Hi - I am running an Edge of the Empire campaign at present. My group and I are loving the setting. We started with Escape from Mos Shuuta closely followed by The Long Arm of the Hutt.

Anyway, we're having a lot of fun, but as a relatively new GM to this setting, I wanted to ask for a little bit of advice:

Every time my group encounter robots as combat opponents, and defeat them, they collect the droid remains and tell me that the mechanic in the group plans to rebuild them and use them as their personal security team. They seem to think they are eventually going to have a small army of battle droids.

Now I could just keep saying 'sorry, those robots are beyond repair' but I was wondering if there were other ways to deter this plan of theirs?

Thanks in advance.

Perhaps there is a way to solve this in-game.

Who did the droids belong to? If they were expensive droids, surely the owners had a way to track them if they were stolen.

What kinds of places to the PCs adventure to? A small army of droids will remind citizens of the Clone Wars, and they might take offense. Or the local marshals will not take kindly to the blatant show of arms.

Deter?

Me personally, I think I'd run with it and have some fun. Give their droids some annoying personalities and quirks, and turn the tables on them.

Well, like kaosoe suggested, expensive droids would have trackers on them.
Also, what if some of the droids were "free" and fully sentient? Surely it would take more than just a memory wipe to get rid of that (or even notice that until it's too late).

Give the players the choice to indeed repair and reprogram the droids, but insist on making the difficulty rolls in secret? Or simply have several difficulty rolls and don't tell them which one is for which droid, since there's no way they could find out until they reactivate them.

That might discourage them, and if it doesn't, hilarity might ensue

Also, I'm very sure that there are laws against owning a small droid army hehehe

I say give them what they want. Make sure it takes a while and not 1 roll. Then grab 'Dead in the Water' and let those droids have a mutiny.

Did he wipe the memory? No?!! They remember your group as the ones responsible. Maybe the last orders are still in effect. It really depends on the era you are playing in, but I would think the last "person" who had a droid army was not well received. And I'm guessing repaired droids aren't going to be as durable, or skilled as another droid, let alone your basic minions. Or there's a Droid Liberation Army.

So I say give them what they want, but use it to drive the story/team. Make it really intense (like I have) and the group will stop asking for stuff.

Great ideas here. I love the idea where one of the droids doesn't get wiped properly and leads the rest in mutiny. The more personality each Droid gets along the way will just make the payoff that much better in the end.

Edit: clarity.

Ever mustered an army? I imagine some droids don't get along just as some people don't get along.

Haha, it's peaches and cream at the start, until the infighting begins!

I wonder what ship they have to transport the droids too? I'm sure a droid would be a bit grumpy if you strapped it to the outside of your YT for the hyperspace jump... On the upside you would have a first line of defence against mynocks.

Great stuff - some ace ideas here how to mix things up without saying "NO!" to the players. :-)

They wiped the memory of an R2 unit they acquired from Teemo the Hutt, but every other droid they acquired is just deactivated at the moment.

I have the same issue and solved it in many little ways... They have a security business, so droids work there. Some have annoying quirks that disrupt more then help, some turned on them or had vengfull owners...

One of my players yesterday accused me of creating a second account to start this thread. But yeah, most of the droids have some pretty extreme personality ... let's call them "quirks" that may require special cajoling or even bribery to get with the program, ranging from a homicidal and bossy astromech who keeps trying to "interface" with things he shouldn't, a -very- sassy protocol droid, and a handful of other difficult personalities.

Great stuff - some ace ideas here how to mix things up without saying "NO!" to the players. :-)

They wiped the memory of an R2 unit they acquired from Teemo the Hutt, but every other droid they acquired is just deactivated at the moment.

So, what happens if the R2 unit starts fulfilling his training programming and starts repairing all the other droids and turning them on?

Also consider the cost of the replacement parts for the droids. A fried circuit board is going to need to be replaced as the chips -can't- be repaired without refabrication.

I would just roll with it personally,

There are some issues that can come up depending on how much your players think it through.

-Cost of repairs (though a telented mechanic should be able to create 1 functioning droid out of 2 for free)

-Personality issues, though why you would install sophisticated personality modules/ routines in a fighting droid is beyond me

- tracking devices - though this can be found quite easily and removed by a mechanic too

So maybe they will gather some droids 10?15? over quite a few sessions...let them have some fun and then destroy them all in a glorious larger battle. The trick is to not force them to take the battle (they could feel "cheated") but to make them actually want to take it .

Your players shouldn't be poking around in the GM thread so you shouldn't have to worry about creating another account. Either way it's a cool story just waiting to be told.

Another way to offer for them to be used is if a major ally needs a military force. They could be for security or transport protection. The PC's get a kickback from providing the Droids. Also treat them as low power minions, then if the PC's need to participate in a large battle then they could use the Squad rules from the AoR screen too.

A third option is for the PC's to set up a business using the Far Horizons rules, bake it a droid repairs business so that any collected go towards that and are sold in the background to run the business from day to day.

Great stuff - some ace ideas here how to mix things up without saying "NO!" to the players. :-)

They wiped the memory of an R2 unit they acquired from Teemo the Hutt, but every other droid they acquired is just deactivated at the moment.

So, what happens if the R2 unit starts fulfilling his training programming and starts repairing all the other droids and turning them on?

Oh I like that, I like that a LOT!

Your players shouldn't be poking around in the GM thread so you shouldn't have to worry about creating another account. Either way it's a cool story just waiting to be told.

Another way to offer for them to be used is if a major ally needs a military force. They could be for security or transport protection. The PC's get a kickback from providing the Droids. Also treat them as low power minions, then if the PC's need to participate in a large battle then they could use the Squad rules from the AoR screen too.

A third option is for the PC's to set up a business using the Far Horizons rules, bake it a droid repairs business so that any collected go towards that and are sold in the background to run the business from day to day.

Oh, my players can poke around anywhere they want. After giving out advice in another thread, my players wound up in a very similar but not identical situation, and it was about half-way through the encounter my player said "I should have seen this coming, I saw your post on the forum!"

With a little GM finesse though, it's pretty easy to maintain an narrative control over things. For every advantage a player can have, a GM needs to be able to identify at least 3 disadvantages or ways this plan could blow up in their faces. To deal with the army of droids, maybe people start pulling out old weapons from the clone wars like Ion Rifles and droid poppers. Maybe they brush up against another droid lover that can reprogram and retask their droids just like they did to get teh army in the first place. Droid software can be buggy, require maintenance, and fail at the worst of times. Maybe a big bad battle droid suddenly develops a quirk where it wants to be an autochef? No it can't be bothered to shoot those thugs down the street, it needs to explore that bakery for fresh pastries for the meal it has planned.

I am also a fan of the plan that if the players amass a small army, you can send a small army back at them. Someone will notice a bunch of droids, and all players have someone they don't want to know where they live. Jedi and Rebels are chased by the Empire, and even the criminal fringe of the galaxy have rival criminals or people they owe money to. You can have a nice big set piece battle where the droids get taken out via a war of attrition. Give everyone the chance to be awesome, but at the end of the day, squads of mooks shooting into squads of droids and vice versa will deplete numbers on both sides.

Also, for the record, I love the idea of the R2 Unit activating all the droids. That's genius.

Every time my group encounter robots as combat opponents, and defeat them, they collect the droid remains and tell me that the mechanic in the group plans to rebuild them and use them as their personal security team. .... if there were other ways to deter this plan of theirs?

Simple... send in meatbags....

Every time my group encounter robots as combat opponents, and defeat them, they collect the droid remains and tell me that the mechanic in the group plans to rebuild them and use them as their personal security team. .... if there were other ways to deter this plan of theirs?

Simple... send in meatbags....

Can I sell their kidneys on the Corellian black market?

Every time my group encounter robots as combat opponents, and defeat them, they collect the droid remains and tell me that the mechanic in the group plans to rebuild them and use them as their personal security team. .... if there were other ways to deter this plan of theirs?

Simple... send in meatbags....

Can I sell their kidneys on the Corellian black market?

You clearly know my gaming group all too wel...

Players gonna play, haters gonna hate, and shoot 'n Looters gonna shoot 'n loot.

Although I did have another funny idea about the droids. If the droids are in the employ of the "big bad" and he/she/it has noticed the party's propensity for scavenging them, mayhaps loading them with time delayed explosives hidden really well could lead to some explosive hilarity? It's like "the club" for droids, but instead of preventing their theft, it ensures you only get to steal them once.

Although I did have another funny idea about the droids. If the droids are in the employ of the "big bad" and he/she/it has noticed the party's propensity for scavenging them, mayhaps loading them with time delayed explosives hidden really well could lead to some explosive hilarity? It's like "the club" for droids, but instead of preventing their theft, it ensures you only get to steal them once.

You could build-in self-powered micro-holo-trackers, which communicate in real-time their current position back to the entity who installed them. Install one with each “Droid Identity Number” in each droid component, so that they can not only track you down, they can also track down all your suppliers and contacts. At a time of their choosing months in the future, they could then take down you and your whole network. Think “bait cars” for droids.

You could also go the nano-bot route, where the droids are actually a Trojan Horse that the attacker is hoping the PCs will scavenge, only to get themselves infected with the latest nano-technology that could do who-knows-what kind of damage to them. Maybe their ship gets nano-hijacked and flown into the palace of a local Hutt, giving them barely enough time to get into the escape pods and eject?