Tag: Adam Schwaninger

Spacebound and Down: A Star Wars Story

Black Sun hires the Porg Chop Express to run a juvenile rancor from Jakku to Tatooine before that shoulder-padded bastard Dash Rendar does the same for Crimson Dawn.

All the players were really into it. Once I mentioned Dash Rendar, Kass Nanto the Muscle jumped at the idea and started incorporating Sally Field’s lines from Smokey and the Bandit into how Dash had jilted her once. She actually spent a cred right then and there to sic bounty hunters on Rendar (acquire asset, gets a 6) – unleashing the indefatigable duo of 4-LOM and Buford T. Zuckuss.

I ran the race with this idea of accumulating Lead, like a tug-of-war clock. The Porg Chop started in the hole, but if they pushed their position to desperate as they made their hyperspace hops they could catch up. I gave them a choice whether to arc around the inner rim (safer, slower) or cut through the Core (more Imperials would notice their Wanted Level 2). They chose the Core, obviously.

Milo had the rancor and its keeper/veterinarian (“Oh no, I’m an animal enthusiast!”) Malakili put on the Express. Malakili was played by my worst Dom Deluise impression. We never found out why he wore that stupid leather hat. He’d be around to both not help and to tempt Kass with pharmaceuticals.

Then I sprung the Entanglement I’d rolled last game. Their hyperdrive cuts out. Crash the Mechanic gets it patched up fairly quickly, but 1) I start a “She’ll Hold Together” clock and 2) they lose another tick of Lead. This clock’s a possible consequence of any failed Helm rolls and it kept Dorifto the Pilot and Crash working together.

You Sumbitches Couldn’t Close an Umbrella

After several hyperspace hops (Jakku -> Corellia -> Vandor), they caught up to Dash Rendar in an ice field. Vandor’s Imperial garrison launches fighters. 4-LOM and Zuckuss were in hot pursuit, somehow having lost at least one of their stabilizers along the way.

Kass doesn’t wait for Dorifto to close before she opens fire. She eats shit on her roll and Leebo, Dash’s droid co-pilot, shoots up the Express. The rancor starts to wake up, there’s a hull breach in the cargo hold, and they’re in a dogfight in an ice field. It doesn’t look great, but then, like a friendly semi truck convoy, the sixes come to the rescue.

Crash tackles the hull breach first and crits, fixing quietly and insuring that

Akkol Cha the Mystic has a controlled position as he soothes the rancor back to sleep with the Force, all while

Dorifto makes the Imperials look like a bunch of inept state troopers.

Akkol Cha seizes on the idea of soothing the rancor with the Force and reverses it, reaching out to wake the rancor inside Dash Rendar’s hold. Kass adds her nascent abilities to the roll and they crit again:

“Leebo, that wasn’t laser fire! We hit something – and I never hit somethings! Go back and check it out!”

Dash’s Outrider leaps into hyperspace and is not seen for the rest of the session.

Double or Nothing

After that, the handoff at Jabba’s palace goes smoothly and the crew head to Mos Eisley for some downtime – and to wait for Dash Rendar in case the scoundrel shows up. The Porg Chop Express goes to +3 status with Black Sun, which would technically trigger the endgame and they have enough cred to boost their crew quality to tier 2. The idea of a big finale doesn’t feel wrong to me, but I’m not sure it’s time just yet?

In the end I mostly ignored the Lead clock. The players were going full throttle without me needing to track it. The “She’ll Hold Together” clock was the main source of stress, as different characters took turns resisting the ticks on the 4-segment clock as those early 4-5 results piled up. I think that worked well. Buford T. Zuckuss is the best Star Wars pun we’ll ever have and has taken the crown from Casey Fucking Dewback.

So many Gambits we might as well have been a 90s X-Men comic

In our fortnightly Star Wars Scum & Villainy game the crew of the Porg Chop Express explored sith ruins on Korriban/Moraband.

The Pilot may have been MVP for simply existing. He took “Never Tell Me The Odds” from the Scoundrel playbook and if roll20 keeps giving you sixes, you end up with, well, more Gambits than an X-Men comic.

S&V/Blades in general has a really neat way to mechanize a fall to dark powers too. Dark Side, or demonic possession in vanilla Blades, or what have you. Figure out with the player what they don’t want to happen and set a clock for it. Offer devil’s bargains on everything – here’s this power (+1d) in exchange for these ticks on this clock o’ badness. Then let them resist the ticks, which can cost stress, which leads to traumas, which are all mostly things you see in people consumed by the Dark Side. It works really naturally.

Anyhoo, the Muscle’s balancing act between addiction to wookiee hallucinogens and the pull of the dark side finally tipped in favor of the dark side last night. She went off by herself and became bound up with a sith force ghost. The Mystic will perhaps have to choose whether to stop her or try to save her. We’re headed to some potential intra-party stuff and we’ll need to talk about how inward we want the game to turn going forward.

Scum & Villainy: Life Day or Yippee Ki Yay, Millenium Falcon

inspired by Shane Black

We’re three sessions into a short Scum & Villainy campaign set in plain old Star Wars, because on a long enough timeline everything gets used to run Star Wars. Akkol Cha the Rodian Mystic, Kass Nanto the Chiss Muscle, and Tokeyo Dorifto the Sullustan Pilot are the crew of the Porg Chop Express, a Stardancer-class freighter.

In our first session, the Porg Chop crew were ambushed during a routine cargo pickup on Kessel. Their Black Sun contact, Huntsacker, was killed and they escaped under heavy fire. Once safely in hyperspace, Akkol and Kass were surprised to find that their cargo wasn’t just the sacred Wookiee wroshyr tree bound for an enclave of emancipated Wookiees on an Ithorian worldship under the care of Akkol’s mentor, the Twi’lek Horux. There was also a significant amount of illicit orga root drugs packaged with it. Kass immediately got high and tried to strangle Tokeyo while she was hallucinating.

The hard choice: make an easy run to drop off the wroshyr tree in time for Life Day, but let the orga root sit in their hold, drawing undue attention? Or try to offload the root as fast as possible and then race against time to deliver a Life Day miracle to those Wookiee orphans? Option B, please! The Porg Chop Express set course for the planet Nakatomi and Tokeyo’s swoop-racing pal Choss.

The meet went poorly. They shot their way out of a standoff with a Devaronian Black Sun assassin as well as troopers. Choss kept his end of the deal and took the orga root off their hands, but the ordeal damaged Tokeyo’s friendship with his gambling buddy. Luckily the Devaronian had codes for a small stash of spice at the docks, which they grabbed on their way back to the Express for the long trip to the Ithorian worldship.

This was all fine. Shootouts and brief chases and tense scenes arguing about whether one’s contact is an Imperial informant. I hit a snag when it came time to race the tree back to the Wookiees, though. Basically I just didn’t have enough for everyone to do. Tokeyo was fine – as the Pilot, he was making Helm checks and managing resources to fill a progress clock before I filled my “It’s Life Day and you’re late!” clock. Kass definitely wanted to play up her addiction, and unfortunately I gave it short shrift here. Partially out of real life time crunch, partially out of drawing a blank when it came to making it interesting aboard ship when the only issue is “go fast”. I came up with all sorts of things after the session, of course, but that’s hindsight for you.

Things picked up once Tokeyo slid the Porg Chop Express into the worldship’s docking bay with minutes to spare. They all did some setup + group actions to mollify the enraged dockworkers, then delivered the wroshyr tree to a happy Horux and his band of Wookiees. I think I recovered from my earlier failure with Kass here, as Akkol and Horux worked together to help Kass realize her inner strength. This was a group Attune that we ruled would let Kass take downtime actions to reduce her addiction clock down if she wanted.

We did Tokeyo’s downtime after that, since he won’t be able to join us next time. He managed to overindulge and get the crew in debt to Mospeda, a vaccsuited Rodian modeled after the Russians from Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye run. Seriously, bro.

Next time we’ll add Dr. Cyclos, an Abyssian Stitch to the crew, and handle downtime aboard the Ithorian worldship. Akkol Cha should get some mad background XP, since it’s his childhood home.