I thought I’d post a summary of my TFA campaign on here, so prospective GMs can see an example of how it could go, offer feedback and share ideas. For potential players, there are spoilers aplenty for both the boxed set campaign and “A Call for Heroes”, so consider yourself warned.

Session 1

The adventure started per the book, with the four heroes gathering at the Starlight Wanderer. They made it through the first two fights unscathed, thanks in part to a successful garage ambush and destruction of the speeder using the Wanderer’s turret. After recovering the data and fixing M’harli’s quadjumper, they took off in search of the Resistance, and finding Phasma and Co. instead.

The encounter on the star destroyer almost didn’t happen. It took every “dark side” dice upgrade in my arsenal to keep them from getting away, and even then, Bormo’s hyperspace roll almost prevailed, but he tied instead of beat the number of failures, so they were captured. After telling a somewhat convincing story, they managed to overpower their guard while the FO searched their ship. In what would be the first of many unorthodox moves on this group’s part, they gathered their gear and headed up to the hangar control room, subdued the techs there (showing some “good guy” vibes, they didn’t just gun them down) and then deactivated the hangar shield, venting the troopers there into space.

This sounded an alarm, of course, so they closed the shield, raced to the quadjumper to recover the data, and discovered the ship was unflyable. While Fira and Tiras held off pursuing troopers, M’harli and Bormo got a FO shuttle running and they all escaped.

Session 2 (where the whole thing almost unraveled, which was mostly my fault)

Realizing they needed a “clean” ship before they approached the New Republic, M’harli offered to steer them to a shady contact on Ord Mantell and see if he had a deal for them. While the pair talked business, the rest of the crew hung out in a cantina. Rassa Set, the aforementioned gangster, offered a clean ship if the party flew the shuttle to Quantxi to pick up a “delivery” from Kanjiklub and drop it off at a warehouse without attracting any local security attention. After that, they’d meet up and swap keys, so to speak.

Touching down on the nearby moon almost ended this whole adventure, when the party met ten heavily-armed gangsters, a gunship, and their cargo: six Twilek slaves. My intent was to present a moral dilemma, but also to convey that “guns blazing” was not a viable solution. In this second part, I failed, and if M’harli’s character hadn’t almost commandeered the shuttle, the whole party would’ve been massacred, because two players (thanks in large part to their lack of RPG experience and their view that this should be played just like Imperial Assault) were ready to start throwing grenades. They flew away, but everyone was almost visibly angry with the M’harli player (not character, mind you; things were very tense around the table) for seemingly “running the group” because she had the keys to the shuttle.

They calmed down enough to come up with a coherent plan, dropped off the slaves at the warehouse, and the other three slipped out while M’harli went to make the ship exchange. They infiltrated the warehouse, waited for M’harli’s return at the helm of a beat-up YT-2400, lobbed stun grenades at the guards, freed the slaves, got everyone on board and took off, confident that screwing a gangster who may or may not have ties to Black Sun wouldn’t come back to haunt them later.

After this session, I dished out a bunch of info on how RPGs differ from tabletop dungeon crawls (there are no do-overs, not every scenario is winnable through force of arms, etc.), answered a bunch of their questions, warned the one player who may have actually been trying to run the group, and thankfully averted future meltdowns.

Session 3

The most fun to date, this involved the crew of the newly-named Rassa’s Folly hyperspacing to meet the New Republic on Hosnian Prime and arriving about an hour after the flurry of red death from Starkiller Base. After dodging incoming chunks of planet, the crew picked up a faint distress call from the Nebulon-B Frigate Redemption (Armada tabletop models came in handy for this portion), whose drives had been damaged by the blast and was falling into the sun. Hey, if the destruction had also resulted in a cancelling of all their orbital velocity, it could happen. Work with me.

Dodging debris, with Fira and Tiras on the guns to blast any chunks that got too close, they docked with the frigate in time to see an explosion in the aft section venting debris and people into the void. After meeting with the ship, they learned they’d witnessed the death of Redemption’s engineering crew, who were attempting to repair the hyperdrive. So they now had 78 minutes (I started the timer at 90 when they entered the system) to patch the hole, fix the hyperdrive and get the sublight engines running.

While the crew split up to accomplish various tasks, Tiras was approached by Finley Finlas, Jr., junior partner in Finlas and Sons, one of the biggest banking houses in the core worlds, and offered twenty thousand credits to immediately fly him and his droid assistant to safety. Adopting a team attitude over his “I’m in it for myself” scavenger roots, Tiras declined.

In the main ballroom, Fira attempted to calm the passengers, and was reunited with Dak Hobbes and his wife, Elsa. Dak and Fira were part of Recon Team Alderaan, a secret New Republic unit formed years earlier for recon and infiltration, that was unfortunately disbanded after a suspicious training accident resulted in the death of most of the team. Dak met his wife, a nurse, while recuperating from the incident, in fact, and the disbanding of the unit led to Fira’s disillusionment with the New Republic. Dak confided he’s now working with the Resistance and will tell them the location of the base if they give him and Elsa a ride. After the Redemption’s saved, of course.

A successful roll causes Fira’s spider sense to tingle, and she spots Finley giving orders to his droid, who then heads off in the direction of the ship. Fira and Dak follow, and when the droid fires on them, they blow it to bits. Fearing future thievery, they give one of the Twilek slaves a blaster and tell him to guard the ship until they can take off.

Repairs continue, with complications, of course, and with about 30 minutes to go, they discover the Redemption’s hyperdrive is shot and must be replaced. The sublight engines are now running, but at this point they only serve to slow their fall; they're deep in the sun's gravity well. The party heads to their ship to remove its backup HD and are fired on by the Twilek, who’s decided Finley’s new offer of 20k credits is a fortune for a former slave and lets the banker on board, keeping guard while he preps the YT-2400. They gun down the poor soul, board the ship, stun and hog tie Finley. After the hyperdrive’s replaced, they undock and hyperspace out with about 8 minutes until the point of no return, effectively kidnapping a prominent banker in the process.

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We've done a few more, but I'll let this fly for now and update the post later with more sessions. C&C are welcome!

As a beginner GM (this is my first rpg) I enjoyed how you were able to flesh out the story. Very helpful.

Thanks. It's been a fun ride so far. Next sessions:

Session Four

Before the hyperspace jump to Hosnian Prime, Tiras received a Force vision of the Strus Clan slaughtering their old friends on Jakku (I gave him Force Sensitive Exile to see how Bormo would react, since he's a member of the Church of the Force, and to set up a plot twist later), so before heading to the Resistance base, they returned to Jakku, and I narrowly averted a gaping hole in this adventure's plot.

They met with their old friend, learned of the impending gang attack, and headed off to recruit the mercenary woman's band to help. But what to pay with? They hadn't been to the Resistance yet, so they had no reward for the data. But they did have the son of a prominent banker, and that seemed like a fair trade to the mercs.

About a day before we played this adventure, I noticed that nowhere in A Call for Heroes does it mention the Strus clan base is protected from air attack. And the party has a ship with two linked turrets. In order to avoid a massively anti-climactic ending, I put the base in the end of a box canyon, under an overhang which not only protected the gang from the blistering Jakku sun, but also from blistering air bombardment. So they had to do it the hard way.

They snuck into the camp, planted charges at the turrets and the water tank, then hovered the YT-2400 at the canyon entrance and told the Strus they could surrender or die of thirst. Pretty clever move on their part, and successful with relatively little violence or risk. Once they cleared the gang out, they repaired the water tank and the turrets, and their scavenger friends finally had a decent home. Next stop, Resistance base. Well, after a brief detour to bury Bormo's parents, victims of the evil Kylo Ren and the First Order when they came hunting for Max von Sydow and the map to Luke Skywalker. The only thing left in his family home was a pendant of his mother's, which he now wears in her memory, and which may or may not contain a secret.

Session Five

The crew arrives at the base, Dak and Elsa go their merry way, and the party's given the choice of ACfH missions, so they naturally choose the research facility, because it sounds cooler. They land, enter the facility, fight the bugs and the FO spies, and discover four interesting looking machines, and evidence that a fifth one was there until recently. Before the self-destruct countdown, Bormo investigates the machines and rolls incredibly in his Mechanics (lightsaber on the yellow), so I'm forced to tell them they're organic containment units of Kaminoan design. So now they're aware the FO has clone technology, and my big twist is partially hosed. But hey, that's the RPG life. GM's gotta adapt.

So adapt I did, and it almost worked spectacularly. Starting with Dak taking his old buddy Fira aside after they returned from the mission and asking her how well she knew her three companions, because someone sent a message warning the FO they were coming, so they could strip the research facility of cloning tech.

Session Six

My new favorite, because of how much the party had to work, and how close I came to pulling off my evil plan. Dak tells the party he sent Wol Kessix to check out the comms station, and they haven't heard from him, so everyone sits tight for a day or so, healing, rearming and loading up on skills. The next day, he tells them of a distress call. Wol's stolen a FO shuttle from the base, but the ion storms fritzed it and he's adrift after a partial hyperspace jump. Dak and the crew have to rescue him before his life support expires.

They jump to his location, adrift near a debris field (Armada stuff to the rescue again). They cruise in and dock, and Dak brings his friend aboard. Wol's offended at Bormo's attempt to search him (epic Negotiation fail), and shows him the blaster he's carrying, the data he's stolen from the FO, and nothing else. Dak takes him for a relaxing game of holochess while Bormo and Fira attempt to search the ship. Then, the shudder of a tractor beam rocks both craft.

The ILH-KK decloaks (I rolled a detection for them, and thankfully they failed) and their old buddy Rassa Set hails them over the comms, demanding they power down and prepare to be boarded. So the crew springs into action. Bormo races to the cockpit, Fira and Tiras man the turrets, M'Harli comes up with the idea to break free, Punch It, and execute a 360 while releasing the shuttle at Rassa's ship. A feat of precise timing, with which Dak volunteers to assist by standing near the ramp and pulling the handle at the right time. Fira fires the turret, scoring a critical hit on their engine (one in a million shot), Tiras fires and misses, they break free and spin, but Dak can't get the handle pulled in time. Or so he tells them.

Fira jumps out and runs to the door, using Athletics to doge Dak and release the shuttle, allowing them to speed up. As the ships exchange fire, Fira's old war buddy pulls his blaster and fires at her, set for stun. So does Wol, and it's only Fira's upgraded soak that keeps her from going down. Tiras hears the shots, but the cockpit crew are oblivious.

What follows is a firefight inside a ship that's in a dogfight. Top that , Lucas. The ion cannon actually disables the YT-2400, but the cockpit crew relieve enough strain before the baddies can dock, and it springs to life again. Fira amazingly doesn't get stunned unconscious, and she and Tiras manage to kill both traitors. Bormo calculates the jump again, and M'Harli pulls the levers. And something explodes in the engineering room.

While M'Haril evades Rassa's fire, Bormo races to fix the sabotaged hyperdrive, doing so in a single round thanks to another amazing roll. They calculate the jump, take laser and missile hits but evade the tractor beam and ion cannon, and jump to safety.

They party now heads back to the Resistance base, wondering how a pirate knew where they'd be jumping, and why two supposedly loyal agents of the Resistance were in on the betrayal...

Great job inviting new players to your table. That's one of our main goals at Dice For Brains!!

Thanks. It's been fun to introduce them to RPGs, and even though I couldn't capture them in the last session, the end should still be pretty entertaining. Gotta find some schematics of the inside of a Star Destroyer now...

Session Seven

Yet more proof that I have to be ready for anything with this party.

Returning to D’Qar with the bodies of two Resistance fighters, they were met coolly by Major Emmatt, who imprisoned them in an empty parts cage in a hangar until he could sort the truth of their story. The major was busy organizing the evacuation of the base since the First Order had found it, and General Leia was off burying a memento of her husband at the place where he’d first told her he loved her.

Bormo picked up the knife and the group left the cage, pondering their options. The hectic pace of the evacuation had covered the sound of the blaster shot, but Elsa would no doubt be going for “help” to stop the evil crew, so they had to move fast. After some debate, M’harli and Fira changed into the uniforms of the dead officers and Bormo helped them hide the bodies behind a crate while Tiras stealthily left the hangar and hid under an X-Wing to see what was coming. Fira picked up the remaining blaster and they casually walked out.

Tiras appeared in Elsa’s doorway, brandishing a blaster he’d found during his sneak through the base and demanding her surrender. She responded by firing at him, but missing. Then M’harli struck with the staff again, doing little damage, but disorienting Elsa and forcing her to drop the blaster, which M’harli picked up. Faced with two armed opponents, Elsa surrendered.

I was wondering if anything further had happened in this game.

No, life has interfered since my wife and I moved to Dallas. Now that things are settled I gave the gang the choice to finish the adventure as it was, or tweak it to match The Last Jedi (we were close), or gave them the opportunity to make their own characters from scratch and start a new adventure, and they chose door #3. I'm good with that, since I'd rather make my own character than adapt a starter set one if I were playing, and we're looking forward to campaigning in the time of the Rebels TV series.

I'll probably post that campaign log in the EotE forums, since that's the sourcebook most of the players are leaning toward so far. It's going to be time-based and freeform, instead of the somewhat focused setup the TFA beginner box laid out (though I have to give my group credit for making their own way despite the steering of the starter set), so I'm working on a basic outline of the system and a beginning scene, and they'll take it from there, with some events happening in the system whether they take part in them or not.

We may someday wrap up the adventure of the Rassa's Folly crew, but for now we're traveling back in time a bit. Thanks for reading, and we may be back someday.