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Xero Kunai
2008-10-12, 03:41 AM
Alright well.. I'm running a Star Wars d20 campaign over MSN (Revised.. cause I think Saga edition is too easymode) and last session my players threw me for a loop.

First I guess I'll give some slight backstory, The party consists of two solid players, and two others who can't stick to a character. The Two solid players are Rakator and Tran, a Soldier and a Scoundrel. The other two have had multiple characters, but anyway.. I decided to go away from Canon and just make it fun.

Mission 1 - Was an option between working for the Empire, the Hutts, or the Rebellion.. they chose the extremely dangerous Rebellion job for 15000 credits. Sneak into the old Coruscant Senate building and capture a mole that was giving the Empire Rebel secrets. Went find, Rakator, Tran, and a third who later quit went into the building itself, while the Twi'lek sniper set herself up outside on a building parallel to it along with the Duros Tech Spec. Went fine, as they got halfway up to the top floor.. things went to hell, something had began murdering many of the people inside, and as they got close to the top.. imagine something like this
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=GWMtw3XAhRc (Only the first few minutes)
Except instead of a Ninja, it's an extremely powerful Darkside Force User.
He's headed towards the Mole.. and they wanted their money, so they follow. They find the Force User at the throat of the mole and Tran and Rakator run in guns ablazing trying to save her (the mole)

Now, lets just say I had no intention of them actually beating him, it was a character way higher than them, and he was to just smack them around a bit till Troopers arrived and he runs. Well, Rakator had managed to get him to drop the mole, and the third guy who later left managed to get him away.. this is where Rakator managed to grab the chick and flee.
Before all this the Duros Tech Spec, Kadlo, had left and gone back to the dock to get their YT ship, he managed to land it on the roof. (Because by now troopers and tons of other disaster type troopers were there.. whole buildings being murdered don't just go unnoticed.. right?)
Of course.. Tran decided after getting on the ship with Rakator, that he wanted to go back and try and take him down. (I was thrown for a loop for the first time here.. suffice to say) and as he was firing at the man, who was walking nonchalantly towards him.. he scored a critical, and used a Force Point to confirm the critical, gaining a 18 on the damage roll (Which does instant wound damage..) and when I rolled the fort save for the user.. I got a 1. : \... So after Tran lewted the unconcious Force user of his two lightsabers, he fled.


First mission completed, the Twi'lek sniper decided that the lightsabers could be bugged, and ejected them from the airlock in space. I was laughing hard

They got their money, split it up.. except for Tran, who was in the employ of the Rebels anyway.

That explanation was a bit too long, so I'll keep mission 2 short.

Mission 2 - (Here's where I give canon the finger) The Rebels ask the group to head to the Yavin system and take out a scout force that was threatening to discover their base there. Simple nuff, (On a side note, the group discovers the Empire blames them for the massacure, apparently the captured Force user made them out to be his accomplices) They head out, minus the Tech Spec. Get to Yavin, land somewhere close to where they believe the scouts may be. They find the scouts, engage in combat.. turns out there were a bit more than they thought. The Sniper triggered a trap and had a sniper battle with two commandos while Tran and Rakator fought off four on their own a few hundred yards away.
(After the battle, the player playing the Sniper decided she wanted to play a new character, so I had to come up with a creative reason why the Twi'lek would not be there anymore..) At this point, a Imperial Drop ship showed up where the Sniper battle had taken place, and a young man with Brown hair called her out and thanked her for getting distracted long enough to find the base. His pilot flies off in the direction of the base.
They meet back up, and head back towards the ship in a hurry, taking a speeder bike stolen from the Imps. They fly their ship to the on Yavin (which wasn't thaaaaat far anyway) and find it heavilly under attack. (It seems there were waaaaaay more than a scout force) They recieve a distress call from the general inside the hangar, asking for help. He's soon booted off the screen and Brown Hair taunts them, telling them it's too late and shutting the connection.
Here, Tran was for the idea they flee and forget about the base. But Rakator and the Sniper decided they had to try and save the general.
Luckilly, they're able to land and get into the hangar without being blown up. They rush in, it's empty, clear run to the stairs leading up to where the general is.. As they get halfway to the stairs (it's a big hangar) the Sniper is shot by.. well, another Sniper.
(Not to refer to MGS again.. but.. something like this http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu3_ZDf3YKw )
Rakator and Tran throw caution to the wind and sprint towards the stairs, fighting their way up and taking down the sniper and his spotter. Tran runs back to help the Twi'lek while Rakator rushes into the room and confronts brown hair. Brown Hair taunts him about the dying Twi'lek, but the soldier won't have it and charges at him. Scoring a crit on Brown Hair, but rolls low enough to where Brown hair still survives. And as Karma would have it, Brown Hair scored a crit directly back, but Rakator wasn't able to make his fort save and fell unconcious. Troopers enter the hangar as Tran helps the Twi'lek, but Tran is aided by a Rebel Force Adept who had been hiding among the ships. Brown hair taunts Tran with Rakator's unconcious form, and Tran has no other choice but to give up.. except he doesn't. He walks forward, trying to bargain with Brown hair to take him instead, and the Soldiers apprehend the Adept and the dying Twi'lek. Brown hair leaves Rakator and goes to be with his troopers, walking by Tran, dismissing him as a non threat.

Tran decides to take the shot at Brown Hair, who was already close to grievous wounds anyway, and scored a crit (I rolled this myself, just to be sure he wouldn't pull anything) and it confirmed. He had called the shot on Brown Hair's arm (Which Rakator had cleaved into already with his Vibroaxe) and blew the thing clear off. Lets just say his troopers wouldn't have that, and let into Tran. Blowing away the young scoundrel, but still leaving him barely, just barely alive..

After the troopers had fled and began bombing the whole base, Rakator awoke and managed to inject himself with some bacta, giving him just enough strength to gather Tran and flee.



Holy, wow.. okay, sorry. I'll completely skip the third mission, just a slight overview.

Rakator took Tran to the closest system to get him medical help. Tran got skin grafts for all the wounds he took, grafts from a bantha. (The hospital wasn't the best.. after all)
As they got back to Bakura (Yeah, lol, I blew away Canon already) where the base was, a bounty hunter stopped them. (I had suspected it to be a space battle, but they gave up) he took em, took em to a planet, rival hunters attacked his ship and it crash landed. Tran and Rak met up with a Rebel operative who had been undercover among smugglers (after they had killed his smuggler crew) and together after some important stuff, fled and got back to Bakura.


Alright, here's where we were last sesh.. They went to see the General at the Bakura base about their failure, taken there by his aide, a snide and rude man Val Tamplin. When it turns out the general tells them it was a success, the base had been a ploy and they wanted the Imperials to think they cared about it. This let them be free to use their base in the massassi temple, or something to that effect.

Tran wasn't necessarily happy that they had been used in the plan without any knowledge of the immense force, or of the fake base. (the Adept having been the only real person there besides the general) But he was especially angry at how the General wouldn't let him off of his duties long enough to try and rescue the captured Twi'lek. He claimed he was leaving the Alliance (To which the general wouldn't let him, as Tran knew too many important things to just leave and said he wouldn't be allowed to leave.)
Here's where things split, Tran stormed off after arguing with the operative that had helped them, and tried to leave. While Rakator was trying to investigate the murder of a diplomat's bodyguard that occured in the base.


Here is where they confused the hell out of me.. "Wait.. what did you just do?"
Tran tried to leave the base, and was halted by guards who wouldn't allow him. They had their weapons on stun and threatened to stun him if he didn't turn away. Tran pulled his blaster and shot one of the guards, then got into a firefight with the other.
meanwhile, Rakator was being lead to his room by Val Tamplin, and asked Tamplin about the murder. When Tamplin provided a sarcastic and uncaring response, Rakator took that as a reason to suspect Tamplin of commiting it.. and sucker punched the skinny man right in the gut.. then took him to a bathroom stall and hid him to go call security.
Of course, he couldn't at this point, because someone who saw Tran shoot the guard pulled the alarm. Tran tried to flee outside, but a description was given of him, and the trainees outside began to open fire on him. Tran managed a few rounds without getting hit, but then three of them hit him at once, shooting him into unconciousness..
Rakator had ran to the training compound after hearing the description.. hoping to.. well I'm not sure.



but now here's the reason I made this, I want to ask..
What do I do now? I'm not sure how I should have the alliance react to both of these acts. Should they be imprisoned? Or worse?..

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-10-12, 04:04 AM
I'd say arrest them both hold them in cells, and have them interrogated. Either they come up with decent reasons(Tran seemed to have decent reasons), if they can convince him to stay, he should be fine. The other...if he has good ranks in bluff, he might be able to convince them the guy he smacked was the traitor. Otherwise, he's out. Either new character, or he convinces Tran to follow him, in which case you get to run an escape session, and they get new employers.

Premier
2008-10-12, 05:08 AM
Looking at it IC: Tran shot a soldier of the armed force he was in. He's a traitor, and traitors are killed on sight in wartime.

OOC viewpoint: In an RPG, the Dungeon Master is not the only one who has duties towards the players. The players themselves also have duties, not the least of which is to apply the necessary amount of metagaming required to keep the party together and the campaign going. Yes, this duty trumps the false sense of "I'm a player, I'm free to do anything I want and the DM has to accomodate because that's his job"-sort of entitlement that seems to be prevalent these days.

Just what was Tran's player expecting would happen? He can go his own way, and from now on you'd run two campaigns simultaneously, one for the party and one for Tran's Fantastic Solo Adventure? Doesn't work that way, bub.

Now, it is possible that the player saw this himself, and was trying to retire Tran by having him just walk out. However, it seems from your description of events that he totally failed to make these intentions clear (even if it WAS the case). So I suggest you have a private talk with Tran's player to find out his motivations and what he was trying to accomplish.

As for Rakator, it sounds to me like he was just a damn fool - even though, for all we know, you might have accidentally given him some reason to think what he did by not roleplaying Tamplin properly. Why WAS he sarcastic and uncaring? Based on what I've read, it just doesn't make sense given the situation.

Having said that, he was still a fool, and should reap the rewards of his action with no punches pulled.

Flickerdart
2008-10-12, 10:16 AM
Well...if you're that intent on keeping the players, after they're imprisoned, the rebel base is attacked by Imperials and bad things happen. Power goes off or whatever, or maybe they're let out to help because they're skilled combatants.

Anxe
2008-10-12, 10:28 AM
They could escape in the middle of the previously suggested Imperial attack and then join the Empire. That'd be pretty sweet.

Artanis
2008-10-12, 12:01 PM
Alright well.. I'm running a Star Wars d20 campaign over MSN (Revised.. cause I think Saga edition is too easymode) and last session my players threw me for a loop.
OK, I don't know anything about how to advise on the rest of the post, but...MSN? Why not something like MapTool, Gametable, or OpenRPG?

Xero Kunai
2008-10-12, 03:00 PM
OK, I don't know anything about how to advise on the rest of the post, but...MSN? Why not something like MapTool, Gametable, or OpenRPG?

Mainly because that was what everyone already had and we didn't need to go spend ages trying to get everyone correctly set up..
That and I'm just lazy. But link me to MapTool and Gametable, maybe I can figure those out.

Xero Kunai
2008-10-12, 07:11 PM
I managed to find Gametable.. and so far I'm close to orgasm.

Artanis
2008-10-12, 07:24 PM
MapTool (http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=downloads)

OpenRPG (http://www.openrpg.com/)