Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Tales of MaricopaCon 2013 I: The Idiot's Array

Suzette (Mrs. Grognard), Grant (Spawn of Grognard), and I (Grognard) settled in at the hotel Friday night.  I took the evening not so much to go over the scenario as I did another pass at the rules.

The Idiot's Array might very well entail my first vehicle combat in the new system, and even though I've run about 20 hours of Edge of the Empire in total since the beta book came out, it's just enough of a weird system that I was nervous.  I didn't sleep much Friday night as a result, which meant I was tired going into a marathon 15 hours in the Mesa Room in Centennial Hall at the Mesa Convention Center.

The scenario went smoothly.  We had a full table, six players, including Mrs. Grognard.  I don't want to give too much away about the plot, except I really wrote as a effectively a film noir-inspired homage to Casino Royale, with a fair amount of some of the wonderful, early Han Solo/Lando Calrissian trilogies, and just a dash of the Timothy Zahn Thrawn Trilogy to give it that kick over the edge.

Every NPC the characters meet has an agenda, often at cross purpose with each other, and by the end of it, the players wound up doing something unexpected that threw the main villain, an Emperor's Hand, for a complete loop.

In general, the scenario went well, but the pregenerated characters I provided weren't great.  I learned a lot about character building from The Idiot's Array, and ironically, the pregens for The Edge of Despayre were much better constructed.  For those who want to know my opinion, if you aren't dumping virtually all of your starting experience into Characteristic increases, you're doing it wrong.

Still, by the end, the group had won the sabacc tournament, had created such a confused situation that at one point Imperial stormtroopers were firing on the Emperor's Hand, and managed to escape, albeit with a couple of PCs and the Imperial Admiral who was the point of the whole scenario, badly wounded.

For all of the players with the exception of two, this was their first exposure to the system.  Feedback was positive.

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