My Star Wars PCs have found themselves assigned to Echo Base. The Imperial attack is a few weeks away, and I'm looking to run a couple of sessions before the big event. So far, I've come up with a few ideas, and I'm calling on the collective minds here for some help.

1. "Having trouble adapting the speeders." A couple of the more technical-minded PCs are tasked with working on getting the speeders working in Hoth's frozen environment.

2. Establishing outposts, one of which the PCs will be stationed in when the Empire attacks.

3. Search and rescue - like Luke, a scout goes missing.

4. Hunting and/or capturing a Wampa or three.

What ideas do you have?

Give them a full blown mission/adventure, not just errands.

We detected some activity in the southern hemisphere. It's probably just smugglers or pirates laying low, but we can't have our operation compromised. Go down there, check it out, and if it is a threat, deal with it.

You can write a whole multi-session adventure on that premise.

It may also be cool as you're in a canon area to make a link with that. They could help set up the shield generator, maybe finding tauntaun's if the speeder adaptations fall through etc. It could also be a good time to meet some of the legends of the films, nice moment for the players probably to talk to Leia and folks. It'd probably only fill a little time but it may be fun.

You could always pull a nice little spy troupe to give them something important to do.

Commander calls them into his office with General Leia, both looking rather shaken. They explain that they think there's an informant in the ranks, and they've detected a few attempted broadcasts they've managed to intercept. So, no transmissions have gotten off the planet, but the most recent breach was just barely stopped before it hit Imperial Airwaves. They need the players to investigate who might be attempting to alert the Empire, as they are (through some plot hook magic) the only ones besides a few core characters (such as Han and Luke unless you want to use them as potential suspects) and then set them loose to find the traitor/spy.

Before the Attack

• The Wampa attack that never made it to the screen.
• Chewie needs a part he can't find to fix the Falcon. And he needs help putting it in.
• For the space guys, the crew is returning from a supply run when Vader's fleet arrives in-system.
• Analyzing the parts of an Imperial droid that Han brought back in order to crack Imperial com codes before the attack.

During the Attack

This is an idea I had a while back but never got to use. To avoid mixing it up with canon scenes, recall the all important Ion cannon. An Imperial raid of Stormtroopers upon the Ion cannon facility is launched just before or during the assault. It's aim is to blow up the Ion cannon to take it out as a threat to the drop ships and/or orbital ships. The PCs were assigned to guard the Ion facility or perhaps they are suddenly told by Leia to get out there when it's suddenly attacked.