So, I’m joining here in format to look for advice and possibly trade stories of this adventure.
I’d like to give it to my players as an interlude, rewriting the first act because they are far from the scholarly type. However reading the description of the Sanctuary leaves many questions in my mind.
First the map is strange. The ship seems to be pictured from port side, top thorn away, however the map is looks like taken from top and the starboard side of the ship is damaged.
It mentions elevators and non functioning freight lifts a few times, but I don’t see them and don’t really understand where are the multiple decks.
All is a bit confusing.
Has anybod y experienced similar problem or I just hold the map upside down?
It’s been quite a while, but yes I remember the map being a little odd and confusing. I just filled in the blanks and made my own map up, copying from the book.
It could be that the damage was along the top and starboard size, sort of diagonal, so the top decks and the extreme starboard ones on the lower deck are destroyed or exposed to vacuum.
The elevators could be in some of the destroyed areas, there are a few bits even on the port side which look like they should have contained something (particularly just behind the Turbolaser Battery Room) which could have contained some.
Now it says that the Basilisk moves through the corridors and the PCs can escape it by using smaller service corridors, but I don’t see any of those on the map, so I suppose the map is just meant to be a general guide to the layout of the ship and the specifics are up to you to describe narratively.
So I ran it to my group and we had a blast!
I modified the start, to fit the group - last campaign they managed to stop a modern rakghoul outbreak (not long before ROTJ) on their own, but they are all criminals or on the run and one of them is Force Sensitive (not per se wanted by the Empire, but sure as hell don’t want attention) so I changed the Imperial Agent (the one on the original story) as he “expressed the Emperor’s gratitude and asks for silence on the matters of defeating the Rakghouls” (the campaign started with the Ice Station Zulu oneshot and I expanded it, without the criminal syndicate instead changing it to an eco-terrorist) - definitely worth it’s own write up, but not the subject here.
It was a kind of reward and introducing a new complication, just so they don’t become complacent
Anyway. They agent tasked them with the job as a “reward” to find the Sanctuary and retrieve the heretic jedi artifacts. I used the executed smuggler’s story to start the session, but he was an aquaintance of a PC and got intercepted by the agent.
After they found the wreck in the debris field, the agent followed them through the obvious tracking device, but they started a hide and seek with them and the appearing Basilisk. I gave it cortosis to increase the difficulty for the three, around 500 xp characters (1 of them with lightsaber) and the agent had Kallus’ stats with 2 nemesis Assassin Droids (I love adversary cards). He wasn’t hostile but the players were paranoid (though the Trader did mentioned once that they could talk) so they shot (and cut) their way out and was especially bummed when the FS cut down with lightsaber one of the Assassins in the presence of the agent who in return fled.
It was a great game!
They evaded the basilisk, found the holocron and took down the 2 droids. I used the story’s recommendation of the Perception skill challenge from time to time to evade each other and the Basilisk and it was fun. Tied the agent’s arrival (how many rooms they can explore) to their Astrogation and piloting checks and both team fought the Basilisk (Imps in the background, one round then they fled as the PCs) as it hunted everyone.
They didn’t have a Mechanics guy and left the Astromech on their ship’s board (wasn’t a bad idea, warned them a couple of times) so they didn’t use most of the interactive objects. Also, the FS is still not put on the necklace It’s gonna be a huge facepalm, when he does
Thanks for reading through my rambling Hope you enjoyed it or at least got some inspiration for your own story!
Good job bud, looks like it was a success! How did the players enjoy it?
Also, why will the FS get a shock when they put the necklace on? I know there is a vision that happens, is that why or were you thinking of something else?
They enjoyed it, the Smuggler was upset first that the agent escaped, but it was only the heat of the moment.
They’ll be surprised because they spent a good amount of time to discover every piece of information that would have been given to them easily by the vision of the necklace
I didn’t push it because I have a tendency to lay them traps and they are extremely wary with my gifts
Not to my knowledge, I occasionally sell them second hand ship with some flaws, like that Luxury Yacht that a hutt had a huge, inappropriate and disgusting party in, but hey, it was cheap!
Hope you enjoyed it or at least got some inspiration for your own story!