High Risk, High Reward
Hyperspace, Showdowns, and Getting Paid in Fly Casual
“Traveling through hyperspace isn’t like dusting crops, boy!”
–Han Solo
Smuggling is a high risk, high reward line of work. In exchange for the freedom to enjoy the open skies and the money it takes to survive, Smugglers willingly undertake dangerous, sometimes illegal, jobs with employers that can be capricious and unsavory. Every leap into hyperspace, every approach to a planet, every interaction with a buyer or seller is full of risk.
Available now at local retailers and in our online store, the Fly Casual sourcebook for Star Wars®: Edge of the Empire™ features new guidelines to help GMs add more risks (and a few rewards) to Smuggling adventures. These include expanded rules on hyperspace travel and details for how to run quick-draw showdowns. In today's article, developer Max Brooke provides an overview of these integral aspects of any Smugglers’ tale. We'll also touch on how GMs can help a group of Smugglers find work and eventually determine how much they should get paid.
Making the Jump
Here's Max:
Thanks to the miracle of the hyperdrive, space ships can soar between the stars with astounding speed, completing journeys that once could have taken millennia in a matter of days. However, thanks to shifting hyperlanes, complexities introduced by mass shadows, and countless other factors, jumps across the interstellar void are far from safe. The calculations involved are enormously complex. Even the slightest error can mean the death of everyone aboard.
Fortunately for PCs and GMs, Fly Casual provides guidance on how to make Hyperspace Travel exciting without bogging down the game. New modifiers for the Astrogation check factor in the circumstances of departure and the route. Expanded options are given for spending advantage, triumph, despair and threat results on these checks, and a list of travel times is provided for many of the galaxy’s most common trading lanes and smuggling routes. Astrogation checks with sufficient advantage or threat can get the travelers to their destination early or help chart new hyperlanes, while threat and despair on the check can cast the ship adrift in uncharted space or even cause a collision with a mass shadow. Any jump is slightly dangerous, but a good Pilot backed by a skilled crew can take advantage of secret routes and shortcuts to arrive ahead of schedule or where the Imperials least expect it.
Quick Draws
Showdowns are an important part of the Star Wars mythology, and Fly Casual provides GMs with the resources for quick-draw duels. These rules provide additional options for combatants squaring off in a showdown, from the moment the parties involved begin to size up and intimidate each other to the thrilling point when someone draws and shoots. A showdown can be added to the beginning of a longer battle or be used for a conflict that ends after a single shot. While these rules are especially useful alongside characters with the new Gunslinger specialization, GMs should find them useful when crafting all sorts of Smuggler stories.
Thanks, Max!
Finding Work and Getting Paid
Beyond the expert flying and the shootouts, a smuggling job begins with the search for work and ends only when you get paid – or when you don’t. Fly Casual therefore offers suggestions for GMs about how to make the beginning and end of a job just as suspenseful and action-packed as the middle. A smuggling job might begin with characters meeting an underworld contact in a seedy location, receiving a coded transmission from the Rebel Alliance, or discovering that an old friend could use a little help.
With solid skills, a good crew, and a little luck, you’ll be able to deliver your cargo to its buyer intact and on time – but getting paid for your delivery is an adventure in itself. Your pay may very well depend on a Negotiation check, so Fly Casual includes a table of Payout modifiers that helps translates the results of that check into credits or cargo rewards. Of course, you may fail to deliver the goods you promised when you promised them, so there are also options for what to do when the cargo arrives late or in an undesirable condition. In the worst case scenario, a team of Smugglers may have to face the wrath of their employer empty-handed. Fly Casual gives some ideas about what to do if that happens, from staging a shootout to deepening an Obligation, and how to keep the story moving forward to the next, hopefully more successful, smuggling job.
Shoot Faster and Fly Better
Travel through hyperspace is almost inevitable on a smuggling job, and blaster duels are common in this line of work – especially when a deal goes bad. With the new guidelines introduced in Fly Casual, your Edge of the Empire gaming group will be able to find a job, speed through the stars, draw quickly, shoot first, and, in the end, get paid.
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Participate in grim and gritty adventures on the fringes of the Star Wars universe with Star Wars®: Edge of the Empire™. Edge of the Empire is a complete standalone roleplay system that transports players to some of the shadiest locations in the Outer Rim, the underbelly of the Core Worlds, and everywhere else in-between!
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Players who tend to get involved in dogfights and other ship-to-ship battles will find the Critical Hits Deck incredibly useful. Each card details the effects of the hit upon your vehicle and the difficulty level of the Mechanics check required to fix it. With these cards in hand, you’ll be able to understand how to recover from being knocked off course, how vulnerable your ship is if its shields overload, and how long you have to bail out if your ship starts breaking up.
The natives of Devaron were some of the earliest explorers and cartographers of the galaxy owing to their natural inclination to wanderlust and restlessness. More so than their contribution to galactic civilization, Devaronians are remarkable for their visage: their cranial horns and sharp teeth cause them to appear as the demons and monsters found in the legends of myriad galactic cultures. Female Devaronians typically do not grow the horns, which may be surprising to outsiders since the males of the species are more commonly encountered in the galaxy at large. Males tend to succumb more readily to the desire to strike out on their own, which results in many of the power structures on Devaron being governed by women.
Reptilian humanoids hailing from the wasteland world of Zolan, Clawdites possess a genetic ability that makes even the most affable Human con-artist jealous. For the minor expenditure of strain and a successful Resilience check, a Clawdite can change the color, shape, and texture of their skin to match that of any other person they have previously encountered. The above average Cunning possessed by Clawdites is essential to preserving such a ruse, as their Deception skill sells the impersonation to suspicious enemies. While some people find this attribute of Clawdites to be exceptionally appealing, it tends to spark a measure of distrust and unease in others.
Physically, Kallerans are tall and lean, often standing two meters or more. Their brawny physique and acute senses are perfectly suited to a life of confrontation and action. They each possess a set of antennae that they utilize to supplement their speech by conveying emphasis and subtext and can also be used to silently “speak” to one another through a simple vocabulary of movements and gestures that strangers will generally not recognize. This is not an untrainable technique, however, so a Kalleran could certainly train her friends to read her intent—much like other species would use hand signals—when silence or subterfuge are required.
Whether their skill comes from devoted study and careful practice or from simply a lifetime spent in a dangerous galaxy, Martial Artists, often armed with nothing more than their own body, blend physical power and mental focus to defend themselves and defeat their enemies. Brawn and Willpower are the primary attributes for the Martial Artist from which they draw inner and outer strength. Athletics, Brawl, Coordination, and Discipline are bonus career skills for the Bounty Hunter who chooses this path of the implacable warrior.
but Willpower and Intellect are also strong choices for opening up different ways to track targets.
Thrill of the Chase
Prepare For The Hunt
Martial Artist - A disciplined hand-to-hand warrior, strengthened by years of focused training to turn their body into a deadly weapon and stalwart bastion. Talents such as Martial Grace and Coordination Dodge directly increase the hunter’s offensive and defensive capabilities, while Overbalance punishes an enemy’s foolish attempt at a strike and Unarmed Parry shrugs off all but the most disastrous attacks with ease.
The bootheels of law enforcement will never completely stamp out scum and villainy, not entirely. Trades both legitimate and illicit are still in high demand in the Outer Rim, where the Empire’s grip is tenuous at best and laughable at worst. Many Hutts and crime lords of all species view the change in leadership in the Core Worlds as simply a market shift; buying, selling, and swindling are all the same game, only the faces on the other side of the table have changed. 
For now, though, characters in the Rebellion have a difficult road ahead. Securing military victories against a monolithic foe remains rare enough, but every success is born from a previous one. Powerful political allies need to be won in any way possible, not to mention the everyday necessities of food, materiel, and fighting bodies. The most potent ally of all, though, is the will of the people. A Rebellion is a cruel waste of life if the very galaxy they are fighting for does not believe in their cause. The obligation for struggle must be demonstrated, just as the possibility of ultimate victory must be proven. What the people need is hope.
Droid Tech - Whether assembling a horde of robotic assistants or focusing on a singular masterpiece, the Droid Tech lives to cultivate the usefulness of droids. Some Droid Techs see this calling as a way to make good credits in a galaxy that depends on droids to maintain their way of life, while others may view the value of the work itself as infinite; every optimized power relay, every upgraded subroutine a tally in the ledger of greatness. Droid Techs benefit from the Deft Maker talent while crafting droids, which is complemented well by Eye for Detail’s addition of success or advantage on Mechanics and Computers checks on which such crafting relies. In the field, Reroute Processors can optimize a droid by increasing a needed characteristic while reducing a currently unnecessary one, and Redundant Systems allows the Droid Tech to make needed repairs by scavenging extra parts from another piece of equipment.
This 26” x 26” natural rubber gamemat is the perfect surface upon which to tackle any obstacles the galaxy (or your gamemaster) might throw at you, whether you're plundering ancient riches in 
