Rod and Rob played Destro and Jaina in my Post-Episode VI Star Wars RPG campaign yesterday. At the urging of their Hutt boss, the party found themselves infiltrating the prothium blaster gas system Killaniri as vendors to the Czerka Weapons Corp. Jarn Thro secured the needed vendor identification codes and ship marking decals. On the world of Mutanda, encircled by dozens of Imperial star destroyers, Pieda flew right in and landed Akbar's Trap at Justa Starport, near another 50 or so light to medium starfreighters. At this underground facility, Destro and Jaina got the lay of the land, mixing company with vendors from Czerka, BlasTech Corp. and Blethern Gas Industries as well as Imperial officers, civilian workers and a few of Mutanda's Horansi natives, who live on the surface largely ignored, except for a few mercenaries, poachers and hunting expedition leaders.
The Horansi are civilized but somewhat primative and resemble great predatory cats. Their tribal conflicts and racial and philosophical differences have split them into the tigerlike Kasa, the lionlike Gorvan, the leopardlike Treka and the pantherlike Mashi. Mostly, their native weapons have been limited to bows and spears. Destro and Jaina met their Gorvan contact, and working with him, they infiltrated and easily defeated his tribes foes in rival Kasa and Treka villages. In return for a more secure Gorvan region and services and weapons delivered by the party, valuable native animals were authorized for offworld delivery. In terms of credits, this will depend on what price this live cargo will bring elsewhere, but 20 tons of live herd, predatory and novelty creatures are now in the Akbar's Trap cargo hold, in return for a mere 2 tons of Hutt weapons.
As it turned out, an elusive Mashi named Sw'isi was an Alliance spy, but unfortunately the network of Imperial spies spread misinformation and used Destro, Jaina and the Gorvan tribe to smoke the Mashi out. But Destro broke in on the Imperial takedown of the Mashi, and after intimidating the entire group with a thermal detonator, he took data discs outlining the local spy networks as well as prothium gas production and delivery information. Using his new flutterpack, Destro flew away clean.
Jaina, with the help of this information, the party and the dirty rotten attorney Milus, managed to freeze her arm on a carbonite prothium processing tank, then sue Czerka Corp. for 1.25 million credits, settled out of court. In order not to submit to this defeat, Imperial agents attempted to apprehend Milus, but were prevented from doing so by Jackpot. Details are unclear, but may involve an unknown gas used in an Imperial star destroyer hallway, and possibly some unknown method of biological memory erasure similar to the procedure used on droids.
Experience: 3,000 xp
Ship Fund: +1.25 million credits, +20 tons exotic animals, -2 tons weapons
Next session: Saturday, June 30, 2007 2-8pm (subject to change)
I saw the brand new Star Wars rulebook. It's pretty straightforward. From what I can tell, the D20 system is getting better all the time. This newest update should streamline the game even more, speed up play and make it even more fun. Personally, since the game sessions I run are very short-story oriented, the rules actually matter a lot less to me as GM than most people would think. I tend to memorize the newest set of rules just by using it and yes, even though I can't really afford to, I try to keep up with the latest set of rules for Star Wars and D&D. In the long run, it's better that way because you don't get behind and you can enjoy each edition for its maximum possible life. So yeah, I okayed Rod and Rob to go ahead and update their characters to latest edition rules. But DON'T WORRY, they're easier if anything, not harder, and characters from the previous edition easily translate just fine. I think I get what Wizards of the Coast is doing with Star Wars: they've found a way to make it quicker for new players to create a character, while at the same time making it easier for veteran players like us to customize our characters more easily than before. I especially like the section on Droids. I could have a lot of fun with the Droid building guidelines.
Whew. All of that being said, for the session I ran yesterday, I referred to one of my old West End Games references, the Star Wars Planets Collection (1994). This book, like the GURPS Space planetary references, is good enough that you can open to just about any random page and have plenty of fresh ideas for a session. All you have to do is ad lib a few things, and you're good to go. So yeah, when it comes to role playing games, I like the newest rules, but when it comes to adventure ideas, the new stuff is great, but nothing is ever too old either so don't get rid of it. I have some old MegaTraveller ideas that I still use. I even incorporate Warhammer 40,000 ideas. I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction, and watch a lot of Scifi Channel also, and I file it all away in my mind, for possible future use of anything in some future session. And yet when I'm actually running a game, I usually start with just one big idea for a session, but I improvise and use a lot of index cards. I add some color and detail but I really try to keep the game moving.
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