Running EOTE Adventure at a Convention. Ideas?

By OggDude, in Game Masters

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I'm thinking about running an original EOTE game at the next convention. I know you guys come up with great ideas, so I thought I'd pick your brains for some good plots and adventure designs.


Here's the requirements:


  • The game should run about 6 hours
  • It will be for 5 or 6 players
  • It should have even pacing. Investigation or "skill" encounters should be evenly interspersed with combat or action encounters.
  • It should come to a reasonable conclusion with at least most of the plot points wrapped up.

I've come up with a couple of openings, but I need some ideas on how to fill in the plot. Here's what I've come up with:


  • The characters are all prisoners being held in cells on a transport ship going to a penal colony. After some claxons sound off and the ship shudders from some impacts, the doors to the cells mysteriously open. The characters may or may not know each other.
  • The characters all awake not knowing who they are or what they're doing. As the plot unfolds, it becomes apparent that the characters, themselves, erased their own memories to protect... something. They've left themselves clues along the way, and the plot is eventually made clear.
  • The story opens with a crew of smugglers carrying a mysterious cargo being chased by some adversary. It turns out that multiple factions want the cargo, and the characters have to investigate the intrigue surrounding the plot. How they decide to handle the cargo or other plot points will change the outcome of the adventure.

Some other ideas I've been toying with:


  • There's one or more "ringers" in the group, possibly PCs working for one or more adversaries, or at least with their own agenda. Perhaps the group knows that one of them is a plant (a la Cylon players in the BSG game), or maybe they become suspicious as the game goes on.
  • Multiple adversary groups are involved with the plot, going against the PCs and each other, perhaps with an unknown puppetmaster pulling everyone's strings.


I want to stay away from hackneyed plot devices such as anything involving Hutts, named movie characters, fetch-the-MacGuffin, rescue the princess (unless the princess might be the mysterious cargo?), yada yada. Any ideas would be great!


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Will the players be creating their own characters or will you have a set crew for each group that you run through at the convention?

If you're going to go with pre-gens, can you list the specializations you'll be using?

Edited by ddbrown30
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I'd also like to add that 6 hours is a lot shorter than it sounds. The adventure from the core, Trouble Brewing, can take that long (or longer). It's taken me about 5-6 hours to get through the portion on Formos with my group (of mostly noobs). That includes a bit of distraction/breaks for dinner, but I would say at least 4 hours of solid gaming went into it. Keep that in mind when designing this adventure.

Edited by ddbrown30
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Will the players be creating their own characters or will you have a set crew for each group that you run through at the convention?

If you're going to go with pre-gens, can you list the specializations you'll be using?

They will definitely be pre-gens. Careers would probably be a standard mix, but their back stories will be interwoven with the story line. For instance, if a PC is a plant, it will be part of their back story as to why they're there, what they want to accomplish, etc. I was also toying with the idea of having some sort of "score" to indicate how well each player does with their character's own goals within the story.

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I'd also like to add that 6 hours is a lot shorter than it sounds. The adventure from the core, Trouble Brewing, can take that long (or longer). It's taken me about 5-6 hours to get through the portion on Formos with my group (of mostly noobs). That includes a bit of distraction/breaks for dinner, but I would say at least 4 hours of solid gaming went into it. Keep that in mind when designing this adventure.

Generally, when I run Escape from Mos Shuuta, it takes an average of 4 hours. For one group, it took 3, and for another, it took almost 5, but about 4 hours for the rest. Long Arm of the Hutt seems to take about 6 hours average, so if you think about the content of LAotH, that's about what I will need for this adventure, possibly a little less just to make sure I don't run over.

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I like the prison ship starting point. It allows you to start in media res and allows you to skip the awkward meet and greet. Personally, I would go with huge collision or pirates or something along those lines. The ship is about to be boarded or destroyed and, either way, the PCs need to escape.

From here, you could go in a few directions. They could head to the escape pods, which I think is the mostly likely course of action. Alternatively, you could have there be another ship on board the prison transport that the PCs could steal. Going this route could lead to an interesting confrontation with a crew member who has the same idea.

Regardless of how they get off the ship, they shouldn't be able to leave the system immediately and will end up on a nearby world. If you take the stolen ship route, just make it so that a key piece of equipment is missing or broken. From here, they need to secure their escape while avoiding capture. Plenty of opportunity for social and technical skill checks as well as some combat as the PCs try to acquire whatever they need to escape.

I think you should be able to fit something like that into 6 hours.

Edited by ddbrown30
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Have you thought about the possibility their amnesia is to allow for a spy or two to be added so the Imperials can discover what the rebels are hiding and apparently willing to die to keep secret?

Maybe make them think they were subjected to a new Imperial weapon designed to turn rebel sympathisers into hardcore Imperial Operatives but what's going on isn't what they think it is... for example maybe they are all Imperials and this gives them the chance to escape the horrors of their past but once they remember will they be willing to take the risk knowing they would have enemies on both sides?!

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They could be sleeper agents of the ISB, elite troopers programmed to infiltrate the Rebel Alliance and then turn on them. Their imprisoning could be part of the plant; the cell doors opening being curtsey of the ISB. The cargo could be a bomb, a Star Wars style super-weapon, or a long range communications beacon hidden in a crate of arms destined for the heroes to deliver to the Rebels.

During their adventure the heroes see clues that lead to their true past but the question is: Once they realize their meant to slaughter freedom fighters will they follow their destiny and go through with it or will they try to turn to the light and betray the Empire.

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Great ideas! OK, for the prison ship:


Along with the prisoners, the transport is also carrying a MacGuffin... maybe a shipment of credits for Imperial troops in the Outer Rim. The ship is boarded by another ship (which can also be used as a getaway vehicle in the last episode). The infiltrators gassed the crew to knock them out, then cut the power to remove the force field around the MacGuffin. This causes the prison block to lose power, which frees the prisoners. Now it's a race for the bad guys to find the goods and escape, or the prisoners to foil their plans.


Further complications: they meet a crewman who wasn't exposed to the gas and are forced to work with him to stop the thieves. Maybe the crewman turns out to be one of the thieves. Unfortunately, this also sounds like the plot to "Die Hard", so we may have to think of something else :) Maybe one of the prisoners is working for the thieves, and his job is to slice the computers and find where the MacGuffin is being held, then betray the prisoners to the thieves. One of the prisoners could also be an ISB agent and the Empire knew that someone was after the MacGuffin and this is part of a trap to stop them. The thieves might end up being Rebels, but that fact isn't known at the start. Now we need to tie all of these points together into a coherent plot.


Now, the amnesia plot:


The PCs are a group of ISB operatives set to infiltrate... something (Rebel base sounds good). Instead of amnesia, they're sleeper agents who are programmed to think that they're the good guys and who will activate at a particular time. The group is told to do something heinous (slaughter puppies, blow up a bus full of nuns and orphans, etc).. One or more of the group have an issue with this, so before they're reprogrammed, they leave themselves clues as to their true purpose, hoping that this information will break the programming before it's activated so they don't have to do the heinous thing.


OR... they're Rebel investigators who discover a plot by the Imperials to blow the base, or set up an attack or something. As they investigate, they realize that they're the ones who planned the attack all along, and wiped their memory to allay suspicion. They're supposed to realize who they are at the last minute and escape, but they discover it too soon and have to make a choice to either go through with it, or to save their new friends (they've become sympathisers during the time they've been there). Maybe their ISB section chief is the final boss bad guy who tries to bring them in, but if they choose to side with the rebels, he says "This was always a risk. Too bad, you were some of my finest agents" and proceeds to try and kill them.


Please keep the ideas coming! :)

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I've been doing some more thinking on this and I'm gravitating more toward the prison ship escape scenario. The other plot lines are cool, but I think it would take more than a stand-alone 6 hour game to complete them.

As for more details, I spent some time going through Wookiepedia and came up with the following. It might be too weird :) but I think it's doable:

The infiltrators are a group of Chiss who are trying to retake a small dovin basal that had been captured after an advanced force of Yuuzhan Vong were defeated by the Chiss Ascendancy, some 30 years ago. The dovin basal was taken by the Empire from a secret Chiss lab for study. A group of loyalist Chiss, let by the son of Admiral Ar'alani , is trying to re-take the creature to prevent the Empire from using it to create a new form of super weapon.
The Chiss brought their own portable containment field for the dovin basal, but after disabling security on the ship to perform the transfer, the unbonded creature began to defend itself, killing some of the infiltrators and pinning down the rest in the cargo hold. The PCs are released from their cells after the security is cut, unbeknownst to the Chiss.
The PCs will have various options for dealing with this situation. More than likely, their primary concern will be to escape the ship and regain their freedom. Optionally, PCs could have their own agenda. For instance, one PC could be a member of the rebellion who would want to take the creature to a Rebel base for study. Another might know of an outlaw biotech company who would pay handsomly for such a creature. Another may just see the entire situation as an impediment to his freedom and want to destroy the creature, along with the infiltrators.
As for the dovin basal, it's a small and weak variety, perhaps one used in a starfighter-sized vessel, or maybe one bred for land-based operations (maybe for a tank?). It should be just powerful enough to provide for a good end-game boss fight, whether or not the goal is to kill it or incapacitate it. With its ability to manipulate gravity, it should provide a very exotic, and more than likely, terrifying, fight, with lots of opportunity for cinematic violence :)
I'm still working out the structure of the adventure. Part 1 will be the prisoners escaping from the holding area and arming themselves. I'm thinking of having a heavily armed security droid blocking their way toward the start. Since they won't have weapons or armor, I'll place various objects that can be used as improvised weapons, or give them opportunities to stop the droid using other means (using Mechanics, Computers, or some other skills). Part 2 will be assessing the situation, discovering who's aboard the ship, and what they're after. This could also consist of some fights between the PCs and the Chiss, or maybe more droids and crewmen who weren't affected by the knockout gas. They could also form alliances, figure out what they're own goals are, etc. Part 3 would be the climax, battling the creature, defeating the Chiss (if that's what they decide on doing), double-crossing their own party, or whatever. And, of course, finally escaping the ship.
How does this sound? Would you want to be in this kind of adventure? Any other suggestions? Is the dovin basal too weird or powerful to bring into it, even if it's neutered (just knowing what it's capable of could totally freak out the party)? And, after reading up on it, what sort of combat powers and abilities should I give it, keeping in mind I don't want to annihilate the party or the ship :) For instance, it's black-hole generating ability could be seen as giving them high defense, with the narrative description of blaster bolts being sucked toward mini-singularities floating around it when its fired upon. They could also have some sort of gravity-based telekinetic power that can pick someone up and throw him against a bulkhead. I would also not be opposed to having a Cthulhu sort of atmosphere when dealing with this thing, instilling mind-blowing terror into its victims.
Again, any more suggestions or ideas, I'm all ears (or eyes as the case may be) :)
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I wouldn't recommend pitting the party against itself for a convention scenario. Something like that might work for a home campaign but mutually exclusive and competing goals combined with pick-up group members who may have never met and will likely never meet again is a recipe for PvP. One one player gets to win and that might make everyone else feel like they just wasted a few hours.

However, something where each PC has different (possibly secret) motivating goals that propel the story can create a sort of transparent breadcrumb quest that leads all of the players to some final mutual goal. Something like one PC wants to kill the warden for prior injustices which creates a riot which allows another PC to complete his task of accessing the computer core and downloading the ship's blueprints and manifest which leads to the discovery of the dovin basal (or other MacGuffin) that another PC was hoping to find.

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I don't really want it to come down to bar brawl or anything between the PCs :) , but maybe having different goals that can all come together in the end, if they play it right. Of course, that might become too complicated. I just didn't want to have a group of random petty criminals with no focus or reason to work together.


Jumping to the end, the final goal will be to get off the ship with their lives. As the dovin basal is a weird, bizzare, and Cthulhu-esque creature, maybe that will be the only goal (survival), and it could be played out like the original "Alien", being a space-horror adventure. That actually sounds pretty cool :) Maybe the twist toward the end is that the creature destroys the Chiss ship, just as they're about to get on, leaving the PCs to to find some other means of escape. Maybe they discover a small shuttle that's in the hangar bay, or just escape in a cargo pod. In fact, maybe the only way to destroy the creature will be to overload the engines on the transport while on a hyper jump, destroying the ship (and creature) while it is safely in hyperspace. Because of the creature's power, it can't be confronted head-on (or maybe they witness the carnage when the Chiss try this, and wet their pants in terror at the result) and it stalks them, much like the alien in "Alien", maybe picking off their Chiss/Imperial/droid allies one by one.


I'm actually kind of liking this, but I don't want them to think "Oh, this is 'Alien'. Ho hum", so I'll need some other interesting plot conflicts.

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6 hours!

Blimey, that's a marathon to these old bones! My sessions are about 2 hours at most!

Posted at

6 hours!

Blimey, that's a marathon to these old bones! My sessions are about 2 hours at most!

Conventions have time slots for their games. They're normally in increments of 2 hours, with most RPGs running between 4 and 8 hours. Generally, if you run a game that's at least 6 hours, they'll give you a free weekend pass :)