The mission that would not die.

My game group was playing Star Wars. Since it was going to be an RPGA game we had to use the newest edition, which used a system that would later be released as D&D 4th edition, and we didn't particularly like it. But complaints aside, Living Force it was. I joined the first game late and hadn't rolled a character. I took over one of the GM's premade characters and joined the game.

Around the table we had two Humans, one of them a force adept the other a scoundrel, a Rodian, a scout, and a droid. The character I took over was describeded to me as being the kind of man who "sold" your grandmother a "bible". We were on our way to a meeting in a quite part of the space station. We entered the cargo bay and began talking to a droid. A green person who should have kept quiet said something he shouldn't have. There was a heated exchange of words and finally the robot we were meeting had enough. He yelled and the walls to our left and right began to dissolve with a barrage of red bolts. We dove for cover. We knew the room was full of illegal weapons, we were there to smuggle some away honestly, so we knew better then to be blowing things up. The first thing I did was shoot the fucking droid.

Turns out there were ten of them. We shot four, the force adept pushed a crate of blasters over on two. One of them dropped a grenade and took care of the rest.
We were glad to all be alive and relatively unharmed. The GM was going easy on us, but we were fucked and we knew it. We shot our contact over some harsh words. We killed ten of our employer's men. We needed to get the hell out of there. We were almost out, then the Rodian decided to leave his grenade belt in the air lock.

The first explosion ruptured the station's hull and shook our ship. The second explosion was the station begining to depressurize. We blew a quarter of it up. The session ended there. We all left about an hour later. Still laughing.

The GM had a grim look on his face the next week.
He said he'd submitted his report and was told we had to replay the session and complete it closer to the expected end. He said he was told we were "Doing it wrong." . All we had to do was not blow things up. This was easier said then done. If you've read my Shadowrun post you'll remember that blowing things up is sort of how we solve a problem, and we all agreed we had a problem.

The game started as before. We non-violently made our way to the spaceport, got in our ship, and flew to the space station in orbit. This time we stopped outside the cargo bay and readied our weapons. The force adept kicked in the door. I pelted one wall with grenades, the Rodian got the other. The driods shot at each other. Most of the men behind the walls had been killed in the explosion. In a few rounds the rest of them were dead. We gathered up a ridiculous amount of explosives from the crates in the room. Left a large quantity in the room and left the rest across the half of the station between us and our ship. A quick damage calculation later and we were told we had destroyed 70% of the station this time.

The next week our GM looked nervous. "Do it again." We didn't even pretend we were playing nice this time. We didn't go to our ship. We went to a nearby Imperial(Republic?) garrison and stole a ship. I had just talked the Star Destroyer into letting us dock when the GM called the game. It had only run this long because he thought we'd never manage to steal the thing. 70% was a nice number, but we all agreed. We could destroy the whole thing if we hit it with that star destroyer we behaved as we passed into orbit the last two times.

The GM was ready for this. He had another game ready. I think he just wanted to see if we would keep trying to blow the station up. As far as I know the RPGA thinks we completed the mission, I couldn't tell you. The moral of the story is... Hmmm. If you have a problem we can blow it up. Not really a moral, but I'm sticking with it.

-James