Not sure I like the scene where hundreds of attack robots are escorting you to imprisonment and suddenly hundreds of fur balls drop out of the ceiling and destroy said robots ala "Deus ex machina"

Dark World station could be so much more.

the malthar likes to patronize the Dark World Dancers.

Yeah, I'm not happy with either the mandated capture by the Malthar or the rescue by the chukkahs (*cough* Ewoks! *cough, cough*).

I do like that the players get fly not only their own ship, but some others as well in the space-combat scenes. And the required station stops mean that there can be action on planets or stations, too.

Well, if you had a campaign, you would modify some of the elements with a side story/mission. 

But, yeah, two worlds go to war over chukkahs? Or, maybe it's a massive drug interdiction conflict...

Hmm, I would have to think about it. 

(note Encounter #1 wink wink nudge nudge)

Not plannning on a campaign, but a one-shot (that might last more than one sitting, of course). While I'd love a campaign, this is intended to be something brief to try with my wife & sons between now and the end of summer.

Dark Shadow's Revenge would be a neat addition to WoWL, too bad that game melted away on me. I do see the (re)appearance of MalCo's agent in Clarion system.

Dramune Run (outlined)

Note because i hate trying to type chukkahs I will refer to them as ewoks from this point forward.

1. Clarion

    A. Bar fight while trying to hire the PCs

    B. Storming the Gullwind in the Docking bay

2. Into the Void

    A. Nightshade's pursuit and death of Garlus

    B. Hit and Run- pirate assault scout

    c. Monkeys on the town- yazirian hit squad (at a station)

    D. Robotic hist squad (at a station)

3. Dark World sTation

    A. Ambush and rail road capture.

    B. Docking Bay and Besieged Gullwind

    C. Battle of Dramune

4. Epilogue

Act 1 is good and even most of act 2.

Dark World station, Act 3, is not well thought out. and act 3 turns into a rail road for 2/3s of it with the PCs spectators.

Why has the Malthar marshalled so much men and material to stop the PCs and recover the ewoks? It jsut seems out of proportion to me.

The why of this seems like it needs some adressing.

The Development of the political situation mandating a dramune war might need some adressing

Dark World station should be developed more IMO, make it a real hive of scum and villany that can be visited.

Good ideas:

Battle of Dramune final is a good idea. gathering of pirates vs militia and some UPF support and the Gullwind caught in the middle.

Ideas that they didn't use:

Hacking via computer- why dont the bad guys employ a hacker against the Gullwind? This makes for varied form of attacks instead of just another round of mooks with guns.

What might have been interesting is the PCs sneaking aboard Dark World Station to rescue the Princess err I mean ewoks. Side mission to deactivate the tractor beam err I mean release the docking clamps. after the PCs have run around Dark World sattion doing some things then have the ewoks pull a drop from the ceiling "Deus ex machina" allowing them to get to the ship.

Not a hit squad but a group of spacers that can be hired on.

{EDIT --- damnable multi-quote bug again...}

The Malthar wants the Gullwind, pure plain & simple. He desires it, he lusts after it. Even the opening description of the ship states "many a captain desires such a fine craft".

As for the "why" of the political situation, MalCo has been illegally recovering a protected species of Inner Reach in order to extract (IIRC) brain fluid to make Ixiol. It's the equivalent of a mass effort hunting/killing of bald eagles in the US, and then throw in the extensive drug trafficking charge on top of it.

ahh, didn't skim the monkeys on the town so closely last night.

Again, protected species...just like the bald eagle is in the US.

Don't forget the drug trafficking scheme either, which said species was being farmed for.

Yes, the drug trafficking plot is a good one. Would this actually be called a war, however? It seems like one engagement. If it is the Third Dramune War, one would think there would be more than one big space battle. 

Perhaps the planetary government on Outer Reach also strikes back? Perhaps with terrorist attacks?

 

Good points!

"You've never heard of the Gullwind?!? It's the ship that made the Dramune Run in less than 12 parsecs!"

I seem to recall running it as-is. My players got the drug-related angle and ran with it. As to the 'war' side of things, I guess a war is a war even if the fighting resources on both sides (ships) are limited (i.e. google the so-called 'Football War').

When running a recent adventure based around Outer Reach and Darkworld, I did actually do some retuning of the former to make it more useable as a situation. I tended to see Outer Reach (OR) as a played out backwater, and thus not so much of a police state. This enabled me to have various mining stations being used both by nefarious forces and by straggler miners abandonned to their lot by corporations when the mineral supply began to dwindle. This also enabled me to engineer a plot whereby said stragglers help the players to raid a base held by the Malthar's goons by using huge mining robots as part of the assault. This was after they'd managed to escape Darkworld and the Malthar's plan to have them all killed in one of his 'game' arenas by combat robots

Re: one engagement does not a war make?

The Pig War between Brittian and America did not even have an engagement. I believe that if i looked hard enough i can come up with other examples of conflicts that recieved the applation of war but only had 1 engagement more or less. 

Point taken. 

Agreed.

Not to mention, attacking the UPF escort ships; that always bothered me more. Even the biggest of real-world drug smugglers would avoid attacking the Navy, it seemed to me? But, if he brought enough force to Leave No Survivors, then I guess it works.

The ship is fast and special, sure, but I thought Garliss had figured out the ixiol-chukka connection? Maybe he doesn't get it all to the PCs, but neither the Malthar nor his local guy (captain of the Nightshade, right?) know that. Maybe I should add more info within the ship's computer, wasn't getting it to one of the UPF admirals Garliss' last request?

Maybe it's not necessarily the Malthar who's commanding the OR militia directly, but the planet's leaders, and they think they can handle the IR & UPF together? I wonder if Malthar might be only one of several players in a coalition that controls the world-- a corrupt government, some corporate bigwigs like Malthar, and a collection of pirate captains. Malthar runs the station, and has a sector-wide arms- and drug-smuggling network.

Good one! I may swap that for one of the Act 1 attacks, while the ship is under repairs, or Act 2, while the ship is under overhaul. Heh, a bribed bureaucrat/banker/lawyer could try to have the ship seized by station authorities, and the PCs need to overcome that. I want to see what PCs emerge, though-- I'm a believer in the "GMs should challenge the characters' abilities" concept. (sidebar) I ran a Serenity game years ago, and the crew's pilot was also a Core-trained attorney: very useful, indeed.

Something just as useful might be trying to insert a hijack or sabotage team as NPC crew on one of the stations.

I do like that kind of DxM better, based on PC actions rather than a GM fiat "You guys get captured, no matter what".

I'll get to taking notes....

Maybe the situation is that one ball the Malthar is juggling is the capture of the Gullwind

and incidental to that is the political situation in Dramune? That the Dramune War is not the absolute end result of the Dramune Run by the Gullwind but rather a more complicated bit of juggling and the Gullwind is just a match set to the fuel.

In fact what would be nice is a set of News announcements/ data net news stuff that the PCs encounter are various places in the adventure, after the bar fight on Clarion, after docking at anther station, etc that convey the deteriorating situation in Dramune. How there is a bit of a constitutional crisis for the COW (council of Worlds) with two member planets on the brink of war with each other with the UPF being called on by both to deploy Space Fleet units to Dramune.

And what would be really cool is that if these news blurbs would make it seem like Space Fleet is being deployed to keep the aggressors on Inner Reach from attacking Outer Reach that the Malthar's machinations and political manuevering is working. But when the secret that the Gullwind carries is released to the Frontier the on site Space Fleet Commander sides with the Inner Reach Militia despite his original orders sending him to support Outer Reach.

In this way as the Dramune Run draws closer to Dramune there is a sense of rising tension. And since the players know that the Malthar is the bad guy but that it looks like he will triumph and squash the Inner Reach's militia the stakes are high and they must perservere and try to prevent this. The the gamble to sneak aboard Dark World station and save the Princess err I mean Ewoks. Disable the jamming and broad cast the truth of what's been happening. Then escape Dark World station as the engagement errupts.

Maybe just maybe instead of "YOu are captured- no matter what" Garlus had the Gullwind outfitted with smuggling compartments ala Millenium Falcon and that the part of Garlus's plan was to use these compartments and fake the jettisonning of a lifeboat or launch after jumping into Alderan err I mean Dramune knowing that Outer Reach Militia would likely be waiting with HS5 friggates armed with grapples and haul the ship into Dark World station. Thus the NPC has suggested the one course of action but the Players can have the illusion of free choice and not have to go with Garlus's plan but the events would go hostile enemy action by a powerful force and then you can run the module's scripted rail road. but otherwise they will successfully get on board Dark World by hiding in the smuggler's compartments. and for a few skill checks can get loose in the station.

Garlus and crew work(ed) for the Malthar. Wanting the ship is just another one of the plagiarized Star Wars plot points. This is the conversation that Dablak and Garlus have before the players intervene at the initial meeting:

Dablak: "Going somewhere, Tylappar?"

Garlus: "Yes, Dablak, as a matter of fact I was just going to see your boss. Tell the Malthar I've got his money."

Dablak: "It's too late, you should have paid him when you had the chance. The Malthar has put a price on your head so large every bounty hunter in the galaxy will be looking for you. I'm lucky I found you first."

Garlus: ""Yeah, but this time I've got the money."

Dablak: "If you give it to me now I'll forget that I found you."

Garlus: "I don't have it WITH me..."

Dablak: "The Malthar is through with you. He has no time for smugglers who drop their shipments at the first sign of a UPF cruiser."

Garlus: "Even I get boarded sometimes. Do you think I had a choice?"

Dablak: "You can tell that to the Malthar, he may only take your ship."

Garlus: "Over my dead body.'

Dablak: "That's the idea..."

This of course is followed up by Garlus not shooting first but instead dying of cancer shortly afterwards. Now the Gullwind is the Malthar's, over Garlus' dead body. ;)

Son of a... I just tried to click Like on this post! I need to spend less time on Facebook.

Shadow's comment suddenly reminded me of a Star Frontiersman article I closely worked with Larry Moore on: "The Villainous NPC" in SFman #16 page 72

Its a two page article that charts a NPC starting out at the same time as the PCs and the stages of his rise to power over the course of a long running campaign and uses the Malthar as an example.

Its worth a read for more ideas. It proposes a path for the Malthar to start out as the best bush pilot in Outer Dramune system doing runs between Pinnacle and Mejora stations who just happened to be the pilot on the PCs first mission.

He's referred to as the Malthar throughout the article but I would change his name in the beginning to something like Marlborrow or whatever so as to not give away too early to the players that he is the once and future Malthar.

Which is why I went with Malic Tharigan a.k.a. Mal-Thar later a.k.a "The Malthar". 

Yes, I remember reading that story. Good one.

You can make additional jumps without an overhaul, but you run the risk of slagging the atomic drives with each non-overhauled jump. It starts at a lower percentage (IIRC 25%/drive?) and eventually works its way up to 100% chance of destroying the drive.

It's listed on the final page of Dramune Run at 2000Cr per month.

Also noteworthy, this is likely a location-specific rate and not a universal rate, since it relates only to Majora Station.

I was assuming Majora-only at first, too.

Skipping an overhaul has a 60% failure rate, then 80% on the next try. As noted, Garlus has already made a 4th jump to get to Clarion.

So, I'm looking at 1-19 hours to refuel the engines, 3-177 hours to overhaul them; 70 hours to repair the hull, 80 hours to plot a jump, and 16.67 hours to accelerate to jumpt speed. That's approximately a week on the Station; plenty of time for shenanigans here.

Which is good, since I don't seem to see a reason for the ship to dawdle at any further stations en route, though. If the PCs take the most direct route (3 jumps via Madderly's), they won't need another refueling or overhaul, and could hang out in the outer reaches of the systems while they re-plot the jumps.

Is there a statement that ships lose some/all of their momentum upon going through a jump? I feel there should be, but I don't see a number anywhere.