Well, after months of build-up we finally finished the cloud city Grand Prix over the last two sessions. The Ace Pilot/ Hot Shot picked up on a throwaway comment I made as a race journalist that no one has ever attempted the race without a co-pilot. He took the unintended bait and entered the race on his own, following the obligatory cloud car modding montage.

Mr Aaron Blakely has spent all his xp honing his planetary piloting skill and relevant talent, with the 'make your own luck' signature ability thrown in for good measure.

He won the initiative and hit the throttle straight out of the gate, keeping ahead of the pack most of the way, with a few setbacks and near misses keeping it interesting. At the last bouy he used a combination of talents, attachments, and 'making his own luck' to maintain a speed of 8, succeeding at the last piloting roll with 3 triumph and a single threat. This allowed him to showboat across the finish line, skid across he landing area and come to a stop after bumping into a camera tower. He had a dented door panel but was amazingly positioned for the camera operator to pan down perfectly filming the new champion exiting his trusty cloud car.

Aaron Blakely not only finished at an incredible speed 8 but with a place value of 64, I believe this may be a new track record!!

That beats the place value my players had!!

So, the down side of winning the race without a co-pilot is that the corporate Stormhawks (coming in a distant 2nd place) have hired a legal team to take out a civil suit against Aaron, as the official rules refer to the conduct of both the pilot and co-pilot. The well-dressed legal team have come to the conclusion that Aaron's win is unsafe due him cheating, they have also served a £1m credit injunction preventing Aaron (or race officials or pundits) from promoting himself as the race winner.

The full implication of this are yet to play out; but a Stewards enquiry now needs to happen, all betting payouts will have to be suspended (which could cause riots), Lando is very unhappy with this, and Aaron's credibility could cause issues with his adoring public and the guests at the swanky garla. Not to mention the copious bets Aaron and the group placed, leaving the group a bit broke.

This imaginary legal chicanery upsets me far more than it should. I can only imagine how pissed the PCs are.

Wow, that kinda takes a running dump on the pc,s success. I sure that triple T should be able to dispel or mitigate those situations or provide some other venue for uppercomance. E.g. The reputation of the Stormhawks snow dives after the race, effectively tainting their reputation forever on the serious circuit, this racer gets a hardcore cult following that is willing to assist in any way possible or, the nuclear option, Lando Callisrism himself backs the players and shuts out the stormhawks case entirely, as being an ex gambling/con man himself uses this opportunity to booster his own reputation, getting into this guys really good books proves a narrative strong hook and inevitable backstab.

sure that's how the real life works and it is a good narrative dressing, it just seems like beating the players with a stick when the legendary exploit would have yielded a carrot.

I will let you know the feedback after tomorrow nights session.

After a few moments of confused silence someone in the crowd shouts "Stormhawks suck, Aaron wins!" The rest of the crowd take up the chant.

Aye, just as said it's fun to work in complications and establish good support. Might actually work out in the escape...

I'm gearing my group up to Jewel of Yavin and I'm definitely stealing that complication. My players will go nuts for it.

50 minutes ago, rogue_09 said:

I'm gearing my group up to Jewel of Yavin and I'm definitely stealing that complication. My players will go nuts for it.

For this adventure I have added in lots of additional adventure complications by bringing in all of the cloud city based pre-gen adventures that I could find, including the WEG 'Crisis on Cloud City', the WotC 'Cloud Cover' and also the Order 66 'Enemy of my Enemy', this has pandered to all of the characters main skills and kept them super busy. I haven't decided if the Imperial occupation will happen before they finally leave the city in the clouds.

I also had a welcome message going over what items are prohibited, check my topics for the full text.

So, Lando stepped in and assured Aaron that he would have his people take care of the legal side of things, but obviously it may take a few days to sort out. Aaron gave a post race interview where he referred to the Stormhawks as the "windy pigeons", this has been picked up by Newsnet reporters.

Now there isn't much more to do but get ready for the gala and the after gala party that Aaron has booked next to the museum.

Well, the gala is going well with lots of intended and unintended interactions bumping the bidding and moving things along. Lando flitted in and made a brief grand appearance, and then slipped quietly out of the party. So far the bid is up to about 250,000 with 4 rounds of bidding left. I still don't know what the players plans are for stealing the Jewel, one player had suggested not stealing the gem but just cashing in thier winnings, obviously that isn't possible until the legal challenge had been rectified.

They also have six days to make a delivery to Kaltho the Hutt to a planet at least 5 days away with a X1 hyperdrive, on behalf of some sector rangers that have persuaded (blackmailed) Aaron and the group to do a job for them, (I have also incorporated the fan adventure 'Enemy of my enemy'), so they need to get a move on.

Who knows how the situation on Cloud City may have changed if the characters return after thier off-station diversion, it would be a shame if the Empire stationed a garrison of stormtroopers there and closed down all the casinos whilst clearing out Lando's Commandoes or other dissidents.

The gala went as planned, lots of plotting and fun interactions with the bidders. They got the final bid up to 315,000 credits.

So, the racer hired the club next door to the museum to act as a distraction for the thief if needed. The thief hid in the store cupboard after faking a delivery for the gift shop and then hid until the gala had finished.

Dr Strange, the group slicer/medic snuck off to get the banking droid and transferred the funds to an account belonging to a rebel contact.

The thief came out of the storage cupboard and followed close behind the security detail, and then when the groups Wookiee marauder set off fireworks out front as a distraction, he darted into the Jewel room, disabled the security screen with a well placed ion shot, grabbed the Jewel and then flipped a destiny to activate the thiefs disappearing act signature ability, absconding down the garbage shute. It was great fun.

The speed junkiee and the Wookiee headed back to the main ship in port town, whilst the slicer headed back up to thier other ship docked on one of the standard landing platforms at the main commercial port, he was confronted by three of Stim's soldiers (from the D20 radio adventure 'Enemy of my Enemy'), whilst the old Jedi Elaiza waited by the port town ship hoping to persuade the group to hand over the Jewel. It was interesting running the split group but having both encounters play out. As the thief made his way down the wind tunnel and then back up through the station, an emergency announcement from Lando signalled the start of the Empires occupation.

One thing I didn't expect was for Elaiza to be invited on the ship to rendezvous with the thief and the Jewel. It will be interesting to see how this plays out whilst running the next adventure on Vanqor, especially as they are likely to be 5 days ahead of the other ship due a better hyperdrive.

I really enjoyed GM'ing the JoY adventure as my group ended our EotE campaign with that heist! I had a PC that was pro-Jedi and convinced the group to give his portion of the winnings to Elaiza along with the jewel...the rest of the group (except 1 guy lol) gave Elaiza most of their winnings after that PC died in a fiery blaze of glory creating a diversion that ended up saving the group and allowing them to get away.

I added Elaiza into my next campaign as their mentor/benefactor about halfway through the first year of that campaign (we are almost 2 years in now). She took the money and was able to build an underground bunker-type Jedi academy on Nal Hutta (of all places) and now that is their home base and Elaiza is teaching them and sending them on missions. I didn't directly give the PC's in this campaign the winnings from their previous characters, but I did make it much easier on them to have a safe place to stay and still incorporate the money into the campaign.

Make your own luck SIG ability