Hyperspace Downtime?

By Crazed Lasher, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

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.

We also see Palpatine travel from Coruscant to Mustafar in a very short (but not defined) amount of time in Episode III.

The times are very hand-wavy, depending on the style of game you want. Some people want to fly from one side of the galaxy to another frequently (which the movies seem to support), while others want to detail specific sectors and keep the game in smaller 'neighborhoods' for more intimate storylines. In the former case, the travel times may seem too long, and in the latter case, the given travel times may be too short. The guidelines given for travel times seem to be set somewhere in the middle.

Still, I've noticed that some of the products seem to forget that a x2 hyperdrive is more common than a x1 and that means the travel times are going to be longer. The old adventure in the Beta was actually impossible to accomplish if the PCs chose the Firespray (x3 hyperdrive) and required perfect timing with a x2.

This is a good open ended question. Here's what I do...

First off, before the game starts, I'll ask my players what they'd like to prioritize:

"Okay players, please rank the following from 1-5 in importance:

Combat

Playing out your Backstory

Romance

Hard Science

Slice of Life (Day to day activities outside of adventuring)"

If the players average a high score in Slice of Life, then I'll change up EotE to simulate a day in ten minutes. I'll roll up a 1d100 and have about 100 random examples of things that can happen to either a single character, or a crewmember. For instance, the refresher can go down in one of the days. It floods. I'd probably go ahead and make it the Wookiee's fault. He dumped a big Kashyyyk log in there. A little bit of humor. The crew can do whatever they want about it, but the day shouldn't be any longer than 10 minutes in real time gaming before we go to the next day. I'll take out the "refresher goes bonkers" from the 1d100 list, and then I'll add in another example, like "Pass a secret note to a player and tell them they find 200 credits, plainly sitting there at the Dejarik Table... Could be anyone's."

Lots of other stuff can happen in a day, if you want to get into the nitty gritty of it. A player should have to deal with his addiction, and you might be keeping track of other things, like food consumption, but this is all optional and outside of the heroism nature of Star Wars.

If the players don't really care for Slice of Life, then we just move on. As soon as they hit the hyperdrive button, we skip, in the interest of time.

Edited by hencook

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

I don't think the movies are very useful for that. Padme goes from barely showing to being really obviously pregnant over the course of E3, yet at no point in the movie can you say "here's where a few weeks go by". It's a myth. If these stories were written 400 years ago they'd used phrases like "...and lo, they came upon Mustafar..." or "...and behold, the twins were born..."

Turning the myth into an actionable RPG means getting a little more practical with the details.

I get some rest. Or fix the group's gear. Or patch CC-2N8 up. Or hunt for spy-bots, tracking and sabotage devices. Most importantly, everyone uses the time to heal.

Well, on Fridays healing is the second most important thing we do. Because every Friday...

Hyperspace Downtime sounds like a great name for a tapcafe!

There is a tapcafe casually called "The Downtime" in the Rouge Squadron series. Your cafe may already exist! It's existed long enough for people to stop using it's full name.

I ran a horror session back in Saga set in the KotOR era while the group was in hyperspace. Basically, they had just left left Taris after delievering some goods to the Undercity. A group of rakghouls boarded without them knowing and started causing all kinds of damage, which included the door to the cockpit sealing and the crew being unable to exit hyperspace. So, in addition to not knowing what was messing with the ship and half the lights being out, they were on a time-table because they needed to get back in the cockpit to exit hyperspace when they reached their destination.

You could try surprising them with something like that. Something stows away or they get some crates that contain something that escapes during the trip.

There have been some really good responses here, folks. Thanks for all the ideas! Feel free to keep 'em coming.

I have added "Hyperspace Downtime" to my campaign as a cantina near one of the players' main contacts on Ord Mantell. I look forward to spending some time there!

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?

Then I would most likely cause damage to their ship, I'm all about keeping the PCs poor. Or, if one of the bounty obligations was in affect their might be one hiding on board, etc.

For trips that last more then a day I like to have the players make an easy resilience, cool, or vigilence check. Usually a failure results it some Humorous quirk or event at the players expense. I have one player thinking he is now followed by a ghost.

Edited by kinnison

We had about 3 days of hyperspace travel in our adventure tonight.

The characters did the usual Mechanics and Medicine to heal droids and sentients, and they had some pretty spirited debate about what to do with the relics they recovered in the tomb they just raided.

It was some good roleplay where each of the characters got to shine by really expressing their points of view, whether it was "let's sell everything for as much credits as we can" or "let's save the relics and donate them to a museum" and various points in between.

It was nice!

The session had moved a little faster than I expected, so some of the characters visited a contact at their destination and several others actually visited the Hyperspace Downtime cantina where they flirted with and charmed some of the locals!

Hi again!

Sorry for this new instrusion. But, what do you think about this?

An example of this is the journey from Coruscant to Alderaan. In terms of distance, Alderaan was situated close to Coruscant—the former at approximately 5,000 light years from the Core, the latter at approximately 10,000.[7] However, during the Imperial era, such a journey required roughly sixteen hours of travel due to a section of the route passing through a part of the largely-uncharted Deep Core, where navigation was difficult as a result of the gravity wells produced by the congregation of stars.[8] Ironically, then, it was actually faster to get from Tatooine to Alderaan on the other side of the galaxy. In some cases, intragalactic travels could take days, depending on the distance between two planets and the obstacles between.

In general therms... maybe time would be a basic distance reference but the main amount of time is based on Setbacks due to hazards?

Suggestions?

I'm not even going to make something up... despite Hyperdrive rating, Hyperspace travel moves at the speed of plot at our table.

Hyperspace travel takes as long or short as the GM needs for plot purposes.

If it doesn't move the plot forward, Hyperspace travel happens instantaniously.

Edited by CrunchyDemon