Re: OOC#33
I still remember, back in my early college days, getting introduced to the Star Wars RPG (the old West End Games version, with the D6 rules). One of my best friends was running the campaign...using, initially, published adventure modules, though he later spun off into his own take on the Star Wars universe, which I loved. But in one particular module, we were supposed to be hijacking an Imperial fuel shipment. Unbeknownst to any of us, IF we succeeded in stealing the ridiculously large fuel freighter (which was basically like an Imperial-oversized set of tanker cars for a train, except in space), there was supposed to be a homing beacon that would bring the Empire to the Rebel base we'd escape to, they'd blow up the shipment rather than let the Rebels take it, and the Rebels would have to give up their base and go on the run, yet again.
Well, I was playing a slightly paranoid bounty hunter. We got aboard the ship, found the communications center, and plugged in our droid--whom I gave explicit orders to kill ALL outgoing communications. Steve (the GM) rolled for the droid--exceptionally well!--and asks, as the droid, "Does that include the emergency homing beacon?"
"ESPECIALLY the homing beacon!"
Steve got this glazed look on his face for a moment, as he processed that and contemplated the results...and then proceeded to tell us that we had found THE ONE WAY he could think of to short-circuit the entire second half of the module...because without the homing beacon, there was no Imperial fleet coming to recapture or destroy the fuel shipment and therefore no need for a harrowing escape from Imperial forces. He said, "They say in the module that it's important that the Empire tracks the shipment...but you've managed to eliminate every possible option they have to do so. And I just don't see a reason to force you to go through that when you were smarter about carrying out the mission than the guys who wrote the module." He tried a few other things (I'm not sure if they were his ideas, or stuff written into the adventure), but it was one of those nights where everything was clicking...the Imperial ship dispatched to intercept us got massively damaged because it was scooping up escape pods and I loaded one up with everything explosive that I could find. The one Imperial officer who stayed aboard to try and sabotage the ship died when, rather than taking the bait after he started fires in multiple sections of the ship and going to investigate, I decided to just seal off the command section and blow atmosphere everywhere else (the ship was supposed to be empty at that point...I'd gone on shipwide comms with a thermal detonator and told the crew they had five minutes to abandon ship before I set off the detonator, which is why there were so many escape pods to be rescued).
That was the first time I seriously de-railed a GM's plans. It became something of a habit...never deliberate, just, when presented with impossible odds, I tend to think way outside the box, I guess. It was such a consistent thing that one of my friends told me, after I'd short-circuited his much-anticipated all-night battle plans, that any time I start asking questions that seem utterly unrelated to the threat at hand, he knew things were about to take a really weird twist.
I don't know if I've ever done that in this game. I suspect that some of Roy's more unusual shots have created some surprises for Don...I'm sure the time that he and Beth hacked into a bunch of Lady V's monetary accounts and transferred all the money to the Hermes' slush fund was unexpected. But beyond that...I don't know. And I actually like the not knowing.
