I might be running this in the future. I am still having trouble grasping the concept of how to run the auction. Really seems no point when it is obvious the hutt can easily outbid everyone, that as a GM i don't see much point of the players working on the other characters

The Hutt might have a certain value beyond which he wouldn’t pay — it would be better for him if someone else bought it, and then the Hutt paid someone else to steal it for him.

There’s legit business to be done, and then there’s underhanded non-legit business.

I Should Mention That I Am Glad Many Of You Had Fun. After All That's What This Is All About.

Do you think the story would work better if the PCs were blackmailed or coerced into doing the heist to pay off an Obligation? Then give them an interesting decision: should *they* double-cross the blackmailer, thereby entailing more Obligation?

Also: how much money should the PCs start with? This mission seems expensive.

Do you think the story would work better if the PCs were blackmailed or coerced into doing the heist to pay off an Obligation? Then give them an interesting decision: should *they* double-cross the blackmailer, thereby entailing more Obligation?

Also: how much money should the PCs start with? This mission seems expensive.

In my experience, PCs that are coerced into undertaking a mission will take every opportunity to take the mission off the rails. If you want to play the adventure as anything like it's written, I'd suggest against using coercion to bring them into the story. Doing otherwise is likely to lead to throwing away half or more of the module as the players knee-jerk away from the storyline.

I might be running this in the future. I am still having trouble grasping the concept of how to run the auction. Really seems no point when it is obvious the hutt can easily outbid everyone, that as a GM i don't see much point of the players working on the other characters

The Hutt might have a certain value beyond which he wouldn’t pay — it would be better for him if someone else bought it, and then the Hutt paid someone else to steal it for him.

There’s legit business to be done, and then there’s underhanded non-legit business.

Also, the Hutt only needs to bid higher than everyone else, so you'll want to push at least one other bidder to stay in it and keep the Hutt increasing his bid.

I'll be running this multiple times over the coming months as a one off adventure module for new players on roll20. I'm hoping it goes well, and I'll try to let everyone know the different combinations and ways to handle things that my various groups come up with for the situations they encounter. I'm just hoping they are creative, as I'm not always a fan of following the adventure as written, especially if they have a better idea.

Started them off with 100 xp to "season" their new characters and I'm looking to give them an additional 1k credits to be able to spend on Cloud City for various supplies. It shouldn't get them anything too fancy, but it should be just enough for some good heist gear. I hope they pool their credits and work together. I allowed them to pick obligations and then helped to tie that in with people they will encounter during the heist and such. Gave them all reason to be on Cloud City at the very least.

Opened up all the EotE books for use so the team of 5 is as follows:
Chiss Outlaw Tech
Human Slicer
Klatoonian Enforcer
Human Driver
Twi'lek Entertainer

Any advise or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I've been reading and re-reading the book to try and burn all of the information in to my brain so that I can help the conversations flow a with a bit more narrative of a standard conversation then having to stop and look through the book for it again. I'm pretty excited to run it though

In my experience, PCs that are coerced into undertaking a mission will take every opportunity to take the mission off the rails. If you want to play the adventure as anything like it's written, I'd suggest against using coercion to bring them into the story.

Thanks. Sounds like good advice. Maybe I'll find a way to make the double-cross seem less obvious and inevitable. Thadin, are you going with Shen as written?

Started them off with 100 xp to "season" their new characters and I'm looking to give them an additional 1k credits to be able to spend on Cloud City for various supplies.

100 xp is about what I had in mind; that sounds good. And you're giving them 1K credits each, a total of 4K? Again, that sounds reasonable: this adventure features lots of bribing and purchasing. Also, are you giving them a ship?

In my experience, PCs that are coerced into undertaking a mission will take every opportunity to take the mission off the rails. If you want to play the adventure as anything like it's written, I'd suggest against using coercion to bring them into the story.

Thanks. Sounds like good advice. Maybe I'll find a way to make the double-cross seem less obvious and inevitable. Thadin, are you going with Shen as written?

Started them off with 100 xp to "season" their new characters and I'm looking to give them an additional 1k credits to be able to spend on Cloud City for various supplies.

100 xp is about what I had in mind; that sounds good. And you're giving them 1K credits each, a total of 4K? Again, that sounds reasonable: this adventure features lots of bribing and purchasing. Also, are you giving them a ship?

Yes, they'll be able to pick one of the classic starter ships for their descent in to Cloud City, meeting little resistance from the Wing Guard as they are "already expected". 5k will be the total, as there are 5 pcs.

When I GMed the Jewel of Yavin, I gave the PCs 72 hours to play with. Every action they took ate up blocks of time for the whole party, and they had to find time in there to eat meals, and sleep regularly or they'd start accumulating set-back dice over time. I let the PCs explore at their own pace, determine their own courses of action going forward, and plot out every action that they took with only limited suggestions from me in the beginning to kind of get them some ideas to start rolling forward.

They hit this scenario with a bunch of Mafioso hitmen.

First thing they did was they investigated the different racers, and found out that Carbine had been thrown out of Casinos all over Cloud City all week. So they used Aris to arrange a private Sabaac game with Carbine in her Husband's casino, and proceeded to cheat him at Sabaac. Carbine didn't catch them cheating, but he lost all his money, they made him angry enough to get Carbine to pull his blaster on them. They beat Carbine up, and arranged to have him arrested until after the Race was over.

For good measure, they went out and stole Carbine's Cloud Car, and gunned down several Hutt Gangsters and and Carbine's Co-Pilot in the process.

They successfully eliminated the Mandel Motor's sponsored team from the race as well when the Mechanic PC in the party passed a Bad Motivator check on their Cloud Car during a friendly race and and nearly got them killed. (The other PCs racing them had to go back and rescue them, but they couldn't save the Cloud Car which was plummeting bellow the Planet's Habitable Zone).

Lastly they straight up planted a Detonite Charge in the Cloud Car of the Local Underdog and blew him up during the race.

Poor Pos Podura. They figured out his Sob Story two days before the race happened, and had him assassinated because they figured out that he didn't actually have enough money win the gem if he actually participated in the Gala. One of the PCs actually took advantage of his death and mascaraed as him during the Gala to bid up the price.

I Played this for 10 3 hour sessions. The first 7 sessions were devoted to planning, and preparation. Session 8 was the race. Session 9 was the Gala, and Session 10 was both Heists and the escape. Your mileage may very, but when it came the heists and the escape, the PCs developed multiple get-away strategies.

They left with the Jewel, and the Money, and tons of infamy and Obligation.

Cool story. Very bloody, even if most of the killing wasn't in straight combat.

Sounds like your group had fun with it, Strongarm! So how granular was your time-keeping? Half hours increments? 15 minutes? 5?

1 Hour Increments. 15 minutes, and 30 minutes is too much cutting. You also have to factor in things like travel times across Cloud City, so it's better to keep things broad.

Poor Pos Podura indeed. I like the idea of taking one of the bidders out of the picture and going in their place. That's a good alternative if your PCs loose the race or didn't bother to compete. Though assassination seems a little harsh, but different strokes and all that.

My favorite episode was the party.

Cool. Did your GMs track whether your PCs were getting enough sleep? How about food and drink?

I did, but in a very loose way. They had to pay for their meals, and I noted on the time table when they ate and slept and did other things.

The adventure includes a range of restaurants and bars where the PCs can do things like this as well, that are well fleshed out. So even while they're eating at places things can happen to interact with the story. For example one of my PCs decided to go off on his own to eat Diner at the really expensive restaurant only to discover that the Hutt Bidder at the auction had rented out the whole restaurant for himself and his entourage. So he took advantage of the situation and gained an audience with the Hutt and introduced himself and made the Hutt an offer to help aid the Hutt into knowing what some of the other people were bidding during the auction.

Because one of the PCs had disguised himself as Pos Podura they were able to manipulate the Hutt to great effect.

Sounds fun. I'm toying with adding a few minor random buffs and debuffs from food or drink. Eat at a fancy restaurant, maybe give the player an option to try a dish that has a chance at buffing or debuffing one more skills for a short time, or giving you a boost or setback die for a short bit, or maybe affects your alertness or dexterity. Likewise, a good night's sleep at the luxury hotel might have a chance at giving you a small temporary buff, whereas a restless night of sleep at a dive might have a chance of giving you a small temporary debuff. I dunno -- it will depend on whether my players are interested in that sort of detail. Some might not be. I'll talk it over with them.

My team "Broke" the game. How?

Sounds like you had fun!

Well, that's what I liked about this adventure - it was a great framework for a good story. It is very easy to modify - you don't want the race - sure, get rid of it, especially if there aren't any pilots among PCs. Or just skip it and assume Arend can get the pcs to the auction. The scenario's barebones are just an inspiration for a Gm - but then you probably don't want to buy it

Miishelle - I think that, unfortunately, it was your GM who made the mistake - S/he didn't think about your (or groups) motivations, that your PC doesn't like stealing things etc. Introducing a moral dilemma (as other people here suggested) would be a way to make the story deeper. Or changing all the auctioneers into criminals (it's always easier to steal from bad guys), etc.

Summing up - I still think it's a great adventure module and hope for more like it!

I am GMing this tomorrow for a group of friends who are in love with this game.

It's actually a natural follow-up for the PC's I'm playing with. They've only done one scenario before this - their first adventure which I wrote to take place on Bespin. They were drugged and set up as patsies for the assassination of Lando Calrissian - a power grab by a rival member of the Exex. Obviously, Lando didn't die. I placed them in an impossible combat scenario against an Emperor's Hand and two assassin droids. Almost completely disabled, they were saved by the intervention of a MacGuffin in the form of General Rahm Kota, who after effortlessly dispatching the opposition, took the party to meet Lando, who survived and was in hiding in Port Town.

They investigated the assassination attempt, cleared their name, and returned Lando to his baronhood. As a result of all of this, Lando "owes them one." Excited to see how I'll have to factor that in.

I've got a doctorbot-R2-Bag of Holding with part of his memory core he can't access, a Nautolan droid mechanic whose mother disappeared under mysterious circumstances, a Zabrak bounty-hunter/mobile artillery platform whose childhood rival Donn Drapered him and took his place with the Mandalorians, and a Bothan smuggler/intel operative who received a "burn notice" on his last mission.

My group is extremely inventive, and I'm the kind of GM that will throw out my entire plan to accomodate the PC's creativity. Their Obligations are varied enough that I can easily work them into the game in the form of incidental encounters, and my plan is pressing them to fracture some of their group dynamics to see how they react.

They have no ship currently, and a standing offer from Lando to use Bespin as a home base for their future adventures. I have a feeling that's going to change.

I will say that if you are running this as a GM (I'm kind of a novice in this regard admittedly) - DO. YOUR. HOMEWORK. This takes a lot of preparation. I've made custom maps for many of the areas they're likely to encounter including Market Row, the Plaza Level, and a few others.

I am extremely stoked to run this tomorrow.

Let us know how it goes, Grantzilla!

Wow. Okay, first thing's first - I don't see any way whatsoever you can do justice to this campaign in only three sessions.

Second, I highly recommend keeping a status log as the GM of where they are at as far as the major points of the investigation. I find I'm having to not quite drop huge hints and lead them by the nose, but coming up with incidental things that point them in the right direction.

The most hilarious thing that's happened so far was helping Aris escape the thugs. The party's R2 unit rolled Mechanics checks against itself, simulating a major malfunction. Billowing smoke, spinning his arc welder around randomly to create sparks and moving erratically to distract the guards. Meanwhile, the sneaky Bothan obscured Aris by holding up a large bolt of fabric, pretending to examine it and consider purchasing it. After the R2's distracting display, she grabbed the fabric, wrapped it around herself and doubled back into the alley containing the black market. I kinda felt like more combat-focused characters don't have a lot to do here. The Zabrak tried to stealth up through the stealth cloud - which he did - and Batman one of the thugs silently - which he did not. Completely whiffed, which as it turns out helped more than hurt.

Anyway, they still have quite a ways to go to prep everything, but the Nautolan has managed to convince Grek to cut some corners the next time he works on the Stormhawks' cloud car prior to the race. Oh, and she's discovered she's related to Kit Fisto, finding a hidden message from her missing mother buried deep within the memory circuits of another PC - the R2 unit. After solving an easy encryption riddle, she got a video giving them a clue of the planet it originated from, a message from her mother, and a hidden archive of Teras Kasi techniques passed down in their family. She instantly got +1 Brawl, and the droid gained +1 Computers instantly for regaining access to that portion of his physical memory, making his processing more efficient.

This is fun, but the scenario has a LOT of moving parts and I don't feel like it will be fair to spring something on them in Part II or III that they overlooked because it didn't occur to them. That's why using Aris as a sort of Exposition Dispenser is probably the best way to really convey to the PCs the vast and varied scope of what they have to do.

More to come...

For our Distraction, my PC pretended to be a "Holovid-Evangelist" The others went along beautifully...CAN YOU FEEL THE POWER OF THE GALAXY!!

It Worked

Holovid-Evangelist! I love it!

My PCs spent about half the encounter not really knowing if the thugs were there to kill her or protect her so they were arguing about the best approach, despite me being extremely descriptive about the environment and their visible behavior.

The R2 jumped right into the distraction game, while the Bothan kept chasing after Aris trying to Charm information out of her and failing miserably (she has a pretty hoss opposed roll.) I felt like if they'd played into the distraction a little bit more the whole encounter would have been over sooner.