Adventure Idea: So you wanna be in pictures...

My recent post on Player Character ships got me thinking about one of the adventures I had written up to cover one of those times where an Adventure Module mandated that the characters' ship had been lost. In this case, it was after the Starfall Adventure (where the PCs are taken prisoner onboard a Star Destroyer). Though never specified, it was always my assumption that the PCs' ship would have been impounded by the Empire after the capture of the party. Thus, when the group escaped, they had to try and track down their ship again.

I wanted the recovery of the ship to be more than just breaking into an impound yard, however. Thus I came up with the idea that the Empire actually SOLD the ship to a holo-movie production company who were making a (propaganda) film about the heroism of the Empire in it's struggle against the Rebellion. The PC ship was going to be used as the base of the 'evil' Rebels—in fact, the director of the film thought it was a real coup to get an actual Rebel ship for this role (it adds to the 'integrity' of his work, afterall). Unfortunately for the real owners of the ship, the script calls for it to be destroyed spectacularly in the final scene of the film.

The adventure began with the PCs poking around the impound yard and finding out what happened to their ship. From there, they had to infiltrate the filming site—setting up all kinds of opportunities for encounters with egotistical directors, self-absorbed actors (including the hero and heroine of the movie), touchy special effects guys, suspicious security guards, etc. Through bluff or force, the PCs finally make it onto their ship—only to find it rigged with demolitions charges and pyrotechnics. It's main engine systems have also been disabled to prevent a more serious (and less cinematic) explosion.

In my running of this, the adventure climaxed with a chase scene as the PCs lifted off right from the location shoot (with much fist-shaking from the director!). Flying with repulsorlift only (thus very low) they escaped down a local freeway, wreaking havoc with commuters as studio security (and eventually police) gave chase. Meanwhile, folks inside the ship were frantically disarming explosives and trying to get the main engines back online. After much chaos, the PCs escaped with their ship and a story to tell.

It was a fun little twist on the 'stealing your ship back' scenario and if anyone wants to use it in their own games—feel free! If I had it to do over again, I'd actually set the whole things in a major movie studio—imagine a ship plowing through different sound-stages, each with different films in progress (and different obstacles to face—think Mell Brooks' Blazing Saddles ending). Fun fun.