So I'm planning on destroying Nar Shadaa in my final game as GM. I know it's weird and all I just want to finish our Star Wars run with a bang. But having come to this decision it got me curious. Have any of you gotten to blow up a planet in your games? If not what's the biggest thing that your group has ever destroyed?

Also Alderaan and the Death Star don't count

Not yet ....... but I'm hoping to one day.

Having goals is good....

We as humans are doing a good job of destroying the real world earth, maybe not as efficiently or permanently as blowing it up with a death star superase but we could make large parts of the Earth (tropical areas, current deserts) uninhabitable. Which brings me to a side note... destroying a planet doesn't have to mean turning it into an asteroid field... you could cause a massive ecological disaster that renders it (mostly) uninhabitable something that transformed say naboo into say mustafar would count in my book

I was going to say that Earth was still in existence, so I have not … yet … destroyed a planet.

But then I read the post from EliasWindrider.

/me has a sad

Yes it is how I ended up on this dirtball.

It wasn't our fault. We couldn't figure out how to shut off the Sith temple's self-destruct system. And then our ship was stolen and we were forced to take the dead mercenaries' grungy old ship that smelled like BO to escape just before the planet blew. At least we got some valuable and illegal artifacts.

But yeah it happened that one time.

We as humans are doing a good job of destroying the real world earth, maybe not as efficiently or permanently as blowing it up with a death star superase but we could make large parts of the Earth (tropical areas, current deserts) uninhabitable. Which brings me to a side note... destroying a planet doesn't have to mean turning it into an asteroid field... you could cause a massive ecological disaster that renders it (mostly) uninhabitable something that transformed say naboo into say mustafar would count in my book

It's all good, we'll all die before it gets too far then the insects will evolve and wonder what all these ruins are.

I'm about to blow up (mostly) a small moon with a mining colony. Since my players seem to need a hint to really hit them hard in the face with a bag of hammers to get the fact that there is a new power in town...

In my campaign, Endor was completely laid to waste by the destruction of the second Death Star (though this happened three years before the campaign began). This served not only to remove several canonical characters from existence (so as not to overshadow the PC's and their endeavors) but it also shook the Rebellion to its core; laying the foundation for the current political realities of the campaign.

Wrote up a Solar System that had a sun spiraling towards supernova. Wouldn't actually hit supernova for a long, long time, but in the grand scheme of a Galactic calendar, it would merely be days. That being said, the sun essentially super radiated all of the planets, and while there was one colony of droids left, they themselves were spiraling towards utter destruction because of it. The planet used to be very in tune with life. So, kinda??

Btw, the players never decided on helping evacuate the droid's, so all hope is lost on that front.

"Do not be too proud in this technological terror you've constructed the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force."

We as humans are doing a good job of destroying the real world earth, maybe not as efficiently or permanently as blowing it up with a death star superase but we could make large parts of the Earth (tropical areas, current deserts) uninhabitable. Which brings me to a side note... destroying a planet doesn't have to mean turning it into an asteroid field... you could cause a massive ecological disaster that renders it (mostly) uninhabitable something that transformed say naboo into say mustafar would count in my book

It's all good, we'll all die before it gets too far then the insects will evolve and wonder what all these ruins are.

The thing is we have a technological solution for this... liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), thorium is low level nuclear material, so plentiful there's enough of it to power the world for another one to two thousand years. The reactor is about the size of a large trash can and the mixture turns to a solid at room temperature (so spills would be incredibly easy to clean up), it operates at negative pressure, so no boom from a "melt down", BTW a molten core is the natural operating state. If it did get to hot, it'd melt a salt plug and the reactor would drain into a tank causing the reaction to stop, why? Because thorium by itself is to low level a nuclear material (it doesn't have a critical mass), thorium is a "fertile" fuel, you have to step it up by hitting it with neutrons before it will react/produce-energy, which also means it's a way to dispose of all that nuclear waste produced by the first generation of nuclear reactors. By the way since it is a low level nuclear material it is fairly hard to use to make nuclear weapons (you'don't have to step it up a lot). Also thorium occurs naturally with rare earth elements, the rare metals we need in trace amounts to make all sorts of electronics such as solar cells and bateries. It's against the law to mine them in the United states because by removing them and dumping the thorium back on the ground you'd be "concentrating" the thorium/nuclear material which is against the law. With the increased supply of rare earth elements the cost of hybrid and all electric cars would decrease somewhat (and we have a lot more cheap solar energy to extend the life of our thorium supply). BTW LFTR reactors can be shut down for the weekend and started up on Monday and does not require any special cooling of hot fuel to make it not react and melt down.

Also, we could pass the exhaust of coal power plants through sea water to make concrete (a very useful building material) to capture a heck of a lot CO2 that otherwise goes into the atmosphere. And we should actually be burning biochar rather than coal we dig out of the ground. you can turn organic material (food waste) into a cleaner coal by applying a low heat when the material is in a vacuum (basically composting). And in addition to providing cleaner energy (and producing cement by passing the exhaust through sea water) would greatly reduce the amount of waste we are putting in landfills.

So yeah, there is a pretty easy technological solution to climate change/global warming. But for various reasons (e.g. oil/coal companies would lose a lot of money, it's hard to organize the social/infrastructure change) we aren't doing it.

No why? What have you heard?!?!

I ordered a BDZ strike (by my personal forces) on a planet I found infested with hibernating Killiks.... If the peace-loving Alderaanians exterminated them on Alderaan, that's a good enough reason for me to exterminate them when I found them myself...

So yeah, there is a pretty easy technological solution to climate change/global warming. But for various reasons (e.g. oil/coal companies would lose a lot of money, it's hard to organize the social/infrastructure change) we aren't doing it.

It's promising technology but you're forgetting the other reasons why it hasn't been done yet.

The main reason it hasn't been done yet is that they haven't figured out how to actually make it work. It could be an amazing breakthrough but the working prototypes from the 60s didn't use thorium so this new angle hasn't been tested.

But it's in development, various groups around the world are now trying to get it figured out. Technology like this combined with more efficient solar power collection and similar clean energy sources are good reasons for hope. I think we're really getting off-topic here though, I thought we were talking about Star Wars?

Yeah, solar power is getting good enough, getting 8% cheaper per unit of energy generated every year, has done for decades, will do for decades more (it's the fitting that isn't getting cheaper, which is why we are seeing a lot of ground level stuff in fields in the UK, as they are cheap to erect).

To make it a total game changer we need cheap, fast charging, high capacity, batteries.

On topic...

We wrapped up a friend's AltU!Legacy Era campaign (set during the time of the Legacy comics, but no Cade Skywalker) with Korriban going the way of Alderaan.

Perhaps Darth Wyyyrlok shouldn't have set up the One Sith's ultra-super-duper-weapon on the One Sith's primary base of operations... especially when there's a PC who's tantamount to a walking disturbance in the Force and is affectionately known as the "teenage telekinetic wrecking ball" who's going to come a knockin'...

Somehow, the phrase "oopsie" just doesn't begin to cover it

"Do not be too proud in this technological terror you've constructed the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force."

"Error: You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day."

Imperial Tyranny! I rebel!

My group destroyed Byss using a hefty dose of real-world physics, an equally impressive bending of the game system (Saga, at that time) rules, and borrowing heavily from Man vs. Kzin Wars for inspiration. Basically, we dropped our heavily-modified bulk transport out of hyperspace on the "back" side of the system going hell-for-leather sublight, slingshotted around the star to accelerate to a significant fraction of c, then released our cargo of heavy-metal asteroids. The resulting shotgun effect obliterated life on the planet in spectacular fashion. Asteroids contacting the surface at near-relativistic velocities produced impressive results, and any that exploded in the atmosphere still contributed an enormous amount of energy to the system. It was both horrifying and glorious at the same time.

As GM, I took a page from Steven L. Kent's 'Clone' series. I called it "celestial-scale scorched earth".

In a campaign I've been running off and on for years (started in the WotC revised core rules but we have since converted) the PCs were infiltrating the Imperial military base just outside of Bestine on Tatooine to steal experimental miniaturized gravity well technology. The jawa demolition expert decides it's a good idea to leave an excessively large explosive device (several thermal detonators chained together) behind at the main reactor for a "diversion". The tech was on a stripped down VT-49 Decimator and just as they're flying through the atmosphere with a chase scene beginning the jawa sets off his bomb and the military base along with about half the city of Bestine go up with it. They PCs are all criminal scum, but even they were horrified by that. Except for the insane jawa of course.

"Do not be too proud in this technological terror you've constructed the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force."

"Error: You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day."

Imperial Tyranny! I rebel!

My quota still good, here have one, good sir.

Now, back to topic:

Destruction on planetary scale? The biggest thing one of my characters did was to connect an infinite plane of fire with a demonic pocket dimension, flood the whole dimension with eternal elemental fire. The demon lord of that demonic plane never bothered us again. Unfortunately my character was the pipe which connected both dimensions with each other … a glorious way to end a campaign. ;-)

I in particular have not destroyed a planet, but one of my group has destroyed Kashyyyk with the Death Star, pulled Nar Shadda into a star, and killed 2 Star Destroyers by ramming one from behind with the Xantar Frigate. His nickname in the group is Rear Admiral Noobie.