I got to run my "
The Last Jedi" replacement Star Wars Saga adventure called
NO LAST JEDI at GaryCon last week. I've finally recovered from the Con Crud, so can now do a recap of how it went.
First
of all, in case anyone wants to run a game of SW Saga themselves using
the new movie's characters, I've uploaded pdfs of the character sheets I
made for the game under the
Campaign Resources of the Vorpal Chainsword. Second, I uploaded a bunch more pictures from the game people were nice enough to send me under the
Gallery section of the site.
The
story starts out with essentially the same opening crawl as The Last
Jedi. Only in this case Rey has been training with the enigmatic Luke
Skywalker for about 3 weeks, but has learned little of his motivations.
The game opens with Chewy returning from the Resistance fleet in the
Millenium Falcoln with Fin, Poe, and BB-8 in tow (Poe came in on his
X-wing). They were sent by order of Princess Leia to plead with Luke to
return to the fight with the resistance. The players attempted to
convince Luke of the nobility of the cause, but he kept insisting it was
too dangerous for everyone if he left. At that point, BB-8 played a
holographic message from Princess Leia for him.
"Luke, I beg
you to return from exile and rejoin our fight for the resistance. We
have lost much since you left, the New Republic all having been wiped
out by Starkiller Base before we were able to destroy it. But we have
hope yet, as we have learned the secret location of the leader of the
First Order, this Lord Snoke. We believe that if we can capture or kill
Snoke the First Order will fall and Ben may even return to us. But I
know that Snoke is strong in the Dark Side of the Force, and only with
your help could we ever hope to prevail, but press on we must. The last
remaining ships of the Resistance fleet are amassing for the final
assault on his secret headquarters even as I record this message. This
BB unit has the coordinates where to meet us. Help us Luke Skywalker,
you're our only hope."
(Note: If the
Players convinced Luke before playing the hologram then he will fight
with them in the upcoming scene and one player can control him. But in
this game they did not, and Luke still refused.)
BB-8
revealed that the location is in the Horuset system. At this Luke paled
and says "We must stop her!" Just at that moment the sound of a Tie
Fighter roared overhead!
(Note: I had a
bluetooth speaker setup behind the DM screen and had a Star Wars
soundboard loaded up on my phone so I could play sound effects from the
movies. The sound of Tie fighters screeching by and blasters and
lightsabers crashing together REALLY helps amp up the fun of any Star
Wars game)
The Imperials had tracked the heroes to the old
Jedi planet (the official name is Ach-To, fyi). The Imperials were now
searching the planet for Luke. Now Luke has no choice but to go, so
they've got to get back to the Millennium Falcon and Poe's X-Wing, and
of course Phasma and a squad of Stormtroopers stand in their way.
(Note:
The old Star Wars minis from the Wizards of the Coast line are perfect
for the RPG, as they're pre-painted and super durable. I love them. You
can still get them from ebay and some miniature websites like coolstuffinc.com.)
They
fought their way past Phasma and her stormtroopers. Luke ran off to
handle some AT-STs on the other side of the battlefield (if they'd
convinced Luke earlier then instead he'd have stayed and helped and BB-8
could've controlled him). One unexpected hilarious moment of the game
was that BB-8's player decided to roll around between bushes and ask if
there were Porg nest under there. When he found some, he'd shock the
Porgs to cause a burst of Porgs out of the bushes, startling nearby
Stormtroopers, including Phasma! He even rolled so well on this that a
hunting Nexu burst out of the plants intent on eating the Porgs and the
Stormtroopers along with them. So the heroes were able to slip by Phasma
(who was fighting off the Nexu) and blast their way clear to the
Falcon.
Next we had a Starfighter chase scene, where the Falcon
and Poe's X-wing were harrassed by Tie Fighters as they tried to break
through the blockade surrounding the old Jedi planet. (I used the X-Wing miniatures for this, as they just look awesome.)
Finn and Rey acted as gunners in the Falcoln while Chewy flew, and Poe
and BB-8 fought off Ties in the X-Wing. Luke just meditated mysteriously
in the X-Wing.
They escaped the blockade and made their way to
the Resistance fleet. Here Leia and Luke embraced and Luke explained the
plot. Long story short is that Luke actually found Snoke over 5 years
ago while he was mopping up Empire remnants and old Sith artifacts with
his crew of freshly-trained Padawans (including Ben Solo). They had
found some holocrons mapping out some of Palpatine's other projects and
were shutting them down before they became a problem for the New
Republic. Unfortunately one of those projects was the Tomb of Darth
Plagueis, Palpatine's old master. Palpatine couldn't kill Plagueis
because Plagueis could jump bodies, and had done so many times before to
remain immortal. Plagueis would jump into his Sith Apprentice after he
was fully trained but before the Apprentice got wise to him, thus
allowing Plagueis to live forever. But Palpatine figured it out, and
froze Plagueis in a Force Trap deep within a Sith Tomb on Korriban. This
Tomb required Palpatine to occasionally visit and maintain the
suspension so Plagueis wouldn't wake up. With Palpatine's death though,
it was only a matter of time before Plagueis woke up. Luke learned of
Plagueis and took his best Padawans to go shut Plagueis down for good.
However Plagueis killed most of his Padawans before Luke could pull some
Force magic and block Plagueis's ability to switch bodies within the
Force. Ben and Luke then pulled the temple down on Plagueis and barely
escaped with their lives. What Luke didn't know was that Plagueis had
survived and already put his mark on Ben as his next apprentice, who was
grieving from the loss of his friends and vulnerable to the Dark SIde.
Eventually Ben turned evil and destroyed the New Jedi Temple, due to
whisperings in the Force from Plaegus (also known as "Snoke"), and
joined Snoke and helped build the First Order from an Empire remnant
fleet.
(That's a lot of exposition! I know,
I'm sorry. Now here I really wanted to run through a "Flashback" scene
and I had the Sith Tomb map and a handful of 5th level Padawans and Luke
ready to go. It would've been cool to let everyone be a Jedi and have a
big battle between Plageuis (with some Sith robo-zombies) and the
Players as Jedi. But the con game was already running long and time was
short (only had 4 hours for the game!) so I just explained all that and
moved forward.)
Luke finally explained that if he were to
die, Snoke would regain his ability to switch bodies through the Force
and would likely immediately take over Kyle Ren/Ben's body, which Kylo
certainly wasn't aware of. So Luke had to stay in hiding to study the
Jedi texts and figure out how to permanently sever Snoke's connection to
the Force before he could take over Kylo Ren's body for good. But he's
come out now because of where the Fleet discovered the hidden base, the
Horuset system, which is where Korriban (and Plagueis's tomb) are! Luke
knows Snoke's tomb is on the planet below them.
At that moment
three giant Star Destroyers appeared out of Hyperspace next to the
Resistance fleet! Leia commands the ships to jump to hyperspace but
there's some kind of Hyperspace Jammer coming from the largest Star
Destroyer, blocking their escape. Ackbar turns to the party and says
"Its a Trap!" ;)
(So now we've got a
Starship-scale battle to fight. I used the Fantasy Flight Armada minis
for this as they look awesome. But for the actual battle we focused on
the Falcon and Poe, and the other ships we rolled dice for, high/low
war-style. It was a simpled D6's for Ties/A-Wings, D8's for
X-wings/B-wings/Tie Interceptors. For each grouping we just rolled
whoever rolled lower lost a ship (and one die) from the little 3-ship
sprues. That way we could know how the general battle was going outside
of the close-up battles of the PCs.)
The
heroes knew Snoke was on the surface, and wanted to get Luke down there
to kill him once and for all. They also knew they should probably stop
the Hyperspace Jammer on the main Star Destroyer. AND the X-wings were
getting killed out there so they wanted Poe to help in the overall
Starship battle. So they decided to DO ALL THREE!
Poe flew out on
his X-wing with BB-8, and fought his way to the main Star Destroyer. He
then JETTISONED BB-8 into one of the hanger bays of the Star Destroyer!
Just, out in space and through the blue shield thing right into a
hanger. By himself! Then Poe just flew back into the main battle. So
BB-8s goal was to disable the Hyperspace Jammer alone. Hilarious.
Luke,
Rey, Chewy and Fin took the Falcon through the starship battle and down
to the planet, evading and blasting Tie fighters along the way. Once
there, they entered the Sith Tomb. (Chewy used
quite a few Force Points on the piloting checks going down, and I just
let them find the tomb rather than fight their way up to it).
So
we had this three way encounter going on. Poe would blast a Tie or two.
The ground heroes engaged Snoke and Kylo Ren and some Imperial Guards,
and BB-8 had to bumble his way through the Star Destroyer. That was
probably the most fun part of each turn, watching BB-8s player figure
out how to trick a Stormtrooper into falling down a chute or
electroshock him into tripping and falling. Eventually BB-8's player
found a maintenance tunnel and was able to make his way to the
Hyperspace Jammer (bypassing a TON of Stormtroopers I had ready to go)
and disable it. He then shot himself out the garbage shute and into
space. Poe had placed a tracker on him so just picked him up floating
out in space mid-battle! It was pretty awesome.
Meanwhile I gave
Poe's player Luke to play (the original plan was to allow BB-8's player
to play Luke in the final scene, since anyone who had to be BB-8 for the
whole game deserved a break, but BB-8 had his own infiltration adventure going on).
Luke faced off against Snoke and Kylo with force powers while Rey, Fin,
and Chewy took down the imperial guards and robots with their blasters.
The Sith Tomb was full of traps and they were careful to move to safe
spots during each round. Kylo started throwing Chewy around and so Rey
ran up to Kylo to face him one-on-one. This would also allow Luke and
Snoke (who were busy throwing pillars and stone coffins at eachother) to
face off in lightsaber combat. Unfortunately we ran out of time at the
Con and had to leave it on that cliffhanger...
What a game! I
have to say, it was so much fun, and the players at GaryCon were some of
the best folks to help re-write The Last Jedi into a Star Wars story
worthy of the Saga!
