Pseudo-Star Wars Idea

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

Aside from the feel of the movies, I'm also just not interested in trying to ape the canon of Expanded or pre/se-quels. If you ignore the games, toys, books and later films there is actually very little that is ever explained about Star Wars.
[...]

Preach on. Heck, I'd be happy to dump everything except the original movie! Who says Vader needs to be some hick kid's dad?

[mlangsdorf]

My personal preference, based on experience, is to keep the themes and concepts of the original trilogy (and any part of the EU I particularly like), and to ignore any attempt at strict adherence to canon. George Lucas was making stuff up as he went along in order to tell a great story, and I think everyone at the gaming table should be equally privileged to make stuff up.

Again, based on my experience, is that there is maybe 1 person at the table who really wants to get into the details of storm trooper armor and chronology based around the Battle of Yahvin, and everyone else wants to play a cinematic, cliff-hanger swashbuckling game based around lasers swords, space princesses, charming smugglers, weird aliens, and starfighter dogfights.

So I think that VonKatzen has a good approach to this, in not getting bogged down in canon and details, I think it's also a shame to throw out cool stuff from the later media just because they're not in the original trilogy of movies. If you and your players agree that something from the Clone Wars animated films is really neat, you should use it, even if it's not in the original movies.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

Vader's armor (either his armor or his powers or both stopped a short-range hit from Han's big pistol)

One thing to note here is that Vader actually deflected (and reflected) Han's shots, as after he takes the weapon away we see scorch marks on the walls of the room. He was probably using the Force to enhance his reflexes to Parry those bolts unarmed, but as you note it's impossible to say if the deflection was a function of his armor or powers.

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

Push/throw/lift stuff is a pretty common technique
Befuddle the minds of/evade notice from dumbasses

IIRC, Yoda indicates that one shouldn't actually attack using the Force - that is, you shouldn't Push people around or throw Galactic Senate seats at them in an attempt to crush them. Since you are ignoring the prequels, this seems a good way to differentiate between Jedi and those who use the Dark Side.

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

Fly (only Vader does this)

ISTR Vader doing some decent jumps, but no flight. When does this occur?

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

Jedis: Obi-Wan, Yoda, no one else ever mentioned as far as I can tell. No information given on them at all.
...
Vader used to maybe be a Jedi (never explicitly said IIRC) but there's no explanation for who the Emperor is or why he has powers/where he got them

Pretty much all of what is established in the original trilogy is here, when Obi-Wan gives Luke Anakin's lightsaber. For the first, Obi-Wan notes the Jedi Knights were "guardians of peace and justice" for "over a thousand generations," and notes this was from before the Empire, when there was a Galactic Republic. Obi-Wan implicitly states that Luke's father was a Jedi when he refers to the lightsaber as "the weapon of a Jedi Knight," and explicitly calls Vader a "young Jedi." The Emperor is, of course, completely unexplained.

[Phantasm]

Of note, Vader is explicitly called a "Dark Lord of the Sith" in the 1977 novelization of the original movie (credited to George Lucas but ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster). The novel filled in some of the gaps, including scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor (most notably, Blue Leader - Red Leader in the movie due to a color change on the models to not interfere w/ experimental blue-screen shots - stating he once flew with Luke's dad).

If you wish to consider novelizations suitable sources, then the term "Sith" predates the release of the original movie by about a month. (Eight pages in the middle of the first printing had shots from the movie, and was the first indication the stormtroopers were clones.)

If I was to run another rebellion-era game, I'd probably toss a Second and maybe even a Third Clone War prior to or part of Vader turning against the Jedi.

[weby]

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

Yeah, the phasers did pretty good damage in TOS (though I have to wonder where all that instantly vaporized mass went - should have created an explosion, not a disappearing act!)

Maybe they are really Displacers, not Disitegrators!

Star Trek phasers on paper (especially TNG phasers) are some of the most OP hand weapons ever introduced to science fiction, but apparently no one in Starfleet has the common sense or training to use them in remotely logical/effective ways.

Note that in Star Trek there is apparently no army and no infantry training. Even red shirts seem more like civilian style police than troops.

[A Ladder]

What I did in my Pseudo-Star Wars Setting (hilariously named that in my word documents):

TL 5 weapons, since all the blasters seem to be single fire and not rapid fire stuff. Ignore shots and reload times.
TL 6 vehicles, Star wars is analogous of WWII in a sense, but call the motorcycles and cars "speeders", planes "fighters", and boats "star destroyers" and then deck them out with TL 6 weapons with RoF 1.
Lightsabers are handled with doubling broadsword damage (2x Sw+1).
No one wears armor.
Pick appropriate skills from basic, shying away from anything that doesn't pop out of the movies (like Power Blow and Boating)

Just remember what JoelSammallahti said: people are poor. Any other gadgets should be a purview of one or two thingies the PCs say they have at character creation (Like the communicators or a grappling hook on a rope) and that's it.

Star Wars, IMO, is a space western with fantasy themes and window dressing of WWII.

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

Who says Vader needs to be some hick kid's dad?

Judging from the movies he's basically Doctor Doom, Chief of the Gestapo and the whole father/son relationship was dramatic plot stuff added because his character was so popular after the first one.

Originally Posted by Varyon

One thing to note here is that Vader actually deflected (and reflected) Han's shots, as after he takes the weapon away we see scorch marks on the walls of the room. He was probably using the Force to enhance his reflexes to Parry those bolts unarmed, but as you note it's impossible to say if the deflection was a function of his armor or powers.

Given that Doctor Doom is at least one of his inspirations and that's exactly the sort of thing Doom (also a wizard in robot armor) would do I'd be inclined to say you could split the difference, i.e. his armor might stop a blaster bolt anyway but he was able to assist his parry in such a way that it basically did nothing to him.

IIRC, Yoda indicates that one shouldn't actually attack using the Force - that is, you shouldn't Push people around or throw Galactic Senate seats at them in an attempt to crush them. Since you are ignoring the prequels, this seems a good way to differentiate between Jedi and those who use the Dark Side.

Not a bad idea.

ISTR Vader doing some decent jumps, but no flight. When does this occur?

Assuming his jump wasn't just his super-strength (and it's probably not since Luke does it) there is no logical difference between flying and a TK-lifted 'jump'. Power-lifted air travel is called 'flying', even if you only do it 5'. Using your legs to spring (with no interim power in flight) is jumping. Jedi don't jump, they fly short distances. Unless you're arguing that Vader is somehow increasing his leg strength with the Force - but since he's throwing lots of stuff around (i.e. making it fly) it seems pretty natural to assume he is also making himself fly.

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Of note, Vader is explicitly called a "Dark Lord of the Sith"
If you wish to consider novelizations suitable sources, then the term "Sith" predates the release of the original movie by about a month.

Yes but in neither case is there any explanation of what a Sith is, what a Lord is, how Vader became a Lord (whether you make him a former Jedi Knight or not), etc. Basically everything people associate with the Sith - their being an 'order', their previous attempts to conquer the galaxy, their 'dark side' religion - has zero basis in the movies. The closest thing to any relation to the later 'Sith' order having anything whatsoever to do with Dark Side force users is the Emperor and Vader trying to convince Luke to join them and kill the third wheel in the Dark Side. But Vader and the Emperor also discussing converting Luke into this third wheel, openly and without irony, so it's clear that the 'rule of 2' was some BS made up later and not at all envisioned in the original trilogy (much less the first movie script, its novelization and its toys, which is the only occurrence of the term at all for twenty or thirty years).

Since feudal titles are present in Star Wars and Lord is certainly one of them it's impossible to say what 'Dark Lord of the Sith' might mean. Certainly the Emperor is never referred to as a 'Sith' or as an anything at all. It could be a title to go along with his position (like Lord Protector) to give him some pseudo-feudal rank as happened with Napoleon's picked men, the Sith might be his secret police; they might be an ethnos or region he was awarded in fief for his services to the Empire; the Sith might be an abstract concept which he is a recognized Master of, etc. You can basically make up anything you like based on the zero evidence in the movies (and bare title in the screen play). I think his obvious position as Secret Police chief in IV would make the Sith being the Gestapo one of the more germaine interpretations.

Also, you can not possibly treat the original Alan Dean Foster novelization as canon along with the other two movies - in the novelization the Emperor is supposed to be some blowhard do-gooder who gets hemmed in by bureaucrats and toadies on his way to power and loses contact with teh people. That is nothing like the psycho old wizard with precognition from VI.

If I were to characterize the very vague evidence given in the movies the Republic had been declining and becoming a military bureaucracy for a long time, and the Emperor uses the military as a power base (assisted by his psychic powers). Unlike most people who didn't know or care about Jedi (a remnant of the feudal republic of the old days, like Princesses and Lords; and some BS pagan religion no one believes anymore) the Emperor knows they have psychic powers so he has his Gestapo commander Vader pogrom them when he gets to power. It's more a combination of the old Roman Republic and its gradual transformation into an Empire (which long predates any 'Emperor') with the destruction of its old higher class families, institutions and religions - and The Emperor is basically Napoleon, the 'saviour of the Republic' who embarks on a train of conquest that eventually triggers a massive civil war because it's so expensive and destructive. The collapsed timeline of the prequels where this all happens in a period of 20 years just makes no sense at all on the basis of the first 3 films.

By being careful about how real-world history and terms are used it's entirely possible that the Empire is hundreds of years old by IV, that the Emperor is a recent position, and that Jedi Knights were virtually extinct/irrelevant during the Clone Wars but a couple of them (being an aristocratic order) were important enough on other grounds to be generals and hotshot pilots. And while Jedis were known for training in backward places (or at least hiding there) they were probably not monks, but instead fully engaged in civilian politics and so forth as members of an elite (though largely symbolic, by then) group. Sort of like the Equites of ancient Rome.

The Rebellion is made up of all sorts, but especially the old aristocracy who want their position back, republicans who dream of a return to the old republic (as many Romans did long after it was a dead letter), various merchants and smuggler types who dislike the Empire's clamping down on trade and forcing local planets more and more into line with imperial law, and aliens who resent the intrusion of the Empire's war machine into their customarily weakly linked or independent regions (like the Mesopotamians and Greeks and Celts being integrated into the Roman Empire; or the Rheinland Germans forced into the Napoleonic mould). They talk of 'freedom' but so did the ancient Greek oligarchies in the Alexandrian times, who meant 'our right to have slaves, run things for the benefit of elite families, and not have to pay taxes, tithes and manpower to a distant overarching state'. The Rebel Alliance can be entirely interpreted as reactionary oligarchs who use state-sponsored terrorism to fight the empire, rather than the American-style revolutionaries or what have you. They don't even have many aliens in their ranks. The Rebel Alliance does seem to be less sex-based in terms of their hiring for religions as position - the Empire is 100% male and 100% human - but that may be because we only see the military bureaucracy of the empire, and none of its civil institutions. For all we know the Empire had billions of women and aliens in civil positions, but considered them unsuitable for the military (as the Alexandrian successor kingdoms preferred to have Greeks for their infantry, despite controlling a huge non-Greek empire).

The Rebel Alliance seems somewhat less murderous than the Empire, but that may simply be for PR reasons and a lack of power. For all we know they would have blown up the Empire's capital just to kill the Emperor (and they do kill at least several millions of people on both of the Death Stars!) if they could afford an enormous hyperspace battle station. The Rebel Alliance could as easily be interpreted as the Shining Path as the Sons of Liberty. Just because their enemy is villainous and oppressive doesn't mean they aren't, too. In fact in history I'd say both sides of most wars are 'bad guys' and civilians are just caught in their power games and propaganda. Based on mood music it makes it seem like the Rebels are the 'good guys', but that's subject to various interpretations depending on what you think 'good guys' are in a violent rebellion. After all, there were plenty of people who liked the Shining Path and willingly fought for it.

There are many variant interpretations possible, but I think this at least makes more sense of the original trilogy than most of the EU and LucasSpam.

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by Fanny

Would you be incorporating anything from the newest Rebels series which just concluded?

I have no idea what it's even about about.

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by Fanny

There was a "Clone Wars" CGI show set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith and focuses on Anakin Skywalker training a Padawan named Ahsoka. Star Wars Rebels is mostly (except for the epilogue of the final episode) set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope and follows up on CW characters but mostly focuses on some new ones.

I'll basically just stick with the three core movies, because it makes it easier to model. Without all the expanded stuff and the monk jedis and force explanations etc. it's much easier to use straight 1950s-style 'new type' psionics, UT blaster guns, etc. without modification. The more stuff you integrate from the EU and other movies/cartoons/games the more you have to tweak stuff to make it fit.

[Phantasm]

I think my next Star Wars game - should I ever run one again - will be "redo" of the prequels, with changes to fit the original trilogy better. To this end, I'll probably raid a few things that cropped up into the EU but have been set (by necessity) prior to 1000 BBY in regards to the Jedi and Sith:

First, the Jedi. They're still warrior monks who live by both a code of honor and a discipline of faith, through a religion with Taoist and Buddhist overtones which grants them access to abilities through a mystical possibly sentient energy field known as the Force (which may have a sense of humor). The Jedi are fairly decentralized, having no central authority; in times past they've tried it but it didn't work out. Jedi occasionally end up in seats of political power, but rarely do they actively seek them out; more often, they end up serving houses of nobility or specific planets as ambassadors and/or military leaders. As they are decentralized, there are many sects of Jedi, which sometimes end up in conflict with each other when their planets or noble houses feud.

Next, the (Old) Republic and the Empire: Each member system sends a representative to the Galactic/Imperial Senate, but how the representative is chosen varies from planet to planet. Many of the older planets (Alderaan, Corellia, other Core Worlds) have a ruling aristocracy; other member planets are representative democracies, theocracies led by a Jedi or Sith dynasty, or are essentially planet-wide corporations (the latter is especially common in the region known as the Colonies). Due to its bureaucratic weight, the Republic is faltering, with some systems calling for secession and others for centralizing power.

Then there's the Sith: The Sith began as a sect of the Jedi who started dabbling in darker aspects of the Force, taking their name from a now-extinct race from whom they first learned the dark arts. By their nature, Sith tend to dominate, having a rather Darwinistic "survival of the fittest" and "might makes right" mentality. In times past, the Sith were driven out of the Republic and believed squashed, but have always resurfaced, often from within the ranks of the Jedi from those who learned Sith teachings from various sources. Some might say that the Sith have legitimate grievances against the Jedi, and the animosity between the two groups has never died. Like the Jedi, the Sith are also at present decentralized, with multiple Sith Lords claiming leadership. There is no "Rule of Two", only the "Rule of However Many We Need." Fortunately for the Republic and the Jedi, Sith infighting tends to have them at each others' throats rather than cooperating.

A final note on the Force: Yes, there will be a light side and a dark side of the Force. However, the Jedi and Sith are both flawed; the light side requires logic and making decisions without emotion, which when taken to its extreme can end up being rather callous in the "for the greater good" mentality, leading to some Jedi being rather Machiavellian, forgetting that the Jedi religion also calls for compassion and understanding. The dark side is linked to and thrives on raw emotions, and the Sith take that to an extreme by embracing all their negative emotions: anger, hate, envy, avarice, lust. In Freudian terms, the Sith embrace the Id while the Jedi embrace the Super-Ego. That the Force itself wants both sides to embrace the moderate/balanced (the Freudian "Ego") aspect as well is lost on most of them.