Proxy Glider

When my wife Megan and I were visiting family down in FL, I introduced the Star Wars Saga RPG (a tabletop game my wife and I already play) to a young in-law named Brandon. This is the story of a small game that took on a life of its own.

Brandon took to the game and immediately wanted to play! So my wife helped him design a character and cajoled me into gamemastering a small game.

Her words exactly: “Maybe we’re piloting a ship and we get hijacked. Just make it us versus some enemies, so we can play a game and introduce my cousin to the game.”

Game #1

So that’s what I did. I made a small campaign, where Megan’s character and Brandon’s character were on a ship and got hijacked, and had to fight off overwhelming odds to take back the ship. I told them at the beginning they couldn’t be a Jedi class; they were merchants, so they had to stick with either Scout, Soldier, or Noble.

They fought off wave after wave of strong Stormtroopers who had boarded their cargo ship. I had an idea during the battle though. They were levelling up pretty fast (mostly because there were only two of them to split the XP between), and games aren’t fun if all you do is level up with no goal. I made the odds VERY overwhelming cause I wanted to try out an interesting plot twist I had running through my head.

When their character’s finally expired… “You can use a Force Point to fall unconscious instead.”… I told them I had an idea for a game the next day and they could use their same character sheets.

Game #2

The character’s wake up and see that they are locked in a compartment on their ship. They can’t hear the engines of the ship, so they assume the ship must have landed somewhere. They have weird marks on their arms that look like an injection was given to them, and they feel really funny.

(Those injection marks were the beginning of an epic plot twist.)

As they break out of the locked room and defeat the rest of the Stormtroopers on their ship, the characters begin experiencing sudden surges of Force power that have weird, chaotic reactions!

(Whenever they rolled a d20 for an Attack roll, the number that was rolled would determine what weird ability would manifest. 17 would trigger Plant Surge, where plants would try to attack the enemies that the characters were facing. The player who rolled an 18 would instantly heal all spent HP, restoring them back to peak condition. And 19 - my favorite cause I designed it - was called “Army of One”. For Army of One, the player who rolled the initial 19 would roll a d6 and they would suddenly be cloned d6 number of times. The clones could fight alongside their players - increasing their fighting strength up to x6 - but would disappear at the end of the battle.)

One of the characters rolled a 17, and the resulting force power, Plant Surge, caused all the plants and trees on the planet nearby them to grow around and into the ship. This completely incapacitated the ship, and shocked the players when they realized that they had force powers! How did they get force powers without being Jedi though?

Several times they rolled 19’s and fought off waves of strong Stormtroopers with clones that looked like them! The players all agreed that was a cool force power. It was a bit over-powered though, especially as they approached level 10 and suddenly got 6 clones who had their strengths.

After beating off all the Stormtroopers, they were attacked by a Dark Sith Apprentice… and suddenly their weird force abilities started disappearing!

(I made the weird force abilities disappear because it was getting too overpowered and I wanted them to work for their XP a little harder.)

They beat the Sith Apprentice (and he fled from them, running into the jungle)… the players began begging for more story… which I had not written yet.

Game #3

We started Game #3 expecting this game to be our last game. My wife and I couldn’t stay in Florida forever, and I had been gamemastering games every other day for the past week!

We started this game with the players outside their ruined ship. Plants and trees had grown all over the ship during an unexpected Plant Surge, and had ruined any hope the players had of leaving the ship.

The only place to go was away from there. Perhaps they could follow the Sith Apprentice.

They tracked the Apprentice for several miles until they reached an old tomb set into the side of a mountain. They could feel that the dark side was strong in this place. I used this map generator to generate the tomb.

As they battled through each room in the tomb, the Sith Apprentices kept getting stronger and stronger. But they finally made it to last room!

In the last room were a bunch of medical droids who were programmed to operate people. The purpose of the droids was to increase a person’s resilience. My wife’s character volunteered to be operated on. The droids doubled her characters Defenses, but with a penalty; she could never wear Armor ever again.

My cousin-in-law wandered around and found a datapad with a lot of information on it (but I didn’t supply him with what was written on the pad because I hadn’t written it yet!)

At the end of the tomb mission, my cousin-in-law wanted more game. He had lots of questions about the campaign which he wanted to know the answers to!

His questions: How did we get Force Powers? Why were those medical droids left there in the first place? What were those injection marks on our arms? What were we injected with? Why did we lose those weird force powers? Why can’t Megan wear armor anymore? Can there be more story!!??

More story… and with me only a few days from going home.

My wife arranged with her cousin that we would continue playing the game using Skype. And I decided to finally sit down and write a complete plot line, something to connect all my loose ends… something I had never dreamed I would be doing for this “small game”

In The Interim

I sat down one day and decided to write all the story thus far, and figure out a way to connect all the loose ends I had unraveled in the story.

I wrote a simple idea for the story, and then spent a week designing a character generator in LibreOffice to generate super-soldier Sith characters.

Basically the spreadsheet allowed me to plug in normal character stats and it would return 10 increased stat characters to me. Over the course of Game #4 and Game #5 I perfected this character super soldier spreadsheet.

In order to transmit the game story information I had finally written to the players, I gave the information to Brandon via the datapad he had found. Now he knew what it said…

Game #4

The previous game was supposed to be the last, but it was not to be. Now both players were Level 10, and wanted a plot.

In the previous game, Brandon had discovered a datapad. Now I told him what information the datapad contained.

It describes a plan called Artifex Virtutis (literally Architect of Power - Project Artifex for short).

Project Artifex was originally designed to create Force-sensitives out of Stormtroopers. 

The program first aimed to create super-soldiers by enhancing their battle prowess. Most of the initial experiments had differing results. The first subjects became Force sensitive super-soldiers for a limited period of time but then lost the use of the force in later periods of time.

Midichlorians are the submicroscopic cells that all Force users have. Force-sensitives have discovered that by manipulating these cells in different ways, they could cause certain reactions to occur. Midichlorians are The Force.

The Empire began experimenting on humans using midichlorian transfusions. This would theoretically allow a person to get an initial hold on the Force and then grow into a Force user over time. Reactions varied again. Some of the super soldiers developed weird force abilities (some of which were of no use at all), or developed the ability to change midichlorians in only one way (they only had one force power). Most became violent hybrids, and had to be terminated for the safety of the project.

I vainly thought I could explain their weird force abilities that appeared and disappeared this way… but as it later turned out I needed more.

The datapad pointed them north a few hundred miles to another hidden Sith base.

They traveled north to that base. When they got there, they discovered another Sith tomb, generated using the same map generator as before just new random numbers.

Except this Sith tomb was teaming with activity. Each room of the tomb had been converted in medical laboratories of one kind or another. Some rooms contained patients waiting to “augmented” into super-Sith. Some just contained mean “augmented” Sith who would battle them.

There was lots of XP to go around, and at the end, both players were closing in on Level 13.

Then Brandon popped another couple questions out: What planet are we on? You haven’t finished explaining all the other details either, so can there be another game?

Back to the writing block again.

Game #5

Brandon was able to hack some more information out of the datapad he found originally.

20 years ago, the Empire made a discovery on the planet Yalara. They found a tomb on the planet of some Sith Lord or other. Inside the tomb there was a factory of robots that were designed to genetically alter indivduals. These individuals usually had greater Defenses when the surgery was complete. The surgery however left telltale marks behind. All the people who were operated on by the Sith Lord's robots had vivid scarring across their face, and arms. The scars have midichlorians left over in the wound. The only problem with this was that the scarring left the soldier unable to tolerate armor on top of a scar. Once opponents realized that the super-soldiers were the ones with the scars they began pummeling just those soldiers and then once they were dead, the battle in general would be much easier.

The Empire designed other surgery techniques which were more unnoticable, but less effective... [Record stops here]

Brandon’s first reaction was epic. “Oh, we’re on Yalara!”

Then he realized that Megan’s character had opted to undergo surgery-by-Sith-bot. He immediately said: “I’m rolling Perception to see if Megan has scars on her arms.” She did have scars. “I’m just going to watch her and see if she turns to the dark side.”

Well, I had other plans for the game. As they left the second tomb, a Jedi ship lands in the clearing near them and they are surrounded by Jedi who order them to surrender their weapons. Seeing that Megan has scars all over her arms and face, they separate her and Brandon and interrogate them.

After the Jedi ascertain that neither player was dark side, they being them to the conference room on the ship (which is now in hyperspace) and they fill them in on the story.

“The Empire has been working on designed ways to turn regular people into force users and corrupt those users with the dark side of the Force. The one good side to this was that unless a sizble amount of Force energy could be injected into the subject, the process always seemed to fail in the end. So we haven’t had too much trouble tracking down Project Artifex and stopping them.”

“Recently though, things have changed. In order to find enough Force energy the Empire began using Sith artifacts to drain the Force from force-sensitive locations and transfer it into a subject (Remind you of Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy? I was playing that game when I wrote this section. lol). This has unbalanced the Force and has allowed Project Artifex to make their first super-soldiers. We were tracking a weird disturbance in the Force over Yalara… both of you, it seems. But since you’re not turning to the dark side - an obvious defect in Project Artifex’s plan for you - and both of you are slightly augmented, would you be willing to join us in stopping Project Artifex?”

Both players said they would be willing to aid the Jedi this way.

The Jedi reveal their destination is the planet Artooa, where they have detected another disturbance in the force. (Can you say “IT’S A TRAP!!”)

The players land on Artooa and fight their way to Project Artifex headquarters, another huge maze of rooms connected by winding hallways.

Each room contained a medical laboratory, usually with a bunch of augmented Sith waiting to attack the players and the Jedi who had accompanied them. At one point, they encountered a person in one of the rooms who they convinced to fight too. His name was Cron and he was fierce with a vibroaxe!

(Each of the players played their character. I played Cron, and the two Jedi who accompanied them. This satisfied me cause I wanted to play as well as GM the story, and it satisfied my players cause they could focus on their characters progress and not be distracted by another character.)

The maze I made though was just too big to finish in one night, so after the players had levelled up again we saved our progress so we could finish later.

Game #6

Megan and I got the flu in between Game #5 and Game #6 so the next couple games were really short.

The fact is, the maze I generated was big, and there were still about a dozen rooms left unexplored. I had picked one of the rooms as my “final staging area”, but I had left no clues as to which room it was. I wanted the players to wander around the Project Artifex base attacking, defeating Sith, and levelling up… until they stumbled onto the right room.

When he levelled up, Brandon was able to procure the Farseeing force power, and he immediately used it to try and detect where in the huge maze of rooms they should go.

This put a major crimp in my plans… Please understand, I am a fair GM. I let my players play their own characters using the rules in RPG rulebooks we use. I don’t force my players to play the way I want them to play. I let them play the way they want to. I merely adminstrate the story around their actions.

So Brandon uses Farseeing and detects the exact room where the “Big Boss” is located, and rushes there! I was hoping they would level up several times (possibly up to level 20) before facing the big boss, but they ended up getting there very directly and after only a few battles (so they were still level 15).

Due to my being sick and congested, we called off the game before the “big boss” battle.

Game #7

Before the game began, I explained the both players that they really weren’t ready for the Big Boss room. I told them that I wanted them to survive, so I suggested the following compromise: “How about this. Explore the rest of the rooms in the Project Artifex Base and get more XP. But we’re going to end this game tonight. So when either of you gets tired and wants to quit, we are going to immediately teleport you back to this point so you can open the door and face whatever is in the final staging area.”

They agreed and began wiping more Sith off the map by exploring several more rooms.

Just before 8pm, Megan announced that she was getting tired so we teleported the new-and-improved-and-more-experienced players along with their Jedi companions and Cron back to the final staging door. Here’s what happened next…

You open the door. Inside you see one man laying on an exam table. As the door opens the doctor looks at you as screams, “The Master will never be defeated!!” He jabs a needle into the man on the table and injects something into him.

The injection has an effect on the patient. He begins glowing!! (Brandon in background: “Oh, crap.”) His muscles grow in size exponentially and gets instant six-pack abs. He jumps off the table and Force Slams the exam table and the doctor into the far wall, and pulls out a lightsaber a strides towards you.

The Jedi that were accompanying you yell at you that they will try to hold him off, and you should run. Cron joins the Jedi in pummelling the Master.

There’s only one door left to run to…

Needless to say, they ran to the last room in the center of Project Artifex. Here they meet an aging kind doctor who was only operating on patients because his life was in danger. He holds the answers to all the questions raised during the game, and the final plot twist of the game.

The door to this center room closes locking them in the room. On the other side of the door, Cron and the two Jedi futilely sacrifice their lives to slow the Master down… which allows my two players to have a slightly rushed conversation with the doctor who understands full nature of Project Artifex. I encouraged Brandon to explain the story thus far to the doctor and ask him every question he had. And he did…

“How did we get Force Powers? What were we injected with?”

“Project Artifex must have used their midichlorian injections on you. Do you still have those Force powers? What can you do?”

“No, they disappeared after a short time.”

The doctor begins scanning them while saying, “Well, that’s odd. We haven’t had any subjects who lost their powers since our first trials.”

“Why did we lose those force powers?”

“There does seem to be some irregularities in your systems. And I think I know what happened. You said you were merchants and your ship was hijacked. That has been a common method Project Artifex uses to get subjects to experiment on. But usually when they hijack a ship, they only find one pilot. But in your case, there were two of you. And, expecting only one pilot, they must have only had one dose of midichlorians with them. I think they split the dose between the two of you, giving you a half dose. That’s why it wore off.”

“How do the midichlorian injections work?”

“When we first started experimenting on people, we thought that simply injecting a person with midichlorians would make them able to use the Force. We were wrong. It wasn’t so simple.

Our research recently showed that there is a difference between light side and dark side midichlorians. The light side focuses on training and control. The dark side focuses on power and corruption. If someone is infused with light side midichlorians although they have the ability to use the force, they typically lose their force powers until they are able to be trained in how to harness the Force correctly. Dark midichlorians however, corrupt the person and make them very powerful.

However, the Force doesn’t tolerate imbalance, and making a person into a force user causes an imbalance in the force. There must always be two force sensitives created at once (one light, one dark) in order to give both predictable power increases. What we’ve been doing recently is creating both dark and light force users, but then we kill the light side force users, leaving only the super-strong dark side users behind. This still imbalances the Force, but it allows the dark side user to gain predictable amounts of power, which is the goal the Empire had in the first place.”

“So what do we do now?”…

The Final Moral Choice

It took me 2 weeks to design this final challenge. I was quite proud of it! The were two possibilities. One of them allowed both players to potentially survive. The other allowed only one of the players to survive.

The only people in the room are the doctor, his patient, and the two players (both who were infused with a half-dose of midichlorians)

The doctor suggests the following: “I can stabilize your injection and help you to become super-soldiers so you can defeat the Master. Here’s how…

I have two midichlorian doses here. I can inject both of you with a half-dose of one of them, and inject my patient with a full dose of the other.”

You need to choose if you want to be injected with light-side midichlorians or dark-side midichlorians.

Here’s what I anticipate will happen when I do this… at this point, I gave both players outside-the-game GM knowledge of specifically what each action would do and let them choose.

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If they infuse themselves with half-dose light each:

You will lose your connection with the Force until you are later trained (Lower every level of Jedi to 0 and add those levels to another current class you have.)

You can’t use any force powers, but you can use Force Points (to increase damage or attack). You can still use the lightsabers you have built.

You lose all the scarring on your body (you can wear armor again)

+30 light side points (return to light)

Damage Reduction 300 until the Master is dead, then DR dropping off to 0. (DR 300 might sound a little excessive, but the Master could easily hit 300+ damage on his attacks)

Critical hit x2 on 18 and 19

Critical hit x3 on 20

The patient on the table however becomes an augmented Dark Jedi and joins the Master on the other side of the door and both will fight you.

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If they infuse themselves with half-dose dark each:

Neither of you can wear any armor

All DEF up to a minimum of 100

You can’t use any light side powers at all.

Damage Reduction 300 until the Master is dead, then DR dropping off to 0.

+30 dark side points (become completely dark)

Critical hit x2 on 18 and 19

Critical hit x3 on 20

The patient on the table becomes a champion of the light and will fight against you and the Master alike. Because the nature of the dark side is not to share power, you will turn against each other and have to fight the Super Dark Jedi, the light-side Champion, and EACH OTHER until only one of you survives.

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So… What do you do?

Both players went light side, and fought the Master (I should really submit his character sheet here sometime so you can see what they faced) and saved the day.

And that… is the end of the biggest “short story” I’ve ever written!!