Hey everyone,

I'm pretty new to GMing a game, but I wanted to start out my group in a Gozanti Cruiser that was modified as a prison transport. I really want them to be forced to crash land on a dangerous planet and was wondering what the best way for them to successfully crash the ship. Something like what Anakin did in episode iii.... but I want the PCs to feel like they have some control. I have 4 players.... one player is a good pilot, one is a decent pilot and a great mechanic, and the third is a decent pilot. The fourth player has no piloting or mechanics skills. Do I just use more narrative to get them to the ground? Am I missing something in the books?

Any help would be great, sorry if the question is stupid.

Thank you.

My suggestion would be to narratively make the ship start to crash (without a roll required) and request piloting checks to see if they can land whats left of the ship. Start with a difficultly that they should pass and slowly increase it over two or three rolls, giving them bonuses or more problems after each roll. I would personally flip a destiny point on each roll to upgrade the difficulty and fish for despairs on a failed check. Which would end the rolling and cause a terrible crash.

Just be sure to let them be able to land safely but put the odds in your favor that they crash.

If the ship has exceeded its HTT and is crippled, just use the one-roll resolution rules to see how well the pilot puts down. The rules say that it will happen and the PCs will walk away, but they might take some sounds and maybe a critical hit along the way. Other characters can also do one-roll with appropriate skills as the ship comes down.

In one of the very early cutaway books published for A New Hope there was an explanation of how the escape pod that R2D2 and C3PO use works, and it mentions that the way it keeps people alive is by using an artificial gravity plate that simply keeps gravity steady at 1G when the pod is impacting the surface, meaning the people get jostled around a bit, but don't actually experience the hundreds of Gs from the impact.

I personally really like this idea, because in a universe where gravity plating and repulsors that require next to no energy are extremely common components and integrated into practically everything it makes perfect sense that this type of technology can be used as inertial dampeners both for when spaceships accelerate, but also when they decelerate in a crash.

I've always maintained in my games that the standard gravity plating on a starship has inbuilt crash protection that functions as a kind of gravity airbag in the event of a catastrophic landing, which is why we witness so many crash landings in Star Wars where people walk away unharmed despite the ship being a total loss. Same goes for Star Trek.

Maybe something like as follows:

Handle the crash narratively ("You're gonna crash!") - flip a Destiny chip as apology for the rails, tell them all they will be making a Resilience OR Coordination check (their choice), which will be starting at a Daunting Difficulty, w/ 1 Upgrade/Challenge die, to resist X Wounds (6, 10, whatever you want).

Then they get to make their Piloting and Mechanics, etc. checks at a Hard Difficulty w/ each net success reducing the Difficulty of the crash inflicted Wounds resist check.

Gives them lots of control over mitigating damage, but ensures the crash.