help me brainstorm for a mid december OR early->mid january session

By EliasWindrider, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

A crew based of the Princess Bride sounds like a lot of fun! As for ideas, I suppose it depends on how married you are to having them fill their original roles. Since you have a swordsman in Westely, I would have Inigo be a gunslinger (like Gallandro or Han). I'm thinking Rodian or Devaronian (Soldier) Sharpshooter/Vanguard/Assassin or (Hired Gun) Marauder/Infiltrator if you would rather have him as a swordsman. For Fezzik, I would go for Talz or Herglic instead of Wookie, and (Soldier) Vanguard/Heavy if you want him to carry a huge gun or (Hired Gun) Enforcer/Marauder for a bruiser.

If you choose to bring in characters based on other members of the cast, You might even add Prince Humperdink as the Imperial governor who was supposed to wed Buttercup and is trying to get her back (maybe she has an inheritance he wants?).. Vizzini could be a toydarian (Diplomat) Agitator/Analyst/Scholar(?) hired to capture Buttercup for Governor Humperdink. Of course Admiral Rugan will need to mirror Inigo as a gunslinger maybe (Colonist) Performer/Gunslinger or (Colonist) Doctor/Marauder/Infiltrator for swordsman.

Edited by JorArns

Other than westley, I am trying to keep these nemesis characters (built like PCs) to 2 specs each, lots of good ideas there. I was thinking of maybe stating buttercup as a pantoran quatermaster+commodore (make her and westley Co-captains, she runs runs/directs the ship does strategy, he's the charismatic face leader of away team does tactics kind of), inigo as devaronian vanguard+gunslinger would work, fezzek needs to strong and not be able to speak basic but he doesn't have to be stupid, I was thinking maybe a wookiee mechanic+gunner), governer humperdink as pantoran or chiss (probably a big game hunter), and Vizzini as a toydarian tactician+agitator would work leading a bounty hunter crew after westley+company, Admiral Ruan being a chiss Commodore+analyst styled after thrawn would work, commodore grants ranged light as a career skill so he just has a lot of ranks in it and a high cool.

Life Day adventure for the lulz. :P

Ok, I don't have stat blocks for them all yet but here are the character pages for the Princess Bride characters on my obsidian portal campaign site

Westley

Buttercup the only blue skinned female wotc miniature without a lightsaber I can think of is mission Vao which I have, so I'm using that as the mini for Buttercup

Inigio Montoya devaronian gunslinger which is sure to want to draw down on Thad Bane.

Fezzik (a Whiphid, not quite a wookiee but close and Whiphid's have low cunning and are awesome at brawling, I'd like to use the new martial artist spec if possible but I put a different build up in the mean time)

Commodore Tyrone Rug'en

Governor Humperdink Rug'en (yes they're brothers, guess who their second cousin is)

Vizzini start with this one, he has links to most if not all of the others

Edit: They all have brief back stories, based off the princess bride but star wars-ified. So far only Westley has an Ogg Dude character sheet, I hope to get them for most of the others soon.

In the mean time, there is enough fluff on these guys for the rest of you to start making suggestions about the potential boarding action combat encounter/interaction with the PCs

Edited by EliasWindrider

Here's Inigo Montoya's character sheet (made with OggDude's character generator)

Edited by EliasWindrider

Well Tyber Zann (mortal foe of various Hutts, espeically Jabba) and leader of the Zann Consortium of the computer game "Empire At War: Forces of Corruption" is canon now as both him and his organization are mentioned in various Edge of The Empire Books. Perhaps you can use the "Mask of The Pirate Queen" Module as he hires the party in that one.

Also, it seems they threw bits of "Blade Runner" into Rogue One so maybe an investigation run in the lower/ickier parts of a City World akin to Coruscant?

Edited by Brother Malachai

Here's Buttercup's character sheet

Here's Fezzik (oggdude character sheet) I statted him as a whiphid commando saboteur with a brawn of 6 (brawl damage is 10 plus successes), and his encumbrance capacity is 23 (not a joke, not a mistake), he's maxed out brawl and has 3 ranks in ranged light for throwing grenades (he carries 15 grenades of various types)... this is an hommage to the scene in The Princess Bride where Fezzik is good at throwing rocks, his soak is 10, defense is 3/3, he carries a fusion cutter but uses it to open doors not to fight (he's better with his fists)

By the way, the session is this Saturday January 7th, 2017, so if you guys have more ideas now's the time to mention them.

Here's the oggdude character sheet for EV-8D4 (the McGuffin of this session), I spec'd it as a Diplomat:Agitator/Analyst/Quantermaster (full 3 trees) and lots of skills. Basically it's an awesome spy (deception etc.), and cruel motivator, and smart enough to lead a droid rebellion on Gavos.

Back when I introduced my players to the system using the beginner game, I put together these 3 MP3 audio files for the initial scene aboard the Krayt Fang

Gamorrean Opera

Gamorrean Opera Plus Ship's Alarm

Ship's Alarm

Since my PCs picked up Ke'Vin the Pig Guard as a sidekick PC (that is run by a player who has a regular PC) in the last session, I now have an opportunity to use them again.

And the Gamorrean Opera is going to be a "Weapon of Mass Distraction" (deliberate pun) which when broadcast over the PCs' comlink (by Ke'vin trying to play it on his head phones) is going to inflict 2 setback dice on all actions, muhahahaha, and yes I'm deliberately dropping the hint that they can use this against their enemies by slicing their comms.

Here's Vizzini's oggdude character sheet.

My starts about 12 hours from now. I made Vizzini complete with Marauder corvette in case I need to do a space battle with him.

Lando Calrissian will make an appearance as the Sabaac "ringer" that represents Grondo in the tournament, but he's going to get poisoned during the lunch break. The poison won't kill him, but it will knock him out of the tournament, so that Thad Bane has to step in and save the day by playing sabaac.

By the way here's the Cantina Royale (where the Boonta's Eve Sabaac tournament will be held) map I made using 3 sets of Maps of Master "night life" tiles

FinalCantinaRoyaleBoontasEve_zpsjj5qs6fl

And here's the Maps of Master "Cavern Tunnel Tiles 1" + "Cavern Tunnel Tiles 2" + "Surveillance Station" Gavos oridium mine map (for the EotE GM Kit "Debts to Pay" adventure)

DebtsToPayMineMapUsingMapsOfMasteryTiles

How did it go?

I got about half of my prepped material done

haven't written it up on obsidian portal though.

basics

used Tal Seario, CEO of Czerka, former PC turned NPC when player got married and deprioritized the game (can't say I blame him). Anyway his people found evidence on the wiped secret droid society AI back up computer suggesting that an EV series supervisor droid in the employ of Zordo the Hutt saw Zordo the hutt's majodomo giving the password to the lowest level encrypted section of the datachip to the guy who stole it, before he stole it. the evidence suggested it because the rebuilt from wiped bits holovid was very grainy and the audio was distorted to the point that it wasn't sufficient for legal evidence. Also on the computer, believed to be a later entry of the same droid spy's ai backup, was information that Zordo had acquired an oridium mine on Gavos that wasn't as profitable as expected and Zordo was going to send the supervisor droid to the mine to make it more profitable, and it helped the margins some. However since then Zordo has been quietly trying to offload the mine. There were no further updates of the supervisor droid's ai so it is believed that the supervisor droid is still at the mine.

The trick is to get Zordo to think it is his idea to transfer the mine to Grondo, so that Grondo can get the droid in the process (all equipment at the mine includede) without Zordo being any wiser that Grondo just wanted the droid, not the mine.

So the plan is for Grondo to host a Boonta's Eve sabaac tournament at the cantina royale (the map above was used) on nar shaddaa, and each Hutt would put up the Ante but have a lesser species player representing them in the tournament, who was gambling with the stakes collectively agreed upon by the hutts. Zordo offered up his "worthless" (having less worth than advertised, not no worth) as stakes to "cheat the bet" slightly and asked that Andra (Grondo's human fixer, a PC)'s contract be put in the pot, which Grondo agreed to. Most of the Hutts had one of their own Vassals representing them in the tournament but Grondo got an outside ringer. Baron Administrator Lando Calrissian of Cloud City is an old friend of Andra, and he owed her a favor which she called in to get Lando to play for Grondo. Lando won the Cloud City Sabaac tournament in 5 BBY, so he's one of the galaxy's best sabaac players, and he was quickly amassing quite a lead in the tournament, which made Zordo suspicious about why Grondo was trying so hard to win this, and maybe Grondo wanted me to bet the mine.

Anyway they break for lunch and Lando suspiciously gets food poisoning, bad enough that he can't get more than 3 meters from the refresher, so Thad Bane (PC, nephew of Cad Bane) has to take over, we rolled a couple hands of Sabaac using the rules from suns of fortune, on the first roll Thad players rolls a triumph so he won the current Sabaac pot, gets the deed for the mine, and then pulls the deed an Andras contract of of the pool, before betting again. Good thing because on the next hand Thad gets a despair. Normally that would mean he got knocked out of the tournament but since he had quite a lead from Lando and had just won the pot, I gave him one pass (he only lost half his stake), and on the next hand Thad gets 2 triumphs winning the sabaac tournament over all for Grondo.

So after the deed's been signed over, Grondo sends the PCs with baron Alto Endel (chief executive of Macander Heavy Ores on the planet Aleron in the Tapani freeworld's region, and consigliere of mythical human crimelord Emil Mola [star wars version of Keyser soze from the Usual Suspects and frenemy nemesis of one of the PCs]) to "inspect" his new mine to determine its true worth (true but it's just a cover for the real objective), pick up the current shipment of oridium ore on Gavos (the PCs have a highly modified CEC Consular class light cruiser, so they've certainly got the encumbrance capacity to haul the shipment of ore)m and the real reason was to acquire the EV series supervisor droid.

When the PCs get to Gavos I "start" to play it out like the at the mine section of the EotE GM kit adventure debts to pay, including the damaged treadwell droid outside and the other freighter of the sullustan who delivered the blaster carbines, but I used the mining colony maps from Maps of Master "Distant Outposts" and at that point it becomes kind of tactical, I put a buttload of droid minis on the maps and they had to storm the compound through the vehicle bay, they mostly clear the ground level with some B1Bs retreating to the upper level, and then they hack into the surveillance system to locate their droid they get into position and the droid they're looking for isn't outside the ventilation duct when they last viewed the surveillance feeds, and the droids roll some grenades into the duct at them indicating that the droids were viewing their actions over the same surveillance feeds, so opposed slicing checks to lock each other out of the system success with triumph and despair, they lock them out but the droids shut down power to the facility taking the surveillance and lights and atmospheric filtering/circulation offline, after a minute or two they think to go check the air shaft from the top floor down to the basement level (which would now be accessible because the machines circulating air wouldn't be operating [yes that's a feature of the map]) but they don't hear anything.

They try to negotiate to get EV-series supervisor droid, but he already went down the shaft and into the mine, so they negotiate with the second in command the astromech, and they get a copy of the supervisor droid's AI back up (which it says the supervisor droid taught them all to do), they want to inspect the contents of the ai, but don't want to load it onto their ship's computer, or one of the PC droids, and the B1Bs don't have a sufficiently advanced processor so they load it onto the other freighter's ship computer, verify that it looks like they have what they want then extract the freighters computer so 1) they can't fly it, and 2 they have a backup of the AI that they can prod and probe.

So they never went down into the mine. As they're leaving the planet, and jump to hyperspace they soon get pulled out of hyperspace by a gravity well generator satellite that was towed into position by the pirate ship revenge who was waiting for them and with 2 quad medium ion cannons firing against them while their shields were down the PC's ship is soon "dead in the water" and they're being boarded by pirates. The pirates win the top initiative shot and inigo montoya uses his seize the initiative talent to make them all go first but after the few main pirates go, we were short on time, so we call it there and say the PCs retreat back into the ship.