Too much deus ex machina?

By Ender07, in Game Masters

6 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Hah! Post the results if they do, it sounds like it's gonna be interesting ;)

It always is with my group...I never know exactly what is going to happen with them! I'll post back after this Sundays session and let everyone know what happened.

Valid statements gents (?), however ISD's are quite large and if one is forcing their way through Stormtroopers they're doing it wrong. There are bound to be countless maintenance shafts all over the thing. Sure influence is short term but with a high enough rank it can be priceless. Or one just rushes the bridge, opens ALL the airlocks and waits for crap to happen. I play with horrible people...really. :(

Edited by ASCI Blue
Just now, ASCI Blue said:

Valid statements gents (?), however ISD's are quite large and if one is forcing their way through Stormtroopers they're doing it wrong. There are bound to be countless maintenance shafts all over the thing. Sure influence is short term but with a high enough rank it can be priceless. Or one just rushes the bridge, opens ALL the airlocks and waits for crap to happen. I play with horrible people...really. :(

Yeah, we call them PCs ;)

Also, _killing_ everyone on the Star Destroyer isn't the hard part. Well, OK, it's not the _hardest_ part. No, that's flying a Star Destroyer with 5 people.

In theory the *flying* part should be doable with a handful of people IF there is a pilot present. Using the thing at it's full capabilities with 5, I agree, is laughable.

21 minutes ago, ASCI Blue said:

Valid statements gents (?), however ISD's are quite large and if one is forcing their way through Stormtroopers they're doing it wrong. There are bound to be countless maintenance shafts all over the thing. Sure influence is short term but with a high enough rank it can be priceless. Or one just rushes the bridge, opens ALL the airlocks and waits for crap to happen. I play with horrible people...really. :(

Re: Airlocks: Star Wars doesn't have that level of centralized control. You would need to be at each airlock to operate it. At best, you might be able to monitor all of the airlocks from the bridge, but beyond that, no.

8 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Re: Airlocks: Star Wars doesn't have that level of centralized control. You would need to be at each airlock to operate it. At best, you might be able to monitor all of the airlocks from the bridge, but beyond that, no.

Where is this a thing?

20 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Re: Airlocks: Star Wars doesn't have that level of centralized control. You would need to be at each airlock to operate it. At best, you might be able to monitor all of the airlocks from the bridge, but beyond that, no.

I'm not sure I'd agree it's impossible, but I'd totally say there would be lots of safety protocols to prevent it from happening. In my mind, it would be a hell of a hard computers roll, to disable those safety features. At least, if the ship is in motion and not in a dry-dock situation. Then the situation changes quite a bit. Rather than blowing out the airlocks, getting everything to lock down so that enemy mobility is cut would be more effective, I think.

I do agree that it would be a very hard thing to do, also agree it would be reasonably easy to wall off sections of the ship to inhibit movement. I'm reminded of Babylon 5 when the Drazi were doing a government overhaul, one group was planning to get the opposing force into one location and open single airlock to take care of the other. I now wonder if a similar thing would be the easier of two to go, eg leave a path open to the hanger with ships that can leave, get a majority of people there, then open a single door.

Are we really discussing safety controls in a world without handrails?

:ph34r:

Actually, I think they had handrails, Luke sliced one during his fight with Vader, and Vader had to huck Palpy-poo over the rail to get him in the pit.

Challenge dice.....all can be realized with Challenge dice.....

8 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Actually, I think they had handrails, Luke sliced one during his fight with Vader, and Vader had to huck Palpy-poo over the rail to get him in the pit.

True! Also, there were handrails on the Invisible Hand when Obi-Wan and Anakin were fighting Dooku.

Gotta watch out for that 5-foot drop.

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I'd agree that critical systems like life support and airlock control are likely separate from menial infrastructural components like trash compactors and toilet waste processing.

On 2/15/2017 at 0:48 PM, Ender07 said:

Once again, thank you everyone for all of the input and points of view...I really value the info I get from everyone on here! I think I found some good "next steps" that will return player agency, keep the suspense high, and give them multiple options to move forward...

I decided against retconning the tractor beam issue, I will explain my reasoning to them as to why I rolled it secretly, but since it has already happened I will move forward with the story. Once they are pulled inside the hangar bay I will give them the chance to hide or prepare for battle as a boarding party comes on board to arrest them. If a fight ensues, I will allow that to play through...however this is where the Deus Ex Machina comes in...I will bring in the Rebel ships and have them immediately open fire on the ISD and launch their fighters, thus causing chaos to ensue.

Just a thought, you might want to take a peek at the old WEG game Starfall , where the team has to break jail and get off a compromised Star Destroyer before it blows up.

18 hours ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Well, Influence lasts a matter of minutes, and I doubt the Stormtroopers you mentioned would see that as a legal order.

I doubt the Stormtroopers will get told in the first place. You get to the bridge, disable all other communication and order a communication blackout, jump to the next rebel base, order a ground assault, at the second they are out you depressurize the hangar and unlock the fighters to get rid of that problem and start firing onto the helpless landing crafts because they are traitors to the empire. All of them and disable to bridge crew afterwards.

Afterwards you welcome the force wielder with the talent for influence to the darkside. Free yellow eyes included. But you got a free imperial star destroyer for the alliance. Mission successful?

If you are not a fan of mass murder, there is always the option to just use influence on the bridge crew and planetary scale battle meditation on your leadership check to make the crew fall in line. At least long enough to have an alliance squadron of Y-Wings take out the star destroyer with ion bombs and send in troops to capture the "helpless" ship. In that scenario it becomes rather interesting to hold the bridge long enough once the crew is realizing what is going on. Would be a fun episode for sure, with two follow up episodes when the empire starts hunting their own ship and guerilla imperials try to sabotage the ship, while the rebels just try to get the hyperdrive up again and run away, etc ^-^

Grrrr, now I actually want to play this adventure, but our jedi feels like a presence 1 character, so I guess this is out of question. ^_°

So I ended up running my session on Sunday and everything went pretty well! I explained why they didn't get to roll to see the tractor beam and didn't seem to phased by my explanation so we carried on. They landed in the ISD but instead of fighting the boarding party one of the PC's used Force Foresee to see bits of the future and they decided to change plans and used a stormtrooper and Imperial Officer uniform to pretend they were conducting a prisoner transfer.

They managed to fool the boarding party while the others hid, then started for the detention level. The space battle started shortly thereafter and the PC's that hid decided to wait until the coast was clear and hijacked a larger transport-type ship and programmed the shuttle to go to lightspeed inside of the hangar after they left. They managed to disable every safety on a formidable computer check and set easy astrogation check to jump to lightspeed inside the hangar...which caused quite the commotion when it slammed into the back wall!

Then they brought the fight to the Imps inside the ISD and managed to bring a thermal detonator to the bridge and toss it in on a delay timer before jumping in the turbolift and getting the heck out of there! They left in the transport they acquired and were contacted by the rebellion ship who offered medical assistance to them. We shall see how the next session goes!