Yesterday we started Jewel of Yavin. My group got the job and went directly to the museum to spy out, where everything is and what the security is like. They hid in the storage room of the souvenir shop and at night broke into the storage room for the cleaning droids, and discovered the waste duct.

Now here comes the problem: The auction will be in 2 days (game time). But the force sensitive in my group only wants the gem, not the 250.000+ credits. So she suggested to steal the gem right away, instead of waiting for after the auction. And the group, while still hesitating, could agree to that plan.

For me as a GM it would be a disaster, because they would skip great social encounters, the cloud city grand prix, the hacking of the bank droid, and the real heist (stealing the gem after the auction).
So how could I, instead of talking to them out of play about that they would skip three quarters of the adventure, or railroading them too much, "encourage" them to play the rest of the very cool adventure, instead of leaving now after a quite okay, but not nearly as interesting break in?

Haven't read this adventure yet (it's sitting on the shelf waiting) but could it be that the gem they find there is a fake, and that the real gem will only be produced at the auction?

Involve the other players/characters in his decision to heist the gem. If its still a go, the adventure is built for heist as well, and you still try to involve the checks that you might miss if they don't play the auction, like the slicing, in a different environment with the same obstacles and checks.

Moreover, you can re-skin the social encounter into a different scene in the follow up or the next adventure. When I am prepared with a scene and it dose not happen I just move it up to the next encounters, this way its not wasted and the principle stays the same, you only wanted them to negotiate and connect different npc's story together, not much difference what the race or reasons, as long as it fits your narrative.

Well, if they steal the gem now, they will just get to their ship, blast off and leave bespin. They never get to do these encounters. I think I have to bet everything on the rest of the group, who still wants the money. Maybe I will add some additional guards in the gem room or make the gem a fake which is replaced with the real gem after the auction

Making the gem a fake could most certainly work. Or maybe make it much more difficult to take the route they're trying to take. Also since it seems like the force sensitive may be trying to take the "easy route" to achieve their goals, maybe throwing some conflict their way my change their mind. Or simply reducing the xp earned for making the adventure shorter and not having as many encounters is justifiable.

Rusak makes great points, on that you can still save the encounters you like for anther time. So long as it makes sense when you're incorporating them.

Really the big thing is gonna be having fun, and if just going straight for the gem is what would be fun for the group.. You may just have to let it happen.

Hope this will be somewhat helpful.

nah, there really is no way to play the encounters after they stole the gem. The story is to win the grand prix of cloud city, to get enough prestige to get an invitation to the auction. Then motivate the other bidders to bid a price high enough that the price will get from 20.000 credits to ofer 250.000 credits. Then they hack a remote bank droid to reroute the money to an account of their client (or their own account, preferred ) and additionally then steal the gem.

No need to win the grand prix, and there even won't be any auction if they steal the gem now.

If they go steal the jewel early, then they steal a fake - someone else stole the real Jewel already and replaced it with a counterfeit. Some clue will lead them to suspect it was someone working for one of the bidders - now if they want any money whatsoever, they have to find who really stole the jewel - best way to do that is to do all that research they skipped, then show up for the auction and try to spot which buyer isn't shocked when the fake is revealed.

That one is great too. Maybe the old jedi who wanted to steal it anyways. ****, I could even do the whole race thing to get them into the auction to do their research there. The thief would be there and bid a nice, but not too high price on the fake jewel, because the thief doesn't want to raise any suspicion against him.. Thanks, that will be my backup.

Hi MasterZelgadis,

That's a great question. Although, I still haven't run this adventure, I read it a month ago and I'm planning to start it in a few weeks. Please consider the following lines as a humble advice:

I suggest to not change the gem for a fake one. This could upset the players and could rise some questions like "If is not here with a 24 hrs surveillance, then where is it? where could be safer than a museum with additional guards?"

Now, consider the following:

a) The bank is part of the job, but in the end is optional. They players could fail this stage and still complete the mission/adventure, by delivering the Jewel to Arend.

b) The PC would never find a better price (and an opportunity to take that money): The jewel is restricted by the Empire. Ilegal. This is the only place to get easy access to the credits as well. (The only truly dangerous fellow there is the Hutt. The only one with resource to track the players). If they can get 250K in Cloud City, they barely can get 50K in the black market, knowing that is stolen property and Everyone wants it (the Empire, the Huts, etc).

c) Escape from Cloud City could be the meat of your adventure: Maybe (is not suggested in the adventure, but it's possible), Lando decide to Lock down the City, blocking all incoming and outgoing ships. After all, is his reputation on the line. Also, If they take the Jewel and betray Arend Shen, He will hunt them. The P won't have a place o hide.

d) (I leave this option in the end, because I have the impression that it will be hard to adapt in the middle of the adventure). Use the obligation of your PC. Ok, the Jedi want's the Jewel, but some one might need the Jewel (or the money of the gem) to pay a debt, a blackmail, buy information, etc... If I recall correctly, They might close 50 obligation if they decide to use it for this purpose.

I hope this works.

IMO, the key here is Arend and/or Aris. They had them take on this job and (especially since Arend is planning on betray the PCs) could easily be keeping tabs on the PCs via other agents. If the PCs make a move to steal the gem, I could see Arend preferring to stop them by force or even anonymously tipping off the Wing Guard/Grayson rather than let the PCs pull one over on him.

If he knows about the attempt in advance he might directly or indirectly threaten to sell them out or something to intimidate them into sticking to the plan. I’d probably have him not contact the PC planning to steal, and instead approach the other group members with a, “You’d better rein in your friend or there will be problems” attitude.

For outside the adventure, I agree with leveraging obligation. Not to relieve them of the Jewel however, but to point out the problems they could solve (obligations they could lower) if they got the money instead of/in addition to the Jewel.

In all, I think the PCs should be pretty clearly motivated to complete the job as scheduled. They get more out of it and if they steal it early they will have one extra enemy to deal with.

Do we know why the force sensitive only cares about the gem? Is it an in game thing or out of game? It’s suppressed knowledge that corusca gems can be made into lightsaber crystals, so if that’s the motivating factor how does the character know this?