hey all -

So, I have a fledgling group that loved Escape from Mos Shuuta and we plan on running Long Arm of the Hutt on Monday, but in reading through the adventure I'm not convinced that my players will love or really be successful at the Duke's party in Act 2 and am looking for some guidance.

There are 4 players and with one exception are pretty new to role-playing and the amount of interaction and role-playing much just be beyond them at this point and as I don't want to put them off the game or slow down the adventure and am thinking that the best way of bridging between meeting Ota at the end of act 1 and getting to Gantry AA7 is, per the adventure text itself, to essentially simplify the encounter and have Ota tell the PC's that Teemo has bought a large shipment of weapons and payment has been made just prior to the party. If the party can mingle and find the Vio siblings without breaching etiquette, they can either convince them to let the PC's travel with them to Tatooine, or steal their Nova courier and impersonate the siblings (having put them on ice, of course) and infiltrate the palace that way.

For those who have played it through, does it seem like that approach might work?

Has anyone tried anything else they would recommend?

Am I overthinking this?

Thanks in advance!

First off, full disclosure: I've never run Long Arm of the Hutt . I've never run the beginner game, either.

But looking over the adventure, I think your suggested approach should work just fine. If they're not comfortable roleplaying a group of people mingling at the party, you can just go to the dice and have events unfold that way. This system is well-suited for that. You can narrate their actions, successes, and failures to them, which they'll probably enjoy. Then they get to move on to the next action-heavy part.

If that's how your group likes to play, it's perfect.

I will point out, though, that sometimes it's fun to force the PCs out of their element. It's a reminder that they're not good at everything, that there are aspects of the game they can still explore, and that there are methods of conflict resolution that don't involve someone's smoking corpse.

My suggestion -- and what I'd do in the same situation -- is ask the players what they want to do. Tell them there's a major social encounter in this adventure, and that they can choose to roleplay through it with a minimum number of rolls, or they can let the dice do the talking. The most important thing is to give the players who want to flex their social muscles the chance to do so. Even if you have one or two people who adamantly don't want to deal with social stuff, this will give them the opportunity to hit the bathroom, grab a snack, or just sit back and watch the scene unfold.

Just, y'know, make it clear that they shouldn't reasonably expect to escape with their lives if they decide to start blasting people for fun.

Act 2 is poorly written for relatively new GM/PCs - it assumes the PCs are ready to dive into social role-playing, while they are most likely still getting used to the system and require some more linear narative to drive them.

I've done rety much the same as you described in our campaign and would generally recommend to skip Act 2 and save such enounters for later. Just go with whatever feels logical for your team/narrative and it will work just fine. the rest of the adventure plays well without this part.

You know, my players completely skipped over that act and went their own way. I think what you've proposed will work well.

I would just gm the part as it is written. After all it's a beginner adventure, and the part is there to introduce them to social encounters.

My group also did not get all the relevant info, because they noticed the gand watching them, so they got afraid and left the party. I then used Ota to give them all the relevant info after that (not all of it, of course, they still don't know one of the guests was a rebel).