I've noticed a distinct lack of story times happening around here and I feel it needs to change. Don't be thinking you have to write the entire detailed plot of every single session out, but I do think (especially to encourage new people) that we need to spread the tales, myths and legends that have come out of our groups. Highlights that made you laugh, cry, start thinking certain points of view etc etc. I'll be polite, and start.

A Selonian and a Nautolan walk into a prison...

My group's adventure began with the deep-in-a-Hutt-pocket Selonian Bounty Hunter, Kanu, and the on the run fugitive, Tura Jin, being rather forcefully recruited by a mercenary currently employed by brother Hutts to break one of said brothers out of an asteroid prison. They cooked up a plan to pretend Rayke, the merc, was a bounty to be turned in by aspiring hunter Kanu.

After he was taken away to processing, they were treated to a small tour of the facility by a "too old for this ****" warden, before being left alone in a nice lounge area next to the control room while their payment was processed.

They proceeded to murderhobo the innocent prison wardens, and open the cell doors to the two main cell blocks. They worked out where the Hutt was being held and headed off to free him, only to meet PCs 3 and 4 - an amnesiac Ssi'ruk named Ssuri'wekk who had ripped the bars off his cell (it was a low jack prison), and Lavintas, the Rebel connected Falleen diplomat who had suffered some pretty brutal torture. Oh and a Twi'lek who was clearly hiding something. Or a lot of things.

With Rayke running around the prison inciting riots, they managed to make their way back to the hangar bay, only to be assaulted by a Super Battle Droid (and some regular Battle Droids) re-purposed as tireless guards, who after many years without a memory wipe had come to decide now was the time to take over the prison and implement machine rule.

Battle ensued, with Tura being incapacitated right after throwing a grenade that allowed Ssuri'wekk to tear into the droids armor, exposing a weakpoint that Kanu sniped perfectly. Lavintas mostly cowered behind the Hutt (he was blocking an entire doorway, so he was good cover).

They made it to the hangar, disabled the docking clamps on an old YT-2400, told the prison staff (the ones they hadn't killed in cold blood) that they could take the ship they had arrived on (as this one was better) and made their escape, shooting down two pursuing Z-95s as they did. The ship they left behind was also rigged to explode to prevent any pursuit, so basically the staff remaining in that prison (once they subdued the riots) now have good reason to be pretty mad at the PCs.

Steaming to Ord Mantell, the villains and scum made their introductions and forged tenuous reasons to help one another. Mostly revolving around money. A whole lot of money the Hutt had promised. As they always seem to do, when they need something...



That was session one, which took 4 hours (as they were learning the systems and their characters).

Would you like to know more?

Okay I got one.

The Setup: I'm running the same campaign with 4 groups, 3 local and 1 online, all with friends and family. The first group to get together to play consists of 5 PCs. One of them is an old B1 Battle Droid from the Clone Wars which has gone a long time without a memory wipe as well as it happens to only be the head of a B1 Battle Droid; the rest of the body is more of a human shape. This droid had at one time after the Clone Wars, been used as a dancer, oddly enough.

So at the start of the first adventure, the group is brought to the estate of a Hutt for a job offer and upon walking in, each PC is asked relinquish their weapons by a Gamorrean. The droid charms the idiotic Gamorrean guard by dancing. This allows all of them to sneak in without giving up their weapons. The unforseen consequence to this is that the Gamorrean is now infatuated with the droid and is going to become a bit of a stalker.

I've already been writing up my story and have been posting it over in The Annual Pigeon. My most memorable moment off the top of my head being early on when the party only had a single blaster pistol between them and then dropped it when the speeder they were on jerked and it fell into oblivion.

We actually just started a campaign that is (hopefully) going to be a long lasting one where we make it though most of the modules in a specific order, trading off as GMs through a gaming marathon on New Year's eve, and then continuing past that.

The party is made up of 6 players (plus mine).

We have a Human Mystic (Seer) who doesn't believe his powers come from the force. A Human Warrior (Star Fighter) whose parents were a Run away clone and his Jedi General. A Human Hired Gun (Bodyguard) hired to make sure the ship and its cargo are well taken care of. A Camaasi Conlusular (Healer) that went to medical school and thought he was just 'that good' at healing the sick before learning of the force. A Wookie Sentinel (Artisian) who learned his 'seek' power from a cult of shrewd force users, hidden on an outer rim moon from the empire. A Gank Sentinnel (shadow) who was always good at sneaking and stealing, but learned recently that at least part of that comes from the force, and lastly, my PC (which will only be played once and a while when I am not GMing) a toydarian Smuggler (Charmer) who fancies himself a likeable pirate.

We have two players who haven't really played before, and wanted to test out some new space combat, but also wanted to re-introduce the group to the system, as we haven't played it for a while.

We opened with a crawl talking about how the deathstar had been destroyed roughly four months ago, and this has caused both the rebellion to become more courageous with its missions, and has also caused the empire to clamp down on the planets and systems it controls. The crawl also talked about how this didn't show much change to folks living on the rim, and how just such a crew were working the tail end of a delivery run...

<Cut to...>

The ship, a battered YT-1300 evading four Space Pirate fighters, taking laser fire from them as it tries to make it to Tatooine. The PCs chose their starting locations within the ship, and we started space combat for a couple rounds, they got a couple really solid hits before the pirates began to use missiles, which incapacitated the cargo vessel, and allowed the pirates to dock a larger ship. they dropped a handful of pirate minions into the ship (using the ship map from the EotE box set). Now we transitioned to the ship map. The players scrambled to meet the new threat, and the pilot triumphed a shot to hit the door panel to the engineering bay, locking three PCs into engineering, protecting them from the dangerous pirates. While combat was going on (the PCs doing a fairly good job of clearing the floor) other pirates were stealing the spice from the cargo bay, and leaving a large bomb.

Some clever computer use trying to hack into the pirate's ship gleaned that the crew was hired by Jabba the hutt. More combat ensued, the pirates grabbed as much as they felt they needed to, and they high tailed it away. The PCs would have none of that, if they couldn't have the spice for Teemo (they all work for Teemo the hutt, either under contract or as slaves) no one could. They destroyed the escaping pirate ship and proceeded to limp the ship back toward Tatooine.

I felt this was a good way to pull the characters together (they decided that they had been working as a crew for Teemo for a little over a year), and it was also a way to have them all needing to escape Teemo's custody in the Basic Box (which will be next Sunday).

Overall it went well, the new players picked the system up really quick, and I felt that everyone had something they could do.

Nice! I love how diverse the stories are that come out of different groups.

Next on our agenda is me stepping back as GM to let another guy have a go. The party is heading to Nar Shaddaa to help reinstate two Hutts, brothers, into their seats of power on the moon. The whole place has been taken over by a triad of crime cartels, each with a different sphere of influence and perhaps has some form of Imperial entanglement.

I'm coming in as the first human of the group, and the first Force sensitive (ex-Jedi Knight who has been hiding on Nar Shaddaa for years). I helped the new GM put some stuff together but it looks like he's doing a fantastic job building on the whole thing and making it into a massive campaign piece.

Pretty excited to play the game after GMing for so long!