Let me start by saying that I've been a lurker to these forums for a long time, but today I decided to go ahead and sign up. This seems like a great community to be a part of. I have already ran the beginner's box adventure for my group, and at our next session I plan on running The Long Arm of the Hutt before moving on to some homebrew stuff as well as some of the official supplements like Beyond the Rim and the Jewel of Yavin (when it comes out).

My Question is this:
In the core rule book, hyperspace travel times with even a Class 1 hyperdrive can take hours or days, if not weeks in some instances. What do you have your players do during this time? What sort of things can go wrong, or happen, during hyperspace travel? It seems exceedingly boring and against the spirit of the game to simply say "Okay, you get to Ryloth and the trip was uneventful. What now?" I know that Long Arm of the Hutt has a few things for the players to do or figure out, but they all seem like one off events. I'm looking for other things that could come up later on.

For bonus points, any tips for Running Long Arm of the Hutt or connecting any of the other adventures story-wise? Thanks in advance!

You can say "you've got X days/hours until you get to your destination, did you guys want to do anything"? If a player wants to just read, maybe they get a boost dice for the next day or so based on whatever they were reading. If they want to mod an attachment, they've got the time to do it. If they just want to rest and recover a couple wounds and all their strain, let them.

There's nothing wrong with downtime, whether in hyperspace or planetside. Appropriate use of downtime helps put the times of high-action into better perspective.

Yeah, as long as their astrogation check was ok, no threats or despair, then I simply ask them if there is anything in particular they want to do. If not then skip ahead.

We don't normally expressly cover what happens during downtime. We are all about the scenes of action, and are naturally all untrustworthy individuals who would screw eachother over at times. XD

I donno about everyone else. but I spend a lot of time modifying weapons (currently modifying a dueling pistol to fire more then one shot, to make it my emergency rifle in my pocket,) working out in the large Cargo bay (Waylander, so it's huge) and watching re-runs of friends. Otherwise, got no idea. I remember one time one player went on a quest that we spent 6 weeks in space. I would go mad at spending such a long time on a ship.

I just go around the table and have every player describe what they do in the mean time.

I give them an idea of how long the trip is expected to take, and ask if there is anything the players want to do.

Sometimes this can lead to some fun roleplay, as the characters interact. Then, if there's anything unexpected, I'll let them know.

Thanks for the replies everyone! I intend to use hyperspace downtime to let the players relax and do whatever it is they want to do. Occasionally, though, I think it would be interesting if things came up, just to keep them on their toes. That's the sort of thing I'm wondering about.

Yeah, as long as their astrogation check was ok, no threats or despair, then I simply ask them if there is anything in particular they want to do. If not then skip ahead.

What if there were some threat or despair?

I give them an idea of how long the trip is expected to take, and ask if there is anything the players want to do.

Sometimes this can lead to some fun roleplay, as the characters interact. Then, if there's anything unexpected, I'll let them know.

What sorts of unexpected things might you throw at them?

What if there were some threat or despair?

Book describes threat lowering accuracy or increases time to get there. Despair can do the same or puts them straight into an asteroid field.

Repair gear, heal up in the Bacta Tank, perform Equipment mods. Basically unless its important, I don't count time and I let the players get 'that other stuff' done.

What sorts of unexpected things might you throw at them?

- Imperial Interdictor ship

- Rogue asteroid, or one towed into place by pirates, to force the hyperdrive to cut out

- somebody sabotaged the hyperdrive before they left

- somebody changed the coordinates on them without them noticing

- out of fuel

- a stowaway is found

- if they're carrying cargo, something formerly innocuous "wakes up"

- something is wrong with the dejarik board, and the Wookiee never wins. Now there is an angry Wookiee on board

- the food goes bad, and they all have to use the refresher at the same time

- life support stops recycling the air, making everybody progressively sleepier

- one of the quad lasers starts firing and won't stop. If this keeps up they'll be out of fuel and tibanna gas in no time

...

Obviously a few of these will require premeditation on some NPC's part, and the PCs should have a chance to discover it before it becomes trouble, but...

What sort of unexpected things?

For example, they might be sitting around debating the existence of Luck and the relative merits of Blasters versus more ancient types of weapons, when they come out of hyperspace and find their destination planet is now a series of asteroids.

If something like that were planned for the plot, I might encourage the characters to get in a bit of personal roleplay time on the way, to make it feel more organic when they arrive and find out their destination has been destroyed, or the space station they're flying to has been annexed by the Empire, or something like that.

Other things might be, depending on how they rolled on Astrogation, they might come out of hyperspace

- too near the planet, in its atmosphere

- too far from the planet, in an asteroid field

- near the planet's rings

- too close to the solar system's junk debris cloud

- in the middle of an unexpected starship battle

- inside a nebula, ion cloud or other 'space atmosphere' effect

- greeted by an Imperial customs inspector

- greeted by planetary police forces

- greeted by pirates

- greeted by Smugglers

- greeted by a traveling merchant ship

This could provide some color on their arrival. Even if it's just a simple Piloting check to recover control, then you can narrate their flight to the planet's surface, or their docking with the starport or cruiser they're traveling to.

Almost everything mentioned doesn't apply to downtime while in hyperspace. The destination is different from the multi-day journey.

Yeah, as long as their astrogation check was ok, no threats or despair, then I simply ask them if there is anything in particular they want to do. If not then skip ahead.

This in a nutshell.

Some groups will want to go into detail about certain things their characters are doing, others will want to just skip ahead to the next scene. But most will be a mix of the two, giving a broad overview of what their characters are doing during that time but not really wanting to spend more than a couple minutes on it before moving on to the next scene.

I ran a campaign in which the heroes would go back in the cargo hold and box. It's something of a running gag, but it let the players keep playing while I took a bathroom break.

-Nate

Hyperspace downtime sounds like a brilliant place for a MONTAGE!!!

Hyperspace downtime sounds like a brilliant place for a MONTAGE!!!

Possibly an anti-montage showing everybody doing a whole lot of nothing!

An anti-montage! That sounds awesome!

Possibly an anti-montage showing everybody doing a whole lot of nothing!

Was that a Gamers 3 reference?

Hyperspace Downtime sounds like a great name for a tapcafe!

I have not heard of Gamers 3. Is it something worth looking into?

Hyperspace downtime sounds like a brilliant place for a MONTAGE!!!

Possibly an anti-montage showing everybody doing a whole lot of nothing!

So basically, a loading screen.

We had a whole adventure during one of our hyperspace space travel times.

At least from my experience, most PC recovery takes place during "hyperspace downtime." The group of players I have for my ongoing game aren't super RP heavy so if the trip is going to be long I simply ask what their characters want to do with their time, take care of any skill checks involved then fast-forward to where they can interact and RP with stuff beyond just each other.

Exploration themed campaigns should make more use of playing through some travel time than most other campaign types though.

In old times (and still yet XD) they use to Train,Train,Train,Train,Train,Train,Train and so on XD

And one doubt here. Are spacetime travels a bit to high?

In Clone Wars movies seems than Yoda came from Coruscant in above 1 day or less. Just a "lots of Advantages" question or hypersapce travel times must be adjusted?

There are some military/political grade "speed hyper-routes"? I have seen a few references and it seems that in a few (sometimes a lot) hours character travel from on place to another easily and without spending so many time.