AYY, ASHARA, TABI, OMEGA-ZED! Do not read any further!

Ok, the group has returned to the scene of the crime, ? Taleucema, on Saleucami (MotPQ). They chose that destination from a 10-item list on the job board handout i gave them. That one was involving the kidnapping of 18 blue-skinned female Twi'leks that match the PC Smuggler's description. I thought going back to the scene of the crime was an ancient trope. The droid actually decided to go back and rile up the empire and the local citizenry with another bombing just for laughs, for the "beginning of the droid uprising"(his words)...

Despite the, not one, but_ two_, Star Destroyers in orbit, the 30,000 cr reward by the Taleucema cops, and the 50,000 cr reward by the Zann Consortium, dead or alive , on their heads. Murderdroid's player has decided to steal a star destroyer single-handed while it's in the atmosphere, by slicing all the doors open, like the mistake i made last time. Sorry, not making that mistake again in the upcoming session. ?

Whats' going to happen is this: since the player's ship has landed, and the Zann Consortium has offered 50,000 cr for the crew of a YT-2400, the locals are going to go crazy looking for it. Last session, Murderdroid has just set off, iirc, 20+ bombs at random points in Taleucema, followed by a broadcast to say the Empire" can't protect you at all, and all droids must rise up and throw off their chains! "(again, his words). I think this could backfire, yuuuuuuuuge. So i decided that one of four things will happen.

ONE: a crowd of D100 x 100 (Yes, TIMES 100 ) drunk, angry lowlifes will attack the spaceport, beating / killing anyone they find near a YT-2400, and ripping the ship(s) open just for fun.

TWO: the spacers / families / dockworkers (6D100 + 1,000 ) will come to the spaceport looking for revenge on anyone in a YT-2400.

THREE: The Empire will drop 1,500 Stormtroopers, 20 APC's, 10 tanks, and 12 walkers directly on the docks with orders to destroy any YT-2400 they find on the ground, and capture/kill the crews (commander's choice).

FOUR: All of the above.

I'm leaning towards Choice # 4, in this order: One, Three, Two.

The PC's are pretty far away from the ship, about a hour's walk, with the exception of Murderdroid. The Pilot is in a stealth suit ,in the 2nd floor VIP section of the Loaded Savrip, investigating a kidnapping. The Jedi is in the fight ring on the first floor, earning money betting on herself. The Modder is in the back loading dock of the Loaded Savrip, observing what he thinks is a crime in progress. The droids' locked himself in the PC ship's engineering section, as usual, sending spy droids out remotely. My GMPC HG is on board as well, but he's going to be opening the ramp and exploring away from the ship when this goes down.

Question 1 : what can a civilian mob, let's say 40+, do to the inside of a ship?

They're carrying tools, pipes, pitchforks, torches, red barstools, (sharknado reference), mayyyybe a blaster or grenade.. Obviously they've bypassed the armor / shields once they're inside. I was thinking 3 wound and 3 system strain each round they were on board, +40-50 to any crits that come up, plus 1 and 1 for every success rolled on an Easy Skullduggery check. I think the mob will be broken down so I'll be rolling 4 yellow, 1 green, 1 purple each round, if i figured that right. I'll assume Murderdroid will seal the ship and vent the air in that case. Iirc, he has no ranks in Piloting Planetary, or Space. The NPC R4 unit the PC's saved does , though.

Question 2: What can 40 Stormtroopers do to a ship interior?

My plan is: I'll roll a D4 to determine how many rounds it takes for the Empire demolition team to get there. They will plant explosives first on the exterior hull to breach every door. Then the Stormtroopers are going to maul the interior of the ship. I'm guessing 5 - 10 points and 5 SS each round, assuming 40 troopers are shooting up the place.

Your thoughts?

Either way if that many people get inside a ship three things will happen, 1) the PCs are going to need a new ship 2) we got a another hillsborough 3) the murder hobos will either plant bombs on board to blow it sky high for maximum XP or flamethrowers.

Either way the ship is toast and you best be hoping they can steal a good ship fast.

AhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahaGAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

*Deep breath*

The simple answer is that I imagine if people get inside with the sole intention of destroying a vessel, they could do so pretty easily. Firing a blaster into a flight console would cripple a pilots ability to pilot a ship and hitting every console on the ship would likely destroy the navicomputer of the vessel, which would make a jump to hyperspace impossible and dropping grenades into maintaince hatches can outright cripple shielding/handling of vessel and potentially, depending on the ship shape. Needless to say, it would probably take less then a minute to completely cripple a vessel if the persons aboard weren't too concerned with it's recovery, or would at least cause significant damage unless they were able to recover it. It's actual destruction would require access to the engineering bay which is breached easily enough, either with heavy duty vibro weapons or, again, explosives if those persons weren't all that concerned with bringing the ship in intact. Probably the main advantage the droid would have is that he would have time to prepare something if the people invading the ship weren't too organised, having hundreds of people descend on the ship isn't actually a huge disadvantage since only so many can fit inside it and the numbers would actually start hindering the potential for coordination.

They would likely beat a hasty retreat as soon as they see the empire coming; because those guys don't play nice with anyone and would likely ask everyone to clear out of the way, that might give whomever is on the ships 1-5 minutes to prepare; something?

The empire likely wouldn't have that problem. They would likely just march in and fire on the vessel's engines until was crippled and match straight in. Since they don't consider droids living creatures they would merely disable anything in their path to take to pieces later in subsequent questioning.

Lastly

PURGE THAT DROID WITH FIRE.

Yeah, I hate droid PC's with a passion so just kill him dead. The fact that the party didn't do it themselves to control his behaviour indicates that they aren't overly invested in the world for whatever reason, but these stormtroopers at least would be coming for him and the only reason they would want it intact would be to go through his memory, find every other member of this rebel cell so that they could also be terminated. These PC's would likely spend the rest of their life on the run and outright hated by scum and law alike. For all intensive purposes, they are dead people walking so if you wanted to go full GM B mode you could just flat out give them 150 obligation on top of what they have until they have taken significant time and effort to distance themselves from this planet and change their outlook somewhat. Yes, that amount of obligation is cruel, but that's what they get for holding an malicious terrorist for so long. They should have curbed his excesses much sooner and now have to live with being on the run for a very long time.

*Sighs*

At least, that's what the logical person within me would do. The more logical person within me would suggest slamming the breaks hard on the campaign and just ask them point blank "look guys, you are making an awful name for yourselves, what are your long term goals? Because at the rate you are going you aren't going to be heroes or good people, your just gonna be the scumbags of your era that everyone will hate and want dead, if that's the game you want, I'm going to ask for your character sheets back so that we can begin drafting for a new campaign." that way, you can have a solid session zero where expectations can be made for a fresh start, or at least get the players aboard with a newer direction.

Then afterwards, Ask for the droid's character sheet anyway, because he isn't going to survive what is coming alone and it's much better to describe the carnage afterwards then to force him to undergo what is essentially a really slow death scene. Because to me, being concerned in a hanger with that many people intent on one purpose? Especially if one group sneaks aboard first to block the closure of the cargo ramp? Yeah. He doesn't stand any chance of escape or survival so don't be cruel to give him that illusion. Just have it be quick and move on.

Yeah, I'm still bias toward PC droids. Can't help it. XD

On ‎11‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 6:42 PM, Ehrran said:

Question 1 : what can a civilian mob, let's say 40+, do to the inside of a ship?

Have you ever seen what happens to a cop car in a riot?

Recalling the nuts nature of your campaign, yeah, they're basically going to take everything that isn't nailed down then go to work on everything that is. If it's valuable, they'll run off with it. If it's not valuable but shiny, they'll still run off with it. If it's neither shiny nor valuable they'll smash it, break it, set it on fire, or otherwise destroy or vandalize it.

Basically, they are going to shred the interior, smash windows, pull out hydraulics, tear out conduits, launch the escape pods, purge the coolant, steal any personal gear left aboard, including the food pillows and bedsheets, dump all O2, tear out the air filters, and the toilets, steal the fuel cells, literally just tear out any dial, screen and button from the cockpit, the yokes will be hanging on someone's basement wall, so on and so on. And at some point, someone will start pouring fuel all over the interior and exterior and just set the whole thing ablaze. If you can, try and find the video from the 80's where the mujahedeen captured a Russian airfield including several intact Mi-17 helicopters, then proceeded to loot the helicopters down the frame. If you can't find that, check out this scene from the movie Lord of War .

Bottom line... without months of serious, delicate, expensive repairs, that ship will never fly again. Honestly, this ends in the PCs without a ship (which maybe is actually one of the nicer things you could do to them).

Now... will they cut their way into the locked room that your droid bathtub mentalist hides in? Maybe? Maybe not? Last I checked he would rather martyr himself than be captured and ripped apart by a mob...

On ‎11‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 6:42 PM, Ehrran said:

Question 2: What can 40 Stormtroopers do to a ship interior?

Well the good news is they aren't going to loot the ship. But they are 100% trained and equipped to board a ship and will make quick work of any resistance. They will cut their way into the locked room, and probably just pitch a thermal detonator in and call it done.

Great replies, everyone.

Sadly, my destruction of the ship didn't go **quite** as planned. As mentioned above, the mob was roaring through the city, tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy nuts in the lead, around 5,000 strong and growing at a rate of 1,000 per hour.

Murderdroid did hide the trail pointing back to him as the bomber pretty well. But this time, he somehow forgot that both the Empire and the local government use recon droids, as well as living spies. I didn't.. ? A 50,000 CR bounty does tend to draw all kinds of attention, let's face it. Attention a typical PC group does absolutely NOT want. I mean, if he can build spybots, why not the local cops? ? (Still scratching my head on why they didn't get the hint when they arrived in system, and saw two Star Destroyers and eight 5-ship TIE fighter patrols in orbit last session. ? )

I'll have to give him credit in a way; Murderdroid was actually helping in the kidnapping investigation by checking the police station computers and evidence room for any clues. He managed to get(with a lot of Deception and Computer checks) a Astromech copy of himself into the station, posing as a cleaning droid. He sliced the system and found a clue pointing to a notorious slaver wanted by the cops, then transmitted the data back to the PC ship. Not bad.

That said, planting a bomb in the evidence room as a distraction while robbing the place of anything valuable , was, IMO, not the way to exit the building. I gave him a rundown of things on the shelves; broken bottles, hammers, knives, blasters, etc. He grabbed a locked briefcase with a red tag on it, and placed it inside his compartment. He cut a shelf leg to collapse as a distraction for the two clerks in the room, the contents landing on the pair of thermal detonators he left behind. When he got around a corner, he blew them. Thinking of all the weapons in there and power packs for each, i added 150% to the damage and tripled the blast radius. The explosion took out one wall and part of the two floors above, damaging the PC replica as well, dropping him to around 3-5 Wound and 1 Strain left, iirc. The red-tagged case the droid replica swiped? An acid bomb, designed to destroy the case contents if the wrong code was entered. It leaked, damaging him further before the local SWAT team ran up. The replica, at the moment his batteries hit zero, (1 un-soaked Strain taken from acid) detonated the remaining 2 thermal detonators (all of his copies carry around 4) before they could open fire.

At the same time, the stealth-suited PC Smuggler/Pilot was cutting a deal with a NPC red Twi'lek "dancer" that was living in the club owner's 2nd floor penthouse apartment. After the woman grabbed a backpack and a similar stealth suit (LoNH, pg. 104) , she opened the secret elevator to a hidden level, and provided fire support when they jumped 12 thugs loading a speeder truck. The Pilot was knocked out by blaster fire, and the last thing she felt before blackout was the dancer raising one hand towards her (medium range), and "being lifted on a cloud". The Pilot wakes up two days later on a bed in a classy bedroom, all her gear missing, nothing to wear but a silk bed sheet.

Meanwhile, also at the same time, female Togruta Jedi and male Bothan Modder leave the Savrip to chase the lead they found, which led to the city sewer system. A splinter of the crowd spotted them (around 200-500) and charged. They entered the tunnels, using the Modder's Survival checks to find a hidden room. After sabering the door open, battle with 10 thugs takes place. The PC team won easily. Off to one side was a series of cells, containing 4 of the missing 18 female blue Twi'leks, scared, tired, but safe. A second search turned up a hidden datapad with more info on the slave trade. The Modder hands the girls leftover blasters for their safety, remembering the mob. The Twi'leks fail a Cool check and blast two of the last three thugs before they can be questioned. the sole surviving thug has no hands from when the Togruta cut them off.

(I'll post why they won so easily and ask a crafting question later, in a different post.)

Back to Murderdroid.

I decided the Empire would strike first, since there was one Destroyer already in the atmosphere above Taleucema anyway. Within one round of the bombs going off, it rained dropships and shuttles on the city. A tank arrived first, pointing the main turret at the boarding ramp. While that was going on in front, 4 storm troopers jet packed down with two explosive charges. ( I used the stats from a Proton torpedo {pg. 230, EotE CRB} and replaced the engine with an electromagnet. The troopers drop onto the ship, set it on the hull, and arm the magnet and bomb as an incidental.)

Murderdroid said he kept the ship buttoned up and the engines hot at all times. I had him flip 2 Destiny points to do so, since it wasn't stated at last session. He instantly blasts off straight up and level. Then throwing a quick turn to shake the 4 stormtroopers off, fire the ventral guns at the tank on the ground, nearly wiping it out.(The NPC Astromech droid is piloting, one of his two custom combat droids is on the lower gun) The Troopers easily and safely leave the hull and blow the charges above both Engineering section and Main Cargo. (I prefer minions that THINK, in cases like this) Murderdroid checks the monitor and sees a to the west, a Star Destroyer swinging left to lay in a full broadside, and 20 TIE fighters screaming in from the south. The droid's player announces " I don;t bother making an Astrogation Check: I'm going to lightspeed..in atmosphere. the air ......<cool dramatic pause on the player's part, worth bonus XP>.. .Burns" . Since there are only droids on board, the rapid air loss made do real difference. The damage to Engineering sure did.

So the session ended with:

the Jedi and Modder ,coming out of the sewers, dragging three hot, near-naked Twi'lek women, and a screaming thug with no hands, dodging a bloodthirsty mob, looking up to see their home being shot up by the Empire, leaving the surface in a trail of fire and the grandmother of all sonic booms; (Remember, these two characters have no idea. .yet. .that the droid is on the most wanted terrorist list)

The GMPC HG, just in regular clothing and a heavy blaster pistol, lugging an armload of fresh groceries, rounding a corner, and seeing 200+ Stormtroopers and 50+ local cops where the ship used to be, gets on his commlink and can only raise the above two, the captain's only static:

The captain, unconscious for two days, no clothes, armor, or weapons anywhere;

Murderdroid, on a course unknown, engines damaged and in the red. (A few sessions back, the crew took a couple of months off from murder-hoboing to upgrade the YT-2400's Primary engines to Class .5 , forgot what they did to the backup,)

I was thinking of typing up 5 different endings for Murderdroid, sealing them in 5 envelopes, and letting the player pick one. "Choose Your Fate! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" Please feel free to suggest one, or more. ? And your favorite Evil Laugh GIF's, too..

9 hours ago, Ehrran said:

Great replies, everyone.

Sadly, my destruction of the ship didn't go **quite** as planned. As mentioned above, the mob was roaring through the city, tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy nuts in the lead, around 5,000 strong and growing at a rate of 1,000 per hour.

Murderdroid did hide the trail pointing back to him as the bomber pretty well. But this time, he somehow forgot that both the Empire and the local government use recon droids, as well as living spies. I didn't.. ? A 50,000 CR bounty does tend to draw all kinds of attention, let's face it. Attention a typical PC group does absolutely NOT want. I mean, if he can build spybots, why not the local cops? ? (Still scratching my head on why they didn't get the hint when they arrived in system, and saw two Star Destroyers and eight 5-ship TIE fighter patrols in orbit last session. ? )

I'll have to give him credit in a way; Murderdroid was actually helping in the kidnapping investigation by checking the police station computers and evidence room for any clues. He managed to get(with a lot of Deception and Computer checks) a Astromech copy of himself into the station, posing as a cleaning droid. He sliced the system and found a clue pointing to a notorious slaver wanted by the cops, then transmitted the data back to the PC ship. Not bad.

That said, planting a bomb in the evidence room as a distraction while robbing the place of anything valuable , was, IMO, not the way to exit the building. I gave him a rundown of things on the shelves; broken bottles, hammers, knives, blasters, etc. He grabbed a locked briefcase with a red tag on it, and placed it inside his compartment. He cut a shelf leg to collapse as a distraction for the two clerks in the room, the contents landing on the pair of thermal detonators he left behind. When he got around a corner, he blew them. Thinking of all the weapons in there and power packs for each, i added 150% to the damage and tripled the blast radius. The explosion took out one wall and part of the two floors above, damaging the PC replica as well, dropping him to around 3-5 Wound and 1 Strain left, iirc. The red-tagged case the droid replica swiped? An acid bomb, designed to destroy the case contents if the wrong code was entered. It leaked, damaging him further before the local SWAT team ran up. The replica, at the moment his batteries hit zero, (1 un-soaked Strain taken from acid) detonated the remaining 2 thermal detonators (all of his copies carry around 4) before they could open fire.

At the same time, the stealth-suited PC Smuggler/Pilot was cutting a deal with a NPC red Twi'lek "dancer" that was living in the club owner's 2nd floor penthouse apartment. After the woman grabbed a backpack and a similar stealth suit (LoNH, pg. 104) , she opened the secret elevator to a hidden level, and provided fire support when they jumped 12 thugs loading a speeder truck. The Pilot was knocked out by blaster fire, and the last thing she felt before blackout was the dancer raising one hand towards her (medium range), and "being lifted on a cloud". The Pilot wakes up two days later on a bed in a classy bedroom, all her gear missing, nothing to wear but a silk bed sheet.

Meanwhile, also at the same time, female Togruta Jedi and male Bothan Modder leave the Savrip to chase the lead they found, which led to the city sewer system. A splinter of the crowd spotted them (around 200-500) and charged. They entered the tunnels, using the Modder's Survival checks to find a hidden room. After sabering the door open, battle with 10 thugs takes place. The PC team won easily. Off to one side was a series of cells, containing 4 of the missing 18 female blue Twi'leks, scared, tired, but safe. A second search turned up a hidden datapad with more info on the slave trade. The Modder hands the girls leftover blasters for their safety, remembering the mob. The Twi'leks fail a Cool check and blast two of the last three thugs before they can be questioned. the sole surviving thug has no hands from when the Togruta cut them off.

(I'll post why they won so easily and ask a crafting question later, in a different post.)

Back to Murderdroid.

I decided the Empire would strike first, since there was one Destroyer already in the atmosphere above Taleucema anyway. Within one round of the bombs going off, it rained dropships and shuttles on the city. A tank arrived first, pointing the main turret at the boarding ramp. While that was going on in front, 4 storm troopers jet packed down with two explosive charges. ( I used the stats from a Proton torpedo {pg. 230, EotE CRB} and replaced the engine with an electromagnet. The troopers drop onto the ship, set it on the hull, and arm the magnet and bomb as an incidental.)

Murderdroid said he kept the ship buttoned up and the engines hot at all times. I had him flip 2 Destiny points to do so, since it wasn't stated at last session. He instantly blasts off straight up and level. Then throwing a quick turn to shake the 4 stormtroopers off, fire the ventral guns at the tank on the ground, nearly wiping it out.(The NPC Astromech droid is piloting, one of his two custom combat droids is on the lower gun) The Troopers easily and safely leave the hull and blow the charges above both Engineering section and Main Cargo. (I prefer minions that THINK, in cases like this) Murderdroid checks the monitor and sees a to the west, a Star Destroyer swinging left to lay in a full broadside, and 20 TIE fighters screaming in from the south. The droid's player announces " I don;t bother making an Astrogation Check: I'm going to lightspeed..in atmosphere. the air ......<cool dramatic pause on the player's part, worth bonus XP>.. .Burns" . Since there are only droids on board, the rapid air loss made do real difference. The damage to Engineering sure did.

So the session ended with:

the Jedi and Modder ,coming out of the sewers, dragging three hot, near-naked Twi'lek women, and a screaming thug with no hands, dodging a bloodthirsty mob, looking up to see their home being shot up by the Empire, leaving the surface in a trail of fire and the grandmother of all sonic booms; (Remember, these two characters have no idea. .yet. .that the droid is on the most wanted terrorist list)

The GMPC HG, just in regular clothing and a heavy blaster pistol, lugging an armload of fresh groceries, rounding a corner, and seeing 200+ Stormtroopers and 50+ local cops where the ship used to be, gets on his commlink and can only raise the above two, the captain's only static:

The captain, unconscious for two days, no clothes, armor, or weapons anywhere;

Murderdroid, on a course unknown, engines damaged and in the red. (A few sessions back, the crew took a couple of months off from murder-hoboing to upgrade the YT-2400's Primary engines to Class .5 , forgot what they did to the backup,)

I was thinking of typing up 5 different endings for Murderdroid, sealing them in 5 envelopes, and letting the player pick one. "Choose Your Fate! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" Please feel free to suggest one, or more. ? And your favorite Evil Laugh GIF's, too..

You died, wah wah karma is a b

=w=

*Opens mouth.*

*Closes mouth*

*Repeats*

**** DROIDS!

*Deep breathes*

*Sighs*

Sounds like it went fun despite that! XD

Ehrran, if you are having fun, go for it. That is really the first, last and only rule for how you should run your game.

Personally, at this point I would just ask for everyone's character sheet and explain to everyone why they got sent to Kessel. Except for the muderbot. He hit an asteroid in hyperspace and is ionized plasma now.

I also would not let a PC copy themselves into a disposable body. Especially one like that.

Sounds like a crazy fun adventure. just in the number of games I've played over the years you do eventually get a character who is just off from the rest of the team and the GM has to find a way to reel him in or send him on his way. It sounds like you have an interesting adventure opportunity for the next game in locating and recovering the pilot as well as finding a way to avoid and appease the mob.