Greetings, patrons! This is a continuation from Part 1, I’m going to share some of my favorite stories from playing a LOT of Star Wars RPG games. Note: These stories are all from playing the West End D6 version of Star Wars.

When I was a young man, I joined the US Army, and I played a lot of Star Wars RPG during my time when I was enlisted. My friends and I preferred a slightly more… adversarial approach to roleplaying back then, with the GM enjoying pulling our chains and we enjoyed getting back at him. Or, each other, since we also liked to joke around with everyone in our group.

The Trianii Ranger and the Sith

For a long time in the first Star Wars campaign I played in the Army, my character was a Trianii Ranger. If you don’t know what those are, they’re basically cat-people with prehensile tails, and the rangers are their culture’s law enforcement officers. I had built this character to be exceptionally good at martial arts, since I enjoyed the idea of using “space karate” against stormtroopers and sith lords.

At one point in the campaign, we were tracking down a dark jedi and the trail led us to Nar Shaddaa, the smuggler’s moon. Since this place was the homeworld of the Hutts, it was a fairly lawless yet prosperous location. We followed our quarry into a large brewery/cantina, a place that was fairly well known for being “neutral ground.” We stepped inside and sat down at a table, and we were soon joined by the dark jedi we’d been chasing.

As was his wont, the GM soon had this sith NPC boasting about his power and mocking us for our lack of progress in dealing with him and his schemes. While all this was going on, I told the GM that I wanted to pick the jedi’s pocket… using my tail. Trianii tails are fully prehensile and since we were sitting down at a table, any actions from the tail had a good chance of being unobserved.

I rolled rather well, and the GM asked me what item I wanted to steal. With a sly grin, I answered that I wanted the dark jedi’s lightsaber. We all had a good laugh, and I had to insist that I was serious. The jedi was carrying his lightsaber on his belt and since that was below the table, I considered it fair game. The GM considered this, then agreed.

The next time the dark jedi began running his mouth, my character held up his lightsaber and said “Not so tough without this, are you?” The sith proceeded to show us his shocked pikachu face. What happened next was a huge fight, which kicked off when the dark jedi used the force to tear off a large brewing tank from the wall and smash it into me, immobilizing my character.

With only my hands, feet, and tail visible beneath the tank, I gave my best (muffled) one-liner: “Totally worth it!”

The Second Hutt Job (Krayt Dragon Hunt)

One of my next characters was a slicer — in the Star Wars universe, this is a term that broadly equates to “hacker.” As a slicer, my skills at breaking into secure systems were pretty good, but I was also generally very skilled with electronics, programming, and other related fields. Our group of ne’er-do-wells was hired by one of the Hutts on Nar Shaddaa (we did a lot of jobs involving Hutts) to go to Tatooine and bring back the head of a Krayt Dragon. For anyone who doesn’t know, Krayt Dragons are extremely large, very territorial, and incredibly dangerous.

Fortunately, one of the characters in our group happened to be a big game hunter! This was his particular area of expertise, and he wasted no time in letting us all know exactly that. The big game hunter’s player and myself, we were friends. Our characters, however, were “frenemies,” essentially rivals who bedeviled one another with an escalating series of pranks.

So, we set out on our second hutt job, aiming to hunt down and kill one of the legendary Krayt Dragons. We arrived at Tatooine and searched for some time before we located our quarry. The Krayt Dragon had a lair in the deep desert, buried in a cave next to a rocky cliff. We entered the cave, following the guidance of our big game hunter, and got into a very nasty fight. The Krayt Dragon did not die easily, and it took all of us working together to take it down. The big game hunter wanted me to record the event so that he could use it to show off his prowess at defeating such a mighty foe.

Trouble began on our journey back to Nar Shaddaa, however. As we were packing things up onto the ship and preparing to leave, the big game hunter just wouldn’t stop talking about how “he” had defeated the dragon, and we were really all just his assistants. My character wasn’t too pleased with this, but she kept her mouth shut and just nodded along. Eventually, the big game hunter reminded me to “make the recording look good when we show it to the Hutt.” I gave him a big smile and replied, “Oh, you bet!” This should’ve been a warning sign.

I made a few die rolls and passed notes to the GM about how I was “cleaning up” the recording of our Krayt Dragon hunt. Once we arrived at the Hutt’s court to present our employer with the dragon’s skull, the big game hunter made much of the entire quest. He spoke eloquently about how he’d taken down the beast “nearly single-handedly,” and gave us a smug smile as the Hutt asked to see the recording we’d made of our exploits.

Naturally, once the hologram began to play, it did NOT show the big game hunter in the best light. Indeed, in the recording (altered by my slicer!), it showed the big game hunter looking quite foolish, while my character simply took aim with her sporting blaster and shot the beast in the eye. One blast, and the mighty dragon fell at our feet, with my slicer taking a victory pose with one foot placed on the dead creature’s maw.

Needless to say, the big game hunter was not pleased at all. The Hutt seemed to enjoy everything, though, so we ended up getting our pay for the job. The big game hunter had to slink out of the Hutt’s court with his head hanging low. I had scored a big point in our ongoing rivalry!

Never fear, patrons — we did not have out of character drama out of this event! We were both friends and quite used to the somewhat adversarial flavor of this particular campaign, so we had a good laugh about it afterwards.