Point Blank and Lethal Blows as well as two ranks in Adversary.  This was the big fight of the adventure, and I really didn’t want the PCs to steamroll him.  On the flipside, going by strict raw Dewie’s attack wouldn’t have been enough to take Trex out (just barely got past his Soak Value) as well as only causing a Gruesome Injury result, but how often do you see three Triumphs from a staring tier PC?  I just had to reward that, and given the cinematic presentation of Dewie’s desperate attack, it felt like the right thing to do.  Of course, Trex isn’t actually dead, but he’s not as Brawny as he used to be thanks to having several ribs turned to dust and a few internal organs blasted into jelly.  And he’s none too happy with having his ship stolen out from underneath his snout.

I also pretty obviously wasn’t using the simplified critical hit rules from the Beginner Box, though in retrospect, maybe I should have, as I could have very well wound up with a crippled Wookiee due to the lack of healing skills in the group; I actually felt a sensation of relief that I rolled so poorly for Trex’s critical hit during that fight, as some of those higher results can be pretty nasty, particularly the result that lets the attacker make a free attack, which probably would have knocked Dewie unconscious.  As it was, he ended the fight with only three Wounds remaining until he hit his Wound Threshold, and the two stim packs only gave him back 5 Wounds, as I was using the Beta rules on stimpacks as I’m more used to those than the BegBox version, which I think restore a flat 4 points with no degradation per use.

The last change was calling for Raith to make an Astrogation check as his action once the HMRI had been installed; the module just says that once the module was installed, at the end of that active round, the ship automatically jumps to hyperspace with no other input from the PCs required.  I set the difficulty for the check at Average, but applied a setback die due to the need to rush the calculations.  I’d forgotten he had Galaxy Mapper until the player brought it up, with the way he did earning a brief bit of applause from me for so easily inserting a fluff-based rationale into a crunch-based aspect of his character.  I really think our Dresden Files game has had a positive effect on a group that previously was very tactically minded and loathe to play anything that wasn’t a d20 game.  And I was really impressed with how these freshly-minted PCs all worked within their particular niches, as well as their team work in handing around boost dice during the Trex fight, as opposed to Shodu keeping his boost dice to himself.

There was talk afterwards of my running the follow-up adventure “Long Arm of the Hutt” for them in a few weeks, and where my Wednesday group has since proven to be very tepid towards the prospect, my Saturday group is eager to play EotE again, as they had a blast and at least two of the players will definitely be picking up the book when it comes out later this year (really hoping for a May release on that one, though April would be cool as well).  Does remind me, I do have to give them their rewards, a nice 20 XP and 500 credits each to represent the "petty funds" that Trex had stowed aboard his ship.

As a point of interest, I tried to recreate the BBox pre-gens using the character creation rules from EotE Beta, taking into account that the pre-gens were using a consolidated version of their career as opposed to the Beta's career & specialization method.  What I found was rather interesting, to say the least.  I stuck purely to the core rules on this, including the paltry 500 credit starting funds.

For Lowhhrick, he came out to being about 300 credits underbudget, assuming he took a +5 Obligation for some extra starting cash.

Oskara was either 450 credits overbudget if she only took a +5 Obligation, or a 1000 credits underbudget if she took the full +10 Obligation.

Mathus was only 25 credits short, again with a +5 Obligation, and was the only one of the Humans to be a perfectly legal starting character for the most part.

Sasha and Pash were each missing a  skill rank, assuming they got the two bonus non-career skill ranks that Humans get in the EotE beta.  But near as I can figure, they took a +10 Obligation for 10 XP to cover the costs of raising 4 of their Characteristics to a 3, and then went seriously overbudget on their gear and starting credits, as Pash is 425 credits overbudget while Sasha is only 350 credits over the default budget of 500 credits.

And the one character that I was pretty was going to be overbudget on either XP or credits out to be underbudget on both credits and XP, as 41-VEX was missing 5 XP (likely a missing skill rank) and was 100 credits short using a +5 Obligation for more starting credits.

So in comparison to the pre-gens, my granting the players an extra 500 credits wasn't even remotely a problem.  They may not have taken much in the way of extra Obligation, but the Obligation came up anyway and they suffered the Strain for it.  Plus, I dropped the credit rewards at the end of the adventure from 1000 credits per PC to 500.  I figure big paydays should be far and few between in EotE, though we'll see what happens when we sit down to play "Long Arm of the Hutt."

Well, I hope you've enjoyed reading about how my second run-thru of Edge of the Empire's "Escape from Mos Shutta" went.  If nothing else, I figure it's interesting to see how a group of semi-experienced players with their own characters handled the adventure.

If you've got comments or questions, either about the adventure or why I did what I did when running it, feel free to drop a line here or over at the d20 Radio forums.

Also, you can find sumqui's very handy cheat sheet here, buried deep in the archives of the Fantasy Flight Games EotE Beta forum: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=317&efcid=46&efidt=708757

Tales from the Edge of the Empire: Escape from Mos Shutta, Part 1

Hooray for last minute gaming plan changes!

Originally, last night I and my Saturday Night gaming buddies were slated to finish out what promised to be a high-stakes Dresden Files RPG scenario worthy of the calamity and property damage of the man himself. Sadly, between Friday night and Saturday morning, the GM had come down with a head cold and barely had a voice with which to speak due to illness as well as her day-job. So, while charades and pantomime can be a fun diversion, they're no way to run an RPG, especially for what is likely to be the capstone of the on-again, off-again campaign.  I wonder if there'll be a need for a zombie T-rex to once again tread the Chicago streets?  Hoping not, but it'd still be cool as hell.

So, rather than call the whole thing off, we decided to accelerate the schedule for when I'd run this same group through the "Escape from Mos Shutta" adventure that came with the Fantasy Flight Games' Edge of the Empire Beginner Box set.  I'd run this adventure before for my Wednesday Night crew, who used the pre-gens as this was their first experience with Edge of the Empire and they wanted to get into the action ASAP.

Well, my Saturday group had already taken EotE for a test-spin when I ran a modified version of "Rescue at Ord Mantell" for them back around early November or so.  So not being EotE virgins, they all agreed that they wanted to build their own characters using the Beta rules, with a couple pointing out that in their many years of gaming (and I do mean many), official pre-gens often had a number of problems, chief amongst those problems being said pre-gens after often sub-par.  We did have one neophyte, who'd missed the prior EotE test-spin due to work-related issues (namely, show up to work or show up on the unemployment line the next business day), but the other four players all had a level of comfort with EotE's dice pool mechanic and how different combat was from Saga Edition.
A little over an hour later, we had five freshly minted player characters, made using the Beta rules along with the Final Week Update that FFG provided at the closing of the EotE beta testing period.  The neophyte opted for a fairly simple build, that of a Wookiee Hired Gun/Marauder who wound up with the name Dewryyhn courtesy of the random Wookiee name tables in the back of WotC's Galactic Campaign Guide for the RCR (main, are those charts handy to have in situations like this), though he was quickly saddled with the rather emasculating nickname of Dewie.  The rest of the line-up was as follows:

- Neesa Eyan, a (busty & sultry voiced) female Twi'lek Explorer/Trader
- Raith Bardo, a dark-skinned male Human Smuggler/Pilot
- Shodu Farr, a male Rodian Bounty Hunter/Survivalist
- R2-V05 aka Vos, a masculine programmed droid Technician/Mechanic

I'm gonna step down for a moment to discuss Vos.  That player, who'd had quite a bit of fun playing an R6 astromech in my long-defunct SWSE Alternate Universe campaign, had asked if he could play an astromech in this game.  Now the Beta rules for EotE do present droids as a PC option, but the intent is for PCs to be playing 4th degree combat-capable droids, such as IG-88 or HK-47.  However, it was easy enough to tweak things to let Vos be a 2nd degree droid and Silhouette 0 without any other mechanical changes being required; the player pointed out that being smaller was both a boon and hindrance, as he'd be easier to toss around but only be a tougher target for vehicle weapons or really big creatures like wampas and banthas.  And I must say, compared to how droids started out in the EotE beta, they can be some pretty kick-ass characters, so long as you keep to the notion of "droid PC as a specialist" rather than "droid PC as a generalist", but then much the same is true for most of the available PC races.  Being this was the first time seeing a Droid PC in actual play, I was pretty impressed with just how versatile this "species" could be, and the 4th Degree aspect can easily be dropped, as was done with Vos, whose player adhered to the "can't deliberately injure organics" restriction that most droids have.

I also hewed pretty darn close to the rules as provided in the Beta and Final Week Updates (no fan-made talents or species), with one exception that was both minor and probably far-reaching in terms of a running campaign.  I doubled the listed starting credits for my PCs, providing them with 1000 credits instead of the paltry 500 credits the rules state.  What I found is that only three of the five PCs took extra Obligation, with Shodu opting for an extra 1K credits so that he could have both a blaster carbine and padded armor while Dewie and Raith opted for 5 extra starting experience to buy an extra talent that they really wanted.  I had a brief discussion with Brian Casey aka Fiddleback on Twitter about this, and this group had previously discussed the low starting credit amounts and that FFG's intent was to force players into buying Obligation.  Lewin Suul also piped in on that conversation by saying that his group had very little interest in EotE because the PCs started out so poor.  But as Sterling Hershey mentioned on Episode 3: The Obligameter of the revised Order 66 podcast, the game doesn't suddenly break if you provide the PCs with some extra starting gear to fit their concepts.  And given that all five of my PCs had done just that, buying gear that generally fit with their concepts, handing out an extra 500 credits will probably be my default house rule for EotE for the foreseeable future, presuming the final version doesn't up the default credit limit already.
So, with PCs at the ready, I compiled their respective Obligations and rolled to see which of them would come up, and someone's did, appropriately enough Raith’s Debt, though I didn’t roll doubles.  The other PCs weren’t overly thrilled at having to lower their Strain Thresholds by one, but I did state that each of their Obligations were tied to Teemo in some way, and in this instance the Strain Threshold penalty was due to their issues with Teemo coming to a head, with Raith getting the worst of it due to having lost his prior ship and a valuable load of exotics.   I handed out a few copies of the combat cheat sheets created by sumqui, played the opening crawl that was created by L0thar (both gents being posters over at FFG's EotE forums), appropriate minis were selected for the PCs (I love having the full run of WotC's SW minis, but they can be a pain to lug around), the Destiny Pool established, and so the adventure got underway...

The adventure starts with the PCs each scrambling into a seedy cantina in the equally seedy small town of Mos Shutta on Tatooine, looking to escape not only the oppressive heat of the midday suns but also a bunch of Gamorrean goons sent by Teemo the Hutt, who is none too pleased with any of the heroes for a number of reasons at the moment.  They need to do something to try and make themselves as inconspicuous as possible, and I open the floor for what skills they want to use, setting the Difficulty at Easy (1 Difficulty/purple die) as per the adventure.

Not missing a beat, Neesa spots a couple of older men at a table playing Pazaak, and immediately struts over and asks to be dealt in a sultry voice while dropping 50 credits on the table, and easily aces her Charm check as she takes up a seat while putting the goods on display.
Raith and Vos (who've worked together in the past, so at least one person can speak Binary) decide to just pull up to the bar and pretend that nothing's wrong, requiring a Cool check. The droid fails with 1 Threat, suffering a point of Strain, but Raith rolls the first Triumph of the night, and is soon sipping some fine Corellian whiskey like he's been there all day.

Shodu opts to grab a table close the stage where a scantily clad Twi'lek woman is dancing, but positioned so that he can see the door and counting on the change in lighting forcing any of his pursuers to have to pause to let their eyes adjust, giving him a few critical seconds to ready his carbine.  I ask for a Stealth roll, as while he's in the open so to speak, he's trying to be sneaky about it, and he rolls a lone success with two Advantage, which he uses for a Boost/blue die to be set aside for his next roll, figuring it'll either be for initiative or shooting.

Dewie instead wanted to hide in the rafters, and with his mighty Wookiee strength and climbing skill does so with amazing grace for such a large, brawny creature.

A few minutes later, the Gamorreans that were pursuing them (one for each PC) stumble in and look around, not seeing anything that strikes them as amiss... until one of them lays eyes on Vos.  Squealing in a mix of anger and delight, the thugs begin making their way towards the droid... which for Shodu is his cue to open fire.  He does so at Short Range, does rolls well enough to kill one of the Gamorreans and give himself a boost die on his next roll, which turns out to be Vigilance as all hell begins to break loose.

The PCs all end up going first, and the Gamorreans are badly trounced by the PCs, with notable moments being Dewie taking  down a goon with a Clothesline From Hell (Brawl attack that rolled a record eight successes, though enough Threat to give him a s4Setback/black die on his next action) and Neesa quickly scrambling to grab as many of the credits from the Pazaak game as she could when the table got knocked over due to a Gamorrean whiffing horribly in an attempt to beat down the Wookiee.  In keeping with being a 2nd Degree droid, Vos used the Stun setting on his built-in light blaster, only getting to attack once but setting up a kill shot for Raith (boost die), but the little astromech simply isn't built for ranged combat. This opening combat of the adventure only took two rounds, with Shodu and Dewie being the stars of the show even without Dewie using his vibro-ax, and none of the PCs were badly injured; Dewie took the only damage at a measly 2 Wounds out of 20.

Realizing they need to get sparse, the PCs decide to shakedown the (rightfully) alarmed bartender, though Neesa once again proves the virtue of kind words over harsh language as she easily charms the barkeep into answering their questions.  The adventure itself doesn't really provide the means to direct the PCs to the next encounter, but I ad-libbed and had the barkeep provide the info dump.  Namely, that last night an irate Trandoshan hunter named Trex had been in, loudly complaining about the price the junk shop owner Vorn was asking for a replacement hypermatter reactor ignitor (HMRI), to say nothing of the installation costs, to get his ship, the Krayt Fang, up and flying again, to say nothing of Teemo not being able to deliver on the astromech droid (Vos as it so happens) that the hunter was promised in exchange for returning a group of escaped labor slaves to the slagworks, a series of mines that provides a portion of the Hutt's fiscal leverage on Tatooine.  Seeing a chance to learn more, Vos plugs into the handily available public access terminal in the cantina (bought for the low cost of a single Light Side Destiny Point) and sets about using his Computers skill to see what he can find out about Trex, the Krayt Fang, and what sort of buzz Teemo's put on the street about them.  They learn that Trex has been rather lax in paying his docking fees, and the ship has been locked down by spaceport control and is secured at Docking Bay Aurek.  The docking fees are pretty high, being far more credits than all of the PCs have put together.  It's at this point the idea of working as a group, at least long enough to get off Tatooine and Teemo's slimy reach, is broached, and in true PC fashion, they all agree to work together for at least that long, though Neesa does mention something about incorporating as a free trader outfit, causing Shodu to roll his eyes.  In a moment that was both amusing and a nice tip of the hat to A New Hope, Raith used the large credit coin he'd scooped up from the floor and tosses it to the barkeep as the group leaves, saying "Sorry 'bout the mess," in a rather jovial tone, leaving the barkeep with five dead Gamorreans to dispose of, a Twi'lek dancing girl that's scared out of her mind and refusing to come out from the backstage area, and two old gamblers grousing about how their credits were stolen by the other Twi'lek tramp.

With a bit of caution and stealth, the group manages to make it to Vorn's junk shop, figuring it's the closest and they can't really get anywhere without that HRMI as the Krayt Fang is the only ship docked at Mos Shutta and Teemo's got guards at the few exits to the town.  Vorn proves to be an irascible older Human, even going so far as to berate and kick a beat-up old R5 unit before sending it back outside to finish some task.  Vos opts to have a chat with his cousin while the rest of the PCs set about getting the HMRI from Vorn.  However, Vorn is pretty adamant about keeping the part set aside for Trex, and doesn't buy Raith's story about them being there to pick up the part for Trex, particularly without a payment being made.  Dewie considers showing the junk dealer why it's a bad idea to upset a Wookiee, but he's been a resident of these parts (fighting in Teemo's gladiator pits) long enough to know that starting a ruckus here would be bad, and settles for playing the quiet heavy.  Shodu opts to stay outside and keep watch in case more Teemo-employed trouble shows up.  Neesa steps up, and while she's soon got Vorn eating out of her hand, she's still a bit creeped out by just how lecherous this unkempt Human is, suffering Strain in the process.

Meanwhile, Vos strikes up a conversation with the old agromech, R5-K3, whose a surly old droid.  Through the power of roleplaying, Vos convinces K3 to cause a distraction, enabling Vos to grab the needed part, as K3 hates his owner and Vos really wants to help Raith and his new friends.

Neesa manages to swing the conversation around to maybe buying the HRMI from Vorn by offering a better price than Trex, hiding the fact that she's not in possession of a ship of her own at the moment. Even with all her sweet-talking, she can't get him to go lower than 600 credits (which is what Trex would be paying), which is a bit steep for her tastes, and she's very hesitant to suggest an exchange of favors as part of the deal, given where Vorn's gaze seems to be lingering.  Just as she's about to give up and ask the other PCs to help cover the costs, the R5 droid rolls in, with Vos not far behind.  Raith then strikes upon an idea, and bluffs Vorn into showing them the part so that they can verify that it's in good working order and he's not trying to cheat them.  Vorn's a bit incensed, but agrees and reveals where the part is, and what it looks like.  Seeing an opportunity, Neesa convinces the junk dealer to let their astromech examine the part, which he grudgingly agrees to with an added complaint that he can't entirely trust his agromech's scanners half the time anyway.  VOS good-naturedly confirms that this is indeed the right part and is in fine working order, but before Vorn can try to up the price given the "fine quality of the merchandise as assessed by their own droid," R5 causes the necessary disturbance, bringing a whole rack of delicate and valuable parts crashing down.  This sets Vorn off, and he gets so angry that he forgets about the HMRI and is hell-bent on turning the R5 into scrap metal.  With a shared grins amidst the players, the group high-tails it out, getting the needed part without paying a single credit, leading Raith to quip that it's a steal of a deal, earning a collective round of groans for that one.

With the HRMI in hand, the group now decides to tackle getting the Krayt Fang out of lockdown.  It's now late in the afternoon, and those residents of Mos Shutta that are not indentured to Teemo and make an honest living are starting to filter out into the streets.  The increased crowds mean more bodies for the heroes to try and lose themselves amidst, but it also means that Teemo's got more eyes on the street to look for them.  Where in Saga Edition I might have called for a prolonged skill challenge, in EotE I simply called for a group Stealth test against an Average difficulty, but with one setback die.  They all roll, only instead of calculating each PC's successes individually, I tally the group totals, tracking the amount of successes, failures, advantages, and threats generated on each roll.  How well they did here would determine whether they were ambushed or not for an upcoming encounter.  Seeing as how nobody was trained in Stealth, it was going to be straight ability score rolls, though Shodu did have a talent that give him a boost die on Stealth checks, and both he and Raith spent Destiny Points to upgrade their checks in the hopes of generating more successes, especially given Dewie's abysmal roll (three failures and 1 advantage), which proved beneficial as the group squeaked by with one success but also three threat.  Yes, I did give the players a maliciously wicked grin.

They reach spaceport control without (apparent) incident, and are coldly greeted by a pair of security droids, both of which look combat capable. Against common logic, the group decides to split up, with Raith, Nessa, and Shodu trying to get in through the front door while Vos and Dewie opt to look for another way, such as a side door or something.  I should probably mention that Vos only speaks Binary, and only Raith can really understand the little astromech.

Raith is ready to try and bluff his way past, but Nessa tells the smuggler to follow her lead, informing the droids they are there on behalf the Teemo to settle the overdue docking fees that Trex has racked up.  I figure this is a bit of stretch, especially given how some of that threat from the group Stealth roll was applied, and apply a setback dice.  Lucky for them, Nessa has a convincing demeanor, and with Raith providing an assist to grant the Twi'lek a boost die on her roll, she easily bluffs the droids and smooth talks her way past them without triggering their suspicion protocols.

Meanwhile, Vos and Dewie, being unaware of their allies' success, are poking around the back, and Vos notices a side door.  The door is locked, but Vos has little trouble disabling the lock.  Before it can whistle to the Wookiee that they've got their way in, a human wearing rugged-looking armor (I used a Journeyman Hunter, dropping the distruputor and swapping the laminate armor for padded armor) rounds the corner and spots the pair.  Exclaiming that "you're two of those people that Teemo's looking for!," the human draws his heavy blaster pistol (his showing up was the remaining two points of threat).  Vigilance is rolled as neither side was expecting a fight, and the human hunter winds up going first, and scores a lucky critical hit on the Wookiee, dealing only a few points of damage but leaving the mighty warrior slightly dazed (setback die on all skill checks for the rest of the encounter).  Needless to say, the Wookiee is pissed, enough that he unslings his vibro-ax and with teeth bared, hews into the hapless bounty hunter, dealing a critical hit in return, leaving the poor schlub blinded and barely alive.  Vos starts chirping that they need to go, and darts inside the door, but Dewie wants blood.  The hunter tries to scramble away, pretty much out of the fight, but Dewie mercilessly strides up and stomps the poor hunter's head into the dirt.  If there were a method of tracking dark side in this games, Dewie would have triggered it for his ruthless execution of the near-helpless hunter.  Satisfied, he turns around and storms through the side door to spaceport control.

Inside, the woman in charge, Overseer Brynn has just welcomed an Imperial shuttle to Mos Shutta, and she is proving far less susceptible to Neesa's wiles; the human woman apparently has a deep-seated disgust for Teemo.  Shodu picks up that the overseer has her hand near a panel that looks suspiciously like an alarm button, and quietly tells the others that they'd best play it safe and not force a fight, especially as there are two more droids inside and there is now an Imperial presence on the planet.  Raith quickly and fairly quietly mentions that with Docking Bay Aurek being taken by the Krayt Fang, that leaves Docking Bay Besh, which is a lot closer to spaceport control.  Neesa drops some her bluster and tries again to convince Brynn that they are there to arrange for payment of Trex's late fees, or at least some portion of them up front.  While Neesa does net a single success, she also generates the only Despair for the night.  At that point, Vos wheels in, with Dewie stomping in right behind the droid, vibro-ax still in hand and radiating very clearly that the Wookiee is pissed.  Brynn screams in alarm and the two security droids immediately spring into action.  With Raith snarking that "this is why we can't have nice things!", once again Vigilance is rolled to determine initiative.  It's gonna be tense, as there's 1 PC action, then an NPC gets to go, and if Brynn hits that alarm...

Knowing he's got to make that first shot count, Shodu quickly unslings his rifle, sets the weapon to stun, and fires on Brynn.  The dice gods smile, as he's able to knock her unconscious with a single shot.  This however makes him the primary target of the security droids, who open fire on the Rodian hunter and leave him with a few new patches of charred flesh for his trouble (he was quite glad to have bought padded armor instead of settling for heavy clothing).  With the jig being up, Raith draws his blaster and fires on one droid while Dewie barrels into the other, pushing hapless support staff out of his way in his eagerness to destroy the other droid.  But the droid proves a sturdier foe than anticipated, and it takes a shot from Neesa's blaster to drop the Wookiee's opponent.  Knowing that he's out of his element here, Vos quickly wheels over to the main control terminal and plugs in, quickly seeing to slice the computers and unlock the docking clamps.  The adventure lists this as an Average difficulty check, but an alarm's been sounded so I bump it up to Hard and spend a Destiny Point to upgrade the difficulty.  But Vos takes it in stride, and easily slices the mainframe to unlock the clamps, using his Triumph to insert a bit of code to prevent anyone from locking down the ship for the next twenty-four hours and the advantage to grant Raith and Shodu a boost die on their next actions.  Raith finishes off the droid he'd shot at before, and as the two security droids from outside enter, Shodu turns and blows the head off one of them after switching his rifle back to its lethal setting and drawing a bead on its optic visor.  Technically Shodu acted out of turn, as the droids' turns hadn't finished yet, but he was willing to spend a Destiny Point for it, so I let it happen (the party had entirely too many Light Side Destiny Points at that point, so anything to get the PCs to spend them).  The remaining droid took quick stock of threats detected, and wound up taking a shot at Raith, leaving Nessa and Vos as the only two PCs that had avoided taking damage so far.  Dewie charges at the last droid standing and buries his vibro-ax into its torso, ripping it asunder with a critical hit.

So, with the droids defeated and the Krayt Fang removed from lockdown, the PCs figured it'd just be a quick jaunt over to Docking Bay Aurek, install the HMRI, and take off.  Right... (said in the voice of Bill Cosby during his old Noah skit).  No sooner than the PCs take five steps, they spot a two groups of stormtroopers, one from either end of the road.  Turns out Teemo has some Imperial connections, as a member of the closer of the two groups of stormtroopers points at the group and loudly says, "There they are, get them!"  I think Raith said it best with a simple "Well... poodoo."  And then we broke for dinner.  Yeah, the players railed at that one, but our order of Chinese had just shown up (complete with an order of Kung Pao chicken), and I was hungry.

And that’s where I’ll end this particular post, which as wound up a lot longer than I expected.  I’ll wrap up the adventure, and provide some insight as to various on-the-fly tweaks I made to the adventure, both what most of them where (though I’m sure a few have been spotted already) and why I made them.

You can find L0thar’s opening crawl for Escape from Mos Shutta in the first post of this thread over at the Fantasy Flight Games’ EotE Beginner Box forum:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=333&efcid=46&efidt=763093