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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.
This section of the Director's Commentaries deals mostly with scene three of act 1. At this point in the campaign
we're still in the intro phase: I'm getting used to how the players play their characters, the players are getting used to how I run
the game world(s), and we try to get all the characters in with the party without anyone dying (or having it too forced). Not an easy task on that last one!
The title for scene three was based on a classic line from A New Hope, when the Stormtrooper gets proof that droids got out of the
escape pod and headed into the desert. Not that the no lifesign readings and shuffling footprints weren't a dead giveaway. Although these
are Tatooine Garrison troops, who are not too bright I guess. Imagine how crappy a unit record has to be to pull that assignment! But I digress...
The opening/introduction scrolltext for this episode was as follows:
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"Look Sir, Droids!" Having run through half the city, escaping one pursuer after another, our band of heroes have landed themselves under the metaphorical feet of an Imperial ESPIONAGE DROID. But the FORCE is with our intrepid band, for the droid no longer remembers which Master it serves. The actions of our heroes will soon determine if this wandering ronin will seek to aid them or destroy them. But the party has not come to this stretch of desolate junkyard without reason however, it is here that VAR THESLIN hopes to learn the location of her missing family. Or indeed, weather or not they survived the destruction of ALDERAAN at all...
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By this point the party had more or less congealed as a unit. They didn't trust each other as far as they could throw a wookiee, but at least I had them on the same ship--they would develop teamwork eventually. Unlike when I GM Cyberpunk, I actively try to help keep the party together in Star Wars. In Cyber, you wanna frag Bill’s character cause he looked at you funny? Have at it gato. But in Star Wars the Force moves in mysterious ways, and it’s very rare to find a true coincidence. These people are meant to be together for a reason—even if (as a GM) I haven’t exactly figured out why yet.
The trick with this scene was getting the new droid character introduced without a firefight. How to get an Imperial recon droid safely in a party where most of them are wanted by the Empire? Well.. time to borrow a page from every Daytime Soap in history. Droid + Ion Gun = Amnesia! The droid didn’t know it was Imperial, even if the party did. Sure he figured it out quickly, but by that point he was in the party and happy with it. To facilitate this, I had the droid looking for a very specific girl to be watching. However, with the brain scramble (thanks little Jawa buddies!) it was a little more vague as to exactly which girl he was supposed to be watching.
While the description of “the primary target for observation was a teenaged human female with brown hair who was serving as an engineer aboard a small starship. She is traveling with a motley collection of people, including one Wookiee and one known sibling” seems pretty good, especially when he was less than 10km from his target zone, the Admiral’s player correctly guessed that there were probably three people on planet that fit that. Amusingly, they met one of them in scene iv (the same girl hanging upside down in the busted YT-1300).
Speaking of, let’s take a closer look at those three YTs shall we? The first was obviously the Falcon in her “you came in that?!?” glory. The second ship, the one with the red racing stripes was my ship. Back in the heady days of gaming in the dorms in the dark winter of ’94, my girlfriend, roommate and myself made up the core crew of the Alderaanian Remembrance--with the game alternately GMed by my other two roommates. Usually we just called the ship the Remembrance to avoid any “Imperial Entanglements” as we plied the border between Imperial and Corporate Sector space: busting up slave rings, running guns to war zones and water to toxic zones, and generally trying to make a quick credit. Dran Megrev, always one for a bit of flair, had the ship painted up with the racing stripes. Guess which character I played? *smirk* To this day I can't run a Star Wars game without at least one cameo by my old crew.
The last YT, the L model, was the party from my last campaign that I ran. They asked for a cameo in this game
and here it is! This scene actually occurred in the last game, them coming in hot to Ord Mantell with the first
mate Chunarra dangling their engineer out the hatch to fix the ship before they caught fire and crashed. Ahhh good times :)
Their crew at this point in the campaign consisted of Kir the
Arabic-styled captain, Chuni his faithful wookiee companion, Sera the drunk X-wing pilot on leave, and
Yanna their 18 year old engineer. The current party will almost certainly
run into these misfits again later in the campaign, just as a comparison to measure how well you're doing if nothing else. That, and I
really want to see Var making googly eyes over Lim.
As it stands, the current party is doing well! They have a good ship, a decent backup ship, have a full crew, friends in the outlaw tech community, and are generally on the right track on the three major plot arcs that I have going. Still, the campaign is only halfway through its first act--Exposition Phase as they say. Things will get a lot clearer once the team makes it to Ghambeezi Drift at the opening of Act II. You may also note, Rel and Yanna both fit the description of who the droid was
supposed to be looking for, the question (of course) is which is the right one? And why...
Trivia: The character of Yanna Tarassi (the other engineer girl) was created years before Firefly
came out. However, after watching Jewel Saite play Kaylee, I couldn't
think of a better actress to use as Yanna. Likewise, Nathan Fillion
became a perfect face for Dran Megrev.
This has been the Director's Commentaries for Act I, Scene iii
 Back to Scene iii without the commentary
On to Scene iv 
Engage the hyperdrive and return to the Campaign page
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