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So I've put my Age of Worms campaign on hold for the next while, and convinced one of my players to give a me a bit of GMing break. So I get to be a player for a while, a role I very rarely get the chance to take on. He's decided to run some Edge of the Empire. Last night we played through what I believe was the intro adventure in the GM screen, and after that he's planning to run a published adventure called Beyond the Rim, which I believe is a 96 page hardcover, and the first full adventure FFG has released for this line. Hopefully I'll get to play through it, and after that I'll go back to finishing up Age of Worms.
I decided I'd try to keep up an in character journal of this campaign.
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Session #1, minecraft hutt edition
PCs
Rico Cortez (journal narrator, human, explorer/fringer)
Tarlek (human, explorer/trader)
4D1 (droid, smuggler/scoundrel)
Fucha (wookie, hired gun/marauder)
Sparky (rodian, technician/mechanic)
I woke up in a s*~& hole inn, in a s*%+ hole spaceport, on the s$$~ hole planet of Tattooine. I had spent the past several days in a drunken stupor. Most of my credits had been lost to booze, twi’lek dancers and sabac games, but the lost credits and the hangover were the least of my problems. Mom and the crew had left port without me. I was stranded and pissed off.
Mom and I had a pretty big row when we had arrived in port regarding my so called, “incessant carousing” and “gambling problem,” and I hadn’t talked to her or seen her in several days. Still I was back to the ship docks in time for our scheduled departure. I’d like to think that she wouldn’t have just abandoned me, but in a way that is preferable to the alternative, which was that she had left prematurely due to some sort of emergency. She had made her share of enemies over the years, and she did have a few debts to a local hutt named Bargo. Being in debt to a hutt is not something I’d wish on anyone, but mom didn’t have much choice. A couple of years back, The Princess Bride had gotten pretty banged up in an asteroid field and we were desperate for money for repairs. We had nowhere else to turn. In fact the whole reason we were on Tattooine was so that mom could pay back some of the money she owed. What if Bargo wasn’t happy with the amount she had offered him?
Whatever the reason for her leaving, it didn’t change the fact that I now needed to find a new crew to join. I cleaned myself up and spent a couple of days visiting the local Cantinas. I finally met up with a fellow willing to take me on. His name is Tarlek, and I get the sense that he’s a bit of a greedy bastard. He’s an explorer/trader, and he talks about capitalism and the free market as if it were some sort of religion. Now I like money as much as the next fringer but only insofar as it will pay for booze, twi’lek dancing girls and keeping the ship flying, but it’s a tough galaxy, so you can’t blame a guy for wanting to earn some credits. His crew is the usual mix of misfits. He has a rodian mechanic named Sparky and a big wookie first mate named Fucha that is clearly his muscle. A droid called 4D1 recently joined up with his crew, but I’m not sure what its area of expertise is. It’s a law enforcement model, but I don’t get the sense it does much enforcing of laws these days. I’m sure there is an interesting story there that I may hear one day if the thing gets chatty.
It seems that, like my mother, his wookie Fucha is also in a bit of debt to Bargo. I know this because while were in the Cantina, we were approached by a droid called 3P9. I recognized it immediately, as it is Bargo’s personal protocol droid. He explained to Tarlek that Bargo wants to meet with him and the crew about doing a favor that would work towards paying off some of debts owed by the Fucha.
After lunch we made our way across town for Bargo’s manor. The place was opulent and well guarded by gomorians. We soon found ourselves in Bargo’s personal audience chamber. Bargo himself is slim by hutt standards. One side of his face is badly mangled, as a result of a botched assassination attempt several years back. I found him repulsive and hard to look it, but I tried not to let it show. It’s best not to offend a hutt in his home. He told us about how he had won a share in an oridium mine in a sabaac tournament a while back, and how he needed us to go check out the mine. He wanted us to bring him back a report on its status as well as recover the expected proceeds for his share of the year’s take. By his estimates, he figured he should be earning about 100K credits a year from the operation. I had a feeling he was going to be disappointed. I wasn’t eager to be the bearer of bad news to the thing, but it didn’t look like I had much choice if I was going to prove myself to Tarlek. Bargo is friendly enough when he’s in a good mood, but he’s a ruthless cuss at heart, and he doesn’t like to be disappointed. I knew this could all end badly if we didn’t play our cards right.
Our little mission briefing was interrupted when a half dozen gomorians burst into the audience room. They seemed to have a beef with Bargo, and they were carrying vibroaxes on their backs. The two gomorians that were guarding Bargo rushed forward to protect their master and a brawl ensued. 3P9 ordered us to help defend Bargo. I drew my blaster pistol and looked to my new captain for a cue, but he seemed content to see how things played out. So far none of the gomorians had drawn weapons, so escalating things didn’t seem too smart, especially since the gomorians all had viboaxes and were only a few steps away. It didn’t take long for the six attackers to beat Bargo’s guards into unconsciousness. That was when I got worried. I thought they might go for their axes and come at us next. We held our ground and waited, but instead of attacking they started shouting at Bargo. I don’t know their nasty primitive language, but it was obvious they were pissed off at the hutt. He pretty much sat behind his giant desk and took their barrage of angry words without much to say back to them. Then they turned around and left. I breathed a sigh of relief as the tension left the air. I like a good tavern brawl, but taking on a half dozen well-armed gomorians isn’t the kind of fight I get into if I don’t have to. I was glad to see that Tarlek had some sense, and knew when to play it cool. Even the wookie was smart enough not to know when to hold back. Bargo didn’t seem interested in discussing the nature of their dispute, but I couldn’t help but think it might have something to do with our upcoming mission.
We set out the next day. Tarlek’s ship is called the Good Fortune. It’s a YT-1300, which is a very common freighter in the outer rim. I was born on a ship just like it, and mom had the thing until I was fifteen. Then she sold it off, and acquired a newer YT-2400. Fucha showed me my locker and my quarters. It brought back a lot of memories from when I was a kid. The wookie gave me some dirty looks, as I was settling in. It was clear that he would be keeping an eye on me, and he didn’t entirely trust me yet. He certainly made it obvious that I should not go anywhere near his stuff.
A couple of days later we came out of hyperspace in the vicinity of the planet where the mine was located. It was a small planet, and other than the mine it was basically uninhabited. Our scanners showed that its atmosphere was toxic, which explained the lack of life. The mine operation appeared to be the only thing happening on the rock. Fortunately there were some generators set up that were maintaining an energy field around the mine which served to provide breatheable air and keep out the toxic gases.
As we made our decent, we noticed two landing pads. The main one was empty but the secondary pad had a small freighter sitting on it. We landed, and entered the big ferrocrete bunker that housed the mining operation. The entry area was deserted and there was no one in the reception booth to greet us. We found fresh trandoshan blood in the booth. Something was definitely wrong here.
Next we entered a big room that served as a cantina. Here we found four dead bodies sitting at a table. They had clearly been miners, and it appeared that they had been killed by blaster fire. According to Sparky, the rodian, they had only died within the past couple of hours. At this point we all drew our weapons. It was quite possible that there were still hostiles nearby. I wondered if they were connected to the ship we saw on the landing pad. We discovered a functional cook droid in the kitchen. It was a bit addled and hadn’t seemed to notice that the four men at the table were dead. Sparky shut it down, and attempted to delve into its CPU to see if he could glean any useful intel from its memory banks. We didn’t discover a lot, but we did learn that it had a restraining bolt attached to it. I don’t know much about such tech, but Sparky told me they are devices used to control droids and override their programming. I’m not sure why anyone would bother to put such a device on a cook droid, but someone had. Sparky removed the bolt, but it was unable to tell us who was responsible for implanting it in the first place.
We continued our search of the place and soon came to the office of the mine manager. It was deserted. Tarlek and I searched a big filing cabinet while, Sparky delved into the computer system. Fucha and 4D1 kept watch. We found plenty of documentation regarding the status of the mine. It seemed that most of the easy to reach ordium had already been extracted, and what was left would be costly to extract and not particularly profitable as a result. It looked like Bargo was going to be disappointed. Sparky managed to hack into some security footage. We saw a small droid leave the bunker shortly before our arrival. It hopped into a cloud car and flew off. We also saw a trandoshan receptionist get shot by blaster fire, but the camera angle didn’t show the attacker. Around this time an automated alert triggered. It indicated that one of the generators supporting the shielding keeping out the toxic atmosphere had shut down. Other generators were still active, so we weren’t yet in danger, but I suspected that if we a lost a couple of more generators it could get bad fast. Time was of the essence.
We headed out to the secondary landing dock to check out the ship. There we discovered five crates of oridium ready to be loaded aboard and shipped off world. The ship itself was deserted, though we found a dead body nearby and on the ship there was an empty crate that once contained blaster weapons. Tarlek and I both saw opportunity. We could load up the ship and take off now before whoever had hit this place came back. I was pretty confident that we could get a good price for the ordium, and we could use the credits to pay off Bargo. We also had documentation regarding the status of the mine. The rest of the crew seemed good with the idea. It was likely that any miners still around were already dead, so there probably wasn’t much we could do for them. Fucha, Tarlek and I got to work loading the freighter. 4D1 remained on guard duty, and Sparky made himself busy prepping the ship for take off. All this took us about half an hour, but during that time we were fortunate, and no one came back to the ship.
Tarlek was worried about walking back through the bunker to the Good Fortune. He had a bad feeling that he’d run into hostiles. Thus I offered to fly the freighter and crew to the primary landing pad. There wasn’t room for two ships to land, so I had to do some fancy piloting to lower the clumsy freighter close enough to the landing pad to allow Tarlek, Fucha and 4D1 to hop out without crashing the freighter into the Good Fortune. If I had failed it could have been disasterous, as I would likely have badly damaged both ships. I pulled it off though, and I think I impressed Tarlek. Sparky stayed with me, and we flew into orbit where we rendezvoused with the Good Fortune.
I recalled a planet called Zion 7 that had a prominent mineral market. It was only a few systems away, and I figured it would be a good place to get quotes on the value of the ordium and sell it off. We headed for Zion 7. A couple of days later we were docked. I hit the streets with a couple of samples. It didn’t take long for me to learn that we would likely get 25,000 credits a crate, and there would be plenty of possible buyers on the planet. It seems that ordium is a commodity in demand. Tarlek and I negotiated a sale. The negotiations went well and we landed 150K for the cargo. We were tempted to take the money and run, but we didn’t need Bargo sending bounty hunters after us. We all agreed to hand him over the majority of the credits, as well as the old freighter. We kept 40,000 for ourselves, and we hoped he wouldn’t discover that we had skimmed some off the top, as he probably wouldn’t see it as a finder’s fee the same way we did.
Next we returned to Tattooine. Our meeting with Bargo went as well as could be expected. He wasn’t pleased about the status of his mine, but that was outside of our control. He also wasn’t happy that we hadn’t bothered to find out who was responsible for the attack and if there were any survivors, but we did have credits to offer him and a ship that he could sell off. We encouraged him to direct his frustration and anger towards the hutt from whom he had acquired the mine from in the first place, and he seemed content to do so.
All in all, I count the mission as a success. Fucha paid off some of his obligation to Bargo. I made a decent enough impression on Tarlek that I think he’ll keep me on. We came out ahead several thousand credits, and no one had to fire a shot. Now it’s time to leave Tattooine and find new opportunities. Currently I have only the gear I had been carrying when I went into port. A lot of my more expensive equipment had been left aboard the Princess Bride and was lost to me, so one of my first priorities will be to buy some much needed equipment. I also plan to set aside some money to save for the entry fee to one of the outer rim’s biggest sabaac tournaments. Hopefully I’ll be able to resist spending all those credits on drinks and dancers, but we shall see. I have never been very strong willed when it comes to my vices. I look forward to future adventures, and I hope that wherever mom is she’s doing well, unless of course she did ditch me on purpose. In that case, f!%+ her.
I'm not familiar with the Edge of Empire RPG. If you don't mind my asking, how long was your session? What are your impressions of EoE from a gaming perspective, since it seems that not too much happened (depending on the session length) without any combat being involved. Is EoE more story-driven than combat-driven from your perspective?
Thanks for any insights into this RPG.
There probably should have been some action. But our characters didn't really care enough about the mission goals to do a proper investigation of everything that was going on at the mine, and thus avoided the main encounters of the adventure, which I was told afterwards involved some sort of mini droid uprising at the mine.
The system itself is intended to be a pretty narrative system. However, it is star wars, so there is supposed to be plenty of action, but as I said our characters kind of side stepped it.
Edge of the Empire explores the stories of fringers living in the outer rim. It's not really about Jedi and the Empire as much as it about explorers, smugglers, bounty hunters, hutts etc… Think Han Solo and Chewy instead of Luke Skywalker. It's set just after Episode IV.
I'll need to play it a bit more before I can comment much on the system, but so far I like it. It's a nice change from a game like pathfinder. Character creation is pretty fast an easy. The custom dice mechanics are interesting. The mechanics themselves have evolved out of warhammer frp 3E, which in turn evolved out of war hammer 2e and 1e. However war hammer 3e is very different than 2e (like 4e D&D is to 3e in many ways). Anyhow, it's definitely a cleaned up and slicker version of the warhammer 3e system, which I can say with some confidence since I've played a about a dozen or so sessions of war hammer 3e.
Cool, thank you for the information. I really enjoy your various journals and will keep watching for the next installment!