Got done with a second session and surprisingly we weren't able to finish up the adventure. Granted we got started late and PCs been moving slowly and methodically (been treating it very much like a horror flick and I decided to play along with failed or threat on perception rolls leading them to odd sounds and such.
Kept the atmosphere a mix of creepy and macabre humor. Had particular fun with the chef droid and medical droid.
As a bit of a background, I have 4 PCs.
1. A Chiss Bounty Hunter (Assassin) that is working undercover for the Ascendency for a number of different reasons.
2. A kepto-maniac Explorer (Archeologist) droid with a grudge against humans......which I now realize is pretty much just Bender
3. A Wookie Hired Gun (Marauder) exiled from Kashyyk and on the run and also had some Black Sun dealings he's indebted with.
4. A Twi'lek Smuggler (Scoundrel) who was sold into slavery and managed to escape and now on the run from the owners and sever family issues.
Starting off we rolled 6 light-side and 1 dark-side destiny points and no obligation triggered so we were slinging destiny points around like mad for everything.
The schmucks completely bought the droids' stories and bought in one hundred percent. The chiss was pretty much slowly inspecting and sweeping the rooms all military style (not surprisingly) and the wookie got impatient and started opening doors and wandering off. Bender pretty much tried to loot everything in sight....I actually had to keep track of every room he tried to raid...and of all rooms, he didn't scour the computer room so the PCs never found the case of credits.
They didn't really search Landing Pad B and never bothered to review the security camera footage (just watched the current footage on the 2 active cameras).
Rolled down the tunnel and found the miners (left the admin droid behind). Wisely sent Bender ahead who got shot-up a bit by Bonda and Marv. The smuggler had to spend a lot of her time calming everyone the hell down as both the miners and PCs were pissed, all the while alarms were still going off (I already had them at 3 generators down due to how slow they were going.
On the way out they loaded up in the mine car with Marv, Bonda, and another two miners piled up on the ore hopper with the plan on having the two flunkies take the vehicle and second near the entrance back for the others. Of course they just floored it and blundered into blaster fire.
Everyone dove for cover, but the wookie tried to go on a ramming spree. However the droids landed a successful rifle hit, but suffered a despair so ended up shooting out the engine of the vehicle.
EV-8D3 ended up with a successful Scathing Tirade EVERY **** TIME and ended up causing much rage among the PCs. The best part being where the wookie went after the PK droids with a vibrosword and completely whiffed due to the setback dice and I got the best quote of the night:
"I'm going to rip that supervisor droids head off!"
And then completely in character, the wookie dropped the sword and tried to break everything with his fists.
Battledroids retreated leaving 4 dead (1 disabled due to strain) and the two PK droids destroyed...poor little guys and also counting against the 165k budget. Taking some quick time to heal-up and recover strain (many of them were very low on strain due to Scathing Tirade and threat).
The Twi'lek failed the first skulduggery giving the droids time to setup and advance the starship preparations. PCs, Bonda, and Marv setup a firing line and let loose as soon as the wookie opened the door. And in appropriate fashion one of the load lifters barged on in all through a hail of gunfire (almost no damage).
The wookie jumps on the load lifter and with bare hands tries to wrench an arm off to little (no) effect. Load Lifter misses crushing the wookie while a blaster fight through the door starts off. And then something epic happened:
Bender moves to engage the load lifter with a force pike and rolls a double triumph. Yep, 2 yellow dice and 1 green and he gets two triumphs. At which point I just go: "....Well.....what happens?" Bender narrates a pretty epic duel with the load lifter where he ends up single-handely disabling it (he didn't kill it, just completely imobilized the leg servos and left it barely twitching (his choice to do so).
Fight spills into the cargo hold with EV-8D3 hitting once again with all the scathing tirade from behind cover and even managed to shoot the wookie that ran into the open after the second load lifter (battle droids quickly died). Load lifter beats the wookie silly (14 damage and 1 strain) and EV-8D3 gets shot by the chiss assassin and decided to bail out and take the lift up.
I had to flip a destiny point to make the medical droid mystically appear from behind crates to intercept Bender and Marv so they couldn't get to the supervisor droid and proceeds to inflict 3 critical hits on Bender over 3 rounds.
Wookie double stim-packs and takes 2 strain. Load lifter misses again (4 load-lifter attacks had 3 misses which was amazing or the PCs would have been in very rough shape). After the ruckus died down EV-8D3 escaped to the landing pad, the PCs are beat to hell, both load-lifters are functional, but one is nearly wrecked, and most of the other droids are scrap.
And that is where we ended.
For the awesome narrative and a double triumph, I gave Bender extra XP at the end of the session. The wookie also got extra XP for staying completely in character (eating the raw meet served to him by Chef, getting impatient and wandering off and opening doors without much caution, and dropping his weapon to fight not one, but two load lifters hand-to-hand).
A few questions about the adventure or in general:
1. How do you deal with a droid wearing armor? It's a bit silly to me, but would you treat it as modifying the chasis with armor plates?
2. How much cash to replace the mining truck? 4 to 6 thousand credits?
3. How do you handle grenades against minion mobs?
4. How do you expect a Chiss to act? He's been having trouble staying in character and looking for advice.
5. What would you have done with the double triumph or even the despair on the Battledroid shots (successful hit, but rolled a despair).
6. Any other useful tips, ideas, comments?
And the big one: How do I run the next session? The adventure is pretty much in end-game and we'll be going to the next one. But I have no idea what is going to happen with the money or if the mine stays intact or how they deal with Bargos. I have very little to go off of to prepare for the next session (though I do try to use obligation rolls and PC actions to wing a good deal of stuff).
Does anyone have good ideas? I'm thinking if they piss off Bargos, transition into what is basically the Escape from Mos Shuuta mission into Long Arm of the Hutt (which works great for the Twi'lek character and could lead to family drama). Or even the CRB adventure if they choose to try and get familiar with Thekba the Hutt (the PCs were very interested in the financials of the mine) and I kinda want to tie it into a rebel alliance or black-sun plot.
It's kinda hard to pull the massive variety of character backgrounds together into a more focused plot. Especially since I basically have zero time or advanced warning as we transition into the next adventure.
Thoughts and ideas?