Swoop Race on Nar Shaddaa

By CyberGhost, in Game Masters

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So I have decided to run EotE campaign for my players.
After initial session zero, they have decided that they wish to play up and starting smugglers, who wished to start their own smuggling enterprise.

My plans for first adventure is that they start stranded on Nar Shaddaa without money or ship, each character due to his obligation. They know each other through happenstance or common contacts. The first adventure will be them getting a ship.

My plans for first adventure are along this lines:

Boonta Eve is fast approaching and local area where players are located will host swoop race with spaceship as prize. Group's Pilot is sponsored by young Hutt to participate in the race. The Hutt is sponsoring no name pilot off the street for two reasons:

a) low risks - no name pilot will likely attract less attention and there is less chance he will get assassinated or sabotaget before the race even begins, if he gets, you atleast didn't loose much

b) if he wins, he is easier to manipulate

Now the official deal is that smuggler gets the ship and hutt gets all the glory and fame that comes with sponsoring winning racer. However Hutt has second motive, he basically sees this as an opportunity to get a pilot and a ship (or only the ship if pilot is unwilling to cooperate further) for his smuggling operations.

Now I am mainly looking for ideas how such swoop race organized by Hutts would look like on Nar Shaddaa:

Would assassinations and sabotage of racers be common? Or would such tactics be only allowed in race?

Weapons in race? Yes or No?

Third parties trying to interfere with race?

Where would such race take place? Abandoned factories? Ancient Ruins in the middle of levels?

PCs are actually decoy for a second racer who is sponsored by same Hutt?

Also I am somewhat new to the system (ran begginer box few times), so I am looking for any advice how to make such event hard but not too deadly for beggining characters (if they fail no problem, they will probably try to steal the prize :D ). The "pilot" (he is actually a gambler) has 1 yellow and 2 green dice for Piloting (Planetary).

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This is going to be suggestion/opinion:

I wouldn't have sabotage and assassination part of the race. Ditto for weapons. It's a race, not a battle royale. Sabotage is likely anyway, but not if the racers are vigilant.

I'd put the race in and around the Corellian Sector. There will be pilots galore there that want to participate and enthusiastic spectators as well. Most of the course should be "clear" as in, twisty turny streets, a few level changes, lots of short straights for people to see the action. Some passes through abandoned buildings or through service tunnels might be good to add as well. But remember, it's a race, not an obstacle course. The goal is to go fast, fast, fast.

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There are rules for Swoop races in at least a couple of different splatbooks. I’d look at them first and see how they handle things, before deciding how you want to mix things up a bit for yours.

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Yeah, take a look at the Jewel of Yavin adventure or the Taming the Dragon modular encounter in Suns of Fortune. They both give some good ideas and rules about how to do competitive racing in this system.

As for sabotage and the like, I'd say that any event hosted by the Hutts is going to involve some shenanigans, especially towards those the Hutts are betting against. The most important rule here is probably "don't get caught". If I was running it I'd definitely throw in some pre-race tampering with vehicles. Assassination might be a llittle heavy handed - you never know when you're going to knock off someone on whom a Hutt has betted heavily, and in that case you're in deep poodoo. And at some point the racing vehicles might be out of sight of the spectators, and someone suitably unscrupulous might see that as an opportunity to pull out that concealed blaster or use that smoke dispenser attachment...

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bradknowles, on 26 Jul 2015 - 10:47 PM, said:

There are rules for Swoop races in at least a couple of different splatbooks. I’d look at them first and see how they handle things, before deciding how you want to mix things up a bit for yours.

I will probably use the rules from Jewel of Javin.

Admiral Terghon, on 26 Jul 2015 - 8:44 PM, said:

This is going to be suggestion/opinion:

I wouldn't have sabotage and assassination part of the race. Ditto for weapons. It's a race, not a battle royale. Sabotage is likely anyway, but not if the racers are vigilant.

I too was little reluctant too use those as a part of the race, it's as you said race after all. However, I will probably include some pre-race tensions as Krieger22 suggested, just to give bodyguard in the party something to do.

Any suggestion on how to handle "minions" in race. I am planning to focus action on PC and maybe 3-5 other named racers which would have realistic chances to win. However, I am considering to include few more minions just to give "the big race" feel. But I don't wish to bog down the action with too many rolls.

One possibility is to roll just for PC and named NPC and narrate rest without rolls, any other suggestions?