Seeking ideas for Star Wars

[Kweezil]

I'm not quite sure where this belongs, the Other d20 games forum seems more to do with rules and releases, so apologies if I've misplaced this.

Some background: Rebellion-era Star Wars game, about 6 months after Battle of Yavin. The PCs are visiting the ruins on Yavin 4 for reasons that are a bit too complicated to get into. On arrival on the planet, they trigger a probe droid left by the Imperial forces when they sacked the place, in case the Rebels came back (better safe than sorry, and it's only one droid, so hardly a waste of resources).

In character they figure they have enough time to make a quick recon of the ruins, and decided to land despite the risk of a patrol catching them ["It'll take ages to get here" etc.]. Out of character, we figured this was about the time when Vader started searching for the Rebels (and Skywalker), hunting them down with every resource he had available. The PCs spend too long underground in the ruins and the Executor and her squadron arrive (a combination of rotten luck and player suggestion), trapping them on the surface. Vader senses the force-sensitive PC, asumes it's Skywalker (another player suggestion) and orders them captured rather than destroyed.

Fleeing from the TIEs, they have no time to get out of the gravity well, and decide capture or death are just not an option. They decide to disable (rip-out) the safeties and jump inside the planet's gravity well (~20m above the surface, to be precise).

The question: What will happen? We've all enjoyed the game enough to let it end in a TPK like this, but we figure there has to be something happen because of this. The question is, what? I've a few ideas, but nothing really interesting, and I hoped to farm the creativity of the boards for this. Any ideas, no matter how strange, would be appreciated.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I think it is part of cannon that you can jump inside a gravity well. You just end up in some totally random place.

Space is big. Very big. Odds are strong they'd end up light years away from anything. Throw them near a star system and say their warp drive is damaged. It'll take days to repair with a proper facility and they don't have that. They'll need weeks to reapair it with what they have on hand (assuming they make the skill roll).

The nearest planet (which the drive will just barely let them get to has a breathable atmostphere, but high gravity and is volcanic. Not an ideal spot to land, but they have no other choice.

Possible inhabitants:

* A society that is force sensitive, but only to the dark side. Dark Jedi crashed there a thousand years ago under similar circumstances (that area of space-time is thin and prone to catch wayward drives). They are willing to fight against the Sith Lord ... but they clearly have ulterior motives.

* A society that has recovered from the ravages of nuclear war and they are now complete techno-phobes. The party will have to win them over somehow if they are to be alloted the time they need to repair the ship.

* A primitive society that has only progressed to steam power. They won't be going anywhere else fast ... they use a larger version of a mynock for a beast of burden!


... just my two cents.

 

[dave_o]

Excuse me for a moment, but: DAMN WOULD I LOVE TO PLAY IN A DECENT STAR WARS GAME!

Anyway, Sir Geekus has some quite rad ideas, here are a few more -

-- Plant them in a slightly parallel universe for a while. Maybe make Luke into Vader's personal consort, and have them scouring the universe to quell the Rebellion - amazingly successful, thanks to Luke's knowledge.

-- Just to mess with them, have them emerge a few moments before they send their ship into the gravity well, a good distance away. If they go into the gravity well, repeat. Otherwise, give them this chance to escape.

-- CTHULHUOID HORROR MADNESS!

 

[BiggusGeekus]

CTHULHUOID HORROR MADNESS!

... I have a bad feeling about this ...


-BG

PS Sorry, but it needed to be said.

 

[Kareyev]

For some reason when I read this I heard the sound effect used so often in "The Empire Strikes Back" when the jump drives fail. It sounds like you have an excellent story set up and I do not think the party should get out that easy. After the jump engines fail, due to ripping out the wrong wires, send them into a valley of some sort that has a property that distrubs sensors (another reason the rebels chose the moon). They land and hide out finding some ruins of the original inhabitants. There could be ties to the jedi's of old or some sort of tie in with one of the characters. Either way when they find something interesting the Imperials find the ruins, there is a nice battle scene in the ruins. Perhaps the players escape in an Imperial transport. Perhaps they are captured with stun guns.

Have fun!

 

[Pbartender]

Try this...

The ship jumps, but the hyperdrive immediately burns out, possibly damaging some other critical systems.

The abortive jump was very short... Perhaps they ended up in deep space just outside the Yavin system, or perhaps they ended up in a very close orbit around the Yavin sun (far enough away to maintain orbit, but their engines are too damaged to leave orbit). Either way, they are no position to get anywhere safe anytime soon.

The Imperials don't know where the PCs ended up, but they know they couldn't have gotten far on such an ill-planned jump. The Imperials begin analyzing the exit vector of the Rebel ship, while TIE fighter scouts begin scouring the planetary system.

The PCs have now bought themselves some extra time... But unless they get the ship repaired enough to truly escape, it'll only be a matter of time before the Imperials find them.

 

[s/LaSH]

Energy flare.

Someone more knowledgable than me tell me - is SW hyperdrive a separate continuum, or is it just a field that allows a ship to go FTL?
- The former: Opening the gateway ignites the atmosphere, causing an explosion that damages the ship. They get away, but aren't too happy when they get Elsewhere. (Their hyper vector is probably distorted, too.)
- The latter: Atmospheric friction, baby! Even assuming there's some amelioration due to the hyper field, it's going to damage the ship with great heat during the nanoseconds they're in Yavin 4's atmosphere. They get away, but again aren't too happy when they get Elsewhere.

Oh, and don't look for servicing on the ship later - they've just voided the warranty.

It would be fun were they captured by Vader, however. They can escape later, somewhere different and exciting I'd presume - maybe some horrible Planet Of Evil where the Empire is fighting something truly nasty. Maybe Vader's off the ship when it happens (ever read Splinter Of The Mind's Eye? Written before Empire, it at least makes this possible).

 

[Pbartender]

Energy flare.

Someone more knowledgable than me tell me - is SW hyperdrive a separate continuum, or is it just a field that allows a ship to go FTL?

Essentially, the former. According to the Star Wars version of science, hyperspace is a sort of parallel universe in which the laws of physics (like the light speed limit) are much more lax than ours. A hyperdrive does two things... First, it throws the ship into hyperspace. Second it creates a sort of "bubble" of "normal" universe close around the ship to protect it from the oddities of hyperspace. Now, hyperspace correlates, topographically speaking, to the normal universe. So you move the ship and the bubble through hyperspace to where you want to go, then pop back into the real universe. Gravitational wells from the real universe, however, project themselves into hyperspace creating gravity "shadows". These can be dangerous, if they are very large or very close to a ship in hyperspace... Throwing a ship off course, damaging it or destroying it. Most hyperdrives have failsafes to prevent them being operated too near a heavy gravity well.

If you go by traditional Star Wars precedents, you probably wouldn't ignite an atmosphere, it's more common to break the ship or throw it wildly off course... Though, since it is science-FICTION, you could have almost any result you desired.

 

[Gargoyle]

Instead of hyperspacing away from Yavin, they end up teleporting to the inside of the planet, which turns out to be hollow, and habitable. Their hyperdrive burns out, of course. It's a lost world that is home to several extinct species, including perhaps a tribe of the Massassi (which I admit I don't know much about, except that I believe they were on Yavin long ago, and built the structures seen in Ep IV). They must now figure out where they are, and how to repair their drive. They can salvage the broken portal device the Massassi used to get here long ago in order to repair their ship and reverse coordinates, but to get to it they have to either steal it or convince the mostly hostile Massassi to help them. If the Massassi moved their ship (while they were exploring), they may also have to return their ship to the same spot it arrived in.

Meanwhile, Vader still senses the presence of the force sensitive one, and figures out where they are. He sends down a detachment to dig with a Core Digger device that only a super star destroyer would happen to have. (Planetary crusts and mantles do not concern me Admiral) The digging causes earthquakes (yavinquakes?) periodically, inciting the superstitious Massassi into a rebellion against their religious leaders, making things very interesting for the player characters.

 

[Kweezil]

Wow, thanks for the quick response and all the ideas. This should prove... interesting for my players.