RangerWickett
Legend
I'm running a short campaign. So far I'm a little dissatisfied with how the sessions have played out, like I'm not giving the PCs enough choices. One part of the problem is that the adventure is "the villain abducted a VIP; chase the villain as she flees across world to find a ship that can get past an imperial blockade over the planet."
Because it's a chase, the plot kind of necessarily goes from point A to B to C. At each of those points I've tried to have a multi-faceted challenge which they can approach different ways, but it still feels a little railroady.
Story so far:
[sblock]There's a planet with an Interdictor star destroyer in orbit, keeping people from jumping away via hyperspace. The PCs are half locals, living in a remote part of the planet ruled by a petty warlord named Karcero. He's not critical to the plot. But his main lieutenant - Dune Gomero - is a Force sensitive with the flair for the dramatic, who tracks down other Force users and turns them over to the Empire. Dune is nefarious, but he also resents the Empire, who only let him keep his freedom as long as he is useful to them.
The other half of the party were aides to a Republic senator named Saani Argenta, whose ship got caught by the interdiction field and crashed. The local PCs - Hank, who's force sensitive; Corellia, who's a thawed-out clone who was in carbonite stasis for a long time; and Dr. Leon, a cyberneticist and former Imperial operative who got in trouble and is in hiding - rush to the crash site. They fight off some of Karcero's goons who were also looking for salvage, and they rescue the senator's aides - Lowmanda, a Wookiee pilot, and Dr. Eengo, a Mon Calamari physician who's with the senator because she's pregnant.
But a bounty hunter - Sareve, who utilizes lots of droid minions - managed to swoop in and abduct the senator, then fly away in a small ship. The PCs were able to find out she didn't head out to space, which suggests she doesn't have a way to get past the interdiction. And then Hank had a vision of the senator sitting next to him in his house, and then him briefly sitting next to her in the brig of the bounty hunter's ship. It turns out the senator's child is strong with the Force, and she began having these visions of distant places recently, so she was fleeing the Empire to protect her child.
Hank couldn't control the link, so he didn't get anymore information, but it's enough to give the PCs a common goal. Lowmanda and Dr. Eengo want to rescue their charge. Hank wants to help the woman who reached out to him. Corellia is just a loyal soldier, and Dr. Leon figures that if the bounty hunter has a way off this planet, that might be his ticket too.
Last session the party, who has no ability to track spacecraft, infiltrated one of Karcero's bases that would have tracked the ship's course. They arrived to find the place already shot up, and the survivors with itchy trigger fingers. But the PCs cowed them out of a fight, and learned that the bounty hunter had come, blown a few things up in her ship, then threatened to kill all the soldiers unless they let one of her droids access their computer system. The droid came and went, and then the bounty hunter shot them anyway and flew away, apparently to keep them from tracking her ship's movement.
However, the PCs were able to recover from the damaged computer that she was seeking the location of an abandoned Jedi temple in some mountains to the north. The PCs then high-tailed it when they heard radio chatter of incoming Karcero forces. They linked up with some local rebel forces, the leader of which had been around long enough to know about where this temple was. He also knew that there is supposed to be a secret Imperial research facility near it, built into mountains.
The rebel leader offers a ship to get the PCs to the temple, and he says he'll have his people ready to react if they find anything. He also sends along a Kel Dor marksman who works for him, named Anomen. And that's where we are now.
[/sblock]
TL;DR - A bounty hunter abducted a senator (who is pregnant with a Force sensitive baby), but the planet is under Imperial blockade, so she can't leave yet. The planet has a warlord named Karcero who kinda resents the Imperials, but is also a bad guy. The PCs learn the bounty hunter is looking for ruins of a Jedi temple, which is supposedly near an Imperial research facility, and they believe she's trying to find a way past the blockade, and so they need to find and stop her first.
So, what I have in mind is that they land, trek to the temple, find it in ruins but with some poor folks living in it. They think the PCs are Imperials, but can be convinced to help, since they saw the bounty hunter searching the area, and then she vanished. Shortly afterward they saw her shuttle fly over the hill, and heard the distant sounds of mechanical doors opening and closing.
She's in the research facility and has killed the Imperials inside, then landed her ship in a hidden hangar and set up her own droids to cover her as she fiddles in the guts of the computer system. One of the PCs is a pretty solid slicer, so he'll probably be able to figure out that she's trying to get landing codes to actually land on the star destroyer, because there's some research tech there. (She had thought it was in the facility, but it's already been moved.)
When the PCs show up, her droids probably sound the alarm so she preps to leave, and things are made more complicated because the PCs have been followed by Karcero's forces (tipped off by Anomen, an NPC who's tagging along with the party). So the PCs get caught in the middle, but Karcero's men are just trying to capture the PCs. Ideally the bounty hunter escapes with the senator in tow. But the PCs can team up with Dune Gomero, Karcero's Force sensitive minion, and make a plan together to use the access codes from the research facility to fly up and attack the star destroyer.
While some of the PCs work this out, Dune takes Hank to the ruined temple and talks to him about the ways of the Force, but from a dark side perspective of how the Force will make you strong, break your chains, and set you free. I'm not sure how things will shake out, but I imagine the PCs will make a starfighter run on the star destroyer, and while their allies keep up a battle outside, they'll land and try to rescue the senator -- while also trying to, like, blow the ship up, disable the interdiction field, or recover whatever experimental tech is going on.
I need to think of a variety of ways for things to go, so this doesn't stay a railroad.
Because it's a chase, the plot kind of necessarily goes from point A to B to C. At each of those points I've tried to have a multi-faceted challenge which they can approach different ways, but it still feels a little railroady.
Story so far:
[sblock]There's a planet with an Interdictor star destroyer in orbit, keeping people from jumping away via hyperspace. The PCs are half locals, living in a remote part of the planet ruled by a petty warlord named Karcero. He's not critical to the plot. But his main lieutenant - Dune Gomero - is a Force sensitive with the flair for the dramatic, who tracks down other Force users and turns them over to the Empire. Dune is nefarious, but he also resents the Empire, who only let him keep his freedom as long as he is useful to them.
The other half of the party were aides to a Republic senator named Saani Argenta, whose ship got caught by the interdiction field and crashed. The local PCs - Hank, who's force sensitive; Corellia, who's a thawed-out clone who was in carbonite stasis for a long time; and Dr. Leon, a cyberneticist and former Imperial operative who got in trouble and is in hiding - rush to the crash site. They fight off some of Karcero's goons who were also looking for salvage, and they rescue the senator's aides - Lowmanda, a Wookiee pilot, and Dr. Eengo, a Mon Calamari physician who's with the senator because she's pregnant.
But a bounty hunter - Sareve, who utilizes lots of droid minions - managed to swoop in and abduct the senator, then fly away in a small ship. The PCs were able to find out she didn't head out to space, which suggests she doesn't have a way to get past the interdiction. And then Hank had a vision of the senator sitting next to him in his house, and then him briefly sitting next to her in the brig of the bounty hunter's ship. It turns out the senator's child is strong with the Force, and she began having these visions of distant places recently, so she was fleeing the Empire to protect her child.
Hank couldn't control the link, so he didn't get anymore information, but it's enough to give the PCs a common goal. Lowmanda and Dr. Eengo want to rescue their charge. Hank wants to help the woman who reached out to him. Corellia is just a loyal soldier, and Dr. Leon figures that if the bounty hunter has a way off this planet, that might be his ticket too.
Last session the party, who has no ability to track spacecraft, infiltrated one of Karcero's bases that would have tracked the ship's course. They arrived to find the place already shot up, and the survivors with itchy trigger fingers. But the PCs cowed them out of a fight, and learned that the bounty hunter had come, blown a few things up in her ship, then threatened to kill all the soldiers unless they let one of her droids access their computer system. The droid came and went, and then the bounty hunter shot them anyway and flew away, apparently to keep them from tracking her ship's movement.
However, the PCs were able to recover from the damaged computer that she was seeking the location of an abandoned Jedi temple in some mountains to the north. The PCs then high-tailed it when they heard radio chatter of incoming Karcero forces. They linked up with some local rebel forces, the leader of which had been around long enough to know about where this temple was. He also knew that there is supposed to be a secret Imperial research facility near it, built into mountains.
The rebel leader offers a ship to get the PCs to the temple, and he says he'll have his people ready to react if they find anything. He also sends along a Kel Dor marksman who works for him, named Anomen. And that's where we are now.
[/sblock]
TL;DR - A bounty hunter abducted a senator (who is pregnant with a Force sensitive baby), but the planet is under Imperial blockade, so she can't leave yet. The planet has a warlord named Karcero who kinda resents the Imperials, but is also a bad guy. The PCs learn the bounty hunter is looking for ruins of a Jedi temple, which is supposedly near an Imperial research facility, and they believe she's trying to find a way past the blockade, and so they need to find and stop her first.
So, what I have in mind is that they land, trek to the temple, find it in ruins but with some poor folks living in it. They think the PCs are Imperials, but can be convinced to help, since they saw the bounty hunter searching the area, and then she vanished. Shortly afterward they saw her shuttle fly over the hill, and heard the distant sounds of mechanical doors opening and closing.
She's in the research facility and has killed the Imperials inside, then landed her ship in a hidden hangar and set up her own droids to cover her as she fiddles in the guts of the computer system. One of the PCs is a pretty solid slicer, so he'll probably be able to figure out that she's trying to get landing codes to actually land on the star destroyer, because there's some research tech there. (She had thought it was in the facility, but it's already been moved.)
When the PCs show up, her droids probably sound the alarm so she preps to leave, and things are made more complicated because the PCs have been followed by Karcero's forces (tipped off by Anomen, an NPC who's tagging along with the party). So the PCs get caught in the middle, but Karcero's men are just trying to capture the PCs. Ideally the bounty hunter escapes with the senator in tow. But the PCs can team up with Dune Gomero, Karcero's Force sensitive minion, and make a plan together to use the access codes from the research facility to fly up and attack the star destroyer.
While some of the PCs work this out, Dune takes Hank to the ruined temple and talks to him about the ways of the Force, but from a dark side perspective of how the Force will make you strong, break your chains, and set you free. I'm not sure how things will shake out, but I imagine the PCs will make a starfighter run on the star destroyer, and while their allies keep up a battle outside, they'll land and try to rescue the senator -- while also trying to, like, blow the ship up, disable the interdiction field, or recover whatever experimental tech is going on.
I need to think of a variety of ways for things to go, so this doesn't stay a railroad.