Beyond the Rim: Episode I, Chase

By Yepesnopes, in Game Masters

I have not been able to find if this has already been discussed.

As it is presented, the Chase in BtR Episode 1 inside the hangars in the Wheel, between the PCs and the Yiyar Clan has not a clear ending besides the obvious one where the PCs eliminate / disable the NPC.

For example, there is nothing saying how long / how many maneuvers does it take to the NPCs to reach their hangar with the droid.

How have you ran this chase?

Cheersn

Yepes

I have not been able to find if this has already been discussed.

As it is presented, the Chase in BtR Episode 1 inside the hangars in the Wheel, between the PCs and the Yiyar Clan has not a clear ending besides the obvious one where the PCs eliminate / disable the NPC.

For example, there is nothing saying how long / how many maneuvers does it take to the NPCs to reach their hangar with the droid.

How have you ran this chase?

Cheersn

Yepes

It takes however many obstacles or rounds that you, as the GM, deem fit. If one or the other group has a clear upper hand and ending faster than you'd like, throw some obstacles at the other group. If it's just dragging on, have the Yiyars arrive at their docking bay.

Entirely up to what feels right during the session.

I started the chase just outside the hanger door where the PC ships were docked.

I used the map in the book showing that area with the ships docked. I printed it out and blew it up to page size so I could reference it during the chase and have something for the players to look at.

The chase started at medium range with the Yiyar clan in a grav sled (Speed 1) with the droid in the back.

I determined that unless the Yiyar were stopped they would make it to their dock in 4 rounds through the occupied concourse.

The book basically give you 3-4 obstacles. I used one per round.

I had to keep track of the relative distances between the bad guys and members of the group. It worked well.

Here is an aid I made for my game so I could keep the action smooth during the chase:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9438r1bz57adsb/BTR-Playaid-ChaseACT1.jpg

In my game my Gand pilot comendeered a grav sled and the Trandoshan with the Vibro-axe was delivered via the sled into the back of the enemy sled.

Two of the characters took long range shots across the concourse at the enemy sled hitting several Rodians.

My droid hired gun used a jet pack to fly over the enemy sled shooting and missing every time.

My Klatoonian Bounty hunter chased the fleeing sled (barking) and was stunned unconscious.

The grav sleds collided outside the restaurant with people milling about with the Yiyar bailing out of the sled to avoid the Tandoshan with the huge vibro axe. Most of the Rodian's escaped, including Yav. Too Low was not so lucky after losing his head.

The crew recovered the droid and made it back to their ships and left prior to security arriving, and narrowly avoiding the incoming freighter.

They caused 1,500 credits in damage and an innocents leg was broken, so not too devastating.

Edited by iandimitri

My characters decided that they are going to wait for delivery off-station. They have been burned and have a history with the Yiyar clan already, so they are being cautious. I am going to have the shuttle that is delivering the droid attacked, so they will have a minor space battle instead of the hallway obstacle course.

Ran this on my group of 4 players last night – part of first EotE campaign (after running pre-gens through Escape from Mos Shuuta). Result was not too dissimilar to iamdimitri's session above. Sorry, this is gonna be quite long…

My party is one human Big Game Hunter (BGH), a Chiss archaeologist, a Marauder droid and a Toydarian outlaw tech (who stayed aboard their ship). All are fresh 100xp-ish PCs.

They were all paranoid and so waited onboard for ages, until they finally saw the gravsled with Rodians and abducted 3PO droid hurtling past their hangar bay door. Then three of them gave pursuit. Once they got onto the concourse they spotted the enemy sled at long range, they also spotted a parked grav sled being unloaded beside a bar, a couple of hovering delivery droids (my invention) heading towards them along the deck, and a large overhead, rail-mounted cargo loading platform (my invention) that was heading in the same direction to pick up cargo from a distant hangar bay around the wheel. Big Game Hunter goes up a ladder onto the overhead railway and (just) gets aboard the moving cargo platform and takes aim at the sled below and ahead of her.

The Toydarian ran interference by slicing into Wheel comms and announcing that the sled had just stolen a million credits from the on-station orphanage and that there was a reward for whoever stopped it. Unfortunately he fluffed the resultant deception roll and so some of the message was garbled, but a few civvies on the deck did try to stop the sled, and took some stun shots for their troubles.

The Chiss and the Droid jumped the grav sled, and then the Chiss jumped off onto the passing cargo droid as it was going slightly quicker. Thus resulted an interesting debate between the Chiss and the droid about what the heck the Chiss was doing and why the droid was far too busy to take a detour into comabt when it had this important box to deliver.

Meanwhile, opposed piloting rolls between the Marauder droid and the enemy sled saw the baddies holding distance. The BGH up top started taking long range shots with her heavy blaster rifle and optical scope, with suitable modifiers. On her first shot she took out the driver (Lasan, I think). Yav immediately kicked his body to one side and shoved another lackey into the hot seat. The next shot missed, meanwhile the Chiss gave up on the delivery droid and back-flipped back onto the pursuing gravsled.

Now it looked like the NPCs would escape at this rate, but one of the encounters in the book is a number of large cargo containers moving down the corridor. The enemy sled aimed down the middle, between two of the containers, but the BGH pulled of a monster shot and took out the new pilot, who fell across the controllers and (a destiny point later) skewed the sled into the front of two of the oncoming cargo containers. This pinned the sled in place and spun it side on, lifting it up at an angle, and obscuring those inside from the BGH’s lethal aim. Everything grinds to a halt in the middle of the concourse.

Meanwhile the Toydarian was conning station security into this being a rescue attempt on a VIP and that the Yiyar clan were firing blaster bolts. The Wheel security were on their way, though they wanted everyone for questioning. The Toydarian realizing that time was of the essence, urged everyone over comms to avoid seciurity and any inevitable delay and just get out of there.

The PC gravsled arrived at the pile-up, and the Chiss dived over the pinned sled to find no 3PO, but spotted some Rodian boots slipping away underneath one of the hovering cargo containers. The remaining Rodians were dragging 3PO into an adjacent cantina. The BGH finally passes the same point on her overhead cargo conveyer and puts a round through the Rodian dragging the droid into the bar, dropping him, and he drops 3PO.

The Chiss grabs 3PO from outside the bar, inside is chaos, but she looks up to see Yav escorting his wounded gang out the back door. The two make eye contact and Yav nods his respects – they know they’ll be seeing each other again, real soon.

Chiss and the PC droid bundled 3PO into their gravsled and raced back around the councourse, dodging wheel security to get back aboard their ship. The BGH used a destiny point for a cargo conveyer going back the other way and met them at their ship's bay. With clearance denied and Wheel security inbound, the PCs punched it and got out of Dodge, just avoiding the incoming ship, dipping down below the wheel and away from two scrambled fighters. Before the fighters could close, they got out of the (small) gravity well and jumped to lightspeed towards Cholganna - single jump, crazy hard, but the Marauder droid with a fascination for astrogation made the Daunting roll with ease (using some nice data they had gotten rom the infochant the previous session).

They left plenty of damage, and two dead Rodians. Next Monday night, they get to Cholganna, and the BGH gets to go a-Nexu huntin'. Should be fun.

Tl:dr – All in all, too about 8-10 rounds of structured time, with combat, vehicle rolls, athletics, slicing, deception, and lots of great roleplaying.

Edited by jonamok