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Director's Commentary
Episode I: The Evaritt Expanse
ACT I, Scene i
Hello, and welcome to the Director's Commentary track for this game writeup. My name
is J. Ryan Decker and I am the GM for this new
Greater North American Five-Toed Gamer Sloths'
Star Wars campaign.
Despite the wealth of new material detailing the years after the death of the Emperor, and
more recently the Golden Age period featured in the KOTOR series, I prefer to run a more traditional Star Wars game.
I have found that, especially with a new group, not everyone is familiar with all the expanded material.
However, everyone has seen the original three movies (Episodes IV, V and VI). Well, everyone who
will be playing in the game at least--and the movies make for excellent reference material about this time period.
As such, I set the campaign just before the Rebels establish their base on Hoth.
This is a well known time period for the players, and it also gives me a fun place to lead to party to
at a later date. Besides, the thought of sticking a party of misfits and smugglers smack down in the middle of the Hoth
evacuation seems like too much fun to pass up.
Based on a single line by Han Solo from Empire, I placed the Rebels (and the party) at the trading
world of Ord Mantell.
The opening/introduction scrolltext for this episode was as follows:
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"The bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell" It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the DEATH STAR has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base on YAVIN IV and pursued them across the galaxy. Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by LUKE SKYWALKER has established a new secret base on the remote trading world of Ord Mantell. But unlike Yavin IV, this was not an abandoned world of jungle and ruins. Ord Mantell was a thriving world with representatives of sentients from across the galaxy. From elite gamblers in the glittering casinos to lowly scavengers out on the endless fields of junk, Ord Mantell was a world for those who had nothing left to lose. Amidst this menagerie were heroes yet to be revealed, for they had a DESTINY that at this moment even they knew nothing about...
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Being the first ep, I was able to borrow liberally from the opening to Empire,
just making a few changes at the bottom to indicate that the Rebel Alliance was not yet
located at the planet Hoth. The Star Wars trivia buffs out there may of noticed, that the titles for all the
episodes/scenes are taken from lines in the movies.
This was the first session, with an entirely new group of players, so I decided to not get too ambitious the
first session. I knew that after finishing up characters we wouldn't have too much time left to play with so
I decided to keep the objectives of the first night simple: Get the party all in one place. That was it.
I hadn't been playing with this group for very long, so the first night I chalked up as a learning lesson for me.
As the night went on I was able to get a feel as to how the players played their characters, and was able to tweak
the game to fit. The plan was something like this: Start with Var and Rel, they get in trouble. Once they get in a bind,
having the Jedi join the party was easy. He's nearby and jumps in. Diyar was going to be a trick, since she was a bit more
upper class. I was planning that they party would run into her in any casino they might go into--just as she was leaving (probably in a hurry).
Turns out they avoided the casinos, so I she got her intro in the upper-class train car that the party hijacked for their escape.
I hinted that Diyar was probably looking to get off planet and her player ran with the idea to latch herself onto the
party. The amusement came that the sisters and Kluw thought Diyar had a ship, and Diyar thought they had a ship.
Introducing the Admiral I had planned for awhile. You start with Kilarra and she sees this unarmed yacht getting shot at
by pirates or corporate thugs, or station guards, or bounty hunters.. I really hadn't decided. When the player asked if they
were BHs, with that certain gleam in her eye, then that's what they became. The plan was to nail the yacht, get it damaged so it
had to land, and let the wookiee fly down as escort. Didn't work out that way, the Admiral's player got the shields
up in time and the Lightrunner was little more than an annoyance. So I had to keep throwing in ships at the yacht.
I was really hoping that Ellen's unnamed holostar would be there to act as Kilarra's extended conscience to get her
to keep helping out the unarmed yacht, but she got stuck at home with a sick kittie. In the end it all worked out
and the two ships landed just in time to save the rest of the party's collective bacon. I was sort of hoping that the
smoking yacht would set down in the middle of the marketplace where the rest of the party was having a firefight, but it
didn't happen.
This is a mixed up group. All are more or less hiding from the Imperials, but Rel thinks Corric is an Imp still so she's
acting all Imperial and Corric thinks Rel might turn him in so he's acting all Imperial. Good times :) I expect the party to
recognize their usefulness in sticking together, and the thought of the Jedi following the bounty hunter on one of her
pub crawls is just too good to not try to work into to the plot somewhere. Any decent party may also notice that they have 2 ships.
A good party will notice that one is a beautiful vessel that they will all fit into--but she has no guns and a crappy sensor suite.
A smart party will notice that the only two parts worth anything on Kilarra's antique ship are the main gun and scout-class sensor suite.
And a devious party will ask me where they have to go to rip the guts out of one ship to beef up the other. We'll see what happens
next session what this party ends up doing. Who knows, they may decided that two ships are better than one.
From here, the plot arc seems to be leaning toward two major plots: finding out what happened to Var and Rel's aunt and uncle, and
figuring out what became of Admiral Viridian's cadre of loyal officers. If I'm good (or, well evil), I'll manage to weave the
plot arcs together. We still have Ellen's unnamed holostar to intro, as well as Donny's Combat/Recon droid. Man, I can't wait to
see him take on a Krath war droid :) This is looking to be a pretty good campaign once we get it going!
Trivia: The crimelord chasing Var and Rel is losely based on the minor-villian Falsetto Jones
from the TV show Kim Possible. He is most well known for his squeaky voice and lack of proper supervillian etiquitte.
This has been the Director's Commentaries for Act I, Scene i
 Back to Scene i without the commentary
On to Scene ii 
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