GM Advice Requested
Schneidend
Member Posts: 3,190
in Off-Topic
So, here's the skinny: My Star Wars Saga Edition players are toting around a shagnasty McGuffin called the Mask of Darth Nihilus. It is virtually indestructible, as most shagnasty artifacts are wont to be, so they need to find a way to destroy it or otherwise lock it away forever.
They currently know of two ways to accomplish this, they could destroy it with Shatterpoint, a Force technique that allows the user to see weaknesses in things that otherwise do not exist or are imperceptible.Shatterpoint, however, is pretty much bloodline-restricted, and the only person the party knows who can do it is a Sith apprentice who wants help killing his master and using the mask as bait to do so. Two of the party's Jedi refuse to go along with this.
They could lock it away in The Armory, a secret vault built by Meetra Surik, the protagonist from Knights of the Old Republic 2, to house all of her sweet loot from that game that would be too dangerous to just leave lying around or sell on the open market. The problem there is that Meetra gave her holocron to a quarren antiquities collector before she left known space, and now it resides in that quarren descendant's high-security collection. This quarren is willing to trade the holocron in exchange for a favor, convincing the council of his currently neutral home planet, Dac, to join the Sith Empire instead of rejoining the Republic. The two aforementioned Jedi don't want to do that.
Alternatively, they could break into the vault and TAKE the holocron. I have an NPC lined up on Dac who could help them free of charge if they just look for him on Dac. They'd just have to break in, fight some Mandalorians, and get out. The Jedi don't want to do this, either, although a third Jedi in the party is willing to do this.
After a bit of a tantrum by one of these obstinate Jedi players, I have, unbeknownst to them, created a 'good guy-friendly' fourth option. They have the holocron of Visas Marr, one of Meetra's apprentices, who will inform them that the assassin droid HK-47 might have The Armory's location in his memory banks. Conveniently, taking Visas' holocron from its housing on Nar Shaddaa activated a failsafe protocol in HK-47's subroutines that causes him to hunt down and neutralize the perpetrators. I've made HK-47 quite a difficult opponent, and he is going to come prepared when he chooses to attack the PCs next session. He's basically an optional boss like Demogorgon or Final Fantasy VII's Ruby Weapon in terms of power.
Now, what do you guys think? Do you have any advice? Concerns? Questions? Keep in mind, this campaign takes place during the Old Republic (specificially the MMO) era, where the Sith aren't just two guys being dicks but are actually a fully-fledged Lawful Evil/Neutral civilization. The Republic and even the Jedi Order are also fairly rife with equal parts desperation and corruption at this time, so this is not a black-and-white campaign where Republic = good guys and Empire = bad guys.
They currently know of two ways to accomplish this, they could destroy it with Shatterpoint, a Force technique that allows the user to see weaknesses in things that otherwise do not exist or are imperceptible.Shatterpoint, however, is pretty much bloodline-restricted, and the only person the party knows who can do it is a Sith apprentice who wants help killing his master and using the mask as bait to do so. Two of the party's Jedi refuse to go along with this.
They could lock it away in The Armory, a secret vault built by Meetra Surik, the protagonist from Knights of the Old Republic 2, to house all of her sweet loot from that game that would be too dangerous to just leave lying around or sell on the open market. The problem there is that Meetra gave her holocron to a quarren antiquities collector before she left known space, and now it resides in that quarren descendant's high-security collection. This quarren is willing to trade the holocron in exchange for a favor, convincing the council of his currently neutral home planet, Dac, to join the Sith Empire instead of rejoining the Republic. The two aforementioned Jedi don't want to do that.
Alternatively, they could break into the vault and TAKE the holocron. I have an NPC lined up on Dac who could help them free of charge if they just look for him on Dac. They'd just have to break in, fight some Mandalorians, and get out. The Jedi don't want to do this, either, although a third Jedi in the party is willing to do this.
After a bit of a tantrum by one of these obstinate Jedi players, I have, unbeknownst to them, created a 'good guy-friendly' fourth option. They have the holocron of Visas Marr, one of Meetra's apprentices, who will inform them that the assassin droid HK-47 might have The Armory's location in his memory banks. Conveniently, taking Visas' holocron from its housing on Nar Shaddaa activated a failsafe protocol in HK-47's subroutines that causes him to hunt down and neutralize the perpetrators. I've made HK-47 quite a difficult opponent, and he is going to come prepared when he chooses to attack the PCs next session. He's basically an optional boss like Demogorgon or Final Fantasy VII's Ruby Weapon in terms of power.
Now, what do you guys think? Do you have any advice? Concerns? Questions? Keep in mind, this campaign takes place during the Old Republic (specificially the MMO) era, where the Sith aren't just two guys being dicks but are actually a fully-fledged Lawful Evil/Neutral civilization. The Republic and even the Jedi Order are also fairly rife with equal parts desperation and corruption at this time, so this is not a black-and-white campaign where Republic = good guys and Empire = bad guys.
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Comments
If the campaign setting isn't just black and white, the options you give to the players can't be black and white either, but instead should be layers of grey where each choice they make should have opportunities to shift the world towards the black or white but always staying a nice shade of grey.
For example, how did they learn about this Sith Apprentice? A good way to introduce the Sith Apprentice is to have another NPC say he knows a guy, who knows a guy, who is willing to get you in contact with him if you are able to do something. That something would be to use the mask to bait a Sith master, who the party can help destroy/kill. In the eyes of the players, it would have been a win-win situation. They would of got rid of the mask and been able kill some Sith bad guy in the process. Only after this task is done, do they realize they were helping another Sith obtain his goals, allowing another Enemy that needs to be hunted down enter into the campaign.
Or with the second option. Do a favour, however, have that favour lead to Dac joining the Sith instead of the Republic. Truthfully, I am not that familiar with the setting so I wouldn't know how this would be accomplished. But maybe somthing like doing a small act that helps another small planet join the republic, which causes the council to realize there isn't a balance allowing another planet who in the past expressed interest in joining the Sith (this person's now home planet). Only after the mask has been destroyed and months of politicking would the Jedi realized they were used.
They first learned about the Sith apprentice when they acquired the mask. They stole it from an Imperial excavation operation on Hoth, and the apprentice happened to be there to fetch it for his master and attacked them to get it back. This is happening during peace time, mind you. The Republic and Empire are fighting a sort of Cold War. The Republic is running an illegal guerilla operation on Hoth, which is commonplace in the setting but also does kinda make the players the bad guys in that particular instance. They simply refuse to see those nuances.
The apprentice later offered to buy the mask from the players. Not really an option I thought would work, but he invited them to dinner at a neutral location, wined them and dined them, and generally acted like a perfect gentleman. It established the Sith apprentice as an agreeable sort, or at least I had hoped it would. I also had a party NPC who has adventured with the apprentice before vouch for him as true to his word. If the PCs had taken up the offer, they would be rid of the mask, but the apprentice would later seek them out to help with his master who has gone crazy with power since receiving the mask.
Later, when the party was looking for information and found Visas Marr's holocron, the apprentice approached them again and this time proposed the master killing plan. The apprentice and his master have been dogging the PCs a lot up to this point, so I figured they'd see reason at the chance to kill the guy chasing them and be able to destroy the mask in peace. The two Jedi players are convinced the apprentice will take the mask for himself and screw them over, despite all my attempts to imply to the contrary.
Now, they've rather closed the apprentice option by soundly defeating him after that last encounter. He's been filled up with a lot of Dark Sidey-ness by fighting recklessly in a Dark Side-imbued area, tortured by his master for his failure, and has focused all that anger and resentment on the PCs for defeating him.
The problem with obscuring the consequences of their actions is that I want this campaign to be about making difficult choices to get the job done. I'm okay with them not doing things. I don't intend to railroad them into doing exactly what I want, that's why I offer multiple options. The fact that they're not comfortable with the options was the point. But, they expect me to offer them options that sit perfectly nice and tidy with their characters, and that's simply not how I run my games.
What happens if the artifact isn't destroyed? Are more Sith learning about it being easy to obtain from a couple of Jedi? Would they be willing to break the cold war over it?
What about other Jedi? Do they fear that the mask might be corrupting the party to the dark side, and it might be the best option to hand over the mask to them? What if the Jedi asking is known to be corrupt but difficult to prove?
HK will work but then they never made a difficult decision on how to get rid of the mask. The choices should be getting harder for them the longer they keep the mask, not easier IMO.
But, yeah, that's a good point. I suppose I have yet to inform them that time is running out. The mask has only conjured one Dark Side apparition so far, so it might be time to throw another one at them. I'm also planning on having the recently-possessed master scold her apprentice for inaction. Maybe she will, having first-hand experience of the conspirators, be the one to say that time is running out. Ah, but getting close enough to a star or black hole to actually do that will ensure your own demise as well.
Also, thanks. I can just say there might be unforeseen consequences for actually destroying it by these methods. A star and a black hole would be pretty significant in the energy field that is the Force. Not a supernova, certainly, but destroying it by either method might create a wound in the Force along the lines of what created the mask's wearer, Darth Nihilus, in the first place.