Once Upon A Time... Kaboom!

Once Upon A Time… Kaboom!

It’s your campaign’s first session! Your players just finished building their characters. If more than 15 minutes goes by without something exploding, give up your campaign.  Seriously, I’m talking about physics-defying fireballs causing great disturbances in the Force. I want your players’ jaws to drop and one of them to say, “But I just made my character.”

The situation surrounding the Kaboom should keep the PCs reeling for the next couple of gaming sessions. There should be a tiresome series of encounters with little time to lick wounds or make plans. Keep the PCs moving, hoping to survive.

Should you kill the PCs? Only if you want players to quit. However, you can have them knocked unconscious and captured. That is how the original trilogy began. The star destroyer blasted the bejeezus out of Tantive IV. Vader and posse mopped up the deck with the NPC rebel crew, driving the droid PCs to escape in a pod. The Leia PC was cornered and shot unconscious. I bet the players around the table were all yelling, “WTF!”

The Phantom Menace actually does a great job of creating a Kaboom with a lingering threat. Minutes after landing in the Viceroy’s command ship, the Neimoidians disintegrate the Republic Cruiser. Gas seeps into the room Qui Gon and Obi Wan are sitting in, and droids charge into the room, blasters firing. The Jedi race across the ship, trying to cut through the blast doors before the droidekas pulverize them. Finally, the heroes slip into a dropship and end up running from the droid army.

What’s the point of this player abuse? There are two reasons. The first: remind the gamers they are playing Star Wars. In a Star Wars adventure, the heroes do not answer a classified ad looking for caravan guards. Nor do they hang around cantinas until someone contracts them to explore a dungeon. Okay, Han and Chewie started their campaign adventure hanging around Mos Eisley Cantina waiting for adventure… but I consider them PCs late to join the campaign.

Chance and destiny capture the heroes. Star Wars is about typical people swept up by Galactic events. They must act or perish. Even in TPM, Qui Gon and Obi Wan went into the Viceroy’s ship assuming it was another routine negotiation. Then Kaboom! Adventure swept them away.

Secondly, you are providing the PCs with a firsthand demonstration of the power and ruthlessness of the enemies they will be battling over the course of the campaign. After running from the Kaboom fallout, the heroes’ psyches should be altered so that when they are called to make a stand against the enemy, they will not waiver from the challenge. They want revenge or to put an end to the evil they suffered under. And, they will likely have started to bond as a team through sheer need.

Let’s review the two trilogies. In ANH, the entire movie is made of the fallout from the Kaboom!... until the heroes reach Yavin IV and are asked to attack the Death Star. Until then, Luke and the droids were running from the Empire’s thugs. They thought they were safe when they got off planet on the Falcon, but by chance they ended up trapped in the enemy’s base. They did what they had to do to escape, and in the process they rescued Leia. Only when they got to Yavin IV were they approached to go on a mission. Only then did they have the choice to walk away from the destiny chance had put before them. Luke was affected enough by his experiences enough to volunteer and attack the Death Star. Han tried to deny his attitudes had been affected by his recent adventures. In the end, he returned to blast the TIE fighters off Luke’s butt, allowing him to destroy the Death Star.

In The Phantom Menace, Obi Wan and Qui Gon get aid from the Gungans, so they could reach Theed to help the Naboo and escape. They tried to outrun the blockade and took severe damage to the hyperdrive. The Tatooine adventures are an extension of the fallout from the initial Kaboom! Only when everyone reaches Coruscant are they free to make decisions unrelated to the Kaboom fallout. However, Padme and Qui Gon were affected strongly enough by their recent experiences they decided to end the Trade Federation’s occupation at all costs.

In the next blog entry, I will show the Kaboom fallout from several of my campaigns. Also, I will discuss the consequences of weak Kabooms.

Dark Destinies on the Net

Star Wars has always been about community and family. Beyond the movies and books, it's a wonderful community of fans. In this spirit, I want to welcome to the web Dark Destinies, a blog which serves as a resource for fans of Star Wars Saga.
Please check it out at: http://gmdarkside.blogspot.com/p/others.html

Star Wars Film School

A couple years out of college I made the reckless albeit inspired decision to make a feature film. This didn’t come from nowhere. I’d sort of made my own little films since childhood. Then, throughout my college career I gradually swayed from broadcast journalism to the starving artist world of indie filmmaking.

In studying screenwriting, I learned a very important lesson, one that I apply to designing Star Wars adventures: Show it. Don’t tell it.

I am a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which makes fun of some of the worst movies ever made. What unites an overwhelming majority of the highlighted films is that the characters in these films stand around theorizing in endless dialogue. These scenes can easily put you to sleep. What those movies should do is show dramatic scenes of the heroes discovering clues through active investigation.

Here’s an example. Roll that clip:

“I think the monster is radioactive, Sergeant,” the scientist ponders while sipping a gin and tonic, a cigar smoldering between his fingertips.

“Why do you say that, Doctor?” the Sarge asks.

The scene goes on like this for about a week.

The movie would be much more interesting if the Sarge and Doctor catch a glimpse of the monster as they were driving back to the lab. They leap from their jeep, cute spunky reporter in tow. Shots are fired. A wild chase ensues. They reach a farmyard. The cute reporter is grabbed by the monster. The Sarge picks up an axe and chops off the monster’s arm. The beast drops the reporter and escapes into the foggy night. The men bring the unconscious reporter to the lab (they never take victims straight to the hospital in these movies). The reporter’s skin is all disgusting and reminiscent of custard. She becomes violently ill. The Doctor realizes she has radiation poisoning… a type he doesn’t know how to cure. He’ll need to capture the monster and learn how to help the plucky custard-skinned reporter before the radiation sickness kills her.

Now, let’s adapt this example to a SAGA game.

The PCs sit in a room and talk about the monster rumored to be terrorizing the village. The scientist rolls Knowledge: Life Sciences and gets a 25. The GM tells the player, “You think the creature is radioactive.”

End scene.

Roll the clip for the cooler version:

The PCs are riding on speeder bikes near the village. They see the monster in the shadows and engage in a high speed chase through the forest. The spectacularly fast creature seems to fly through the trees. The PCs barely keep up as they dodge the trees. The forest gives way to a clearing and they reach an agri-processing plant, where giant droid harvesters deposit food on a conveyor belt, that takes the goods through a high-powered washing spray, through a forest of droid arms that separate the good parts from the bad with claws and blades. Finally, the vegetables are flash-frozen and crammed into a transport.

The monster leaps down and grabs the cute reporter, who is the sister of one PC and the love interest of the other. After suffering enough damage, the monster releases the now unconscious reporter and flees. The 21B droid in the med center informs the PCs the reporter is suffering from an unknown form of radiation poisoning and it doesn’t know how to treat her. The PCs will have to capture the monster and study it so they can find a cure.

Don’t let crucial information be learned by a simple knowledge check. There should be a battle and chase for every important plot point gained.

Also, the stakes need to be raised as the plot advances. In my example, the sister/love interest’s life is dependent on the PCs capturing the monster. The plot is now personal.

The beauty of a campaign is you have time to examine the PCs’ back stories and weaknesses. As a GM, it is your job to find out what buttons can be pressed to make the PCs squirm. What are their passions? What are their attachments (ask Anakin how that can be used to motivate a PC)? Then, work it into the storyline. Is it more effective to have a cool NPC gunslinger confront the PCs or to have a cool gunslinger NPC who is the brother of a PC, who betrayed the heroes, imprisoned the PC’s love interest and is now trying to gun them down and collect the bounty?

It was a great scene in ESB when Luke confronted Vader on Cloud City, but the scene would not be as well remembered if GM George hadn’t decided Vader was Luke’s father.

Make it personal. Make the PCs work for the details. Then, you’ll have a blockbuster campaign, not b-movie schlock.

Viper Attack

The blog's been silent due to massive work on the "Naboo Food Fight" module, which I wrote for Buffalo MiniCon. The games went so well, I've been recruited to run the games at Rochester's Simcom. Hooray!
I've also been working on reworking the Dawn of Defiance Campaign for my group. Here is a video from "A Wretched Hive," as a swoop gang terrorizes a shanty town and extorts the PCs.

Convention Updates

Unfortunately, Cinefest 9/25/10 has been canceled.
Fortunately, I will be running two Star Wars SAGA games at the University of Buffalo MiniCon 10/9/10. The games include a Dark Side Jedi Hunter adventure called "Operation Overwhelming Justice" and a more whimsical module called "Naboo Food Fight." Slots for both games are available.
For information on the Mini Con and to reserve your slots go to http://minicon.ubsarpa.com/
Star Wars Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, Saga Edition

Cinefest Buffalo MiniCon September 25, 2010

I will be running a NJO original module at the Cinefest MiniCon this Saturday, Sept 25th. Join me for "Centerpoint of Action." Also, they have the designer of Feng Shui as a guest. He'll be improvising a game at the Con. Check it out. Here's the skinny on the MiniCon.

Date: Saturday September 25th
Time: 8:30 am till midnight
Location: Rockwell Halls 3rd floor. Cinema gamefest HQ will be in room 305
Rockwell hall is located on Buffalo States Campus the address is
1300 Elmwood Ave
Buffalo NY 14222

Here's a google maps link to the location:
http://maps.google.co...

Events:
We'll be showing movies all day in the HQ room and we'll have our growing library of games from CRAGG's (that's buff states gaming club) and my collection. A large number of roll playing games will be offered themed to the movies you've loved over the years by some of the best GM's the BGS has to offer. The best part is all the gaming goodness and the movies are free and if your hungry we'll be having breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the lowest costs we can.

To register for the events and to let us know your coming head on over too http://www.warhorn.ne...

Fixing Encounters With Hazards

In my last entry, I discussed changes I made to the first scenes of my House of Wookiees campaign, thanks to the skill challenge rules presented in Galaxy of Intrigue. I’d like to continue that discussion. Only this time, I want to show you how I improved the same encounters with rules presented in Unknown Regions.

Hazards.

For the first skill challenge/encounter, the heroes are in a bombed observatory trying to climb to the portal where the telescope had peeked through the domed roof. The PCs make their way to the roof, dodging the Imperial jumptroopers who emerge from the stairwell. As I worked on revising this encounter, I strongly considered tinkering with the insanely complicated rules I’d concocted concerning the cracked holoprojector display, which fills the observatory with refracted images of the Alliance orientation video. The broken holodisplay would make it difficult to determine reality from recording. In my first draft, this is how the rules worked:

House of Holos

The broken holoprojectors make it tricky to get around the observatory. The characters will have a difficult time recognizing what is real and what are refracted recordings.

The holoprojector shows each scene for three rounds before cutting to the next. When a character tries to make a perception roll looking in a direction, he takes a -10 penalty from discombobulation caused by the refracted hologram. Each round after the holovideo scene change, during which the character keeps looking in the same direction, the PC’s perception penalty decreases by five. This reflects the PC separating reality from the recording. As soon as the character looks a different direction, he returns to a -10 perception penalty. Other penalties may apply during specific scenes, as described below.

All the holograms affect the lower story of the dome. Once the PCs get past the first three catwalks on their way to the portal, the hologram penalties no longer apply. The exception to this is the scene showing the Star Destroyer blasting the refugee transport. This scene fills the entire dome and affects the upper level of the dome as well as the lower level.

The PCs may locate the holoprojectors (perception DC 15) and break them (ref def 12 2hp) to eliminate the refracted images.

PCs with the Use the Force skill can separate illusion from reality with a UTF check of DC10.

Scenes in the orientation holovideo; each scene lasts 3 combat rounds.

1. The PCs see a city street. A teenage human male stands between an Imperial officer and his mother. She clings deathly tight to her baby. The teen tries to shove the trooper back. The officer holds his ground and breaks the teen’s nose with his blaster. He follows up by shooting the mother in the head. Another stormtrooper kicks the baby beneath a passing troop transport.
2. A stormtrooper casually tosses a thermal detonator into a school. As burning children run screaming from the building, a stormtrooper squad competes to see who can mow them down fastest. PCs suffer an additional +5 perception penalty because the holographic fire creates concealment for anyone standing in the midst of the scene. Also, since there are many troopers in the video, targeting or identifying a jumptrooper from a virtual trooper incurs an additional -10 penalty.
3. Humans flee across a mighty bridge. An AT-ST rounds the corner and clears traffic with its blasters. Bodies and landspeeders fly off the bridge and into the river far below. The last round of this scene creates an additional -10 perception penalty because of fire and smoke.
4. In a cantina, a group of senior citizens barricade themselves behind the doors. The fridge and piled furniture separate them from the stormtroopers outside. A small window shatters, and the bar fills with fire. For the first two rounds of this scene, there is an additional -5 difficulty identifying holographic images of the cantina from the observatory’s fixtures. The third round is filled with fire, so perception is hampered by -15.
5. The scene shows an outside view of an Inner Core city hall. The city’s leaders have their hands tied behind their backs. Stormtroopers shove them towards the town hall. Troopers fire over their heads to startle the captives into a sprint. Once the people disappear into the civic building, a TIE bomber drops its payload on the site. For the first two rounds, identifying commandos from “holo” troopers causes a -5 perception penalty. When the bombs fall, the image swings around violently as the holographer runs away. Everyone needs to make a willpower roll DC 15 to avoid dropping one step down the condition track as the result of motion sickness.
6. Transports plow dead bodies into a bantha pen.
7. A fleeing transport is run down by a Star Destroyer and disintegrated in a hail fire of turbolaser bolts. Everyone needs to make a willpower roll DC 10 to avoid being startled by the Destroyer’s appearance. Failure moves the character two steps down the condition track. Characters on a catwalk who fail this roll need to make a reflex roll DC10 to avoid tumbling off the catwalk.

This was for the first encounter of the campaign. I think I would have scared most rookie GMs away. It gives me a headache to read it.

Using the guidelines found in Unknown Regions, the funhouse effect of the cracked holovid lens could be turned into a simple hazard.

House of Holos Hazard CL 1

Description: The cracked holovid lens causes the displayed images to be replicated in three places throughout the observatory’s lower level. This causes anyone looking directly at it to possibly confuse what’s real and what is holographic imagery.

Keywords: Optical, Mind-effecting

Attack + 3 vs Willpower

Damage: If the attack is successful, the target suffers -5 to attacks and any skill check the GM deems to require precise visual concentration. For example, Acrobatics skill checks would suffer a -5 penalty because performing acrobatics requires knowing the precise location of walls, floor and obstacles. Persuasion checks would not be affected because it does not require precise understanding of what is real and what is virtual in the room. A target cannot be affected multiple times.

Trigger: At the start of initiative, the Hazard attacks all PCs looking into the affected area.

Recurrence: The Hazard attacks at the start of each round of initiative.

Skills:

Perception: DC 14: As a full round action, the PC studies the area. On a successful skill check, the PC is immune to the hazard’s attacks for three rounds.

Use the Force: DC 14: As a standard action, the PC reaches with the Force to filter out the illusion from the reality. On a successful check, the PC is immune to the Hazard’s attacks for 3 rounds.

Oh my, this simplifies things and keeps the spirit of the Hazard alive. I think the best part of the Hazard construct is that it affects the jumptroopers as well as the PCs, creating fascinating possibilities of how this encounter might go down.

I lied. The best part about this Hazard is that I don’t get a headache from reading it.

It could be argued everything would be much simpler if I had just deleted the entire thing and kept the encounter simple. The problem with that is Star Wars is not about simple encounters. It’s a pulp movie, a space opera. It’s about taking things to extremes. If Vader and Luke confronted each other for the first time in one of Cloud City’s hallways instead of in the carbon freezing chamber and then on catwalks over massive pits, the scene would have lost a lot of its flavor. The obstacles helped make the scene cool.

A WOTC forum poster called this the Spielburgian method. “I do like to use the Spielburgian method of escalating action scenes - he often throws in one or more environmental factors into an action scene, which helps to build the task load for the heroes to a crescendo as the scene unfolds (though they often provide opportunities and new resources for the players too).”

If you’re like me and tend to overcomplicate things in your games, the Hazards guidelines are a great way to take some of the headache out of GMing. If your encounters lack the Star Wars flair, then crack the holovideo display, add a bottomless pit, and listen to your players groan, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

But they will have a childlike grin on their faces.