I can't think of anything to run for a Hired Gun and a Pilot.
Stuck!
"Excuse me Sir/Madam, can you please help me? I need to have this parcel delivered to a close friend in the neighbouring system. There's just the matter of the Imperial blockade. You seem capable though, do you have a ship by any chance?"
Check this link out with Hired Gun ideas from the Game Master forum:
Or go to DriveThruRpg and spent $4 on the Traveler adventure book "21 Plots" or "21 Plots: Samaritan". Each book contains 21 adventure threads with six possible complications. The Samaritan book is full of scenarios where heroes are hired/asked to help people like a Hired Gun & his Pilot buddy might be. These books don't contain stats, just plot hooks to get a GM moving.
Remember the Pilot (if using Edge stuff only) is a Smuggler who happens to be good at piloting. He should be pretty good at the classic smuggler stuff too, and needing to get something out of a secure location (with the promise of violence if caught) is a good plot for Hired Gun/Smuggler.
Check this link out with Hired Gun ideas from the Game Master forum:
Or go to DriveThruRpg and spent $4 on the Traveler adventure book "21 Plots" or "21 Plots: Samaritan". Each book contains 21 adventure threads with six possible complications. The Samaritan book is full of scenarios where heroes are hired/asked to help people like a Hired Gun & his Pilot buddy might be. These books don't contain stats, just plot hooks to get a GM moving.
These "21" Traveller books are pretty good. Some are somewhat standard, some are really inventive, but they all seem to have good twists to suit whatever story you're trying to tell.
Remember the Pilot (if using Edge stuff only) is a Smuggler who happens to be good at piloting. He should be pretty good at the classic smuggler stuff too, and needing to get something out of a secure location (with the promise of violence if caught) is a good plot for Hired Gun/Smuggler.
What other stuff than Edge is there for pilots? I have dangerous covenants, but it's thin on plots
Edited by signoftheserpentAll I meant is that Pilots still have the full set of Smuggler Career Skills they can (and did, at chargen) invest in. And of course they can always go into Scoundrel or Thief on the cheap to diversify their Talent abilities.
What other stuff? I meant that Pilot is a spec in AoR as well, part of the Ace Career whose other Specs focus on gunnery and ship/squadron command.
I'm trying to think of something with a cantina dinner who wants the PCs to help her leave town. Unknown to them she's a former imperial agent who wants to start over, away from the empire.
Not sure what to do with that.
It's a link, read it, you said you're looking for ideas for a plot, that's a female agent looking to get out of her organization.
I can't think of anything to run for a Hired Gun and a Pilot.
Here, try these Adventure Nuggets
Or this game idea
How about a Random Job Generator?
Perhaps you need a Random Cargo Generator?
Or just my suggestions on how to come up with games. . . .
Thanks.
Not sure how to structure the adventure either. I could spend days planning stuff, preempting (pointlessly) stuff and writing descriptions of space stations, planets, places and people.
There must be a better way.
The Smuggler career seed thread should hopefully give you some ideas. As has been said, anything that applies to the Smuggler as a whole should work for the Pilot. If you disagree, could you maybe give us a description of your player's Pilot character? If he's not interested in smuggling or transporting goods, what does he want to do?
With that said, you seem to already have an idea. What more do you feel you need to turn that into a full adventure?
Thanks.
Not sure how to structure the adventure either. I could spend days planning stuff, preempting (pointlessly) stuff and writing descriptions of space stations, planets, places and people.
There must be a better way.
Well for starters you have to make her likable and believable as a NPC if you expect your players to actually help her. Money only goes so far once people are shooting at you. Second you need to make the people chasing her interesting as well, if it's just shooting flaccid minions with no fluff that's basically the difference between a tabletop mini skirmish game and a RPG. There are a ton a pre made locations in the FFG supps like in Suns of Fortune along with some named NPCs yoou might be able to integrate. Then you decide if they need to get her to a specific planet, or a rendezvous in space, or some underworld character that's going to forge her a new identity, etc.
You'll hear people harp on this a lot, especially in these forums, but design strong characters rather than stories. Once you know who this imperial agent is, the story will start to emerge on its own. In addition, this will give you guidance when your players inevitably do something you didn't plan for.
Some questions you can ask to help you design her:
- Why does she want to leave?
- Is she retiring or defecting?
- Where does she want to go?
- Who does she care about?
- What branch of the imperial army is she in?
- What did she do for the army?
- Why would the imps care that she left and therefore come after her? (This one is super important as it could form the foundation of your adventure)
- Is anyone other than the imps interested in her?
- Is she being truthful or is this a ruse of some kind?
That should get you started. Once you answered those questions (and maybe some more that come up as you do the exercise) you should start to have a much better idea of her motivations. From there, you should do the same exercise on some other major characters of the story, such as the person who is chasing her.
Once you've got that figured out, coming up a basic framework for the adventure shouldn't be too hard. Some questions to help you there might be:
- Where do the PCs meet her?
- Where do they need to take her?
- Why can't they take her directly there? (Another important, adventure-defining question)
- How is the group found? Basically, even if the PCs never know how, the bad guy has to figure out where they are and catch up to them at least once. If you can figure out legitimate reasons for how this occurs, it will again help you flesh out your adventure and will give you guidance when the PCs make a left turn when you expected them to make a right.
Finally, I would suggest not spending very much time designing places. In my opinion, it's one of the biggest mistakes new GMs make. They spend all of their creative energy building locations with maps, defining all the little bits, and planning all the encounters, only for the players to completely bypass it all (I'm speaking from experience here). Even if you're certain they PCs will visit a location, only do the bare minimum of design for it, and the rest can be made up on the fly.
There are tons of resources available for GMs, for free, on the internet. The Three Clue Rule should be required reading for all GMs and there are a bunch of other helpful articles on that site. Some Google searches should help you turn up more.
Good luck!
Edited by ddbrown30The Smuggler career seed thread should hopefully give you some ideas. As has been said, anything that applies to the Smuggler as a whole should work for the Pilot. If you disagree, could you maybe give us a description of your player's Pilot character? If he's not interested in smuggling or transporting goods, what does he want to do?
With that said, you seem to already have an idea. What more do you feel you need to turn that into a full adventure?
It needs fleshing out otherwise it's just pc's pick her up and fly her to X and get paid. Win.
As she's an ex imperial agent (or some kind of dark past), how to put some obstacles (the meat of the adventure) but without her taking centre stage over the pc's.
It needs fleshing out otherwise it's just pc's pick her up and fly her to X and get paid. Win.
As she's an ex imperial agent (or some kind of dark past), how to put some obstacles (the meat of the adventure) but without her taking centre stage over the pc's.
My big wall of text above should help you answer some of those questions. Don't worry about her taking centre stage. She's what's driving the plot and that's perfectly fine. Just make sure that the PCs are the ones resolving it. Having the Big Bad show up to catch her isn't overshadowing the PCs, but if she is the one who defeats him, then you've got a problem.
For some more generic tips on obstacles and structure. I would suggest having some trouble getting her off planet. She might need some fake ID or she'll need to be smuggled aboard the PCs ship. You could even start the adventure with the Imps right on her tail like in ANH, putting pressure on the group right from the start, including a space battle as they try to make the jump to hyperspace.
From there, a lot of what will come next will depend on how you answered the questions I gave you before. Perhaps she needs to deliver something before disappearing. Maybe she needs to pick up someone (her spouse or relative, for instance). Maybe someone is helping her disappear and they have a package for her that contains some credits and IDs. Maybe she needs to stop somewhere for plastic surgery.
Then, it's about delivering her to wherever she's going. You probably don't want to have the final confrontation at her destination because then the Big Bad will know where she is. Once that's dealt with, the delivery should be a safe place where they can get paid and say goodbye.
Edited by ddbrown30I agree about places, to a point. Certainly you can overdesign things, as if you were an architect. Drawing maps and such, but verissimilitude requires enough information about the environment, otherwise you're just people sat in someone's lounge pretending to be star wars characters.
Some questions you can ask to help you design her:
- Why does she want to leave?
- Is she retiring or defecting?
- Where does she want to go?
- Who does she care about?
- What branch of the imperial army is she in?
- What did she do for the army?
- Why would the imps care that she left and therefore come after her? (This one is super important as it could form the foundation of your adventure)
- Is anyone other than the imps interested in her?
- Is she being truthful or is this a ruse of some kind?
Also not sure this idea really lends itself to the genre. It doesn't scream: big ass space adventure (even in the hives of scum and villainy). That's what star wars should be. Not a dour character drama.
Ok let's answer these:
1. She's tired of the killing and wants out.
2. Retiring I suppose.
3. Somehwere on the fringe where she can loose herself and not be discovered.
4. Don't know.
5. ISB - an assassin.
6. kill.
7. I suppose the obvious answer is that she knows 'too much'! or perhaps there's a no retirement policy.
8. Don't know.
9. Truthful, though she isn't upfront about her past.
EDIT: maybe her role could be central but less powerful - maybe she's a nightclub singer who's a witness to something.
Edited by signoftheserpent
Dude, that's just wrong 
That's a garbage American remake of a great French film. If you want that story, you have to go to the original:
Some questions you can ask to help you design her:
- Why does she want to leave?
- Is she retiring or defecting?
- Where does she want to go?
- Who does she care about?
- What branch of the imperial army is she in?
- What did she do for the army?
- Why would the imps care that she left and therefore come after her? (This one is super important as it could form the foundation of your adventure)
- Is anyone other than the imps interested in her?
- Is she being truthful or is this a ruse of some kind?
Also not sure this idea really lends itself to the genre. It doesn't scream: big ass space adventure (even in the hives of scum and villainy). That's what star wars should be. Not a dour character drama.
Ok let's answer these:
1. She's tired of the killing and wants out.
2. Retiring I suppose.
3. Somehwere on the fringe where she can loose herself and not be discovered.
4. Don't know.
5. ISB - an assassin.
6. kill.
7. I suppose the obvious answer is that she knows 'too much'! or perhaps there's a no retirement policy.
8. Don't know.
9. Truthful, though she isn't upfront about her past.
EDIT: maybe her role could be central but less powerful - maybe she's a nightclub singer who's a witness to something.
I wasn't asking you to literally answer them here. I'm trying to give you the tools to create the adventure on your own.
Thanks.
Not sure how to structure the adventure either. I could spend days planning stuff, preempting (pointlessly) stuff and writing descriptions of space stations, planets, places and people.
There must be a better way.
You just plan the overall plot then plan some generic scenes, you might be surprised how much the players help.
Also have a listen to this pod cast Order 66 for ideas on how to structure your sessions.
http://podbay.fm/show/276381727/e/1371186005?autostart=1
For tips on encounters.
Some questions you can ask to help you design her:
- Why does she want to leave?
- Is she retiring or defecting?
- Where does she want to go?
- Who does she care about?
- What branch of the imperial army is she in?
- What did she do for the army?
- Why would the imps care that she left and therefore come after her? (This one is super important as it could form the foundation of your adventure)
- Is anyone other than the imps interested in her?
- Is she being truthful or is this a ruse of some kind?
Also not sure this idea really lends itself to the genre. It doesn't scream: big ass space adventure (even in the hives of scum and villainy). That's what star wars should be. Not a dour character drama.
Ok let's answer these:
1. She's tired of the killing and wants out.
2. Retiring I suppose.
3. Somehwere on the fringe where she can loose herself and not be discovered.
4. Don't know.
5. ISB - an assassin.
6. kill.
7. I suppose the obvious answer is that she knows 'too much'! or perhaps there's a no retirement policy.
8. Don't know.
9. Truthful, though she isn't upfront about her past.
EDIT: maybe her role could be central but less powerful - maybe she's a nightclub singer who's a witness to something.
I wasn't asking you to literally answer them here. I'm trying to give you the tools to create the adventure on your own.
I understand, and I appreciate the help.
I thought it might be fun to brainstorm the ideas here.
...but verissimilitude requires enough information about the environment, otherwise you're just people sat in someone's lounge pretending to be star wars characters.
This is true, but there are so many sources for this there's little pointing stressing over making your own, just borrow and tweak. I really like TCW for this kind of thing, there are a lot of scenes with "everyday folks" that really help add to the flavour. Eg: if you want a good public transit scene, check out Lightsaber Lost; if you want a couple good bar scenes, check out Lethal Trackdown (drunken Rodian and drunken Quarren arguing over who the Twi'lek dancer will go out with...classic)
EDIT: maybe her role could be central but less powerful - maybe she's a nightclub singer who's a witness to something.
Or maybe she's both...a deep cover mole (the singing is the cover) for the Empire investigating an criminal organization, recently activated, realizing she doesn't want to do this anymore.
I don't think you need to plan as much as you're fearing, not even the plot...! Heresy, I know. You can have a variety of outcomes because all you need to plan for are key characters and events. Ideally you make these events location-less, so that you can slot them in wherever you need them to happen. If the events are tied to a location, you have to give up the certainty that you'll be able to use them, or if you *must* use them, then you have to do as much as possible to avoid the appearance of railroading.
I often leave the plot for small adventures up to the players (not that they know this). They'll give undue credence to certain characters, or lines they say, or read too much into behind-the-screen dice rolls, half the time they start inventing motives all on their own...and who am I to disappoint them? If I had to put a number on it, I like to provide them with something they are about 50% accurate about. This way they feel like they have some keen insights, and I get to deliver some compelling twists.
Some ideas for your cantina singer who saw something she shouldn't:
1) Contact: she approaches the players and offers a pretty good deal to take her to another system (10-20% above normal rate, and she'll go higher). She won't have time to get into too many details (someone will come get her for her next performance), but she wants the PCs to pick her up tomorrow night at 3am at some dark location.
- does she have the money? She has enough for a deposit, but you don't have to decide about the rest until later. She'll hand over a deposit *right now* if the PCs agree, but it will be the same amount regardless of the final tally.
- does she seem suspicious? Perception vs Discipline: success = she seems nervous; advantages = she looks familiar, she sounds familiar, she's that cool new singer making the circuit; triumph = apparently she's the girlfriend of some mucky-muck kingpin; threat = some beefy guy approaches her and asks if "everything is alright", he seems to be making note of the PCs, but she passes it off that the PCs are fans; despair = beefy guy overhears a bit and asks "going somewhere?", she'll try to pass it off as "no, they said they're from X and I said I always wanted to visit there someday"
- why meet at "dark location"? She has one more gig to do tomorrow, and then has to make it look like she went home normally.
- note...you don't even have to decide her history until the PC makes the roll
2) the beefy guy is in the employ of kingpin, assigned to watch over the singer. She's used to this but lately his attentions have been more focussed.
3) kingpin is classic jealous lover...or rather possessor. He thinks singer has a future and hopes to ride her coattails to leverage the social contacts it will bring. Kingpin suspects, but does not know for sure, that singer saw something, and beefy guy has been asked to watch more closely. Kingpin has always played the legitimate businessman with singer, he's not sure how she'll take the truth.
4) Extraction: singer has one last gig to perform, after which she plans to go home, grab a few last minute things, and then meet the PCs at some dark location. She can't be talked out of this because that is her normal pattern and she doesn't want to break it, so the PCs might want to take matters into their own hands, and this is where you need to be flexible. They might want to grab her right after the gig or at any point before her preferred location. These locations could include: post-gig costume area, cab ride home, limo home with kingpin, her apartment (upscale, with security), cab post-apartment, dark location (slum).
The gig is at an open-air street festival (think Montreal Jazz or New Orleans Mardi Gras), tons of public presence, artists mingling with pedestrians, etc. Little point in maps because you can make it up however you like. Give the PCs Perception rolls to notice beefy guy and his thugs tailing them. Give the PCs Streetwise and Stealth rolls: if singer spots them she'll get even more nervous, perform worse, and make kingpin and beefy guy even more suspicious.
5) Bust out: the singer can't hide her tracks very well, nor does she want to make any effort to do so until after she gets home because that will be suspicious. Her only point of invisibility is while inside her apartment building. Afterwards she thinks she's being careful, but on her own she can't evade her followers. Beefy guy and thugs are on her trail all the way to "dark location", except for while she's in the apartment building, unless the PCs intervene. If they pick her up at "dark location" the confrontation will happen there, which will at first be "civil", as in "PCs, you want to walk away from this situation". If the PCs pick her up at a different location, then the confrontation can happen anywhere along the way (speeders screeching around forcing their transport to a halt) up to the docking bay of their ship. If a firefight ensues, try to make sure at least beefy guy gets away, so that kingpin can activate resources in system X.
If beefy guy doesn't get away, and it was all too easy on the PCs, it's time to change the plot. (This kind of thing happens all to often for me.) Now the singer is an agent for a rival crime organization, has no intention of paying the rest of the fare, and as living witnesses the PCs may have to have an "accident" ... unless they can't find another way to settle. Now they're caught between two hostile camps, which can play out in a variety of ways.
6) kingpin doesn't have his own starfighters, but he might call the planetary customs/Imperials in the hopes the PC's ship can be stopped in time. He will accuse the PCs of kidnapping.
Edited by whafrog