Our group has completed Act I of Perlemian Haul and are about to board the freighter. However, there are a few glaring points within the adventure guide that seem like glaring oversights. Curious as to how the other GM's handled them.

1. If the players are detected, the only real consequence is various blast doors aboard the ship being sealed. I would think that if rebels are detected aboard a secret imperial trade ship, all hell would break loose. I mean, the M226 is one of twelve cargo ships in the fleet, along with two Star Galleons. Wouldn't as SOS be sent out the fleet? Would troopers not be sent to take back the ship? Would fighters not be dispatched to scuttle the ship should it be lost to the rebels? The guide just pretty much states that after taking the control of the bridge "just drop out of hyperspace and meet your rebel allies". Really?
2. Unless intership communication is not possible while in hyperspace? However, a scene from Rouge One where Cassian gets orders transmitted while in hypersapce makes me wonder if that is true.

Ways I am considering to deal with it... obviously intership combat can't happen in hyperspace. Maybe the rebel fleet could meet them at the point the whole cargo fleet is to drop out and ambush all the convoy? Destroy the star galleons/tie fighers, capture the 12 freighters. My rebels are based out of Arda I so perhaps Dust and Rust Squadrons could be dispatched to aid the rebels?

Or perhaps one of the cargo holds contains captured rebel starships. My team could man them and join the fight. Another cargo hold has captured rebels/slaves, which could be released to join the fight as well.

Any thoughts and ideas are appreciated.

While inter-ship communication is possible in hyperspace, from what I've seen in the new cannon is that it is fully possible to drop out of hyperspace before you reach your calculated destination. So if the fleet jumps to hyperspace and the PCs capture it while the fleet is in hyperspace even if M226 calls for help the PCs can just pull it out of hyperspace and set a new course.

As for the troopers on the ship, the PCs could go with venting the atmosphere everywhere but the bridge if they wanted, removing all non-rebels, or they could seal themselves off until they reach the rebel fleet then those rebels help them clear the ship (or do it without the PCs even).

1 hour ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

While inter-ship communication is possible in hyperspace, from what I've seen in the new cannon is that it is fully possible to drop out of hyperspace before you reach your calculated destination. So if the fleet jumps to hyperspace and the PCs capture it while the fleet is in hyperspace even if M226 calls for help the PCs can just pull it out of hyperspace and set a new course.

This. If you drop out early, every one in the fleet may know you did, but probably don't have exact coordinates. Then as he said recalculate course and disappear before they catch you. Imagine a convoy of trucks. No one is expecting anything, then a single truck pulls over, slows down, then turns down a side road. The main convoy might stop depending on orders but they have to turn around and go back, find the right sidestreet, and chase you down. More likely, at most a single escort would peel off and try to find out what happened.

My group vented the cargo hold just before the jump to hyperspace, leaving only a handful of troopers and crew on board. The mechanic of course disabled comms about the same time as well so no ship to ship communication was able to occur. Once this was done they stormed the bridge and took it. They simply dropped the vessel out of hyperspace and plotted a new course. If your players time it right, like mine did, none of these problems will be of much impact. However, if they do not time it correctly, or fail a check, the consequences could prove dire. Just remember, you're the GM, you can modify the adventure to your liking. I've done it with this one and the one that came with the GM screen. My players don't know I modified it, but thats GM secret info.

Thanks, those are great suggestions, can definitely work with that.

What did you guys put in the cargo holds? I am thinking 1) A Rancor 2)Disabled/captured starships 3) Force sensitive rebel prisoner

1) The rancor could just be fun to deal with or set loose in the ship 2) I'm looking for a way to get the PC's their own ship. This mission should put them over the duty limit, so they can be rewarded with one 3) I want to introduce a NPC that I would in turn play as GM. None of my NPCs have force, so I would like to have this element in the campaigns and also have a NPC along with them that I could use to steer plot or suggest ideas to the group through

What your thinking could work, I think that it should be whatever works best for your group. But if you want to know I put;

1) Weapons (Primarily Mines)

2) TIE Fighters

3) I think it was Y-wings maybe, not sure.

Then at the end of the adventure I game them the chance to either gain more duty by giving up all items from 1-3 of the cargo holds, or get less duty but they get more stuff. They chose to take some mines and two of the TIE fighters (since they had a Gozanti as their ship), but give up the Y-wings.

Aside from being reasonably valuable in their own right (otherwise they wouldn't be part of the convoy), what you put in the cargo holds should be set based on the PCs' Duty traits; if it can touch on motivations as well, so much the better.

While this isn't a surprising statement, it's particularly important to do this with an introductory/demo adventure because it immediately establishes for the (presumably new-ish) players that "Duty and Motivation matter, and here's how."

I put in some TIE/D in the holds with maintenance parts and equipment, with orders that they were being flown to a testing facility. Our diplomat, who had come up with a good reason to have found out about the haul, has his duty to space superiority. Strange for a diplomat, but thats what he rolled. I try to use duty throughout, giving points to players who use their own duty during play. Try to do the same, use one or more of your players duty to tell you what you should put in the cargo hold. It'll pull your characters and players further in.

1 hour ago, Kiowa706 said:

I put in some TIE/D in the holds with maintenance parts and equipment, with orders that they were being flown to a testing facility. Our diplomat, who had come up with a good reason to have found out about the haul, has his duty to space superiority. Strange for a diplomat, but thats what he rolled. I try to use duty throughout, giving points to players who use their own duty during play. Try to do the same, use one or more of your players duty to tell you what you should put in the cargo hold. It'll pull your characters and players further in.

A diplomat with Space Superiority is someone who doesn't fly the ships, but arranges all the support so that his cell can fly the ships. Negotiations for fighters, setting up pilot schools, that sort of thing.

17 hours ago, Edgookin said:

A diplomat with Space Superiority is someone who doesn't fly the ships, but arranges all the support so that his cell can fly the ships. Negotiations for fighters, setting up pilot schools, that sort of thing.

Good point. He has done very well in acquiring vessels for the group to use. He's negotiated three ships, and the sale of one other, for about twice what it's book cost is. In a way he's the one doing the best at using his duty, I don't have to push for it very often. The point being, for this adventure, I used the duty of my players to decide what to put into the cargo holds.

Glaring oversights = shining opportunities

In my opinion, a well designed adventure doesn't make the GM feel railroaded and the Perlemmian Haul was, for me, perfect in that regard.

The Perlemmian Haul is the only printed adventure that I have run and my first group loved it. I had M226 carry weapons and equipment for a battalion (see this link) of Imperial Army Troopers. For a group of players that had no real stealth capability they managed to quietly capture the ship and the captain of M226. I had a vague idea what consequences of failure for given Skill Checks but they never failed a roll. I think the Wookie Marauder rolled two Triumphs and a Success on YYGRPP Brawl check with two Threat to fight some techs. The resulting reward(a fairly large bank account on a far flung neutral world) would have required another adventure but we never got to it as the group disbanded.

17 minutes ago, Oden Gebhac said:

Glaring oversights = shining opportunities

Excellent point.

For the storage containers, I feel like weapons, and supplies are just too.... vanilla. Why all the secrecy then? This is a legendary trade line that has been shrouded in mystery up until this point. I feel like M226 should have a cargo worthy of that secretive nature, or at least not routine battle materials, unless you wanted them to serve a specific point? I don't know what I'm going to do with the Rancor yet, but I'm curious to see what the PC's will try to do with it.

On 7/21/2017 at 8:00 AM, Stethoscope Nunchucks said:

Excellent point.

For the storage containers, I feel like weapons, and supplies are just too.... vanilla. Why all the secrecy then? This is a legendary trade line that has been shrouded in mystery up until this point. I feel like M226 should have a cargo worthy of that secretive nature, or at least not routine battle materials, unless you wanted them to serve a specific point? I don't know what I'm going to do with the Rancor yet, but I'm curious to see what the PC's will try to do with it.

If you want to shock them, have the rancor frozen in a block of carbonite with no label. They thaw it out expecting weapons or medicine, find a 2 ton eating machine. In their base.

14 hours ago, Edgookin said:

If you want to shock them, have the rancor frozen in a block of carbonite with no label. They thaw it out expecting weapons or medicine, find a 2 ton eating machine. In their base.

Haha! Thats almost sadistic. I love it! Are there stats for rancors anywhere? I don't recall seeing any.

I just finished running this for a group of first time SW RPG players.

I 100% agree with what Oden said:

On 7/21/2017 at 8:39 AM, Oden Gebhac said:

Glaring oversights = shining opportunities

In my opinion, a well designed adventure doesn't make the GM feel railroaded and the Perlemmian Haul was, for me, perfect in that regard.

I laid the ground work beforehand telling the players that they need to capture the ship and bring the commanding officer in alive (Jilan Noor - I plan on using him as an ongoing villain). They were told that communications were not capable in hyperspace on this type vessel and would need to drop out. They were also sent to free a captured group of Rebel commandos who were being held in one of the cargo holds that was a make shift prison. The other 2 cargo holds were left a mystery until they got on the freighter.

I placed an experimental hyper drive in one hold heavily guarded by stormtroopers (which the players never bothered to do) and placed a high value target for the Rebellion in the other (a COMPNOR agent). The players right away decided to head to the main power room and once there faked a red alert by messing with the systems (Hunt For Red October style). Once the ship was in high alert they freed the captured Rebels and instead of capturing the COMPNOR agent released the cargo hold into space rather having to fight.

The players came up with all sorts of crazy unaccounted for ideas and situations and this quest allowed me as the GM to roll with it. They had an amazing time and can't wait for the next adventure to start.

Don't let the gaps in quest hold you or the players back, let them formulate plans and facilitate their creativity.

3 hours ago, Kiowa706 said:

Haha! Thats almost sadistic. I love it! Are there stats for rancors anywhere? I don't recall seeing any.

There is the Captive Rancor in the Edge Core Book.

So having run it after the original post, I ended up going with captured cargo ships, one of which the players will eventually be awarded. Container B has blasting supplies, given that they had just come from a mining planet, but they could have used these supplies to free the contents of container C, which was a Canyon Kraght Dragon. This beast was intended for Jabba the Hut on a later stop, but since it was intercepted by the Rebels, and transport delayed, the Empire had to thus end up paying him with delivery of a Rancor instead.

18 hours ago, Edgookin said:

If you want to shock them, have the rancor frozen in a block of carbonite with no label. They thaw it out expecting weapons or medicine, find a 2 ton eating machine. In their base.

Winning suggestion!

4 hours ago, Kiowa706 said:

Are there stats for rancors anywhere? I don't recall seeing any.

Unofficial Rancor stats

Sweet. Lots of good creatures in there. I haven't force my players into going up against nature yet, have been thinking of doing so. Might use those stats somewhere. Thanks for the link.

I ran with the idea (that I picked up on these forums, if I recall correctly) that M226 had a prison section that contained two sets of prisoners. One were a bunch of families of known or suspected rebels who the Empire had rounded up and would be using as leverage to try and turn rebel agents into betraying the Alliance. The other were the survivors of the Tantive IV, who had been interrogated on the Rim but were being returned to Coruscant for "full debriefing".

It went off really well, actually, including some comic moments where one of the characters (a thirteen-year old girl, being played by my daughter) was caught by a couple of naval troopers and claimed her father was one of the officers who had brought her on board because there was nobody to look after her. She also happens to be a Force sensitive, who gave her Deception rolls a bit of a nudge and "sort of" mind-tricked the troopers. Anyway, it was worth it for the reaction of the captain when the troopers brought her onto the bridge, sympathetically explaining that this kid was here through no fault of her own and was the daughter of "Lieutenant Subbs". The captain tearing a bewildered Lt. Subbs a new one while the other PCs sneaked onto the bridge was a priceless scene!

I also had a substantial number of Imperial security droids (like the ones seen occasionally in SW: Rebels - I think Thrawn had a couple as personal guards). The tecchie PC managed to roll successes, advantages, and triumphs on her slicing rolls and reprogrammed the droids to back the PCs, setting them loose in one of the holds.