Advice for running Jewel of Yavin

[Tom Cruise 1,278]

My campaign's been going on for a while and I think we're at the level where the party can take a proper stab at JoY. Which I'm very excited about, I've been waiting for this.

I've got my head wrapped around the adventure pretty well, but I'm wondering if there's anything in particular I should keep in mind? Any easy pitfalls, stuff I might forget, anything like that? I'm running it pretty straight without any significant modifications, but if there's anything people think should be changed to make things run more smoothly I'd love to hear it.

Also, if anyone's got any idea how to stat the gem as a lightsaber crystal I'd love to hear some ideas, I think there's a non-zero chance the party Jedi will try to break it down to size and use it, if he can convince everyone else. He's really into the idea of finding a master so he can complete his training, so trying to get on Elaiza's good side seems likely.

Edited January 31, 2017 by Tom Cruise

[Vestij Jai Galaar 461]

Number one problem for my party: how to steal the money. They didn't understand the remote banking droids at first, but I was able to fix that pretty easily with an explanation. The real problem occurred when they actually tried to hack one for the money. 

They failed. It wasn't quite bad enough that I thought Lobot would have people over there in two minutes, but I let them know the prospects weren't good. They found a second droid and tried again....and also completely failed that check! 

I played up the Imperial agents, let the players interact with them as they wandered around in their disguise and actually had them blackmail the PC's into helping them when they realized one of the PC's had a criminal obligation. 

[LordBritish 1,016]

There are alternative routes to obtaining the money other then the banking droids. Do a traditional bank heist, break into a  bank, take a fist full of credits.

Also, something that I think is often misunderstood, is the that the hacking check is likely to take multiple checks to crack. If you fail, then it add's bonus's and setbacks to the narrative; the party fail with advantages and a dispair, the police are on their way but they have opened a ***** in the hacking armour. The party is expecting to have spent a lot of time gathering instruments to stack the hacking check in their favour in any way they can; after all at the end of the day they don't get paid if they don't succeed at this series of checks. Heck, they likely won't get paid IF they succeed at this check and don't make any preparations to backstab/take their share of the money. XD

Or alternatively, and the adventure makes a point of stating this, make it so that there are underworld professionals that can fill in. The key thing with the entire highest, more then anything is that you need a really good hacker.
 

The social event itself is also a good way of working in meeting's with long term nemesis that the player's would otherwise murder. The interventions presented in the book are just suggestions really; and to be honest I always felt that the rash Jedi introduction was lacking in execution, having anyone stand directly between the PC's and a exit is asking for trouble, though that's likely because none of us were Jedi and we had to succeed with the heist to gain reputation from the empire.

[kinnison 850]

Do a forum search for the jewel of Yavin, there is a lot of great advice and variations.

The best thing you can do, is make the Bidders, and main characters important to your players.

I have already introduced Aris Shen to one of my players as a former classmate while they took a class taught by Shreya Ordassa.  And have already built a positive relationship with Aris and my players

Another player has had dealings with Hutts, and I will use Kathlo to further his background story and obligation

The smuggler character in my group is going to have a lot of contacts and know some of the in's and outs of the cloud city, and has already starting building a reputation as a Racer.

[Vestij Jai Galaar 461]

4 hours ago, LordBritish said:

There are alternative routes to obtaining the money other then the banking droids. Do a traditional bank heist, break into a  bank, take a fist full of credits.

Also, something that I think is often misunderstood, is the that the hacking check is likely to take multiple checks to crack. If you fail, then it add's bonus's and setbacks to the narrative; the party fail with advantages and a dispair, the police are on their way but they have opened a ***** in the hacking armour. The party is expecting to have spent a lot of time gathering instruments to stack the hacking check in their favour in any way they can; after all at the end of the day they don't get paid if they don't succeed at this series of checks. Heck, they likely won't get paid IF they succeed at this check and don't make any preparations to backstab/take their share of the money. XD

Or alternatively, and the adventure makes a point of stating this, make it so that there are underworld professionals that can fill in. The key thing with the entire highest, more then anything is that you need a really good hacker.
 

The social event itself is also a good way of working in meeting's with long term nemesis that the player's would otherwise murder. The interventions presented in the book are just suggestions really; and to be honest I always felt that the rash Jedi introduction was lacking in execution, having anyone stand directly between the PC's and a exit is asking for trouble, though that's likely because none of us were Jedi and we had to succeed with the heist to gain reputation from the empire.

 

They did go directly to the bank and steal the money they needed. It is one of those encounters that needs careful GM handling though IMO.

 

One of the things I will do if I GM that adventure again is start the adventure with the cloud car race. Then, after the characters win or lose, I will take them back to the beginning of the adventure and play to where the race starts and pick up again after the race ends. JoY was the first adventure I ran for my table, and overall, I think that it's one of the easiest to start out with. There's a lot of great places to build tension and have the PC's interact with the bidders before the actual auction.

I also spiced up the auction when I ran it by having a bounty hunter stalking one of the PC's with a Bounty obligation through the gala. They didn't realize it until the guy offered them a drink and they had to roll a resilience check to resist falling unconscious.

[LordBritish 1,016]

Aye I definitely have to agree with Kinnison; the greatest issue I can find with some of the adventures is that it's an awful lot of name drops in characters the PC's might not be invested in. Thus usually it's nice to include a lure so that the PC's have a vested interest and some history with the major shifters of this story.

 

My party for example had knew Lando Calrissian from his Conmen days, having been indebted to him on a couple of occasions, thus part of the challenge was avoiding his notice because if he saw us at one of his venues he knew we woudln't be there for fun and games; our first job with him was the hiest of a government building! So he knew we had the experience! It also made giving up the gem somewhat easier and more plausible.

 

We also used Kaltho, more so as a unfortunate nemesis who didn't do anything wrong, but is a target of the PC's. My PC Tobin Stryder later stole the jewel of Yavin from him in a solo raid with the help of some hired muscle from a rival hutt, along with two rare ships and trashing his art collection with his own security droid (and recorded for Dai the Hutt, who often watches the video on occasion to calm down! XD), later on he saved Kaltho's life from a force senstive assassin (Mara Jade) but in doing so delivered the Hutt directly to Dai, dressed in gold armour and ready to profess his love once more! Only to get brutally murdered by Dai. Not my smartest moment, I must admit! XD

[Hinklemar 308]

I've ran this one time so far but had a blast! Overall, the best part of the adventure for me was using obligation triggers to throw random wrenches into the PCs' plans as well as using the plethora of NPCs and their competing agendas to set tension within the party. By the time the PCs had actually completed the thing there were like 3 different ideas the group was arguing over what to do with the gem. Some advice on specific topics include: 

Multiple Factions: There are A LOT of potential moving parts to the adventure and keeping track of who the PCs had met and what they learned required a bunch of notes. That being said, connecting them to different PCs was very rewarding and I had competing objectives in the group between Arend, the Imperials, Elaiza, and their own designs. Also, use Aris as your mouthpiece if they get off track/need ideas. Give them a chance to befriend her, but if they fail to impress make it clear at the end they didn't live up. 

Pacing: It might be tempting to give the PCs extra time, but it worked -great- keeping them under the gun and trying to prioritize where to be. I kept close track of their remaining hours and ended up with PCs running around either solo or in small groups having to choose between sleeping the whole night or following up on leads. 

Stealing the Credits: Some of my players got -way- into the weeds on the specifics of Star Wars electronic banking and the timing of transactions (and then wouldn't initially roll with my final ruling). If this comes up for you consider this explaination: Since the auction takes place after hours the transfer is only posted in the processing queue. When the bank opens in the morning the queue is processed and the actual credits exchanged. The hack part of the heist is to access the queue and change the target account of the bid winner's funds from Grayson's to Arend's. 

Betting: My group of course wanted to place their bets for the Cloud Car race on themselves. I don't know enough about gambling to have a solid solution/answer, but I handled it by saying "you'll get paid winnings later" and since it was a one shot it was irrelevant. If the group bets on themselves I'd reccommend not pulling any punches during the race and have a rock solid backup plan to get them into the gala. If they actually win out then fine, but everyone else could end up literally gunning for them. 

The Gala: PCs may want to try to become bidders and this is a hard no because of the pre-vetting the book talks about. However, during the social maneuvering I let the social character spend 2 Triumph to be named a bidder's surrogate after some good RP and it worked out fine after the NPC sternly warned the PC to not overspend (I had the player make various checks to get an idea on who might bet what next).

 

[Ender07 197]

I ran JoY over a year ago so I'm a bit fuzzy on it, but make sure the racing scene keeps a good pace because it can get kinda boring if it doesn't have a "racing feel" to it. This module was the end of our campaign, one last big heist for the group to make off with tons of money and a priceless jewel, and the PC's wanted to somehow tie it into their next campaign which was going to be Force and Destiny.

They ended up befriending Elaiza, they gave her the jewel as well as most of their money because they believed in her and one of the PC's had been raised by some Force sensitive (not Jedi) individuals who practiced the Jedi Code. I later incorporated her into the new campaign about halfway through the year as a new mentor when they got a bit too experienced for where they started out. She had taken the money and moved to Nal Hutta because she was able to construct an underground bunker away from the prying eyes in Nar Shaddaa. The bunker is her version of a small-scale Jedi academy and her mission has been to try and find some Force sensitives and bring them there to train.

So far the group has gone through 1-2 of the Jedi Trials, and as a reward I made some stats to the Jewel of Yavin and gave it to one of the PC's...unfortunately they decided to ask for 2 and made it a double lightsaber and it became very OP. So if I were you I would use one of the crystals in the book, make it your own by adding some cool stat or something special it can help with, then max out one stat (like damage 9 or crit 1 or 2), and give it to them but tell them the crystal can't be upgraded any further. That way it's powerful, but not too much, and it can still be a good reward for their participation.