OOC: Chat Thread

Re. plans: Fidelity, what do you think about heading up to the moisture farm to see what the problem is exactly, then figuring out how to handle it? From what we know, it's something mechanical, but we might waste time looking for a mechanic if the problem isn't lack of knowhow but something else, like an inability to get parts in due to some rival gang activity somewhere.

Alternatively, we check out the residential area, a bit blindly, but perhaps turning up some rumors there.

I was thinking about just going to the moisture farm to figure out what was going on with it as well. We can figure out the next move based on what we find out.

New baby - takes al your damn time and energy! Palmer will be there to venture into the well though with Besk and Raze.

Hope baby's doing well! (It is indeed an exhausting time. The Terrible Twos are striking early here with my 1.9-year old.)

Hope all is well, Kinu. No pressure. Take the time you need. But thanks for the update!

Almost out of diapers with my last one. Good luck Kinu. Hopefully you'll be able to sleep through the night some time soonish :)

Last night and tonight.
Last night was heaven!

So what do y'all think? We've done this Ugnaught a solid. Do we ask him to put in a word for us with Rance? Do we ask him for another job to at least get some plausible deniability/reason to be here besides looking for the kids? Maybe we ask what we can do to help get the vaporator working again and get some kind of letter from him that vouches for who we are with the rest of the community?

Our big obstacle is that no one will talk to us. So we could also just ask this guy to level with us, give us some advice on how to proceed with our true goal.

Barring that, we go murder-hobo and just jump some of Rance's guys!

Going murder-hobo might be fun haha but I vote we try to get the vaporator working again in order to start earning the trust of the community here. Maybe we could take it to the shop and see if we can fix it or just see what things it needs to be fixed and go about acquiring stuff. Maybe we could get some credits and rewards along the way. Makeup for that droid shake down we had.

Oh noes! I should have checked here before I posted!

But it looks like we are all on the same page anyway. I'll retcon anything you think that needs it. Otherwise just put your two cents in and lets see where it goes.

Hey guys, before we get too far down the rabbit hole of entering a race I just wanted to point out that Palmer rolls 3 greens in Piloting. Does anyone have better?

Raze is also GGG. I could get the next handful of Enhance upgrades to get him to GGGG with a Force die committed, but that would eat up the XP I've been saving. :/

I actually wonder if we should head back into the town. If folks won't talk to us here, let's go get some information from Rance's rivals. Has enough time passed so that the Hutts will talk to us?

We're in an information vacuum that we need to find a way out of. We might:

1) Head back to town to see if folks will be more forthcoming with information.
2) Try to infiltrate Rance's operation in some way (like as racers) to see if that gets us access to a source of information. But we thought the plumbing job would do that, and it just kind of gave us some context on the area with no real leads on the kids.
3) Go into murder-hobo mode and shake down some of Rance's goons for information. This option repels me as a player (and would repel Raze), but it's always on the table if we get desperate enough, I guess.

In case it was missed, the ugnaught mentioned that participating in a race requires entry fees.

Also a reminder, the only lead you had on ppl who might know something in Doé Prim was the speeder-shop front.

And remind us, I believe that "Speeder Shop" had parts on delivery to the moisture farm, correct?

Also, there was a thread of a bigger plot mentioned by "Kriffoff" about ... The Locker? Is that the right term used? I'll look it up.

But yes, we gain some info that can be useful. We have a minor contact in the Ugnaught (did he ever give his name?). We found a back way into Rance's operation (ostensibly).

Probably best to scout around on our way back to Lor-id and speeder back to follow up with Friffoff.

Yea, the ugnaught mentioned that's where the parts were supposed to be coming from.

I think the speeder shop might be the best next option then . Though we recovered the device we might not be able to put it back to use as is and this shop may also hold a clue about who to contact next here to get further in locating the missing youths.

Besk is GG for piloting

Yeah, I was taking them as roadblocks, too. It makes more sense that Em's trying to push us into uncomfortable situations. But I think that strategy is bringing to light a mismatch of campaign premise versus player expectations. We seem to want to be Big Damn Heroes, not morally gray people willing to sell out an Ugnaught who helped us only to help some other person with her problems.

But now knowing that the roadblocks are really meant to be moral conundrums, I think I can see how to act in a way that is consistent with Raze and his values. Raze is never going to sell out an innocent person to get what he wants. But he'll sell out bad guys or criminals any day. I mean, even Tony Soprano leaves the muggles alone.

Like, if Roola won't talk to us because of her take-a-number system, we go and find a way to demand an audience. Maybe we storm her audience chamber with our scheme to put it to Rance, but we have to act now! Maybe we find out someone she doesn't like (a bad person) and take them out. Or we do the same with Rance and hope he'll release the kids as a thank you.

Regarding Conflict: I kind of have a distaste for the system (I particularly dislike that causing fear is worth more conflict than physical violence), but I'm not actively trying to avoid conflict. I'm just playing Raze as I see him, and he's been faced with a lot of things he just won't do.

I think the other issue is that we have little to no information about these kids. Are they prisoners? Slaves? Willing members of the gang? It's hard to know whether we should put pressure on Roola or Rance or anyone at all without any trace of them. Literally none! We have no idea if they're even here. I think we expect a clue trail, but we can't seem to find it.

So, Tl;dr: We probably need to be more assertive as players. To do so, we're going to need options that don't involve harming innocents, or I think the game's going to keep being a stalemate (at least judging by past situations). We could also use some help finding out what's going on with the kids.

Hope this doesn't come off as a rant! I think it's a productive conversation to have, as I'm sensing player frustration (and perhaps GM frustration). :)

Yea, that's a known point about wanting to be the Big Damn Heroes, we've talked about that aspect before, I know. This was as close to a heroic mission premise as I had planned on the planet 😅 But I do feel like there's more to the mismatch beyond that and the ugnaught.

Like, if this is just about not wanting to do morally gray stuff, I get it. But I feel like you can't be surprised when choosing that behavior limits your options of how you can address your problem. We've talked about that before I think too.

As I see it, the only roadblock that I put up was that these are mostly not nice ppl here, or ppl who can't do anything with nice because they have a harsh survival-based reality to deal with first, and so using a friendly "Hey can you help us, please?" approach just doesn't work. I felt like that "set-up" created the best opportunity for the most interesting gameplay. Cuz of course anyone would want to help someone find missing kids if they could, but what if they just can't help? Then things get interesting, maybe, right? Well, that was the thought anyway...

Well, everything else that isn't asking nicely, you guys have seemingly decided against pursuing as an option, at one point or another, for one reason or another, and I'm not sure what those reasons are in some instances if morals is the guiding factor.

I get not wanting to harm or endanger "civilians". So absolutely, take that out. And remove any willing divulgence of knowledge by anyone, cuz ppl aren't doing that, and what are you left with?

Don't you have to take it to the pirates themselves?

Ok, so like, what is morally gray about obliging a pirate who wants to start a fight with you because you've asked if they've kidnapped anyone recently? What's morally gray about using the Force to compel a pirate to tell you everything they know about their own kidnapping operation? What's morally gray about trying to slice into a pirates holo-net (granted, I know that's not really anybody's thing)? What's morally gray about sneaking into a pirate den and just having a look around?

Are those things dangerous? Yes, absolutely. Possibly Conflict generating? Eh, possibly. But I don't see the moral problems there. I mean, it's totally possible I may be lacking in the morals department, but...
No, not at all.

The way I see it, we've all been forging a relationship over the course of a year now, or more. Fidelity, I don't remember how long ago I first gamed with you in that Blades in the Dark game. Bob, you've been in this campaign since the beginning, seen all it's up and downs. Kinu, between this game and Middle Earth, I feel like I know you about as well as I know anyone on this site.

And so just like any relationship, yep, this has its ups and downs too, but also like a relationship, by now it also means something to me. And I would prefer honesty and understanding to other alternatives. Even if that process might cause a momentary sting.

But fact is, we have been having these conversations and struggling with these exact issues with basically every mission since we got off of Gamorr, which might mean there needs to be a conversation as to whether this story is working? Or if we as a whole or anyone specifically feels like their time and efforts would be better spent on something different?

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been contemplating ending this game after this mission. But I also feel like that would be highly unsatisfying...

My thinking on this was that the party had other options and so we could go a different route and not risk the Ugnaught's safety. He seems to be the group's only ally out here and so why risk that relationship right now when there are other options. If there are no other options then Besk would be on board to possibly strain that relationship in order to further the groups goals though.

In regards to fighting with the pirates at the bar, I wasn't opposed to that on a moral grounds but more on the idea that the group could possibly be outnumbered given that they were in the pirate's home turf. Besk isn't a fighter and will do his best to survive and live to fight another day.

I'm not sure if I have said this before here in this game, but I feel we have a good group here. You all have done a great job posting as well as being respectful of one another. We have had some really good moments play out during the game. All my others games have ground to a halt because of whats been going on in the world and I'm glad this one is still moving forward. I think it would be a shame to end the story of this crew too soon.

Just a thought, we do keep on stalling out in places but maybe it is more of us (definitely me) not recognizing options presented in front of us. Maybe a fix for this would be a character that joins the group that could help us figure things out. Maybe for here it could be Lor-Id being more active in her pursuit of her children or maybe it could be the Sith holocron being watchful of us and testing us to see if we are worthy of it's knowledge/power.

Yea, that's totally fair, and I understand that was probably the hold up there, and just with confronting the pirates or trying to check out more of their place in general.

But I guess that's where it gets into the more meta and unspoken gamey, social contracty aspects of RPGs.

In that, as GM, I'm not here to kill your PCs. Right? Like, that's not fun. I want a dramatic and interesting story, and a story that requires you guys to use a diverse set of Skills. I want there to be a sense of danger. I want the outcomes of rice rolls to be appropriately uncertain. But I want the story to keep going, always. So even if it is a "realistic" fear or consideration that, "Yea, we might win against these 4 guys that are here right now, but what about the other pirates? Surely the barkeep is gonna just call in the army if we start a fight.", that doesn't create an interesting story. So of course, albeit, unbeknownst to you guys IC, the barkeep really doesn't like these pirate thugs. If you guys put the pirates in their place, it's a relief to him, and while he may tell you that you gotta leave like NOW, you'll have time to search the thugs and grab a key card or datapad off of them.

Also, isn't ignoring that kind of possibility, or pushing on despite it, what makes someone a Big Damn Hero?
Yea, and I will take the blame for this one. Watching Bob run his game, prompting players is something I'm aware that I need to do better at. But at the same time... like - let me preface this by saying that I think a lot of the OSR thing is B.S. and is just a marketing ploy but... - I have this old school streak in me that every time I think to myself, "Should I point out this option to them...?", I have this other voice that says "Don't do it!"

Also, with the way I plan adventures, I rarely envision specific paths start to finish through a scenario.

I'll take a super-obvious trope: slavers took someone!

Twist it once: maybe one of the victims was associated with them?

Twist it twice: maybe they actually shelter other slaves?!

Set that concept in the game world. And just sit back and see how it unwinds.

Like, yea, I'll create a map with a couple physical weak spots, for if you decide to physically infiltrate. I'll throw in a couple NPCs as social weak spots, if you decide to socially infiltrate. And... everything else just kind of emerges in play.

So I often don't know how it all fits together until we begin play, and so I don't see some possibilities until we're in the middle of it, and I'm like "Ohhh, do they see that? Let's find out..." And then if you don't, like the moment has passed and I'm like, crap.

Probably not a super helpful way to GM 😅

I know we've talked about my open-worldy approach, and how it doesn't work too well for pbp. If we press on, I'll probably need to re-write... or, just write, I guess... a more concrete notion of what the game looks like afterward.

But I also just don't like planning 😖