Greetings! This post recounts the first stage of my efforts to use Under A Black Sun (a Free RPG Day adventure for Star Wars: Edge of the Empire) to run a solo RPG session. If you too want to know what a Discouraging Wound is or how intelligent police droids are, the adventure is available to download for free at https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire/ under the ‘Player Resources’ section near the bottom of the page.

Greetings! This post recounts the first stage of my efforts to use Under A Black Sun (a Free RPG Day adventure for Star Wars: Edge of the Empire) to run a solo RPG session. If you too want to know what a Discouraging Wound is or how intelligent police droids are, the adventure is available to download for free at https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire/ under the ‘Player Resources’ section near the bottom of the page.

A quick flick through the PDF reveals profiles for police, criminal thugs, a death stick dealer and, interestingly, a duracrete slug. These profiles suggest a crime-related adventure to me, which fits in nicely with the four pre-generated characters (our protagonists), who all are all involved with the Pyke Syndicate in some way.

My first idea is that the characters are backup for another Pyke operative in trouble. My next step is to flesh out that initial idea by thinking about what the operative was doing when they got into trouble. The PDF tells me that the Pykes are spice dealers, so I’ll make a list of smuggling-type activities and randomly pick one. My list is as follows: scouting out a storage location, negotiating with customers, loading/unloading a cargo ship, having a ship modified to smuggle, sabotaging rivals, distracting the police, conducting market research and scouting out a smuggling route.

A digital D8 roll gives me a 6: distracting the police. The next logical step is to determine where this distraction is taking place. I think back to the opening sequence of Episode II – Attack of the Clones for inspiration. A few minutes of pondering gives me the following list: a police station, an airspeeder parking lot, a warehouse, a library, a marketplace, a shopping area and a nightclub. A D7 roll gives me a 3: a warehouse. Now I know that our protagonists are on their way to help a colleague in trouble after trying to distract the police in or around a warehouse.

At this point, I cut to imagining our protagonists on their way to the warehouse. They’ve travelling by air taxi to reach the operative as quickly as possible. Jovel is acquainting herself with some stun grenades and Matwe is lounging around next to her, checking they are headed in the right direction. Sin is reviewing property prices on her datapad and Tray’Essek is ruminating on the design of air taxis.

The taxi’s deceleration signals their arrival. Sin pays the driver and mentally adds the taxi fare to this week’s travel expenses while the rest of the party dismount and check their concealed weapons. Ahead lies the flashing lights of a police vehicle.

At this point, it would be useful to determine what the operative’s plan for distracting the police was. It could’ve been: break into an alarmed warehouse, start a fire at a police-protected warehouse, steal something and then flee into a warehouse, disable a police droid and bring it back to a warehouse or alert the police to something highly illegal being stored in a warehouse by another gang. A quick D5 roll gives me a 2: start a fire at a police-protected warehouse.

So now, our protagonists are standing outside a burning warehouse, wondering where the imperilled operative is and what sort of trouble he or she is in.

What move will our morally questionable protagonists make? Find out tomorrow!