Botched Mission ideas

By Rakaydos, in Star Wars: Age of Rebellion RPG

You went in with a squadron of Ywings and two shuttles of commandos, on a top secret mission against a hidden Imperial Facility.

You’re all that’s left. Only two commandos and a pair of damaged fighters actually made it to the ground. There’s imperial patrols looking for you, and the only one who has the coordinates to get back to the Rebel Base is the Squad Leaders dead astromech.

You might be able to reach the imperial facility on foot, but most of the commandos are gone, including the ground force commander who was going to brief you on site. You might be able to recover the damaged astromech’s memory, but the shuttle isn’t going anywhere anymore. There's ships at the nearby starbort, but Imperials have the spaceport on lockdown.

You’re out of good options. Where do you go from here?

An adventure I'm putting together for a Pilot, Astromech(anic), Squad Leader, Scout and Sharpshooter.

Any suggestions on cool ideas to play with for this scenerio?

Edited by Rakaydos

I'd consider having the commander jettison the astromech when he was aware the shuttle wouldn't make it. That way when the party gets to the shuttle remains they have no trace of it and have to go into the wilderness to find the astromech that freefell.

If you want some shades of grey, a survivor was taken, but the party will need to silence them. Many bothans must die...

Contact the local underworld and make some kind of payment arrangements and use the local thuggery to complete the mission.

I don't have many suggestions offhand, but reading your synopsis reminded me a great deal of Black Hawk Down. Perhaps you could mine some ideas from there. If I were to run such a scenario as a GM, the game would start with the mission from the beginning and show it falling apart in stages, rather than in the aftermath of everything going to pieces.

I'll concur with TBS: a missing astromech or team member whose data cannot fall into the hands of the enemy gives the players both a reason to venture outside of their hole-up site and a sense of urgency to do so. Perhaps the players have reason to believe that their team was betrayed: either they were given bad intelligence or someone tipped the Imperials off.

There are a lot of different ways you could run with such as scenario.

My first reaction was... is this where you start your version of the age of rebellion beginner game?

If not do you mind if I use this as the start instead because it comes across better!

Hmm ambush an imperial patrol have them in disguise leading the others in as "captives" and hopefully con your way aboard a lambda shuttle and escape before they notice... I did say con your way through the base maybe hack your way out once you're inside sounds better?

Maybe recover that captured droid or comrade whilst you're at it... I've seen worse ideas pulled off admittedly I wasn't the gm but I wouldn't have stopped them from trying mind you!

Thanks for sharing the idea!

My first reaction was... is this where you start your version of the age of rebellion beginner game?

If not do you mind if I use this as the start instead because it comes across better!

Hmm ambush an imperial patrol have them in disguise leading the others in as "captives" and hopefully con your way aboard a lambda shuttle and escape before they notice... I did say con your way through the base maybe hack your way out once you're inside sounds better?

Maybe recover that captured droid or comrade whilst you're at it... I've seen worse ideas pulled off admittedly I wasn't the gm but I wouldn't have stopped them from trying mind you!

Thanks for sharing the idea!

I picked up the beginner game with this idea in mind, but I'm thinking that it's going to take slightly more conversion than I thought. Not only is the scenerio basically "excape from mos shuta" with grenades and a coat of paint, mechanically, but story wise, figureing out a good way to fit the Moff and Admiral into the Botchd Mission (to tie it into any follow up missions released by FFG)will take some doing.

Perhaps the admiral leaked the location of the moff's base, then "dropped by" to crush the rebels, make a few remarks about unprepared civilians, and leave? (with the PCs on the ground?)

I agree with That Blasted. The astromech has set off a distress beacon and the players have to make their way through the wilderness to reach it in time before the Imperials intercept the signal.

When they get there maybe some hostile creatures have snatched it and damaged the mech in the process, queue fight/trickery/persuasion to get it back.

After this they could find out the parts they need can be found in a nearby town. Have to lay low while the Imperials search and make a deal with some local lowlifes or pirates etc who run the town to get the part they need.

Whilst there they hear the Imperials have a survivor from the raid and are going to torture him for information. This leaves the players with a quandary, do they leg it back to the base, pack up and leave, rescue their comrade or infiltrate and silence them before they reveal some sensitive information. Kind of like rescuing Morpheus in the 1st Matrix movie.