Hi Everyone,

I've been running Long Arm of the Hutt with my crew. We only meet once a month, and sometimes trade off between a D&D campaign and this one. Hence the slow progress. Even so, I have been thoroughly impressed by how much this crew looks for alternatives to combat.

My dilemma is this. After the "Drunk and Disorderly" incident, which they resolved without pulling out a blaster, they managed to take one of the thugs prisoner while scaring off the other three (very effective Scathing tirade, and great roleplaying). They then attached a bomb (Detonite, Utility Belt) to the thug, and used that as leverage to negotiate with Angu Drombb, while at the same time rescuing Oskara's sister, who had materialized as a hostage after a successful negotiation roll generated a Despair.

In essence, they manage to learn that Drombb is on Teemo's payroll, but Drombb's camp is still functional, albeit with four fewer minions (they ran away). Trex is still active, and is increasingly pissed with the PC's, but the players also left a hint that there were detonite explosives hidden around the camp (there weren't), to prevent any sort of hostile action.

So they managed to pull off the shootout at the Cantina without a single blaster shot being fired. Drombb and Trex have been humiliated, and Teemo has been exposed as the financier behind Drombb's activities.

The session ended with them returning to New Meen. The rank-and-file thugs are certainly intimidated, and one possibility is that after the players left with the implication of explosives, they simply abandon Drombb and Trex at the first available opportunity, and the camp is abandoned, allowing the Twi'leks to ransack the place.

Of course, Teemo isn't going to be pleased, and I'm almost inclined to up the bounty on the PCs to 60,000 credits, partly to award the PCs for managing to intimidating Drombb's forces.

Any thoughts?

Wow, my group ended up in almost the same position, although shots were definitely fired. Hoo boy were they.

So now that they have Drombb's records and proof of Teemo's involvement, they also have some information about which local Imperials are on the Hutt's payroll. Certainly this might garner some attention....

In fact, I had an Imperial contingent land at New Meen as a result of the escalating violence, and this didn't help the PCs with a bounty on their heads in the first place. Out of the frying pan, into the fire....

We found that shipboard weapons do wonders when used against personal scale targets, and I think we blasted most of the goons that Drombb had working for him. The rest were scared into running into the cantina, which we then promptly burned down. Maybe one or two people left alive in that camp.

I think for me, the real challenge is to get inside of the heads of Drombb and his thugs. What would they do next. They're humiliated because they were played. The thugs in general just saw one of their own have an explosive strapped to his body and used as a trading chit. Drombb and Trex lost whatever bargaining power they had, and verbally acknowledged they were working for Teemo. Or more specifically, Trex's presence confirmed it, and Drombb told Trex to stand down.

So what happens next?

Given that the thugs are low on the payroll, chances are they simply abandon Drombb as soon as the players leave, given that there was an implied threat of hidden explosives in the compound.Drombb and Trex would then go back to Teemo, who would be understandably pissed, and likely up the bounty on the players by 10K to 60,000, or even up to 75,000. After all, the players did dispatch (or let a Lylek dispatch) the other bounty hunters as well.

Right now, they don't have the documentation from Drombb's computers at the camp, so there's no formal proof that Teemo was the hidden financier. However, on a failed underworld knowledge check with lots of advantage they find it suspicious that Teemo would be hiding his involvement in muscling in on the Ryll mine. A successful check would have informed them that Teemo doesn't have jurisdiction for Ryll smuggling from the Kajidics. The advantage simply revealed that when you're working for a Hutt you KNOW you're working for a Hutt... so why is Teemo keeping it secret? Frankly, I think they found that a lot more intriguing.

I think if I have the rank-and-file thugs abandon the camp, the Twi'leks will go ransack the place, and I can have them meet with Ota as scheduled...

I'm also debating if I shouldn't represent Teemo's bounty in the form of Group Obligation... Or if I should assign if it they choose to simply leave the sector and not take up Ota's offer...

We found that shipboard weapons do wonders when used against personal scale targets, and I think we blasted most of the goons that Drombb had working for him. The rest were scared into running into the cantina, which we then promptly burned down. Maybe one or two people left alive in that camp.

Strangely, my crew actually parked their ship and walked in. I'd set up the encounter prepared for them to come in and do like your team did, a walker and some light repeating blasters on turrets and everything. Their nimble, sneaky tactics worked out really well for them. Now they have the light repeating blasters.

Strangely, my crew actually parked their ship and walked in. I'd set up the encounter prepared for them to come in and do like your team did, a walker and some light repeating blasters on turrets and everything. Their nimble, sneaky tactics worked out really well for them. Now they have the light repeating blasters.

In our case, bringing in the YT-2400 with the Laser Cannons was the trump card. We had fun rigging up one of their speeders with lots of explosives from the New Meen mining camp, and then ramming it into the front door to the garrison and blowing a huge hole. Then my Wookiee rode in on another speeder, killed a thug or two by slamming his speeder into them, and hopped out.

One lone Wookiee with a vibro-axe against a whole slew of bad guys, and I was ready for the fight — even if this was going to be a "Han vs. the squad of Stormtroopers" type of situation.

That’s when the ship came over the walls, and our Klatooinian Heavy started firing the cannons in the ventral turret, and did enough damage to the minion group that many of them died on the spot, while the rest ran into the cantina. Then the ship fired on the cantina, blew one of the walls off, and set it on fire.

I was mildly annoyed that I didn’t get a chance to fight anything in that battle.

But we did learn an important lesson about how much damage ship weapons can do to individuals on the ground.