Category: Uncharted Worlds: Discussion

Question for the masses about how I should have run a combat, along with a rule question.

The players were heading out from a stardock to intercept a set of three ships, one of which was docked airlock to airlock with a mercenary that had been transporting cargo the players were on a mission to retrieve (the Hutt cargo from last week).

My players went tactical; two have their own fighters that they flew off to try and divert the non-docked ships, two others manned the main ship and maneuvered in place alongside the docked ship, and the last jumped in his repair mech (sealed) and went out the airlock to attach to the docked ship and try to interface to shut down their systems externally.

Nothing really went right, their rolls for every Face Adversity were horrible. Both shuttles ended up disabled (missile hits that I ruled as Critical damages that damaged/shutdown systems), the repair mech wound up attached to the docked ship but rolled poorly and the ship powered up, dropped the airlock and took off with him attached to it. He kept trying to interface with it, so I’d have him Face Adversity to hang on (which he’d pass) then Face Adversity to interface (which he’d fail), so I had systems go haywire then eventually brought in reinforcements.

Overall, I’d say we spent 45 minutes to an hour resolving the combat, and I eventually brought it down to three rolls to figure out what would happen to the remaining forces (pilots escape podded, docked ship had all systems disabled, shuttles will need to be picked up but the cargo was retrieved).

Anyways, we spent way too long on the combat…as things went downhill, I could have just killed off characters but I wound up giving them the opportunity to roll Patch Ups which they succeeded on to get back into the fight. Any suggestions on running this fight where everyone wants to do something different, their outcomes have direct impacts on what others are doing, and things go downhill but not horribly so? How many rolls would you have made this entire combat given the setup, or what flow would you have given it? Much like Dungeon World, I felt like I was trapping myself with 7-9 Face Adversity rolls, and I eventually ran out of hard choices/threats.

Rule Question: Shields up doesn’t indicate adding armor to the roll…if the ship/vehicle has armor, is it supposed to be added or should vehicles like shuttles be treated like PCs with Brace for Impact rolls?