Star Wars for One

Last weekend I set up another session of our Bounty Hunter campaign at our awesome FLGS the Wyverns Tale. Most weeks we have about 4-6 people show up, some weeks we have 12, some we have zero, but this week we had one, besides myself. Solitary FFG Star Wars is possible, but… if you’re just making up stories in your own head, maybe write a book? No, this week we had me and one PC. He was understandably nervous going on a solo bounty hunt, but really this seems like it would be a much more common scenario. One hunter means you get the whole bounty, rather than a share.

Given that it is difficult to predict how many PCs will show up in a given week, I built my encounters to be very flexible. Usually if a combat encounter involves minions, I’ll have 3 minions per PC making up the minion groups. One PC table = 3 minions (not the little one-eyed yellow kind, despite how much I would not mind taking a light repeating blaster to those). Rivals are usually a pretty decent challenge for most PCs, so I recommend adding them to encounters on a one to one basis with PCs for a moderately difficult encounter. A nemesis is going to be quite a challenge to solo for one PC. It is not impossible, but it will likely require a bit of luck and some very clever tactics on the part of the PC.

Beyond combat, social encounters can be very challenging for a lone PC, unless they have a particularly well-rounded character. Often when playing in large groups, it is very helpful to specialize in just a few skills. You can be the party “face” with a lot of social skills, the muscle, the sniper, the mechanic/slicer, or maybe the driver/gunner. With a smaller party, and especially a party of one, you need a diversified character. Some career specializations lend themselves to this better than others. Dangerous Covenants, the sourcebook for hired guns has great examples off both a specialist, and a generalist. Take the Heavy: nearly all skills and talents are related to making you a walking tank. Good luck with anything outside wielding the heaviest weapons with devastating efficacy. Not very effective during negotiations, unless those negotiations turn aggressive. On the other side of the coin you have the Enforcer: adding Brawl, Coercion, Knowledge (Underworld) and Streetwise. This is the darker side of a “face” character, but when you add those skills to the already diverse base set for hired gun of Athletics, Brawl (again), Discipline, Melee, Piloting (Planetary), Ranged (Light), Resilience, and Vigilance, you get a street tough that knows how to drive, shoot, brawl, and intimidate information out of underworld contacts. Maybe not someone you would send in for delicate political negotiations, but pretty good in most Edge of the Empire situations.

This past week, as really every week of the Bounty Hunter campaign was fantastically entertaining. The player ended up using his most experienced and well-equipped PC, despite having a fairly narrow skill set as a Bounty Hunter Assassin. Sometimes *not* having the appropriate skill led to some hilarious situations. Negotiating with a Drall duchess, investigating a missing person, and attempting to wheedle information from the Drall Wing Guard were not this PC’s strengths, but that added to the adventure as he caused quite a stir around the capital city of Mastogophorus. Most of the combat encounters he breezed through, since that is his wheelhouse, and in the final battle he held his own, despite going against three rivals through some skilled tactics and favorable rolls.

Starting the session we were both a bit anxious as to how one PC would be able to succeed, but by the end we both agreed it was an excellent adventure and all the more memorable thanks to having just one PC! For those of you attempting your own one on one Star Wars game, I would recommend planning a lot more encounters and encounter areas than if you were planning for a larger group. My typical three major act format usually takes a full group about 3-4 hours. With one PC we were done in two.

Bounty Hunter Report – Infiltration

The bounty hunter campaign is still going strong at The Wyvern’s Tale. Yesterday, the mission involved infiltrating a the Rebel Nebulon B Medical Frigate Redemption, to capture a wounded high-value target that eluded another team of bounty hunters.

The target was a former representative from Ithor, an Ithorian named Gela Aasa. Not sure if that is a canonically-correct Ithorian name, but I got it from a Star Wars name generator, and it worked. If you run Star Wars with any regularity, I would highly recommend having a sheet of these random names to grab for NPCs or players who are looking for a name for their PC.

As described in previous posts, I came up with the outline of three likely scenes and probable NPCs from the adversary decks, and selected some fun and interesting weapons and equipment for the PCs to rent or purchase that would likely come in handy during the mission. For this particular job, I chose some items from Age of Rebellion‘s Desperate Allies, as well as the Mimetic Suit from Fly Casual, which basically acts as a personal cloaking device.

Desperate Allies includes some interesting clothing options that confer different benefits like banal apparel to make characters harder to identify in a crowd, diplomat’s robes to add a boost die in social checks when trying to use status to bypass regular protocols, or resplendent robes and performer’s attire for those trying to attract attention and serve as a diversion for their stealthier comrades.

For weapons, I choose from Desperate Allies again, providing the option to purchase Military Holdout Blasters which are very concealable, but pack more punch than a regular holdout, as well as Goseia HIC “Mercy” Grenades. These grenades emit a hallucinogenic gas that impairs memory, and causes illusions.

The party passed on most of the costume options, but picked up a few banal mechanics coveralls, a few of the holdouts, and all of the grenades!

Once the team was briefed and equipped, it was time to start the mission. Here are the three scenes I planned for:

1. Boarding the Redemption. The frigate would be hiding in a light nebula, while the main Rebel fleet was battling the Empire elsewhere. As the medical model has the fighter bay replaced by a medical suite and a dozen bacta tanks, it would only be escorted by a handful of fighters. The PCs need to come up with a premise for boarding the Redemption with falsified Rebel credentials provided by the Guild for this mission.  Likely NPCs: Comm Operator, Rebel Liason, Alliance Infantry, Rebel Pilot.
2. Surgery Suite – The main hanger on the Redemption has been converted to an oversized medical bay. The hunters will need to locate the acquisition, determine his current condition, and find a way to transport him to their ship, and deliver him alive back to the Guild. Likely NPCs: Diplomat, Physician, Medical Droid, Rebel Pilot, Alliance Infantry.
3. Escape – They’ll need to escape with their quarry, which may prove difficult given the tractor beams, laser cannons, and fighter escort accompanying the frigate. Likely NPCs: Alliance Commander, Comm Operator, Rebel Pilot. X-wing, Y-wing stats.

I had imagined the PCs would try and pose as some diplomatic delegation to get close to the target. As it turned out, one of the players that showed up this week brought his Wookie Doctor PC. This afforded a much more conventional angle for being there. The protocol droid acted as the Wookie’s translator, as the other PCs posed as mechanics, while one Rodian Assassin PC elected to use his newly acquired Mimetic Suit to stealth around the ship. This allowed the team to smuggle in smaller weapons in tool kits and the Wookie’s medical bag.

I provided a simple schematic I found, which helped the PCs plan their operation, and also helped us keep track of who was where in the ship. I would highly recommend printing out ship schematics of ships you plan on using in missions. Most of the common ones are readily available.

This mission had the fewest combat encounters of just about any of the previous bounty hunter missions. It also would have been difficult to fight an entire frigate worth of rebels, but the players came up with some brilliant strategies to avoid combat at set them up for successes.

One of the “mechanics” was a Gand Outlaw Tech that was actually quite good at mechanics. His human smuggler companion was able to fake it. The Gand was also decent at Computers, and was able to find the target was being treated in a VIP wing of the medical suite, and under guard. The wookie and his droid translator gathered some information by some successful charm and medical checks with the young, inexperience and overworked Rebel physician and a troop of Rebel special forces the Wookie was asked to triage. Meanwhile, the Rodian made use of his stealth suit to head down to the main turbolaser and laser cannon batteries.

Hilarity ensued as the Gand used his position in main engineering to disable the tractor beams, cause steam to come out of the vents of the target’s room, which added to the smuggler convincing the posted guards there was a “small” radiation leak in there. Nothing to worry about. The Rodian was able to sabotage the turbolasers and laser cannon batteries, but rolled a despair and a triumph on a stealth roll to get out of there. We ruled this meant a gunnery deck officer mistook him for a Rodian on the gunnery crew, and that he was late for his shift and needed to be written up. That ended in one of the few fights of the entire session, aided by the Gand cutting the power to the entire area, which made for a lot of setback dice from darkness.

In the end, the Wookie, the Droid, and the Smuggler were able to safely transport the target, disguised as a hoversled full of medical supplies back to their ship. The Gand created false records of where the target was transferred to in the frigate, and the team crafted a dummy attached to one of the “Mercy” grenades, so when the rebels came looking for him, they were in for a hallucinogenic surprise! The power being off in the gunnery section meant the turblift was off too, so the Rodian rigged an escape pod to “misfire” and hoped his fellow hunters figured out a way to pick him up. The Droid succeeded on a daunting piloting check to hook up with the escape pod, and the team was able to hold off a pair of Y-wings long enough to escape with their acquisition. Amusingly, the Gand’s obligation came up for this mission. His obsession was to earn a name, and by capturing this Ithorian rebel conspirator, he certainly did!