[SWSE] Getting the PCs to get off the ship

[BudgetDM]

There is a chance I will be running a game of Star Wars Saga Edition[1] in the near future and I had the bright idea of having it be centered around exploration in the Unknown Regions, that way I can rip off Indiana Jones and the Mummy movies as well as the Star Wars film. But I think I might have hit a snag. On most civilized planets, you don't just strafe the enemy because they also have ships as well as anti-air weapon. A stone age tribe has neither. I'm sure that my players would be able to work this our fairly quickly. So what can I do to encourage my players to hike through the jungle like proper adventures archeologists?

Also, special bonus question. I was planning on having the PCs being under the command of a NPC captain. Does anyone any tips of keeping NPC commanders from getting annoying?

[1] I'm still learning the system, so their might be something in the rules that covers this

[Ulysses WkAmil]

1: Bestoweth upon them a Bullwhip. That will clear up any lingering problems about hiking through a jungle to get killed by traps.
2. Make the players think that the commanders idea are theirs. Like have the commander some how mind-twist the players into thinking they want to do said tasks. I'm not much on phsycology, so i'm turning it over to my good friend Fraiser Crane *cue people who know what they're talking about*

[LemuneSD]

Maybe they have intel that something they desire/need is there. Having a reason for them to go to ground would of course be priority. Maybe an overhead pass shows them something really neat and interesting, but they can't get close due to dense foliage or mountainous regions. They could of course get down easily enough if they wanted. But that would split the party if they didn't land. Also, getting back up would be a different problem entirely. With dense foliage, that would also interfere from any plans of using the Ship as air support.

Maybe the group comes across a wreckage from some previous starship. And a still functioning droid uses the ship's tracking beam to pull the party's ship to ground, where they can get into all that trouble with the local natives.

As for commanders, giving them notable personalities usually does it for my group. Either making the players really love, respect, or plain hate is a good way for that. To make them hate, have the commander be racist towards one of the alien members? Or treat them all like tools to be used towards his next promotion. love and respect will of course depend on the players involved.

[Coidzor]

Intel that they can't just scan for. Biological and/or cultural data (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-hr9Mx5PtE#t=2m52s)being of some level of value so that they ould be interested in sampling the local wildlife and sapients.

[LemuneSD]

Oh, and for groups that are relatively new, one extremely fun concept you could try. Rakghouls.

[Sith_Happens]

Oh, and for groups that are relatively new, one extremely fun concept you could try. Rakghouls.

Or, if you want to get even more mysterious and/or terrifying, note that the Unknown Regions are home to Mnggal-Mnggal (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mnggal-Mnggal).:smallamused:

[JellyPooga]

So what can I do to encourage my players to hike through the jungle like proper adventures archeologists?

Make the jungle really big. I'm talking city-block sized trees, big. Try strafing one of them and they're just going to end up making insignificant holes. They'll have to land in the one clearing big enough and close enough for your (the GM's) purposes, because their weaponry isn't sufficient to clear their own "landing pad". They'll have to trek through the giant-sized jungle because the canopy is too dense to see through and some weird alien creature or plant is disrupting their sensors.

[Premier]

1 - Terrain. You can't just land anywhere you want, not even with a Millenium Falcon-sized ship. You patently can't just land anywhere you want in a forest, jungle, mountainous region, swamps - ship will sink -, and even a flat expanse can be a really bad idea right along a fault line if the planet has space opera-style superhigh tectonic activity.

2 - Consequences. The smugglers are staying in a village along with lots of civilians. Is the party really willing to strafe women and children? The area - and the sky - around the primitive village is sacred to inhabitants: if the party desecrates it by flying through or landing, they've just lost the cooperation of the locals.

3 - Incomplete information. They know the general region, but not the exact location. Who says that Star Wars sensor technology must be able to pick up a stone- or iron age village from orbit? Certainly not the movies, we never see anything of the sort.

4 - Commanding officer. It's just not a very good idea, generally. With a captain who's actually ON THE SHIP all the time and micromanaging the party, it's downright terrible, no softer way of putting it. A different thing would be to have a higher ranking general or the like somewhere half a sector away, with whom the party can check in between adventures. He can give missions "Find and extract our informant on Planet X before the Imperials nab him", "Negotiate a treaty with these guys", etc., and then let the players make their own plans and go about the objective the way they want.

[Draco Ignifer]

What's their goal? Unless the goal is only "scan this area" or "kill these people," you really aren't going to accomplish anything in your spaceship. "Retrieve the artifact," "rescue the captive," "explore the ruins," "find the lost," make contact with the tribe," and so on all are situations where orbital bombardment will potentially ruin your mission while probably not advancing it.

In short, give them a goal that they can't accomplish from space, and they'll make landfall on their own.

[BudgetDM]

Or, if you want to get even more mysterious and/or terrifying, note that the Unknown Regions are home to Mnggal-Mnggal (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mnggal-Mnggal).:smallamused:

If the campaign goes on long enough, they will encounter Mnggal-Mnggal related problems.:smallbiggrin:


Make the jungle really big. I'm talking city-block sized trees, big. Try strafing one of them and they're just going to end up making insignificant holes. They'll have to land in the one clearing big enough and close enough for your (the GM's) purposes, because their weaponry isn't sufficient to clear their own "landing pad". They'll have to trek through the giant-sized jungle because the canopy is too dense to see through and some weird alien creature or plant is disrupting their sensors.

I hadn't thought of that, which is weird, because the over-arching plot of this campaign is based off of a non-faction book I read about Amazonian exploration, and one of the things that they mentioned over and over again was how dense the jungle is.


4 - Commanding officer. It's just not a very good idea, generally. With a captain who's actually ON THE SHIP all the time and micromanaging the party, it's downright terrible, no softer way of putting it. A different thing would be to have a higher ranking general or the like somewhere half a sector away, with whom the party can check in between adventures. He can give missions "Find and extract our informant on Planet X before the Imperials nab him", "Negotiate a treaty with these guys", etc., and then let the players make their own plans and go about the objective the way they want.

What about an on-ship captain who doesn't micro-manage? This captain is in control of the ship, not because any organization believes that he should be in command, but because he bought it himself. He's not the most qualified person[1] on the ship and he knows it. He's also getting up there in years and, unless he has no other choice, will stay in base camp while the PCs go adventuring.

[1] He has skills of his own, but they aren't terrifically useful in this context.

[Sith_Happens]

Also, as far as "things to do" go, make sure they come across plenty of ruins from the Rakatan Infinite Empire. You can't explore those from a ship, and there should be all kinds of priceless artifacts and technology ripe for the picking. Although some of these the party may regret finding...:smallwink:

[Crossblade]

Dense forest, strange magnetic waves mess with sensors, The Forces is calling to them, strafing women and children in a blanket fire of lasers is worth a ton of dark side points, crash landing, there's bigger things in the sky than them, their ship is too big to land on the planet (battle cruiser?) so they have to take a shuttle down, being in atmo is harder on fuel and fuel ain't cheap, they need to set down for repairs and maintenance anyway, one of their NPC tag-alongs gets violently ill when in an any type of hovering vehicle or vessel when in very low atmosphere, "Hold your fire? What, are we paying by the laser now?" "You don't do the budget, Terry. I do."


Pick one.

[TheHarshax]

I'm not sure where I heard this, but you can't claim it's yours, until you put a flag on it.

Remind them that if you strafe from orbit, you're going to incinerate all the shiny-sparkly things you were suppose to find.

But here's how you motivate them:
1. Make PCs beholden to a patron, who is funding their expedition.
2. No XPs without risk. eg: You can't gain levels by killing stuff from the safety of your command couch.

If you can't inspire your players to act like adventurers, then they're probably playing the wrong game. Suggest they play Chutes and Ladders.

ad·ven·ture   /ædˈvɛntʃər/ Show Spelled [ad-ven-cher] Show IPA noun, verb, -tured, -tur·ing.
noun
1. an exciting or very unusual experience.
2. participation in exciting undertakings or enterprises: the spirit of adventure.
3. a bold, usually risky undertaking; hazardous action of uncertain outcome.
4. a commercial or financial speculation of any kind; venture.
5. Obsolete .
a. peril; danger; risk.
b. chance; fortune; luck.
verb (used with object)
6. to risk or hazard.
7. to take the chance of; dare.
8. to venture to say or utter: to adventure an opinion.

[LibraryOgre]

Alternatively, rather than intel they need, make them go after intel they WANT.

As they fly over a ruin, have them detect a massive power source, maybe even a weapons lock-on. Have their resident Jedi get a "bad feeling" about something, and feel compelled to check it out.

[druid91]

Give the primitives Catapults, and make them cute teddy-bear people.

In star-wars this means they will win 100% of the time against advanced technology.

[Binks]

I just got finished doing something very similar to this. I was aiming more for Battlestar Galactica/Voyager in the Unknown Regions (one lone ship, no support) but the idea of giving the player's control of a starship and then having them meet up with rather primitive races did come up.

My solution was to make the players want something the locals have. When your goal is to gather information from the local populace your desire to strafe their villages is very low after all. Throw in some terrain that forces landing a distance away (deep jungles, lots of peaks and valleys, other hazards, all the sorts of stuff you'd expect to be between an adventurer and his prize) and you should be able to convince them to get off the ship.

Another suggestion I have, and this one is more meta-gamey, is to make sure that none of the players are playing a pilot/vehicle gunner. The desire for PCs to get out and walk is inversely proportional to how awesome they can be in their ship after all, if you have a group of a pilot, a captain, and 3 gunners then they'll be solving most of their problems with their ship. If you have a group who are dependent on NPCs for flying the ship (your NPC captain and his crew) then they'll be a lot more willing to get out and walk because it lets them be awesome.

Best of luck to you with this campaign.

[BudgetDM]

Another suggestion I have, and this one is more meta-gamey, is to make sure that none of the players are playing a pilot/vehicle gunner. The desire for PCs to get out and walk is inversely proportional to how awesome they can be in their ship after all, if you have a group of a pilot, a captain, and 3 gunners then they'll be solving most of their problems with their ship. If you have a group who are dependent on NPCs for flying the ship (your NPC captain and his crew) then they'll be a lot more willing to get out and walk because it lets them be awesome.

While all of the advice I've gotten thus far has been great, this helps solve this problem and one I didn't mention. You see, I had decided that the captain had at one point been given a droid as a gift for saving some very wealthy people. However, the droid's skills weren't necessary the captain, but he didn't refuse because he didn't want to seem rude. I wanted the droid to have trained itself in another skill to be useful, but I couldn't decide what. Now, I've decided it trained itself to pilot.