Sunday, October 8, 2017

Star Wars Adventure Review - Tatooine Manhunt

This is an ongoing series of reviews of classic West End Games Star Wars RPG adventures. I've run a few, read a few more and not touched a few since I bought them over the past 30 years. I'll look at them for a few different angles, including what I would change to bring the adventure to my table.

Adventure title: Tatooine Manhunt


Author(s): Bill Slavicsek and Daniel Greenberg


Published: June 1988


The Pitch: The Rebels must find an Old Republic officer before bounty hunters collect a huge bounty to bring him in dead or alive.

Summary: An influential adventure on not just the RPG but Star Wars canon. It lives up to the hype and offers a fun adventure on the planet that seems to be in the middle of nowhere, yet everything happens there!




In-depth review with SPOILERS after the jump!


The Story

The Rebels rendezvous with an undercover spy named Dana, who gets jumped by some bounty hunters before she can give them her information. What she has is pretty heavy. A legendary Old Republic general named Adar Tallon, long thought dead, is instead hiding out on Tatooine. The Rebels only have a few days to act on the info before a Star Destroyer currently going through repairs is able to make the jump to the desert world. There's still plenty of danger on Tatooine as bounty hunters have gotten a hold of the information and are trying to find someone in that wretched hive of scum and villainy of Mos Eisley who knows the way to Tallon's hideout.

One the rebels find a guide, it's off to the Jutland Wastes, trekking across the desert to try and find Tallon's hide out. There are Sand People, bounty hunters and a whole lot of Western encounter riffs on the way. Tallon makes a last stand against the remaining bounty hunters at his hideout, along with dealing with a traitor within who sold him out to the Imperials in exchange for his life. The adventure ends with a breakout of Tatooine with stats for the always fun Star Warriors board game.

The Design

This adventure comes in two major set pieces. The first half features the Rebels wandering around Mos Eisley and a certain cantina looking for a lead on Tallon's location. It operates as a mini-sourcebook on Mos Eisley. The original printing comes with a two-sided poster that has the city center on one side and a large floorplan of the cantina on the other. The players meet the member's of Tallon's crew in the bar, of course, but there's plenty of stuff going on in the city like bumping into bounty hunters also on the general's trail.

The second half is a wilderness run to get to Tallon before the bounty hunters (or, in theory, the Imperials) do. These encounters are presented in a linear fashion. The Rebels are supposed to investigate a few different places where Tallon is hiding out, have a few encounters in between those locations and finally come across their target in the last location. The linear setup is the only really weak part of the adventure, but it's easily remedied by picking and choosing which encounters happen. (Also, why can't the players just do a fly-by of the locations rather than surface travel on a desert planet?) Once the players start looking bored, time to go to Tallon's place.

Canon Compatibility

This adventure introduces a few things to the Star Wars canon that became quite popular. The most famous one is the Z-95 Headhunter, the precursor to the X-Wing starfighter. Tallon has a few of these parked at his hideout and they can lend support to the players breathless escape from the Imperials in orbit around the planet (which apparently the only way to leave Tatooine).

One of the more infamous is Jodo Kast, another Mandalorian bounty hunter whose MO is similar to Boba Fett. This also pushed along the idea that the Mandalorians were a culture rather than just a type of armor, but it also offered an NPC for the PCs to fold, mutilate and staple that didn't have a bigger role to play in Star Wars. Kast had something of a cult following among Star Wars fans, even appearing in the ill-advised fighting game Masters of Teras Kasi.

Special Modifications

There isn't much I would change outside of spicing up a few characters. Tallon, even though he's at the heart of the adventure, is pretty generic. Some of this is likely because the Old Republic era was so ill-defined at the time and likely a place the writers weren't able to delve to deep into. I think I would make him connected to a PC if I ran the adventure, or perhaps sub in a character from Clone Wars or something to have players recognize their prize.

The same question hangs over Jodo Kast's head. I learn towards making Boba Fett the lead bounty hunter instead to give players an enemy they know and hate rather than a copy. It would depend on the table and how they feel about engaging with characters they know are unlikely to be killed. Some players don't like the idea, others would still like to tell the story about the time they almost got Boba Fett and changed history.

Some readers have said their GMs ran this on another planet because of all the stuff that already happened on Tatooine. I can see their point, but I feel like having a drink in the cantina and creeping through Mos Eisley back alleys adds a lot of flavor to the adventure. I had a similar issue with the adventure in the Beginner Box of FFG's Edge of the Empire RPG. It features a different dingy Tatooine port with a different Hutt crimelord. Why not just bring out Jabba?

The only real design changes would be toward the end of the adventure. The escape at the end of the adventure feels optional. It makes more sense in the beginning where the Rebels are at a space station with an ISD in drydock, if I needed it at all. I would also lay out the three locations where Tallon is supposed to be hiding and adjust how many wilderness encounters the PCs have based on which they pick. If they pick the right one right away, they have all the encounters. If they grab a false lead or two, they have that encounter, but less ones out in the desert.

Final Thoughts

This adventure lives up to the hype. It's probably the one I would run so far without many, if any, changes and there's a lot of good support beyond the main plot for players who like to fiddle around in the margins. 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Death Stars

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