OOC Chat
So very condensed storytime from my (mostly now) AoR tabletop game I've been running since 2014 regarding the events that happened last session. Still runs a bit long but I hope you find it amusing...
A bit of background I run most weeks on Sundays with a interlude to roll20 & discord given recent events. Even being fairly xp stingy (5 to 10 xp most sessions with @15 for successful adventure conclusion), even with retirements, semi-retirements, and character deaths...yeah the PCs and campaign are more than a bit 'developed'. Depending on schedules, availability, and just plain life changes my table is between 6 to 10 players, some of these folks have been playing at my table for decades through various campaigns and some of their now adult kids play the game (this one doesn't hold my record as the longest, that would be a Mechwarrior rpg;-).
Anyway, the players started off EotE and sort of slid into AoR. I've allowed F&D in, but I think in general my band of miscreants just don't care for force users for one reason or another. It's a full sandbox campaign and generally have a few 'adventures' ready at a given time but at this point it's fairly easy as they are fairly well self-directed and focused on building up their corner of the Rebellion, having a lot of irons in the fire at once.
Essentially, it's two games in one between the tabletop handling more tactical & ops stuff that directly involve the PCs and stuff we handle off table as a more strategic level game as they've grown their own rebellion (own recruiting pools, training pipelines, resources, manufacturing, & logistics etc.)...that while shares a common purpose in overthrowing the Emperor, they are headed to splintering off as far as what happens afterwards (there's friction points that occasionally occur but they aren't dependent on Mon Mothma's crowd at this point and more often then not they feel it's more a one way relationship as far as support goes with the main Rebel Alliance).
Anyhoo, one of the irons in the fire they were developing moved from the planning to action phase. Essentially they learned through their network of spies that there was a secret cache of stygium crystals hidden away Rendili StarDrive's Corporate Sector regional headquarters (and shipyard) located on massive Prosperity Center station orbiting the planet Bonadan. They had 'acquired' a small amount of stygian and a functional miniaturized cloaking device plans (and a frame to mount it in) from a mission @two years before from an (mis-)adventure and had been on the prowl for more stygium so they could take full advantage of it. They deemed the stores the Imperials had seized & stockpiled a bit too dangerous to make a grab for and figured that some manufacturer or other source may have squirreled away an industrial sized quantity of the stuff despite Imperial restrictions. So they really put a focus on industrial espionage on ship manufacturing companies in the hope that one of them either was continuing secret research on cloaking or had shelved their research and just not turned over all their stockpiles of stygium in case circumstances changed.
A number of my players are either veterans or current reserve military so if you can't tell a few of them tend to geek out on the details. Basically so I can't throw Murphy's Law at them every mission but there is nearly always at least some sort of minor complication thrown at them during once the mission timer starts. And they usually plan on shooting someone anyway so there's usually plenty of excitement to go around even during a op that goes off without a hitch. However given the number of moving parts in this one I decided Murphy would be paying them a visit, I just didn't know how right away.
So in the planning phase they were a bit worried about the Imps just blowing up the station while they were trying to crack the vault or before they could make their getaway if things went pear shaped if the fleet arrived ahead of schedule. Granted it was a big habitat that RSD was just a fractional part of but my players can tend to prepare for the worst case scenarios and build their fallback plans from there (and the Imps had destroyed entire planets, so...).
They hit upon that any responding Naval assets were unlikely to bombard RSD's HQ if a number of VIPs were present as hostages. So they put an memo into Rendali's public relations dept (and covered those tracks...a minor snippet adventure) to have a sort of holiday party/gala to showcase a new project the company had been working on to try to regain some market share from KDY (the Vanguard...which was basically a retooled version of a design done by Walex Blissex when he was with RSD that the Zann Consortium had latter 'acquired' from the destroyed death star to make the Vengeance destroyer). Given how institutional hierarchies work and how they have covered their bases, nobody in RSD questioned the upcoming party, left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing thinking this was business as usual.
The holiday I ass pulled at the time for the timeframe they wanted was 'Life Day' (officially November 17 btw). The Holiday Special & Gonk droids are a bit of a running joke with this crowd so no one thought much of it. Then I got to thinking I could lift a Christmas movie plotline where Murphy totally screws with a bunch of 'terrorists' in their perfectly planned heist (with way too many moving parts). And I do tease them on occasion that they dance up to that villainous 'terrorism' line a bit (just not crossing over to random bombings targeting civilians and a few other things but they're always money hungry to feed the beast so they do a lot of shady stuff regardless).
So they do their legwork research, a few minor side trek adventures to set things up like feeding the Black Sun shipping info in the Corporate Sector to thin out any potential naval response, do a sort of 'hostile' takeover of a catering service (and make sure they're the ones Public Relations hires) and acquire plans & materials. They get a little greedy and decide they are going to make a go for the frigate as well (which will cover the theft of the stygium cuz RSD isn't going to admit that they had a secret store of it but ISB may look closely if they can't figure out what he rebels were after). However they also decide the frigate can be a diversion for a backup extraction plan if things go tits up so they do another minor trek adventure to pull the same sort of takeover of a minor construction company doing work on RSD HQ and have a disguised boxed up shipment of 'building materials' containing CIS droids to run the frigate if need be not to mention use that to pre-position their high speed gear when the op begins.
Yeah, these are the sorts of players I have and granted I've probably shaped them a bit this way as well all things considered. So the operation begins, everything starts off perfectly. They have a sizable team of npc commandos with them, the gear & droids have been delivered and undetected, and the RSD security & VIP security get taken out without a hitch.
They secure their 'work area', locate the secret vault, and start on cracking it. They do find a driver sitting in his vehicle in the garage but don't really question him and figure out who he belongs to...though I did tell them their headcount for the hostages worked out and this driver (who I even named Arr Gile) seemed to be unaccounted for as far as pairing him with one of the 'guests'.
So Murphy shows up when one of their teams doing the sweep gets blown out of an airlock, attracting the attention of a passing patrol craft....
They give me the WTF just happened look but came prepared for bear and had contingencies planned out. They utterly destroy the initial local and imperial response, and let them know they are holding all these bigwigs hostage (to prevent a heavier response they feared) Their crackerjack slicer manages to own the RSD system in the meantime but discovers the 'vault' is kept isolated so that adds a hiccup to their timeframe.
At this point the write off stealing the Vanguard frigate and break out the CIS droids to pilot it assuming they won't be able to get away that way and fallback to Plan B for extraction. Which is essentially escaping in the 'tween deck undercity of Prosperity Center and 'evacuate' via other planned transports with the other civilians once the shit starts to fly (and then slip away to hyperspace with basically anything else they can loot).
Given the balls they have in the air between hostages, vault, fighting off the local & imp response they send one of their biggest combat fiends up to investigate what happened to that squad that was blown out the airlock with a fireteam. It doesn't end well as he doesn't retreat as I started to pick off the fire team and he doesn't report like he should. The player was the one guy's son so he's not as savvy as the others (and it was their mistake for sending him, but the theory was he had vacc sealed armor I guess;-). When he did finally spot the guy picking them off I even described that he was barefoot but I think the table missed the reference because they were too busy facepalming or something;-).
When the dead stripped PC was strung up in the lift with the note "Now I have a Light Repeating Blaster, Happy Life Day- HO HO HO" they got it (they usually miss when I base a plot off a Western or Louis L'amour but I made this one blatant). Five minutes latter after they were done pelting me with dice (it was a good laugh tho) they backtracked to Arr Gile, questioned him thoroughly and found out his passenger (Cam) was here to try to make up with wife (who was an RSD exec). Their slicer didn't have any problem identifying her (considering he had basically strip mined their data from personnel files on up to ship designs by this point).
Questioning her, they find out he's a retired Republic commando put out to pasture by the Imps (etc.) named Cam Klane. After they were done throwing dice at me again and figuring out which one of them was Hans Gruber they had a brief debate how they should get rid of this guy or even if they should try to co-opt him (despite killing one of the PCs). They decided to try to get rid of him remotely. Anytime I mention a Gonk droid in this game they always look to turn it into a walking bomb so that was an easy Checkov's gun to predict honestly when I mentioned their presence near the shipyard section early in the session. And they were a bit scared of that light repeating blaster he 'acquired' since it was one of the most frightening heavily modified high speed weapons in the group.
They sent the Gonk droid up to the floors they thought he was operating on with a open comlink and his wife calling for him. As I said they can get a bit ruthless. Cam was a bit suspicious, having a demo background himself, and basically threw a open comlink of his own towards the droid (to make it seem like he was there in person) to see what the rebels wanted. They failed on their recruitment/co-opt ploy so they remote detonated the droid.
I'm pretty sure they didn't buy he was dead since it was too easy but I also let the dice fall where they may so they weren't certain. However they did have a good idea of where he was if he did survive so they sealed off those levels and welded shut any passable ventilation shafts down from those levels.
Meanwhile the navy shows up, things proceed as they expected if that happened, and they break into the vault, acquiring their stygium crystals and a storehouse of other bonus goodies. Having separated out their VIP hostages they pick a few captives to bring with them for in depth interrogation (drugging them for transfer), load up any ISB or other imp reprobates into the Vanguard, giving the sacrificial droids orders to try to escape to a rendezvous point (unlikely to happen but they weren't sure), and leave the rest there locked up in the building (including 'Holli') to possibly prevent the structure from being knocked down around their ears as they escape via 'Plan B' (having cut into the 'tween deck and loaded up their modified 'tram' they had positioned for this contingency).
That bit went off without further complications as they blended in with other civilian evacuations during the Vanguard fight (it didn't make it to hyperspace, all hands lost;-). They were in hyperspace before they could be intercepted & inspected with their load of booty, but at a cost of 1 PC. And the threat there could be a sequel in the future...
This message was last edited by the player at 09:08, Tue 23 Nov 2021.
