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LUZ´s Tramp Freighters Campaign Astromech PC 's thread
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LUZ-TAK
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Joined: 28 Aug 2020
Posts: 34

PostPosted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 3:25 pm    Post subject: LUZ´s Tramp Freighters Campaign Astromech PC 's thread Reply with quote

This thread is to discuss character advancement and adventure hooks for the Astromech Droid PC playing in my Tramp Freighters campaign (you can check it out here: https://rancorpit.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=200722 )

Is the first time I see a player take a droid character, both as player and game master. So I’m really curious how it will play out. I think is going to be a great addition to the party and make it feel a StarWars game. I welcome any ideas on inputs on how to game master droid characters, both in regular adventures and droid focused adventures.

Player Character Data:

Name: Arch (R2-K3)

Concept: Astromech droid with an attitude and big backstory

Char sheet:

He created the droid using the REUP guidelines with some tweaks of mine, looking at the standard R2 for reference.
Stats:
- DEX 1D, Dodge 2D, Sleight of hands 3D
- STR 3D
- KNO 2D, Jedi Lore 4D
- PER 3D
- MEC 4D, Comm and sensors 5D, Space Transports piloting 5D
- TEC 5D, Security 6D, Computer R/P 6D, Droids R/P 6D, Space Transports Repair 7D, Starfighters repair 6D.

Hardware:

- Move 5 threads
- Basic sensors suite
- Silent theft alarm
- Voice modulator (we will play thru discord and he is looking to use a voice distorter to sound robotic)
- Jamming countermeasures
- Internal comm
- Computer interface
- Magnetic threads
- Fine dexterity arm
- Multitool arms
- Internal compartment
- Credit chip reader
- Hidden core, best
- Multispectre flashlight
- Fire extinguisher
- 100ft duct tape
- Security Kit
- Standard tools kit

Appearance:

It’s a quite old, banged up and rusty astromech. His servos sometime do painful sounds 😉



Portrait:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e6/c1/ab/e6c1abee2845a80f77737c095d90c6d4.jpg

Backstory:

Arch was the personal astromech of no other than the great Plo Koon jedi master. In fact, he was flying with him when he got shot down when order 66 got executed. Before that, he accompanied Plo Koon thru many adventures and battles during the Clone Wars, of course always on the sideline or helping him with repairs and technical issues. Nothing heroic or such.

After Plo Koons demise, he was left stranded in a junkyard planet. After patching up himself, he patched up a trope of other discarded droids and together the set up to leave the junkyard planet. They scrapped built a starship of sorts. Barely a carcass with no life support, a banged up engine to put them in orbit and a jury-rigged hyperdrive that would let them do at least one jump. Miraculously, it was successful, and they reached an inhabited colony. No one there could ever explain how that bunch of droids came out of hyperspace.

After that, he spent several years serving one master after another, always pretending the memory wipes were successful. He finally teamed up with the Duro Pilot PC and ended up as crew in the NPC’s freighter’s ship.

Personality:

The player said he plans to play a sloppy, judgemental, mischievious type. He mentioned Claptrap (the robot from the Borderlands videogame, no idea never payed it) as inspiration. He will use duct tape to “fix most things”, so I will describe how the systems of the ship look very bad for anyone other than the doird.

Notes about the player:

He is probably the biggest StarWars fan of all the group. He watched all movies and series, including Rebels and Clone Wars. He pushed hard for the group to choose the VCX 100 as a ship. He is also youngest and silliest of the bunch. Speaks no English so I can only give him material to read in Spanish.

Ideas for character development:

• The droid really wants to become pilot of his own ship. He remembers with pride the jury-rigged starship they crafted to get out of the junkyard world and wants that again. Has a pet droid called M1AU that acts like a cat, answers only to him in cartoony voice "Aye aye captain" or "ney captain".

• It seems he will be piloting a lot if the Duro wants to play the brash pilot in the shuttle… now I wonder who is going to do the repairs midflight?

• He remembers clearly Plo Koon´s times and has a ton of Jedi Knowledge in his circuits. We discussed how the player will keep that part in secret till the Cathar padawan character grows a bit and proves himself before sharing that knowledge. The droid would be the first reliable source of jedi lore for the cathar player, but he would have to earn it first.

• I wondered if having something hidden inside the droid could be a plot twist, from a holocron (too much) to a training lightsaber (not convinced either) to something more mundane (why bother?). I could introduce this twist later in the campaign.

• I have an idea of having the droid beginning to plant “sleeper drone” droids in spaceports and such to gain data and information. Have not talked of this with the player.



Any ideas and suggestions on how to game master this char and craft adventures around it would be most welcomed.
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Xain Arke
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Joined: 19 Sep 2010
Posts: 989

PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2020 11:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This Astromech sounds fun, I really like that Droids can be really old and still be characters.

The player sounds fun too.

I think the thing to remember with Droid characters is that in the movies and cartoons, they are mostly treated just like
non-Droid chracters. If you do that as a GM you won't have many problems.

One of the few ways they are different is that because Droids are so common, they are mostly ignored by citizens of the
galaxy, so they can often get in places where other characters can't and they can do it mostly without being noticed or questioned. A fake
restraining bolt can help here too

You have a bunch of good ideas for things to do with the Droid going forward already

I think your plan with the Jedi knowledge in the Droid is a good one, it gives you as the GM a relatively easy way to give your Jedi character
access to more training and abilities

Have you perhaps considered, instead of a Holocron or Lightsaber inside the Droid, make it a Kaibur Crystal that the Jedi character can
later use to create his own lightsaber from. You can grow plot from there with the Droid and the Padawan seeking out the parts to build the
Saber from

For adventures, fall back on what the player has already given you

He wants to be the pilot of his own ship, so let him fly whenever you can, again droids are mostly ignored, so he could get to the game ship
if it is impounded. Fly in and pic up the other players when they are in trouble. The Droid can also pilot the ship through places that could be
dangerous to the biological crew, like radiation storms, when trying to avoid enemy entanglements.

You could play on his past too, how would he react to coming across some active Separatist survivors working as pirates, what if they
remember him help defeat them alongside the Jedi.

What happened to the other R2 droids that the Jedi used, were they reprogrammed to work for the Empire? Are some out there trying to lure
any still Jedi loyal droid into the Empire's clutches so they can plunder databanks for any information on Jedi survivors or lost archive data?
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Telsij
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Joined: 07 Dec 2016
Posts: 509

PostPosted: Wed Nov 25, 2020 4:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Really like the concepts posted here, along with the potential twists, thus far. (And I hope that M1AU becomes a HoloNet star thanks to the in-universe version of Cats of Instagram... "Pet-droids of the HoloNet" ???

Love that the player is so enthusiastic and that you guys have managed to come together as a group despite the language barrier for the others!

Re: story threads and potential twists, definitely play up the droids being largely ignored *until* you want a more dramatic twist. Then you can lean into the theme of droids being considered "second-class citizens" and/or property, for lack of a better term. Have the fact that the droid character can work largely unnoticed be more and more useful until a big dramatic turning point in the adventure or campaign, where the fact that he *is* a droid becomes the reason he can't fly or come to the rescue and then see how he or the group figure their way out.

As far as having something hidden of which he's unaware? There's always the possibility of a Shard. Perhaps one that is dormant or injured/damaged somehow, and only later "wakes" and tries to take control of the droid? This might be fun to Roleplay, as the droid character might suddenly find himself doing things he didn't intend, until the Shard character is revealed!
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