I think this is one of those things that works better on the big screen than at the gaming table. A series of short hops within a sector to escape with great difficulty and risk is one thing. Yet, for the sake of setting coherence and narrative stability sticking to staid, boring, rational hyperspace limitations and travel times is the wisest course. This is why all those hyperspace times were built into the old WEG system to begin with. Most of Han and Poe's hyperspace stunts in the ST are bat-quano insane universe breaking stunts that doubled-down over the rule of cool over any sort of rational and consistent universe.

Just now, Daeglan said:

I wonder if skipping is always into gravity wells? or if you skip out of gravity wells it is just microjumping

Based on everyone else's reactions (including Rey's - "You can't hyperspace skip the Falcon!") it sounds like there's at least something more involved than micro-jumps. If it's not (almost) always into gravity wells, would it be the stress of repeated micro-jumps that seems to wreak havoc on the ships?

8 minutes ago, Vondy said:

I think this is one of those things that works better on the big screen than at the gaming table. A series of short hops within a sector to escape with great difficulty and risk is one thing. Yet, for the sake of setting coherence and narrative stability sticking to staid, boring, rational hyperspace limitations and travel times is the wisest course. This is why all those hyperspace times were built into the old WEG system to begin with. Most of Han and Poe's hyperspace stunts in the ST are bat-quano insane universe breaking stunts that doubled-down over the rule of cool over any sort of rational and consistent universe.

Perfectly cromulent points. 😀 But we all know how players can be when they see that bat-guano insane Really Cool Thing. So, may as well have something ready for when they almost-inevitably decide they want to try it, too.

Plus, it's just fun to hash out, even if it doesn't get used.

47 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

The kind of games where you have characters that are Poe level good.

Ah, the ol' every character in a story has stats turned up to 11 for everything so they can't fail problem rather than they're still mortals that just succeed because of plot.

37 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Fair question, and upon reflection, the initial difficulty could probably stand to be reduced. Micro-jumps in Suns of Fortune start at Hard with a setback (PPPB). The impression I got from the movie was that only a fool (or someone like Poe or Han...same difference? 🤣) would try and seemed to be on the fly rather than pre-calculated, which was the thought behind bumping up to Formidable with setback (PPPPPB), and the seeming inherent danger leading to the automatic upgrade (seems like there's an inherent opportunity for a despair in the tactic). What sounds closest to what we saw, do you think? Hard with upgrade & setback (RPPB), or Daunting with upgrade and setback (RPPPB)?

I see where you are coming from. What about starting it off with some reds and some custom despair results? If only a fool would try because a despair can really mess with a ship and a couple could destroy it outright would work. Even something like RPP (adding setback as appropriate) and upgrading the difficulty for each jump afterward poses big risks. Even something as simple as a critical hit per despair could really add up to a ship.

Sorta side note. The preview for the Falcon has it's strain reduced because of all of the stress that the special modifications put on it. So that could help explain the condition it was in after they landed.

I imagine the main thing that's being used is less astronavigation and more playing chicken with celestral bodies. We have a term for it in our group and that's "blind jumping.", basically making a hyperspace jump without running any calculations at all and hope that one can respond to either stopping off in dead space after a certain distance or hitting a celestral body and being brought out of Hyperspace by the safety, whichever happens first. It makes for incredibly rapid and unpredictable hyperspace jumps, but only the most nuts would attempt this and only some of the most skilled would have a slight chance of surviving a "worst case situation." So there is some president for skip tracing around our table.

Skip tracing in this case seems to indicate some prepation, so they had clearly planned this route out before time (at least the general location of the entities that they would be skip tracing at), but is usually so close to a celestial body that one has to rapidly adapt to circumstances or immediately die. I imagining this is one of the smuggling tactics particularly desperate characters use to stay one step ahead of a more advanced society of lawful folk; thus it isn't exactly common knowledge, just something those "crazy *** spice runners" would use. The main advantage is it's more likely to be successful then a blind jump (which is entirely at the whim's of the environment.) and that it's possible to employ a complicated route that even the most advanced systems and astronavigators would be incapable of keeping up with on such a short term basis

The issue is that the route is pre-planned and is often done in a manner that leaves exceedingly little time to respond. It relies on knowing what is where at a particular time in day so skip tracing isn't something someone just does, it's a pre-mediated activity that relies on a route that only exists for that limited frame of time, thus they must use it for this journey at this time otherwise they would have to default to basic astronavigation, on the assumption that space is a pretty busy place!. So I would probably make the players make a series of astronavigation checks in advance (upgraded twice. No one really knows how celestial bodies move with 100% accuracy.) which varies in difficulty depending how difficult each step on the journey is. If the character fails or rolls despair? Something interesting happens. The more difficult the journey, the harder it is for the imperials to follow, but the more risky it's likely to be to the characters to really mess one stage of the jump up and take a major collision, maybe some piloting checks to spice up those jumps. That and it would rely on the players being punctual in terms of time keeping; if you completely miss the time frame? Just plane old astronavigation for you! Unless you want to jump blind. XD

Least that is my interpretation of it.

7 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

I imagining this is one of the smuggling tactics particularly desperate characters use to stay one step ahead of a more advanced society of lawful folk; thus it isn't exactly common knowledge, just something those "crazy *** spice runners" would use.

I love the way you put that. Do you mind if I appropriate the idea that smugglers and spicers have used it for the write up?

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

I love the way you put that. Do you mind if I appropriate the idea that smugglers and spicers have used it for the write up?

Go right ahead. ^^ That would be awesome.

We've dabbled with a fair bit of "Spicer Space" nonsense on a few occasions too, we actually pulled off a Micro-Jump with an Abyss Class Star Destroyer (Stealth Star Destroyer) in atmosphere of Jakku in the style of the The Adama Manoeuvre (Battle Star), basically used the stealth drive to get a flank on a Venator Class, then preformed a micro jump to get immediately behind the two dreadnorts and opened up on their engines with our unused gun batteries, and allowing gravity to finish them off. Our one Star Destroyer (crewed by battle droids drafted by our commando) ended up single handily downing four battleships (A fourth had showed up as reinforcements. Having run out of guns to fire, we gained altitude to drop tanks on them, which proceeded to blow that impractically shaped bridge right off!) over a number of rounds while defending the beachhead that the ground forces were establishing. Easily one of our most memorable sessions that involved practically *just* capital ship combat.

And this is why Predator Squad is the best anti-imperial squad in the galaxy, we drive the herds of white plastic before us like sheep in a hunting ground, sick them! XD (Yeah, our campaign is very much inspired by 80's action movies.)

The thing about that particular jump was that the commander of our force could use Wardes Foresight, so I was able to make an astronavigation check while double checked the numbers. We basically gave up both of our turns in order to make this work. I recall the difficulty being like 4 R, 1 P and a lot of setback dice, so despite all the advantages we had, it was still pretty **** close to disaster. Not something I recommend the average party trying! XD.

So yeah, we are no stranger to completely bonkers moves. Even the Holdo move, while possible requires some setup and a lot of sacrifice. So I gotta give to her; that move is hers. Even spice runners aren't crazy enough to destroy their ship(Willingly)!

Well, let's see how today's exercise looks....

Should double Despair result in your backup hyperdrive blowing?

Hmmm...I thought that was a possibility on a Crit, but looking at the vehicle crit table again, it's not specifically called out (although Nav computer is).

Does it really even need to be a crit though?
If you want it to be a crit, you could just add your own item to the component table.

I was just saying that I left it off of the table because I thought the possibility was already there with a crit.

Update to blow the frak out of the hyperdrive.

13 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

We didn't see it on fire until it was in-atmosphere though (right?).

Aside from that, yeah.

Right, but we did see smoke trailing off of a different vehicle in space for an instant in one scene, so... you never know! One interpretation would be the damaged areas and systems were hot enough to result combustion when the ship hit atmosphere. Or, that the there was a smaller fire in some systems between the outer hull and deck plating that had a major backdraft throughout the ships systems when it hit atmosphere.

9 hours ago, Vondy said:

Right, but we did see smoke trailing off of a different vehicle in space for an instant in one scene, so... you never know! One interpretation would be the damaged areas and systems were hot enough to result combustion when the ship hit atmosphere. Or, that the there was a smaller fire in some systems between the outer hull and deck plating that had a major backdraft throughout the ships systems when it hit atmosphere.

That was pretty much my interpretation.

Just going off on Rey's (and the others) actions upon landing, I would think you need to increase the System Strain per Skip to 2.

8 hours ago, Varlie said:

Just going off on Rey's (and the others) actions upon landing, I would think you need to increase the System Strain per Skip to 2.

Possible, but the falcon has a SS of 15 and it didn't break down during the skipping.

3 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

Possible, but the falcon has a SS of 15 and it didn't break down during the skipping.

How many hops did they do? I didnt count..

I would place the difficulty for attempting this at 10 Red dice. And that's just the difficulty to get the GM to let you try this stupid, nonsense, in-universe physics breaking rule.

2 hours ago, Desslok said:

I would place the difficulty for attempting this at 10 Red dice. And that's just the difficulty to get the GM to let you try this stupid, nonsense, in-universe physics breaking rule.

It's so good to have people like you here, making meaningful contributions and keeping the gate in general.

*shrugs*

It's a garbage moment from a garbage movie. Another JJ "Eh, f the rules of the setting. I do what I want."

18 minutes ago, Desslok said:

*shrugs*

It's a garbage moment from a garbage movie. Another JJ "Eh, f the rules of the setting. I do what I want."

It didnt break any rules. It just went to edge of safe. Strikes me as something a smuggler would do in desperation to escape getting caught. Rian Johnson broke far more rules with the Holdo Manuever.

It is worth keeping in mind that RPG rules are extrapolated from what we see on screen, but that what what we see on screen isn't necessarily all that is possible in this universe.

RPG rules are also constructed with an eye towards game balance and limiting what a PC can do. No Star Wars film has ever been written that way.

On 1/2/2020 at 11:20 AM, Desslok said:

*shrugs*

It's a garbage moment from a garbage movie. Another JJ "Eh, f the rules of the setting. I do what I want."

Which is, incidentally, how I like to run my Star Wars.

The more I think about it, the more I like the Lightspeed Skipping scene. Because it opens up the toolbox for me as a GM. Now hyperspace isn't just an "instant escape" option, and it can lead to new kinds of encounters.

Star Wars has never been a Lore-first universe. The movies come out and show us new things. Then the EU rushes in to "explain" it all.

This is where the dice, particularly Challenge , shine. Since Despair can't be canceled, it scales linearly as the stunt gets crazier. Want to skip-jump? Triple-upgraded Hard at the very least, for starters, and Hull Trauma follows System Strain quickly. The party will probably win the day but it'll trash the ship.

Don't underestimate how pragmatic players can be. My table once asked about intra-system jumps and all they needed to hear was how dangerous it'd be before contemplating other options.

I mean, in TROS, the Falcon was on flippin' fire. Poe pushed the limits because he could put the ship down in the middle of the Resistance's best mechanics, knowing they'd prioritize its repair. I loved that.