I'm running a TFA campaign, and I've got the whole story arc mapped out (provided the characters follow it, which is never a guarantee), but I'm struggling with a good way to orchestrate the party's betrayal and capture.

There's an NPC they've met who's really a spy for the First Order, and I'd like to have the spy betray them and get them captured, but I want to come up with something that both ensures their capture, and doesn't feel like they don't have a way out of it. So I'm looking for suggestions.

My idea is to have the NPC get them to a small moon base and vent all the air from a particular room while they're in it (the NPC included, to both ensure it happens and to protect the spy's cover). Once they're unconscious, hidden FO troops restore the air and capture them all. So I'm looking for a thematic trap that the party can't possibly avoid, hehe.

Does that sound workable? Are there better ideas? Does it smack too much of "I'm forcing the party to play out my story instead of creating their own"?

I think orchestrating probable defeat is okay if it's a one-time thing. I had a GM do that in a Shadowrun campaign some years back, and it was memorable, even if it did cause a little frustration at the time. It could be a pretty cool reveal when the PCs recover and learn that the NPC in question is not imprisoned with them.

-Nate

Could always have them assemble in a room and simultaneously hit by droid poppers and sleep gas as a surprise.

By the time they wake up they've been stripped of their equipment and jailed with no idea what has happened so do they need to know the spy's identity?

Thanks for the replies. Sleep gas would work, too, and orchestrating it so they still wouldn't be sure who the spy was is a good part of the plan. And when they wake, I plan to make it not immediately obvious who's responsible, but give them the clues so they figure it out before the end and can race to stop the rest of the spy's dastardly plot.

Ray shields? We're smarter than this!

Ray shields? We're smarter than this!

Apparently not.

Ray shields? We're smarter than this!

Apparently not.

Shame we can't just cut a hole in the floor...

I don't think you should game out the capture. Its better to make the capture as part of the opening crawl.

Why? Because you shouldn't give a false sense of control through a part of the story that the players have no say over.

Huh why not establish the opening scene they've been all captured and transported in the same transport like the one transporting Jun Erso at the start of Rogue One.

So rather cheap changing them ask them what happened to leave them shackled together aboard that transport and weave their story together with efforts to oblige causing a destiny point to shift from dark to light so it's in their best interest to explain how they got there and maybe use those bonus destiny points to explain how they eventually escape starting your game!

Would that work?

Hehe, no ray shields. Cutting a hole in the floor was the first thing I thought of when I saw that, too.

And Versch's concern about not giving the party a choice is mine, too, but I wonder if we started a session with "Oh, by the way, you all got captured," it might create the same dilemma.

I think I'm going to go forward with the "sleep gas + overwhelming number of stormtroopers setting for stun" plan, and if some of the party somehow gets away, I'll work that into the story. I'll do some math and figure out how many it'd take to overwhelm the party, and just have that many baddies show up.

I'll do some math and figure out how many it'd take to overwhelm the party, and just have that many baddies show up.

The best way to start this is two or three stormtroopers per player character and if they're handling that then send in reinforcements of at least as many stormtroopers as there are party members every round. They won't last forever, unless the Force wills it. And if they look like they're about to take down a whole battalion of Imperial troops, then the Empire always saves self-destruct sequences for that kind of scenario. Remember what they did to Scarif, and that was just over some data. They weren't even going to lose that combat.

Good idea to start with something that seems beatable and then escalate it. I might even introduce a big baddie to defeat the group if it looks like they're going to handle the troopers. I'm leaning toward having a Knight of Ren involved in the finale of this story arc, so maybe if he pops in to ensure their capture at this point, they'll have a chance to get some payback against him in the finale.

EDIT: I should also be careful with the sleep gas, since the Episode VII "fluff" specifically stated that stormtrooper masks "filter out smoke, not toxins." Don't want anyone crying foul if the troopers don't go down.

Good idea to start with something that seems beatable and then escalate it. I might even introduce a big baddie to defeat the group if it looks like they're going to handle the troopers. I'm leaning toward having a Knight of Ren involved in the finale of this story arc, so maybe if he pops in to ensure their capture at this point, they'll have a chance to get some payback against him in the finale.

EDIT: I should also be careful with the sleep gas, since the Episode VII "fluff" specifically stated that stormtrooper masks "filter out smoke, not toxins." Don't want anyone crying foul if the troopers don't go down.

Actually it might speak to the brutal nature of the First Order if they're willing to gas their own troops to take down the heroes. That said, the FO is supposed to be significantly more competent as a fighting force than the Empire was. So it depends on who's commanding the stormtroopers.

Very true, they do seem to hit what they aim at a lot more often than the trilogy troops did.

After the last adventure, the party gained a clue (darn those lightsaber rolls) that may be close to giving away the identity of the mole, despite the hints of distrust being sown among the party, so I'm thinking of going another route now.

Early on in the adventure they needed to ditch the FO transport they stole from Phasma's SD so I cooked up a side trip to Ord Mantell that resulted in a moral dilemma and the party indirectly swindling the Black Sun out of a YT-2400. Methinks the mole might just reach out to a criminal element to do the dirty work instead. It's a plausible revenge strategy that might help the mole stay hidden till the nefarious plot unfolds.

Escaped in the transport! I know that was an option suggested in the adventure, but I couldn't come up with a plausible escape utilizing an atmospheric lander.

Hehe, I had the same hangup (plus we weren't sure the transports from the movie had hyperspace capability), so we pretended one of them was more of a shuttle.