I don'the think Ka'rin Bel would want to encourage a confrontation at this point, he originally released the sex holovid to make a few credit but got determined to release it because somebody (ziggy) keeps taking it down, he'said figured that Vaesha has HIRED a slicer to prevent the spread of the holovid, and he'said determined not to let Vaesha "win." He's not at a point where he's ready for a direct confrontation, and he doesn't want to escalate things in that fashion, and won't at least until Vaesha comes looking for him. Right now he's just a little spiteful that Vaesha is "winning" their holonet competition and is wondering how Vaesha is managing to afford the services of a slicer good enough to pull this off. He's guessing that Vaesha is sleeping with the slicer... he might leave a nasty taunting note accusing her of this and

"My dear Vaesha, you've become quite the little skank. My my my, you stooped to sleeping with a first rate slicer just to keep our little holovid off the holonet. You used to be such a nice girl, i think i ruined you [and he smirks]. Your father must have been so disappointed to see our sex holovid, but he'd be absolutely devastated if he learned that his little girl was sleeping with a slicer, defiling herself, selling her little remaining virtue to preserve her image. I've turned you into a common *****. Actually you did it to yourself. So you see, even though you've been relatively successful at preserving your image so far, I've already won. I must admit though that it is rather impressive, none of my past conquests managed to put up this kind of fight about our holovids. But honestly there are other ways besides the holonet to get our holovid out there. There are a thousands of sleazy holovid theatres on Nar Shaddaa alone who will be willing to show our holovid. <insert location of the theater> was just a taste of things to come. Then their are sales of media on street corners. Congratulations you're going to be famous across the galaxy, Vaesha Tarn is going to be a household name. The funny thing is that you would have been a lot less famous if you hadn't tried so hard to preserve your image. I would have just forgotten all about you and moved on."

Then ziggy is going to intervene and a Ka'ring Bel tracking app will be downloaded to Vaesha Tarn's Comlink and a "chase" (more of tracking then a chase) ensues. Actually it should lead them to a location which is making copies of the holovid to be sold on street corners... and they find it before any have shipped. Ka'rin will be there and be surprised that Va es ha found him so fast, and will run... i'm asuing that Vaesha will choose to stay rather than chase him to destroy the media before it ships. This will motivate Ka'rin Bel to escalate things to physical confrontation in future sessions.

So any additional thoughts/suggestions... about every where they go, Vaesha will be sticking the "space flash drive" into computers, it'seems got a chip/CPU on it and is running a program... basically a sophisticated virus... almost an ai whose sole purpose is to seek out and destroy the holovid, and trace where the copies came from and provide that info back to Vaesha as a lead. It's self replicating and Ziggy'so answer/escalation/counter to Ka'rin's attempt to distribute by means other than the holonet. Any computer with this virus automatically deletes copies of the holovid and infects any media inserted into it. So if they can get it onto manufacturing computers, then any computers/media the computer controlled assembly line makes will also be infected.

I don'the think Ka'rin Bel would want to encourage a confrontation at this point, he originally released the sex holovid to make a few credit but got determined to release it because somebody (ziggy) keeps taking it down, he'said figured that Vaesha has HIRED a slicer to prevent the spread of the holovid, and he'said determined not to let Vaesha "win." He's not at a point where he's ready for a direct confrontation, and he doesn't want to escalate things in that fashion, and won't at least until Vaesha comes looking for him. Right now he's just a little spiteful that Vaesha is "winning" their holonet competition and is wondering how Vaesha is managing to afford the services of a slicer good enough to pull this off. He's guessing that Vaesha is sleeping with the slicer... he might leave a nasty taunting note accusing her of this and

"My dear Vaesha, you've become quite the little skank. My my my, you stooped to sleeping with a first rate slicer just to keep our little holovid off the holonet. You used to be such a nice girl, i think i ruined you [and he smirks]. Your father must have been so disappointed to see our sex holovid, but he'd be absolutely devastated if he learned that his little girl was sleeping with a slicer, defiling herself, selling her little remaining virtue to preserve her image. I've turned you into a common *****. Actually you did it to yourself. So you see, even though you've been relatively successful at preserving your image so far, I've already won. I must admit though that it is rather impressive, none of my past conquests managed to put up this kind of fight about our holovids. But honestly there are other ways besides the holonet to get our holovid out there. There are a thousands of sleazy holovid theatres on Nar Shaddaa alone who will be willing to show our holovid. <insert location of the theater> was just a taste of things to come. Then their are sales of media on street corners. Congratulations you're going to be famous across the galaxy, Vaesha Tarn is going to be a household name. The funny thing is that you would have been a lot less famous if you hadn't tried so hard to preserve your image. I would have just forgotten all about you and moved on."

Then ziggy is going to intervene and a Ka'ring Bel tracking app will be downloaded to Vaesha Tarn's Comlink and a "chase" (more of tracking then a chase) ensues. Actually it should lead them to a location which is making copies of the holovid to be sold on street corners... and they find it before any have shipped. Ka'rin will be there and be surprised that Va es ha found him so fast, and will run... i'm asuing that Vaesha will choose to stay rather than chase him to destroy the media before it ships. This will motivate Ka'rin Bel to escalate things to physical confrontation in future sessions.

So any additional thoughts/suggestions... about every where they go, Vaesha will be sticking the "space flash drive" into computers, it'seems got a chip/CPU on it and is running a program... basically a sophisticated virus... almost an ai whose sole purpose is to seek out and destroy the holovid, and trace where the copies came from and provide that info back to Vaesha as a lead. It's self replicating and Ziggy'so answer/escalation/counter to Ka'rin's attempt to distribute by means other than the holonet. Any computer with this virus automatically deletes copies of the holovid and infects any media inserted into it. So if they can get it onto manufacturing computers, then any computers/media the computer controlled assembly line makes will also be infected.

Good idea. The note would be motivating to really get the PCs on his tail, then the warehouse scene. Have you thought about whether the PCs might split up? 1 group to stay and scrub the computers, the other chasing Ka'rin. They could just leave Ziggy to his work and all chase Ka'rin. I do think that having her father find out about the holovid would be a good sidetrack before facing off with Ka'rin, it could be beneficial for the PCs, as they could convince him to help

I plan to not have the PCs ever see Ziggy in person, they don't know where he is what he looks like or what he sounds like. Vaesha remembers what he looked like as a child. He'll "usually" communicate through space text message, or when absolutely necessary through a heavily modulated/synthesized speech. I plan for there to be goons in charge of loading the cargo speeder and making copies at the facility, Vaesha's going to get a text to plug her space flash drive into the computer that was making the copies. It will install the virus and tell her how many copies this machine made of the holovid.

More about the virus... it's a stealth virus that only spreads through physical media and direct connection between two computers. It infects the BIOS (built in operating system, basically firmware) and is impossible (or nearly so) to remove, wiping the OS and reinstalling won't help because it's in the hardware (e.g. the equivalent of the "motherboard" and "chips" that controlls the media drives access devices. The traditional OS (e.g. windows or Linux or mac os) doesn't execute the virus so is completely unaware that it's infected, the slight loss in performance is reported to the os as the equivalent of cache misses (it's not reporting used or unused clock cycles), updating the bios won'the get rid of it because the bios update requires the current bios to perform the bios update, and the old bios infects the new one before the old bios is deleted. When media with the holovid is inserted into a "drive" the holovid is "instantly" erased the virus inserted onto the media and the holovid is not found, the user assumes they made a mistake copying the file to the media, and puts the media back in the computer they copied the holovid from and they can no longer access the holovid on the original computer, it was already open it says the file was corrupted, if they close the window and reopen the file is no longer listed as being on the drive. If a Droid plugs into an infected computer the Droid's controller for his pluggy bits would get infected but the Droid probably wouldn't notice, it doesn't affect their ai only the driver for their pluggy bit the might notice a slight drop in efficiency, but that could be explained by a dirty contact and the diagnostics would say nothing is wrong with the hardware. So there could be a lot of astromechs, out there unwittingly spreading the virus. The reason ziggy designed it this way is that his original approach was to write a virus that spread over the holonet, he was able to defeat most anti-malware software pretry easily but the increased network traffic eventually tipped off the white hat slicers working for the anti-virus software companies. Who eventually track it down study it and learn a thing or three about computer viruses from the code and build a defense against it. Then ziggy has to go out and design from scratch another virus that their anti malware can'take see. Rinse repeat on a six month cycle. Just because he makes it look easy doesn't mean it is, and he's training the opposition. The long term solution is to design something that they can'take see, something that doesn't eat up holonet band width, hence this stealth virus.

Eventually maybe in a real world year they might meet him in person, if he gets in trouble and needs their help.

So, this virus would be incredibly complicated and take an extremely long amount of time to make. So maybe he finds out and tries to stop its completion by killing Ziggy or blowing up his computer. This would provide a suitable adventure, especially if the PCs want to assist their mysterious benefactor. By contrast, it could also work if the PCs are tired of listening to a masked figure, they could meet him in the encounter, then maybe go for the big reveal. Or just keep him a nameless bystander.

Also, if the PCs really want to strike Ka'rin where it counts, give them an opportunity to sabotage him in some other way like maybe blowing up his ship/house/assorted personal belongings.

That would be useful if you want to wrap up the side story a little bit quicker, have him dive into a physical encounter next session with a bunch of goons, and declare open season

Well I figured that he'd start from the virus he infected Vaesha's father's ship and computers with, that's how he stopped her father from seeing the holovid. Also this is ziggy, one of the five best slicers on Coruscant, they say that on Coruscant even if you're one in a million there's still a million of you, Ziggy is one in two hundred billion, to put that in perspective if there were 20 earths, Ziggy would be THE BEST hacker out of every living human, he makes hard things look easy, and he probably also was already working on something similar for a paying client (industrial espionage). Ziggy is a mysterious miracle worker with all things computer, the PCs were already impressed with his micro drones (grasshopper size and appearance flying "droids" with infrared and a bit like a high bandwidth comlink that can bite cables/wires to tap into the data that their transmitting, but the PCs also saw their limitations... something that can keep out an insect can keep them out.) The data stick he's left for Vaesha will be similarly miraculous technology, it's the size of a flash drive but has a chip that puts most star wars mainframes to shame in terms of computing power (he stole the plans for a failed experiment for next Gen computing from the galactic equivalent of IBM and made it work, better than envisioned by the original designers and shrank it from the size of a data pad to the size of a data stick. Combined with the software he put on it, if you stick it in a space usb port it will have hacked root access of a highly secure system long before you sat down in the chair and touched the keyboard with your hands. By any definition Ziggy is an epic level slicer, he's a deus ex machina slicer he tries it and succeeds. I really just made the character sheet to impress the players (we have a Droid in the party that rolls 4 yellows for medicine and mechanics checks and 3 yellows and a green for computers) basically cranking out a sophisticated virus in short order is a hard thing that ziggy makes look easy. He's the guy that black sun turns to when they've got a computer problem that their people can'take handle, and he's usually got it solved in under an hour.

So, the brilliant Slicer hacks the problem away and its all sunshine and rainbows.

The next thing is the Droid's backstory. Maybe it was purchased by some smuggler years ago, but when his ship crashed, all that was left was the droid, and that was in pieces

Well the problem with the brilliant slicer is that he does things remotely and sometimes you need people (i.e. the PCs) on site, for example to insert the data stick into the physical port of the computer. The holonet isn't connected to every computer, not everything can be done entirely remotely. The slicer is a plot device, how I can feed the PCs information and open locked doors for them, but the PCs are the ones who do the adventuring, take the physical risks. I'm thinking of maybe Ziggy being stuck in a wheelchair or in a hospital bed with his brain hooked up to a computer when they finally do meet him (haven'the decided this or whether he's not physically impaired), but the general idea is that although he is the master of information he needs physical agents to accomplish his goals (sort of like "the machine" on person of interest).

Here's another reason for the Uber slicer npc plot device... the story shouldn't depend on the PCs succeeding on a roll, while letting the slicing be as difficult as it should be, it's also away for me as 5he gm to give them a key that "opens any door" that I want them to be able to open but doesn't let them open doors that I don't want them to be able to open (the doctor/mechanic Droid [there are 2 droids in the party] is pretty competent in mechanics, computers and medicine and if they manage to succeed at a roll to open something I don't want them to open they open it, but I get to set the difficulty )

I've got the droid's back story worked out (or rather the droids player does and he's feeding me that for me to work into the story, I take a collaborative aproach to game mastering and the PCs who's turn it is to take center stage generally have a better idea of what is going to happen in the next session because i've mined themy for ideas about what they would like to see... generally these are details about the how rather than about the big picture one paragraph summary).

If you have trouble with PCs who have to open every door, maybe make it so that there's an alarm, or the next time they go into one of these buildings, say that they're being watched by security cameras, or are being escorted by a group of armed guards.

Just one query, have you thought of what will happen to Ka'rin after the virus is finished? He's not going to step into the background, so maybe he tries to attack the PCs after the virus has finished its work.

Also, good idea about confining Ziggy. You could do a Stephen Hawking voice for him.

Also, good idea about confining Ziggy. You could do a Stephen Hawking voice for him.

Think “Wintermute”.

Also, good idea about confining Ziggy. You could do a Stephen Hawking voice for him.

Think “Wintermute”.

If you have trouble with PCs who have to open every door, maybe make it so that there's an alarm, or the next time they go into one of these buildings, say that they're being watched by security cameras, or are being escorted by a group of armed guards.

Just one query, have you thought of what will happen to Ka'rin after the virus is finished? He's not going to step into the background, so maybe he tries to attack the PCs after the virus has finished its work.

Also, good idea about confining Ziggy. You could do a Stephen Hawking voice for him.

The virus will take time to spread, I imagine there being a mission to infect manufacturer computers in charge of making computers that mass copy holovids onto data sticks, and breaking into companies that manufacture datasticks to infect their maneufacturing equipment. the pcs will find the brand of datastick was being used for the copies that Ka'rin Bel was making, and figure that it's a place to start.

Eventually either Ka'rin's mastercopy will be deleted or he'll be too afraid of losing his master copy to connect that computer to anything else (rendering it a non threat). Ka'rin Bel will not take losing to Vaesha well he will likely attack (or more likely hire muscle to do it for him, while he gloats) but the PCS will win that fight easily, I imagine ziggy will hack his accounts and direct people wanting revenge to find him so that he will be a man on the run. Without resources he'll get desperate enough to try to kill Vaesha himself but the party will capture him, and then I will let Vaesha's player devidence what to do with him, I think it would be cool if they lobotomized and put ziggy's mind (or brain) in Ka'rin's body.

Maybe the best way to go would be to let the PCs capture Ka'rin and let them do to him as they wish, and tune consequences accordingly. If he had Imperial enemies, handing him over would give the party more favour with the Imperials, a Rebel enemy favour with the Rebels, a Hutt enemy favour with the Hutt etc etc.

So what about when you finish with the story of beating Ka'rin? Will you move on to the droid? Or do you have some other adventure in mind?

Well Ka'rin is not going to beaten shortly, nother this session, he's a side story for character development not the main plot. All of the characters have them (or will have them once I pry more back story information about certain players), the idea is that there will be at least 3 sessions devoted to each PC's side story before it gets resolved. For example the duros marshal sharpshooter Thad Bane is Cad Bane's nephew and wants to bring in his uncle for killing his father. The other droid'so story is that he's an emerging ai who believes in droid rights but struggles against his behavioral inhibitors. One pc is about his homestead and being adopted after his parents died, one is a fixer for a Hutt (and a conman took advantage of her to steal the data chip with business ledgers which was the theme of the first 4 sessions) so basically i'm not going to be done with Ka'rin Bél or any of the other side stories for quite some time with each PC getting turns to work on their side stories while the primary campaign plot (Hutt intrigue) also takes place. I try to make progress on the main plot and 1 to 2 side stories each session, last session was only the primary plot (well the primary plot is one of the PC'so [the fixer] side story). This session will wrap up the first arc (I use arc to mean multi session adventure) of the primary plot, a space combat and getting paid, then the PCs get a chance to spend their paycheck on Nar Shadda and I go into side stories and few miscellaneous adventures before picling up with the main plot.

MuHaHaHaHa... everything is proceedin according to my design...MuHaHaHaHa

In other words yesterday's session went very well and it was the first time that all 7 of my players were there at the same time yay

MuHaHaHaHa... everything is proceedin according to my design...MuHaHaHaHa

In other words yesterday's session went very well and it was the first time that all 7 of my players were there at the same time yay

I'm looking at a possibility of 7 or even 8 players. How well do things run with that many? I had 5 at tonight's Beginner Game and it went well, despite the teaching aspect (first try of the FFG system for everyone). But I'm afraid too many players would really slow things down as it has in other games (players tend not to pay attention with longer delays between when they get to go).

MuHaHaHaHa... everything is proceedin according to my design...MuHaHaHaHa

In other words yesterday's session went very well and it was the first time that all 7 of my players were there at the same time yay

I'm looking at a possibility of 7 or even 8 players. How well do things run with that many? I had 5 at tonight's Beginner Game and it went well, despite the teaching aspect (first try of the FFG system for everyone). But I'm afraid too many players would really slow things down as it has in other games (players tend not to pay attention with longer delays between when they get to go).

I have 7 players when everyone's present (which isn't always) and it's not a problem. Sometimes the group splits into two teams, in which case I jump very frequently back and forth between them, and they also have two spaceships, giving everyone something to do in space combat.

My advice is to not focus only on what becomes difficult with such a large group, but instead embrace the opportunities it gives you. For one thing, it's no longer a game-stopping event if two or three players can't show for game night. And like I mentioned above, you can split them in two, allowing you to tell a story differently and from different perspectives at the same time. It also lets you run smaller combat encounters; not every group of enemies need to be huge in order to present a challenge. Sure, you're going to have to rely on your players to involve themselves more than if you're running a 4-person group, but in a "cooperative" game system like this that's only a bonus.

MuHaHaHaHa... everything is proceedin according to my design...MuHaHaHaHa

In other words yesterday's session went very well and it was the first time that all 7 of my players were there at the same time yay

I'm looking at a possibility of 7 or even 8 players. How well do things run with that many? I had 5 at tonight's Beginner Game and it went well, despite the teaching aspect (first try of the FFG system for everyone). But I'm afraid too many players would really slow things down as it has in other games (players tend not to pay attention with longer delays between when they get to go).

Actually this was the smoothest session i've run of FFG star wars... normally my players would stop and debate the best course of action out of character before engaging in a combat. That was limited to roughly 30-45 seconds and then combat went smoothly. I adlibbed a few things for example in the combat encounter of my 8 players against 20-ish minions only the pcs and nemesis rolled initiative (nemesis scored a triumph and more successes than the only pc who scored a triumph on initiative, the nemesis used that to run away)... the PCs had 5 good iniative rolls and 2 mediocre rolls so a adjudicated that 5 pcs went then 5 npcs went then 2 npcs then the rest of the npcs. I really didn't keep track of how many npcs needed to attack (eyeballed it to approximately correct number) the npcs had 7 or so wounds and rolled 3 green with regular blaster pistols and that's all I needed to know about them. If a pc did 9 damage it killed and each critical killed an extra npc (multiple shots in rapid succession) combat lasted 2 rounds or about 12 minutes of real world time. Using minions like that makes combat run fast. For rivals I give them 15 or so wounds and if a pc does at least 9 damage and scores a critical on the same attack it kills the rival outright. When the pcs get a big payday if it's at a place like narshadda I say they can buy anything and trust them to keep track of the credits. A few of them are new to rpgs so I suggest equipment to them ahead of the session. I level up 3 of my players' characterset (discussing their options with them first). One of my players keeps track of how many boost dice rolls over from previous rolls' advantages. If I couldn't trust my players or they didn't trust me it wouldn't run so smoothly, but they know my objective is to tell a good story that the pcs ultimately "win"