Retcons and retools

Hey, you weren't there!

Well I've started up again after a long hiatus. I assembled a new group to come out and play this game, because only two from the previous group seemed to be the slightest bit interested. And since so much effort has been put into the first introductory adventure where the party has a critical role in the Battle of Yavin, it only really made sense for us to start from the very beginning. I'm actually pretty proud of the plot I devised to have the party tangentially related to what's happening in the movie, so naturally I wanted to give the players a feeling like they are just as important to the Death Star's destruction as Luke Skywalker is. That's fun.

The players of Arnette and Lisette had enough after that first meeting and said that they can't make a long-term commitment to meet regularly. The guy who played Lance thought it was fun, but didn't seem like he was dying to play again. I also moved, started a new job, my kid started school, the pandemic happened, and then I moved again.

But now that we're starting up again, the players of D'Wook and Turk-182 want to come back, but it wouldn't have made sense to ask them to do the first adventure again so I played them as NPCs, and they'll join later.

So replacing Arnette and Lisette are galactic rockstar/rebel agent Jeegn Ztungles (a Rodian) and his bandmate/partner, harmonica player Grundle Chanken (an Ithorian). Replacing Lance is Hal Brunchkiller, pretty much a carbon copy, although he had very unimpressive rolls that made him look like a doofus from time to time. The guy playing Hal is a good guy, but maybe a little bit too nice for his own good.

In the initial encounter with the sand people, he waved his hand to them after they fanned out and took for cover. One of the sand people shot a hole right through his hand.

Jeegn and Grundle actually kicked the Bith band off the stage at the Cantina and blew the roof off the house with the greatest performance Tatooine has ever seen.

Two new characters also joined. Shal, who is a living tree man from an obscure Star Wars species who can also use the force, but felt after the first session it might be better to choose a different character, and L1, an (unconventional) astromech droid that has a boxing glove he uses to fight enemies off.

Anyway, they made it up to the front door of Jabba's palace in five hours.

In session 2, I imagine they will get through the battle of Yavin, and we can run an abbreviated version of the Yavinian jungle "rescue" to catch them up.

....

In session 1, the guy playing Shal saw what a pain it was to be a beginning force sensitive character. So he wanted to switch to a different type of character.

In session 2, in Jabba's palace, an Ithorian who was posing as a buyer of Shal's expensive flower pot, who was really interested in Shal himself made his pitch. The Ithorians, being very nature minded and living in jungle ships are very interested in Shal's species, the Neti. He said he had a female of the species on the herd ship and he wanted to repopulate the species after a lengthy study. So Shal left to join the Ithorians. Meanwhile, Vero Morelock, another rebel secret agent, was in Jabba's palace posing as a droidsmith, and fixed up a protocol droid, when Jeegn and Grundle recognized her.

Differences:

In order to shorten things a bit, Jabba gave the party the mission with the secret Jedi info the first time, eliminating the need for the second visit with him. The reward was now 20 million, not 200,000. The secret Jedi info was all about the force sensitive characters who appeared in the TV show Rebels, as well as Obiwan and Yoda... instead of random Jedi names I made up.

When they left Tatooine Hal had a vision when Alderaan was destroyed. It was in greyscale and he was in a grassy field with a woman wearing dark clothing. She ignited her lightsaber, which appeared to be pink and her hair appeared to be purple. She told him his powers were weak. Then there was a jumpcut and she was already on him swinging the lightsaber and he rose his to block... and then the vision was over. The rest of the party saw him just faint.

Vero is an explosives expert, and had a device that she was sure would blast open the exhaust port with 14D damage. This time it was Hal who threw the device and the thermal detonator, while using the force. He rolled somewhere in the 40s, so it worked for sure.

Everything else more or less went the same way and they ended up in the brig of the TANTIVE III, though it was Vero that said she was Capt. Kark instead of Turk. Grundle posed as a prisoner the whole time and Jeegn crammed his Rodian head into a stormtrooper uniform.

Oh, here are some pictures of some of the newcomers in the style of 1977 Topps Star Wars trading cards.