Star Wars: Escape from Mos Shuuta, Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of our impromptu Star Wars: Edge of the Empire session! In the previous part, our motley band of heroes:

• Human Smuggler, played by Joe
• Wookie Monster / Hired Gun, played by Drew
• Twi’lek Bounty Hunter, played by Thomas
• Medical Droid, played by Thomas’ friend
• Human Guardian, played by Bill
• Togruta Seeker, played by Antony

had staged a daring escape from the clutches of Teemo the Hutt, a crime lord on Tatooine. Their only means of escape from town was a spaceship, the Krayt Fang, that was still docked there. Unfortunately, the ship’s hyperdrive needed a new hypermatter reactor igniter (HMRI). And the vessel was owned by an associate of Teemo’s, a trandoshan slaver named Trex. So far in the group’s attempt to escape, they had beaten up some of the Hutt’s thugs and had stolen the igniter from a shop.

Now, with the HMRI secured, their next task was to get into the spaceport control facility to release the docking clamps on the Fang. The outside of the facility was guarded by two security droids, so the party’s droid walked up and fed them some bull about needing to refresh the medical supplies inside. The security droids bought it, but insisted on accompanying the mechanical medic on its task. The others hid out of sight.

Inside the facility, a human woman named Overseer Brynn was directing an Imperial shuttle to land at Landing Bay Besh, which was on the other side of town from Aurek, where the Fang was. There were two more security droids and several techs in the room, as well. While the med droid performed its fake task, the bounty hunter, guardian, and seeker crept into the forechamber of the building. Outside, the wookie and smuggler had discovered a locked side door, which the smuggler started to jimmy open.

As the security droids were escorting the party’s droid back outside, they walked into an ambush, just as the smuggler tripped an alarm while getting the door open! Firefights ensued in both the forechamber and just inside the side entrance. The techs hid as best they could while Overseer Byrnn pulled her pistol and reported that she was under attack.

The droids were quickly overwhelmed. Brynn heroically avoided the group’s attempts to subdue her, until the smuggler waltzed in and hit her with a stun blast. With the opposition dealt with, the droid quickly plugged into the computer, released the clamps on the Krayt Fang, and furthermore issued a security alert that the attackers (i.e. the party) were headed for Landing Bay Besh… and that they were disguised as stormtroopers!

The resulting confusion allowed the party to make their way to Landing Bay Aurek without being harassed by either Teemo’s forces or the newly arrived stormtroopers.

Bucket of Bolts

The landing bay was on a security lockdown, but the guard droids let the group pass when they displayed the HMRI and claimed they were there to fix the ship. The Krayt Fang was a rust-colored Corellian YT-1300 light freighter – or in other words, a recolored Millennium Falcon – and its boarding ramp was already down. The group sauntered over, only to  find Trex himself standing at the top of the ramp, blaster in hand.

With everything that had been going on – especially the release of the docking clamps – Trex knew that that he would soon be having visitors. But he was surprised at the size of group confronting him. He shot at them with one hand while hitting the button to close the ramp with the other. Everyone but the droid and the seeker managed to clamber on board anyway, and Trex retreated further into the ship while trading shots with the bounty hunter and wookie.

The smuggler ran to the cockpit to begin warming up the ship. As far as they knew, it was capable of flight, it just couldn’t enter hyperspace. The guardian opened the ramp back up again and rushed around the other side of the ship, hoping to cut off Trex if he tried to run. But the slaver didn’t get so far – he took a critical hit from the bounty hunter’s rifle, and then the wookie charged in with his vibro-axe and chopped the trandoshan into little lizard chunks.

Stay on Target!

The droid and the guardian (who was also a decent mechanic) worked on getting the HMRI installed while the ship headed for orbit. Suddenly, alarms went off – there were 4 TIE fighters inbound! The Krayt Fang would have to hold them off until it could make the jump for lightspeed! The bounty hunter and the wookie ran to man the turrets.

I explained the piloting options to the smuggler/pilot, who declined evasive maneuvers in favor of… flying in a straight line. Not very cinematic! The lack of maneuvers would make the gunners’ jobs easier, but would also make it easier for the TIEs to hit them. And as it happened, it was exactly the right call! The TIEs whooshed menacingly and pew-pewed for all they were worth, but did little damage to the ship, while the bounty hunter and the wookie quickly shot up the fragile fighters. As the last one was destroyed, the tech crew reported that the HMRI should be working again. The smuggler pushed the “engage the hyperdrive” lever and… it worked! The stars stretched out before them as they made the jump to hyperspace. They were free!

Conclusions

All in all we had a fun time and a suitably Star-Wars-y experience. The players seemed to pick up on the how to use the special dice by the end of the evening, which was gratifying. I kinda feel like special rules or props of this nature, despite being oft-derided on the internet, are usually only an issue for a session or two before folks get the hang of them.

I’m not sure that I got the hang of them, though. Since it was a spur-of-the-moment game, I hadn’t prepared at all, and didn’t really know what to do with the special die results most of the time, and fell back on adding Boost dice a lot. Which is fine and all, but I don’t think it really showcased the potential of the system very well for the players. That’s a big regret for me, since the wacky dice results were my primary draw to the game.

While the session felt like Star Wars, I think that owes more to the trappings than the system itself, which (unusual dice aside) is not all that different from D&D or other traditional games. Certainly anyone familiar with 3e or Pathfinder will recognize the 6 stats (Str & Con are consolidated into Brawn, and Int is split into Intellect & Cunning, but otherwise the stats are D&D’s) and the skill breakdowns (charm, deceive, coerce, stealth, perception, survival, knowledge skills, etc.). And while the game doesn’t have levels, it does have classes, class skills, and feat trees. Your equipment matters a great deal, you should wear armor if you can, you’re going to get shot up and so there are healing “potions”, and so on. Maybe all of that is intentional – making your game similar to D&D probably makes it easier for folks to adapt to it – but, like D&D itself, it’s not terribly cinematic. Or very good at reflecting the source material.

But at the end of the day, I hope we get to play again sometime. I’d like to see if I could do a better job factoring the dice into the story more.