Friday 2 May 2014

We Dress Up as Stormtroopers

Essentially this was our number one infiltration tactic in the d6 Star Wars games we played in our school days. Hey, it was good enough for Luke and Han.

Space. 70's style.

Of course it used to drive our GM mental. "Oh you dress as Stormtroopers yet again. I suppose you're going to ask one of the others to check down your blaster barrel for dirt and shoot him in the face? Again..."

Yeah, I did that. It was cool.

Part of the problem though was we played Rebels, a smuggler, a Wookie and a bounty hunter, who were constantly tasked with infiltrating Imperial bases. So faced with the same problem all the time, we opted for the same solution. Partly it was the GM's fault, he hated us dressing up as Stormtroopers but always gave us adventures where it was a viable tactic. If we'd been dealing with some Jabba style space gangsters then we would've had to try something else (like dressing up in Mandalorian combat armour...) Or an alien student of the Force gone to the Dark Side, where dressing up wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference in the face of telekinetic strangulation and force lightning.

Your dressing up powers will not work on me boy...

However, despite (or because of) being a very intelligent bloke he couldn't get over his obsession with the technical stuff. He loved designing bases and star ships. He loved complex tactical battles, preferably ship to ship. He was good at that stuff as as well, I mean he now designs missiles and military aircraft for a living, but we were players who liked to use ingenuity and bluff to solve our problems. We would sneak around and backstab rather than shoot it out with the numerically superior, although tactically inept, Imperial NPCs. Once we escaped a particular base, lovingly and spectacularly designed as always, in a stolen AT-AT. The other AT-ATs in the dock were scuttled by maintenance droids we reprogrammed to carry thermal detonators on board and blow them up before they could give chase. Afterwards the GM showed us the maps he had prepared, in detail, showing the countryside outside the base. There were woods, defiles, spires of rock for cover, streams and rivers to ford, canyons to set ambushes. All stuff he'd included for a climactic AT-AT battle, which never happened. Although he begrudgingly praised our droid bomb idea, and we were suitably rewarded for our planning, we could tell he was disappointed we didn't share his love of that side of the game. We had great fun playing in his Star Wars game, I just hope he enjoyed it too.

Dressing up powers: Working

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