Star Wars - Interlude IV: The Detritus of Destiny (CLOSED)

Nearly twenty years after the formation of the Galactic Empire, the Outer Rim remains one of the few places in the known Galaxy offering some degree of freedom from the yoke of Imperial control. This relative freedom has attracted all manner of scoundrels, criminals, and fugitives to the various planets comprising the Outer Rim. While the Empire is largely unrepresented, the region does not lack in those exercising oppressive control. From Hutt crime lords to spice syndicates, most areas of the Outer Rim fall under the sphere of influence of someone with the power to back up their claim. In the shadows of these criminal enterprises, the resourceful and crafty eke out a desperate existence. While life isn't great, it's better than the alternative. As a crew member on the Secondhand Sarlacc, a decommissioned space tug converted into a salvage ship, you count yourself among the free and desperate. Working for the Aqualish parts dealer Rumko Wun, the crew of the Sarlacc travel the space lanes, searching out salvage sites in the Outer Rim and returning with their finds to Wun's workshop.


Even living in the Outer Rim, it's difficult to not hear news from the rest of the galaxy. The skirmishing between the Rebellion and the Galactic Empire has grown from a simmer to a boil. Rumor has it that the Rebels recently achieved a stunning victory or engaged in an unconscionable act of terrorism... depending on the source of the rumor.

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Overview: The Detritus of Destiny is a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game. This will be my first time GMing an EoE game and I am new to the system. With that said, I've got a fairly good grasp of the rules and given the narrative nature of the game, I'm pretty confident about my ability to run a pretty fun game. The game itself will start off with a set piece, but will otherwise be a sandbox, with the party directing the action and calling the shots.

The Game: If you're unfamiliar with Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, it is an RPG from Fantasy Flight Games designed as a cooperative narrative game, with the dice rolls providing a reference point for describing a character's actions. The dice themselves are an interesting concept and will require a bit of accommodation for the game to work as a PbP on EnWorld. The way it will work is the player will describe the actions they would like their character to take. Once described, the GM will roll using an online roller and post the results, at which point the player will post in the IC thread. If you're unfamiliar with the game, FFG has a downloadable introductory adventure available called Under A Black Sun. The first part of the adventure document describes how the game is played, which is a nice introduction. Players unfamiliar with the game are more than welcome to submit a character and learn how to play along with the GM.

Character Creation:
- Characters will be standard starting characters. The only material allowed will be the Edge of the Empire Core Book. I'm willing to allow species from other books on a case-by-case basis.
- One house rule I am implementing will be to allow increasing Characteristics after character creation through XP expenditure. This will be a limited capability and will trigger each time the character spends a total of 100 XP on skills, talents, new specializations, and/or force powers. Once that threshold has been reached, the character will be allowed to increase a characteristic using the standard rules at character creation. That expenditure will not count toward the next 100 XP threshold. This rule is being included to encourage players to spend starting XP on other options aside from characteristics.
- If you are unfamiliar with the game, I am more than happy to help you build your character based on a submitted concept.

Timing Considerations:
- The game system as written recognizes game sessions as a unit of measurement by which certain abilities are refreshed. Since PbPs are essentially one long continuous session, this game will use the rule that two scenes/encounters will equal one session. The GM will keep track of sessions/encounters in the titles of posts.
- The game will use a modified initiative approach, as RAW initiative is pretty clunky for PbP.

Submissions:
- If you're interested in participating, please post a character concept below; this will not necessarily be a first-come, first-served game.
- If you want to write up a complete character, you are welcome to do so, but I only need a concept in order to select characters.
- I am looking for 3-4 characters for the game.
- The pace will be somewhat leisurely, but I would appreciate daily postings, either IC or OOC in order to keep the game moving.
- Submissions will close on February 22nd, 2016.

Please let me know if you have any questions and thanks for considering this game.

-Forged_Fury

I'm in. I have played the various FFG Star Wars games quite a bit over the last few years, so I know the rules pretty well. Here's my pitch:

Arsinoe Anjuliz is the daughter of a wealthy retired Corellian admiral, Imperial senator (until dissolution), and now member of the Correllian Corporation. An aspiring and up and coming ingenue in the Correllian ballet scene, she was engaged to her older brother's best friend. Unknown to the family, he was in gambling debt up to his eyeballs to a Hutt. The Hutt happened to fancy himself a cultural connoisseur amd, after finding out who his fiancee was, made an offer: clear the debt without any broken body parts for the dancer. At a private little romantic dinner, her fiancee drugged her and called in the Hutt's goons. En route to the Hutt, their ship hit an ion stormand knocked them out of hyperspace, crashing them on a primitive planet. She managed to survive only thanks to some emerging strange powers. The crew of the Secondhand Sarlacc found the wreckage, and the survivor, and aren't sure yet what to do with the pampered young thing. She does seem pretty good at talking, and her being quite attractive doesn't hurt when charming the creditors. Maybe with a bit of extra training she might be worth something out on the Rim. Or they could just give her to the Hutt.

Concept: Human Politico (unless I can use Performer from Far Horizons) with Force Exile (unless I can use Force Emergent from Age of Rebellion) and Influence force power (possibly Enhance power from Rebellion, if allowed).

Kralatten, wookie pilot

I'm intrested, but I know nothing about FFG Star Wars games. My character concept is a Wookie pilot. Ok, not exactly too original, but I figure I couldn't do too much harm to the game with a character that almost no one can understand.

Here's a link to Arsinoe (using Core EOTE only).

Arsinoe Anjuliz

I have played a few PbP EoE games off-site. Here's my application:

[sblock=Mack Granger]Species: Human Male
Career: Hired Gun
Specialization: Mercenary Soldier

Personality:
Calm and collected, analytical and capable of keeping his thoughts to himself. However, he can be very vocal about things that irk him and he is not afraid to speak his mind. He is conservative in his thinking and practical. He is confident in his abilities but does not flaunt them. When he feels something is worthy, he will be devoted and loyal to that cause and the people associated with it.

Background:
Mack Granger was born in the Outer Rim on Roon, his family owning a small manufacturing and shipping company that dealt with small sub contracts for manufacturing high tech items and droid components.

Mack’s personal feelings leaned more towards direct action rather than trying to appease the Imperial agents and authorities while maintaining good relations with those of the Alliance. However, many of his boyhood friends were always planning to join the Alliance forces and he pretty much thought he would too, eventually. Initially, his father did his best to discourage the notions and keep his son safe.

Roon remained withdrawn from the New Order until 15 years before the Battle of Yavin, when Koong, governor of the Tawntoom province, contacted Admiral Terrinald Screed. It was after Screed's interest in Roon that the planet finally began to become drawn into galactic affairs once more. Once that happened, Mack’s father changed his mind and threw his support to the Rebels and let his son pursue his destiny.

After helping the handful of off-world Rebel groups operating in the system in their efforts to aid the local resistance in the Umboo province, a part of the planet known to have long opposed outside authority, Mack became involved in the periphery. Still too young to really be allowed to join up the teenage boy did his part and caught the attention of some of the seasoned operatives from off-world. He was able to learn some things from them and when the time came, Mack was introduced to the right recruiters. He left Roon to officially join the Rebel Alliance once he was old enough.

After training, Mack’s cell was sent to stir up trouble in Bothan space. Unfortunately, his first assignment ended in disaster. After a few raid and destroy operations, the controlling handlers were given false information and Mack’s team walked into a trap. Imperial security tried to snap up the handlers and spies, but most were killed in the fighting or committed suicide. The soldiers and operatives carrying out the operations with Mack fought their way out of the ambush, but only a few actually made it to scatter to other systems and start over in the fight.

In a system bordering Hutt Space, Mack accidentally encountered to scheme run by the Hutts to extort money from an Alliance sympathetic business owner. The Rodian and Quarren thugs were on one of the lesser Hutt Lord’s payrolls, but Mack doesn’t know which one. At the time it did not matter, he took them out anyway. He learned of the price on his head a few months later when an inept bounty hunter tried to collect. After catching a departing transport heading off planet, he found work on a tramp salvage ship as the security officer.

[sblock=About myself] 1. Experience with EoE: I have played a good handful of games using these rules, starting back when it was still in Beta. All my experience is in PbP.

2. Experience with PbP: I have somewhere around 50-60K posts under my belt in the last 5 years, if I were to count them all up from the handful of sites I play at. I also GM a fair number of games as well. With attrition being the bane of most PbP games, this illustrates that I am not going to just disappear.

3. Frequency of Posting: On a normal basis, I can post once per day, 6-7 days a week. I generally do not post more than once a day on principle, allowing others a chance to reply or react during their daily routine as well. I also let people know when I am not available from more than 36-48 hours.

4. My philosophy as a PbP player: I enjoy writing posts and playing the game, having a good time when others are entertained and having fun posting in response as well. I treat every post IC like it is a scene of a TV show and describe my character's actions; there is always something for my character to do and probably say. Just because my character is in combat, there is no reason to stop role-playing. Any day I can post in reply to what other players have written is a good day.

I tend to write my character doing things and interacting with the environment as set up by the GM, letting the GM focus on providing results/changes of scenery and NPC reactions. I can run with what a GM gives me, without needing to hand held constantly. However I know when to pause to let the GM provide results or offering the courtesy to let other player get a chance to participate. I like groups that can develop teamwork and chemistry, where everyone has a role and opportunities to shine. I also believe communication OOC is important for scene advancement and coordinating other things in gameplay.

Recently, I have come to value the interactive side of PbP gaming. This is what sustains a game over the long haul, writers that are interested in responding to each other in character while the plot progresses around them. The focus on characterization on equal footing as plot progression is what brings the players fully into the story to make an engaging tale.[/sblock][/sblock]

Thanks for the submissions so far. I'll take a glance through them this weekend prior to the deadline if I have any suggestions.

Definitely keen - here's my submission:

Name: Elsa Tharik
Species: Human Female
Career: Commander (Commodore) / Colonist (Politico) - I hope AoR careers are OK?

Elsa is a well dressed middle aged human female. Perhaps incongruously, the left side of her head is shaved and the hair on the right side of her head is parted to mostly cover the shaved side. She certainly doesn't seem like the "punk" type, as she speaks with a tight aristocratic accent. When talking to people, she often stares with a cool detachment as if she is looking right through them rather than at them. Behind her back, people call her names like "ice queen", though she doesn't seem to care and takes those names as more of a compliment than insult. She is certainly calm and in control under pressure - perhaps inhumanly so - something that has led to her assuming command of the Secondhand Sarlacc seemingly with Rumko Wun's blessing.

Though she is extremely tight-lipped about her past, it's clear that she has experience with commanding ships - ships a lot larger than the Secondhand Sarlacc - and people. No one has yet questioned her orders as she is clearly the best qualified among the crew... but it may only be a matter of time before her ice cold micromanaging style starts to grate on the more freewheeling crew members.

[sblock="History for GM"]
Elsa is based on a character I ran previously in a face-to-face SWRPG campaign. Her real name is Elsa Tarkin. Yes, of that Tarkin family, albeit a distant relative of the infamous Grand Moff. She had a promising career in the Imperial Navy - following in the footsteps of her great uncle. She graduated from the Academy with flying colours, although after a minor indiscretion with an instructor - technically after graduation, so while there were no actual rules broken it caused enough of a scandal to ensure her great uncle's intervention - her first posting was to a backwater Outer Rim garrison planet.

There she again excelled, working her way up to command of a small Star Destroyer hunting down cells of terrorists. It was when visiting a space station owned and run by an influential ex-Imperial military hero that things took a turn for the worse. Thinking to seduce the hero's son, to order to gain his favor and advance her career, she didn't realise that the son was infested by a strange mind controlling parasite, and became infected herself. The bug lay dormant for some time, until it forced her to sabotage a critical Imperial base without her knowledge. Elsa was rightly implicated, though in her mind she was innocent.

However, with the ISB closing in she was forced to flee to a remote world. There she enlisted the aid of someone who owed her a favor, the parts dealer Rumko Wun, who sheltered her and arranged surgery to remove the parasite. Although the surgery was successful, she is left with an ugly scar on the left side of her head that stubbornly refuses to regrow hair, and vague and fragmentary memories of the events. All she really recalls is that she is in hiding from the Empire, and wanted as a Traitor. Rumko, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, enlisted Elsa as the commander of his salvage freighter and crew in exchange for his silence on the matter.[/sblock]

Note: I've made a few assumptions above about the disposition of the ship and other crew members... this is just my initial thoughts in a vacuum, and don't want to step on Forged Fury's (or anyone else's) toes if it doesn't mesh with what people have planned. I'm more than happy to tweak if necessary!

Nice submissions so far.

To answer the question about source material for character generation, I would really like to keep it to EoE, although I'm flexible on species, since they're basically a one time thing with a possible single special ability (Wookies, Ithorians, etc). Whereas new Careers and Specializations tend to have a lot of new abilities that I would have to track.

Actually, I found much of the Talents in the Trees were the same between EoE and AoR. They are just laid out differently and the Career/Specializations for skills are different. You could just have every player list the talent's effects on the character sheet and it will be handy for reference.

There are many crossover talents, yes, and pdfs of all the talent trees. But I made Arsinoe EOTE as you asked, just in case.