I don't think I have ever used a published module exactly as written (except maybe very early in my GM career). Sometimes the changes are necessary, sometimes I adjust it to fit better with my group and sometimes they simply add to the fun.

Realizing that it's a basic game tutorial, most changes will probably be minor - but what additions, tweaks or adjustments have you made to Long Arm of the Hutt? How did they turn out for you? Would you do the same thing again? What would you recommend for other GMs just about to run the game?

I ran The Long Arm of the Hutt mostly as-written (for a very experienced group of players) and it ran 99% without a hitch. The outline for the adventure itself is pretty solid, and if the PCs go 'off-rails' at all, the module does a good job of describing what's going on behind the scenes so that the GM can plan for contingencies.

I used it mostly as written, but I made the Trandoshan bounty hunter villain a Wookie renegade. Made a particular item in the follow up adventure even more gruesome. He ended up with a suitable death at the fangs of Mr. Krayt in that follow up.

I found it to be rather complete. and not in need to changing. When they get ambushed by the Bounty hunters at the Lylek Den, my players were not doing well, and they ended up dragging one of the unconscious players into the den and later the surviving hunters got eaten by the Lylek. THe players captured Dromb and he basically bargined his life from the information on the computer the players didn't recover.

I ran this mostly as is but I removed the ambush at the lylek den, I used the general idea later after they had met with ota, i also moved the attack by thweek to happen as they left ryloth.

However once the PCs had dealt with the thugs on Ryloth, they actually offered the head guy a chance to partner up with the Twi'lek ryll miners if he kept up a pretence with Teemo that everything was ok.

In response to the players raiding Teemo's computer files, following his demise, I put together a list of information in the form of Teemo's to do list. This has seeded a number of adventure options and also persuaded the group to try to do a heist involving raiding Teemo's bank account.

EDIT: I've attached Teemo's info dump for your enjoyment!

Teemo.doc

I have just started running the adventure and have just done the Lylek Den ambush for 6 players. They made it without any big issues, although the poor politico neimoidian got stunned pretty quick

Since I am living on Wookieepedia, I could not help noticing an issue with the adventure though.

One scene, DRUNK AND DISORDERLY, plays out during the night, in the dark of the night to be exact.

One problem... Ryloth does not have a day & night cycle It is eternally day on half the planet due to 'Tidal Locking' - something that makes Ryloth very special.

(Check it out here: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ryloth)

Now, one wonders why the constructors did not take this into account, heh.

So, one change I will make is to get a sandstorm blowing instead of using the darkness as an environmental difficulty.

Yeah, I know.... minor issue.... but I really like Tolkien and is a sucker for details

One problem... Ryloth does not have a day & night cycle It is eternally day on half the planet due to 'Tidal Locking' - something that makes Ryloth very special.

I thought the same thing, its actually been retcon'd to have a normal day night cycle.

I am about to run this adventure for my group and there are a few things that I thought made very little sense. The first being at the ambush den. It states that the BH's will fall back into the caves and take shelter behind a wall of rubble, effectively cutting them off from their speeder on the opposite end of the cavern network...? Why not just fall back to their speeder in case they need to make a quick escape?? Also having the beast come out and eat the BH's for disturbing it's slumber but completely ignore the PC's is just poor writing.

Another issue is when you reach the mines, and the thugs show up, it is written that they pay not attention to the PC's unless threaten by them. These thugs have been terrorizing these dirt poor miners for weeks now, and suddenly some armed strangers who up out of the blue, and are of no concern?

I was really excited when I read about the Beyond the Rim campaign... but after this and the beginner box I am starting to have my doubts about their published material.

Ouch! That means... the whole planet has been remade into an ordinary ball of rock and dust, and instead of the self illuminated wonders created on the night side we now have a run of the mill cousin of Tatooine? I can't say that I approve really.

Do you have the source for this, since I would really like to know.... why

One problem... Ryloth does not have a day & night cycle It is eternally day on half the planet due to 'Tidal Locking' - something that makes Ryloth very special.

I thought the same thing, its actually been retcon'd to have a normal day night cycle.

I was really excited when I read about the Beyond the Rim campaign... but after this and the beginner box I am starting to have my doubts about their published material.

Eh, I wouldn't worry too much. The Beginner Box (and by extension the sequel) are pretty much the tutorial level to get you to know the game. Are they pretty poor adventures? Well, Long Arm isn't so bad - but they're both pretty linear and railroad-y and designed to do one thing: get the players familiar with the game engine. And in that, the Beginner's Box succeeds fabulously.

I decided not to have Thweek's ship attack them when they arrived, as they had just beaten the TIE fighters at the end of the previous encounter and I felt like we didn't need 2 space battles in a row. Also I'm running with 6 players and with the beginner box that meant 2 people were sitting out.

Since Trex had escaped the ship when the PC's took control of the Krayt Fang, I had him show up at the Lylek Den to ambush them (Teemo had sent him in Thweek's ship with the transponder), making him a recurring character. The players beat the bounty hunters easily and Trex escaped into the Lylek Den. They heard him being eaten and when they stealthed into the cave to make sure, they saw his arm lying just next to the Lylek.

Everything else I ran as normal on Ryloth, except on the way back they stopped to pick up the bounty hunters speeder at the lylek den (think they'd sell it) and discovered bloody tracks leading from the Lylek den to the speeder. Trex had survived!

The only other thing I *would* change is when they get to Geonosis. The adventure even states it's a lot of information and it's complicated, so what I would have done if I had known is take the 2nd duke out of it. You're pressing 1 duke to get info to give to the 2nd duke...and they have almost identical names. Some of my players were a little confused by this, and honestly there's no reason for it. I would have just played it out that you needed to get the same information from the people at the party and then present it to the Duke, cutting out the 2nd duke entirely. Would have streamlined that whole party and made a lot more sense.

My players infiltrated the party as a Wookie opera company and rolled mediocre cool checks, so they impressed almost no one except one partygoer who loved them and asked for their EP.

To get rid of Teemo a couple of them tortured an imperial customs agent for Teemo's information, snuck inside his palace, stunned some security guards in the security/database room and retrieved all his info. Then they blew up the generator and escaped in the confusion.

Jabba apprehended Teemo and thanked the PC's, but the obligation has now shifted because he's a little annoyed they destroyed the infrastructure to an underling's base and it cost him money.

Also I'm running with 6 players and with the beginner box that meant 2 people were sitting out.

There are two free to download characters intended as supplement to the beginners box. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=224&esem=4

My heroes went off the rails as soon as they landed on Ryloth, so I've been more or less winging it and throwing in content from the module as I see fit.

If you have some time, here's what I did:

For starters, they said, "why would we take a speeder to New Meen when we have this starship?" Since Ryloth is more or less a frontier and a shadowport, I let them do it since I figured there wouldn't be much in the way of Planetary Flight Control to interfere.

Then, they captured Drombb's joyriding thugs, beat the crap out of one of them and sent him back home. Since the heroes had pretty much offed every bounty hunter that came looking for them, I cooked up some fierce nemeses for them for a big showdown last night, wherein Drombb had Oskara's sister present. The combat was cinematically spectacular and they ended up freeing Makara, capturing Drombb, offing my two sweet nemeses, and getting some vital information from Drombb's computer about the site's ties to Teemo.

At this point I don't see much need for them to even go to Geonosis. They must contend with the Imperial Nebulon-B frigate in orbit, conveniently in Teemo's employ, but the information they got from Drombb's computer gives them a leg up there as well. I figure they're going to extort the imperials and anyone else in Teemo's employ on Ryloth, then go take the information to Jabba (who they already knew called the shots on Tatooine, all by themselves! I'm so proud.)

This was all done with the Beginner set - we're going to come back around and make adapt the characters to the core rules (everyone really likes the pregens and plans to continue playing them with a few minor modifications) and then continue on with the story.

This was all done with the Beginner set - we're going to come back around and make adapt the characters to the core rules (everyone really likes the pregens and plans to continue playing them with a few minor modifications) and then continue on with the story.

Starting Long Arm soon and this post was great to read. Also wanted to echo that my players mostly liked the pregens, my wife for example is playing Pash, renamed Pesh and made female, so after Long Arm she'll remake with minor tweaks.

When I ran it I tweaked some things in Act 1, these are my original notes below.

Cast B'ura as a Spice Mining Overseer. He's not a Warrior but he knows how to effectively run a spice mine and is loved by his people. B'ura wants to offer the PCs a meeting with his business partner Nyn, who deals with distribution.

If the PCs explain their situation with Teemo then B'ura will explain that Teemo has been trying to muscle in on his mine and they have a common enemy.

When the PCs arrive at Nabat, Nyn explains the situation with Drombb has escalated in B'ura's absence. Nyn then shows the PC a holovid of him doing some horrible stuff to some of the Twi'leks. Nyn also explains that Drombb works for Teemo (optional, have one of the PCs even have a backstory with Drombb while they worked for Teemo).

When B'ura leaves the room have Nyn explain that the old man is a great overseer he's too old to be a freedom fighter, especially after Trex's treatment of him. So Nyn feels she has a business proposal for the PCs.

The proposal itself is that the Twi'leks want to go full scale on their spice operation. First step is to escort B'ura back to the mine and get rid of Drombb. With B'ura back in the saddle the spice will flow and she'll give them an option to transport and make lots of credits in the process.

Nyn will also throw in fixing their ship and/or (depending if it's damaged) putting a new transponder ID in it after Mos Shuuta.

Meanwhile all of these discussions take place in front of Nyn's lieutenant Novus`Passik who has scouted Drombb's operation and can offer some advice on what would be a possible assault plan. Nyn places Novus in charge of programming the PCs speeder. Unknown to the PCs Novus is actually a spy for Drombb/Thwheek/Teemo and can take Trex's place in the Bounty Hunter ambush (with him being the traitor).

Also I'm running with 6 players and with the beginner box that meant 2 people were sitting out.

There are two free to download characters intended as supplement to the beginners box. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=224&esem=4

Oh I should have clarified - they didn't have anything to do during ship battles, according to the beginner rules anyway. Core book has them busy enough.

We ended up using all but 1 character from the downloadable, the 6th made his own using the beta rules (droid assassin).

OK Wookieepedia says Ryloth was tide locked, then in Clone Wars it wasn't, so it was retconned not to be tide locked. Well, in *my* Star Wars Universe it will be re-retconned backed to being tide locked, cause tide locked planets are cool.

Not to mention that a non-tide locked Ryloth eliminates the reason for underground dwellings due to a normalized climate (due to the rotation, the heat storms will most probably even out over the surface). It would heavily impact both flora and fauna, and definitely also atmosphere composition due to an increase in humidity. The list can go on and on....

I think I will chalk this up to a mistake on the behalf of the Clone Wars production and completely ignore that the animated series is supposed to be canon.

Although, if one really wants to follow the rules for canon, and make Ryloth have a day/night, I read up on it and found a really good solution I can accept. Copy & Pasted from a discussion on Wookieepedia;

Our Earth moon is, as most know, tide-locked to the Earth. However, due to the eccentricity of the moon's orbit, it undergoes a phenomenon known as libration. This basically means that the moon wobbles back and forth, revealing part of its dark side to us as it cycles. The moon will complete a libration cycle once during its rotation. For Ryloth, this would mean that part of the dark side and some of the bright side could "switch places." (You really have to watch the libration gif on the Wikipedia page to understand what I'm saying). Assuming Ryloth undergoes libration, this could in fact provide us with more information about the planet, meaning that it must therefore complete a single "year" in the 30 hours that it takes to complete one libration cycle. If that seems impossible, investigate 55 Cancri, an extrasolar star with a planet that orbits in just over 10 hours. Now, I don't know enough about orbital dynamics to know if the combination of a 30 hour orbit, enough eccentricity to create a "day and night cycle" and the earth-like mass of the planet could exist. This would require a physicist or astronomer to investigate. However, it could still mean that Ryloth has its unique and awesome tide-lock status, and the references to rotation could refer to its libration cycle (since that servers as a sort of rotation). I know this adjusted orbit would conflict with the stated orbital cycle, but I know I would rather have one numerical mistake in a guide book than countless substantive mistakes throughout the entire EU.

Otherwise..... a wizard did it!

OK Wookieepedia says Ryloth was tide locked, then in Clone Wars it wasn't, so it was retconned not to be tide locked. Well, in *my* Star Wars Universe it will be re-retconned backed to being tide locked, cause tide locked planets are cool.

Well, we finished Act One last night - all the way up the infodump for Paddock's party. I had to change the opening of the game around, since instead of starting with the beginner's set like intended, we did our own "gather the team" game - so I had one of the group's Obligation Contacts hire the crew on as a favor to Teemo. Trex's ship had some misfortune and need to get his cargo to Tatooine. Along the way, they'd discover the boxes stank and that B'ura was captive in a crate. They would fight, kick Trex to the curb and take B'ura to ryloth easy peasy.

That's how it mostly unfolded. Except that they finished the delivery, taking the wookiee pelts to Teemo - who was upset that they had killed his favorite hunter and tried to pull a fast one over on him. So he ordered his Gamorrians out to beat the stuffing out of them and bring them back.

So I got to insert the Starting Adventure after act two had already gotten under way! Made even more strange by the fact that a couple of days before our first Real Game, we took the characters out for a test run to see how the engine worked and if the characters were built correctly. So instead of re-running the encounters, I just went "That stuff on friday? It happens here", Our test run suddenly became game canon!

The other major change? The players fortified the hell out of New Meen, dug pit traps and spikes on the wall, armed the villagers and that sort of thing. If Drombb's men came in force, they'd have a hell of a fight on their hands. Then when three drunk thugs came rolling into town with their Killdozer, they fell right into the pit trap, were easily overwhelmed and suddenly the players had a heavy construction vehicle on their hands!

So they A-Team'd up the bulldozer with some armor plating, rigged a flame thrower out of the town's alcohol supply and proceeded to return the favor flattening Drombb's spa, men and cantina while Drombb got into his other Heavy Lifting machinery - suddenly it was a Killdozer duel!

I dropped the "Are you with the alliance" NPC, making Nyn the player's point of contact for the whole game. I moved some of the info-dump stuff around and streamlined things a touch (either on purpose or by accidental omission) - but it's a pretty solid effort thusfar.

There were a few things I changed. Mostly to adapt to my players freewheeling nature.

I had a group of 3 PCs on Ryloth. They decided to go after Drombb in a completely out of the box way. My bounty hunter PC is sniper heavy and took up a position on the giant dirt mound outside New Meen and waited it out for a shot. Another PC, a politico, was gonna lie her way in and the last PC, a mechanic, was going to attack through the back of the cantina. (I had added in a back entrance to a kitchen area.) The politico bluffed and said she was a replacement worker and got buddy-buddy with Drombb while the mechanic set off an explosion in the kitchen. All the guards inside ran to the kitchen and into a smoky, bottle necked fight. The politico convinced Drombb to leave it to the guards and exited the front, right into the sniper shot that the bounty hunter PC had been waiting for.

On Geonosis to throw in some action, and because it was already stated that their faces were plastered all over the Holonet, I had Vrixx'tt make the connection and then leave the bar to get a stashed weapon in another room. Two PCs followed and incapacitated the guy, got some info, and killed him. That took him out of the end fight on Geonosis.

And lastly back at Teemo's they went with the, in-the-box, method of entry, but asked if there was a specific time they were set to be delivered. I let them go with it and said there wasn't. So the Vio Twins dropped them off when everybody was asleep. They managed to hack the computer systems and had complete control over the place. They then proceeded to take out the guards, the Kubaz spy, and Teemo. They thought to steal the Dunelizard on their way out too.

Well, it (more or less) went as scripted. I had to juggle some bullet points as they didnt talk to anyone at Paddock - at all. They just went straight for the Duke, which was fine. I wound up dropping the other Duke like Blue Dog suggested which streamlined the middle act.

After presenting a pretty convincing argument why Teemo is bad news, they win over the Duke. Okay, their efforts to bargain to get guns was terrible, but they got the important part tidied up. They managed to sneak onto the transport bound for Tattooine, mugging the poor dockworkers on the other end so they could haul the cargo to Teemo's place, plus they had a message from Paddock they had to deliver (which was the truth - just that the message was "You suck.I hope you die in a fire")

Of course seeing the massive chandelier over Teemo's throne, everyone went "Well, that's poor planning"

One player took a header into the combat pit after rolling a despair. The other one got a bunch of threats, did a Wile E Coyote by jumping up, cutting the chandelier free, but hung onto the cable BELOW the cut. She had just enough time to whip out a sign that said "Help" before falling and winding up waist deep in Crushed Hutt Gutts. Anyway, once Teemo was taken out of the picture, it was a pretty short fight.

However, not only did they grab Teemo's 10 grand from his strongbox, they also grabbed several crates of weapons and hotfooted it outta there for Mos Eisly (about 5 hours away by speeder) - which is where they ran headlong into an Imperial lockdown on them. "Lets see your identification, you have any droids?" they asked at the Roadblock.

Of course one of the team was still completely covered in Hutt Gutts and they did have several crates of blaster pistols and rifles in the back of the truck. I figured that the 501st had more important things to do than stop gun runners, so they fined them and sent them on their way.

Then of course they had to find a way off the planet, seeing that their ride was several light years away. They got to the cantina just in time to see an old man with a cool lazer sword. And they talked down the pilot they hired from their initial 5,000 credits to half that - until they left the planet and found three star destroyers coming after them. They tipped the pilot well after that. (:

Thanks for your insight, guys and gals. It was an interesting read.

I want to play the beginner's box adventure with the pre-gens just to get a taste of the game.

Afterwards, we want to make characters.

I like the adventure of "The Long Arm of the Hutt" but I think it would be silly if my new characters just step into the shoes of my old characters.

Thus I would like to change the adventure to be more like a stand-alone instead as a sequel to the first one. My ideas would be to change the Big Bad and his home world.

Any ideas or hints on that?

Thanks alot.

I know this is an old thread, but I can contribute now that my group is going and I'll be starting this adventure tomorrow.

We did not use the actual beginner game, so I have quite a few revisions right off the bat.

For starters, although my players picked the YT-1300, it is not the "Krayt Fang", so the "Resolving Issues" challenge is a bit different. It is a newly acquired ship, and I like the idea of having to "settle in" and figure stuff out, so I put a few issues into it myself. The ship had previously belonged to a troupe of Twi'lek dancers who wanted to get into showbiz. The PC mechanic was looking for a fresh start, and had an arrangement to travel free in exchange for keeping the ship running, insisting that any major repairs be paid for. On Clak'dor 7, the dancers hooked up with a group of Bith musicians and let the PCs keep the ship. "I got it from an ex boyfriend anyway, so it's not like I had to pay for it." If the mechanic traveling with showgirls sounds familiar, it's because I stole the idea from "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert."

There are a number of other challenges with the ship, but more involving the lax upkeep prior to the PCs getting it. The boyfriend (see below) took a few shortcuts to keep the ship going, bypassing faulty power couplings instead of replacing them. This reduces the ships SS Threshold by 1, and can cause malfunctions if Threat comes up in any Piloting rolls.

I didn't have Long Arm of the Hutt in mind when I used the Twi'leks as a plot device for the ship. It just worked out nice that way. Of course, they aren't going to just suddenly find a Twi'lek in the Number Three Hold. So, the story modification is that the boyfriend works for B'an and initially went to recruit aid in taking on the Development Crew, taking the girls with him to keep them out of danger. (they thought he was taking them to find fame and fortune) When bounty hunters still showed up, he gave them the ship and tried to lure the hunters away, not knowing that the ship itself had a beacon on it.

So, as they are leaving their current mission, they will have the encounter with the Kubaz spy. This should prompt them to start looking for answers to why they were attacked. Old messages will inform them of the mission to recruit help. They are the type to work for a good cause, as long as there is some reward. Their other primary contact will also have an interest in aiding the Ryll miners, and will probably replace Ota in the second Act. I'm not sure how far my players will go in this. They are mostly freelancers interested in exploration, and may not want to involve themselves in Hutt business.

The final act went exactly the way the module said it shouldn't go. My group (four mandalorians) used the shuttle to gain access to the palace loading docks, taking the dock crew hostage. The groups slicer went into the coms room and began slicing open the security system.

Half way through that work the door the sniper was guarding opened and a Gamorean walked in. Having readied her knife she stabbed him and shoved him into the other two gamoreans behind him, it was suddenly go time. The sniper charged past the guards and into the hutts throne room with the shocktrooper right behind her. Having caught up, the medic and slicer came across the two surviving gamoreans and finished them off.

with the element of surprise, the mandalorians laid waste to the throne room ending with a protracted battle with the hutt. After all was said and done I let the group read the passage about how attacking the palace was a really bad idea "Fighting their way in is possible, however unwise. Good luck to the PCs!" This was met with laughter and several rounds of OYA!

Now before you start thinking that my group is just a rabble of bloodthirsty monsters, understand that this was an act of revenge. To sort of equalize the group as starting characters I had them taken as slaves by the hutt. He sold their gear, ship, and strill, leaving them in chains. The kick off of the game was the escape into mos shuta so their starting credits represented whatever gear they could grab on their way out of the palace.

The final act went exactly the way the module said it shouldn't go. ...

After all was said and done I let the group read the passage about how attacking the palace was a really bad idea "Fighting their way in is possible, however unwise. Good luck to the PCs!" This was met with laughter and several rounds of OYA!

That's usually my experience as well. The old joke was,"they won't be expecting this because no one would be stupid enough to try it."

The new trend is that anytime the appropriate line would be "I have a bad feeling about this," my group instead says "Challenge Accepted!" I can use that.