If you want to know how easy it is to scrub out a huge order or wipe out historical events after 20 years, ask the Chinese. Most of them have never heard of Falun Gong or Tianmen Square.

It's pitifully EASY to wipe out historical memory if you control all education and media.

I dont think they are easy to find, but always depends on the GM. If I have force sensitives or players who are training as Jedi, then a story could revolve around them finding a lightsaber. Eventually, I assume when F&D is released, there will be rules for building lightsabers by trained Jedi.

Are they rare? Yes. Are they impossible to find? No. There are lightsabers that have been lost that could be found by a force sentive exile.

If you want to know how easy it is to scrub out a huge order or wipe out historical events after 20 years, ask the Chinese. Most of them have never heard of Falun Gong or Tianmen Square.

It's pitifully EASY to wipe out historical memory if you control all education and media.

Some Chinese I've worked with and employed in the past after leaving the country are staggeringly indifferent to events like those and it really doesn't interest them, at best you might get a difficult silence in the conversation. I've had it explained to me by a very close co-worker who I worked with for years after she migrated here (Australia), that for most the transition to a more heavily urbanised and very utilitarian society has undermined a lot of the traditional trust mechanisms formed in their neighbourhood and occupational connections, just isn't there.

People meet a lot more strangers and as a result, it has a caused somewhat twisted by-product by diminishing empathy, integrity and trust. Plus of course the personal risk of interferring in something that 'isn't their concern' in the first place, if you really want to push the point publically, there is the very real risk that someone you don't know or a technological mechanism will get you in big trouble as a delinquent.

They haven't moved into the global multi-media environment we're conversing on now, there's a huge firewall in between them and the rest of us, the mere mention of "Tiananmen Square" in the topic would mean it just doesn't show up.

An even more extreme example is North Korea if you want a 'real' evil empire, they're a prime example of very long term information control, educational development and social engineering to support the state, regardless of how costly it is on all levels.

Putting that in the Star-Wars, time of the Empire era without any of the fluffy heroics and fun....

You have no 'free' networks to discuss things with, you have no real education past what you've been told and by no means should you trust anyone outside your immediate social group. Compnor has big hooks in things like the Holonet and a good 76% chance to pull data out of any currently active computer on a planet being monitored by them. That includes your comlink, your datapad, your nav-computer and your droids.

it is literally 'hell' for technology and those that use it.

Encrypt everything

Trust no one!

That's true. Forgot about North Korea.

Yeah, Abolish the internet (Or holonet) completely and you have total control over your 'history' despite the fact that there are still people alive from before the regime.

Well at least when it comes to EotE we are talking about the outer-rim for much of this and I just don't feel like the Empire even cares to keep the rim under their thumb. Things that wave a red flag in front of them are going to certainly get the Empires attention, but other than keeping the rim in check is more about not letting the chaos spill over into the core worlds.

Obi wan was able to hide out on the home planet of the one guy in the galaxy that was really interested in hunting him down. Deus ex machinia aside I have to take that to suggest that the Empire just didn't have much interest in these systems unless something popped up that made them interested.

In the core I can buy that people "forgot" the Jedi in the sense that the Empire suppressed the history of them, and made life hell or simply killed off anyone who tried to re-ignite the Jedi flame in the cultural consciousness. But clearly it isn't 100% effective, people like Leia who were sheltered from the wrath of the Empire most of their lives knew about Jedi, she knew about Kenobi. General Dodonna ends his mission briefing with "may the force be with you". We don't see all the pilots expect Luke looking around like "whats the force".

I just don't see the force or the Jedi as completely wiped from the collective minds of people in the Star Wars universe during the period of the Galactic Civil War.

I think a lot of you go at it the wrong way. The reason there SHOULDN'T be many lightsabers during the rebellion is that during the purge they were destroyed, made illegal, and where the crystals were harvested/made was razed or highly regulated. [ cit 1 ] any Museum pieces should be replicas or non-functional. The only way to "find one" would be some hidden cache, or if the Empire allowed it.

Easily anyone found in possession of a lightsaber could find themselves attracting attention of bounty hunters who would turn them in to the Empire and collect a standard bounty.

Ignoring the travesty of Corran Horn and how he made his super saber, Luke had to synthesize his own crystals (he didn't know where to find the proper crystals) and was only able to build one based on a journal of Obi-wan. Even he failed several times building his saber before he succeed.

edit:

Letting a player find one, means the GM is willing to give that player the equivalent of a success on at LEAST a Daunting (rarity 8, on Corellia) streetwise check. at minimum 10000 credits. But what is the fun in that? too easy. Next thing they are going to find is a fully loaded Missile launcher in some back alley behind the Outlander Club

The reason there SHOULDN'T be many lightsabers during the rebellion is that during the purge they were destroyed, made illegal, and where the crystals were harvested/made was razed or highly regulated. [ cit 1 ] any Museum pieces should be replicas or non-functional. The only way to "find one" would be some hidden cache, or if the Empire allowed it.

When you think about it that way, finding a functional lightsaber in a post-New Order galaxy is probably about as easy as getting your hands on a functional AR-15 in modern Australia.

If you want to know how easy it is to scrub out a huge order or wipe out historical events after 20 years, ask the Chinese. Most of them have never heard of Falun Gong or Tianmen Square.

It's pitifully EASY to wipe out historical memory if you control all education and media.

Sadly true.

Have to say I'm not too fond of the lightsaber obsession either. I once had a force sensitive character I deliberately wrote as descending from the least Jedi or Sith related force tradition I could find. The GM pretty much had his former Imperial inquisition pet NPc brow beat and guilt my character into letting their younger sibling be trained by said NPC and to take a lightsaber we took off a dead inquisitor. And since I got a lightsaber I felt like I didn't have a right to be annoyed veryone was getting ranged weapons as awesome as what my gadgeteer had spent most of the campaign buying and modding.

So the "modern" lightsaber is ~4800 years old by the setting of EotE. How many Jedi do you think went through the whole make your first saber ritual? Voice gave the numbers of "100,000,000,000,000,000 sentient beings vs. 1,000,000 Jedi". But how many is that a year? 1,000 a year 100,000? Let's say 50,000 that's 240,000,000 lightsabers created over that period of time. We've seen things like holocrons last thousands of years, so I don't see them all being broken relics. Even if they've got a shelf life of 1000 to 2000 years, that's still ~100,000,000 lightsabers. I just don't see the Empire expending the resources needed to track down ever single lightsaber. The lightsaber isn't the problem for the Empire, it's only when a Jedi wields one that its an issue. It's much more cost efficient to just track down reports of some crazy dude with a glow stick than hunt down every lightsaber ever made.

You're not going to find them at every Mos Espa pawn shop, but finding one seems closer to a needle in a haystack than a needle in the Sahara. And that's just to find a lightsaber, learning to use it is a whole different kettle of fish.

At the same time, even if there are 100 quadrillion beings in the galaxy, that's not really relevant. What's relevant is the population of the Republic - still a big number, and the % who are Jedi is still small, but the ratio is larger.

Yea, let me spend 10000 credits on a lightsaber and an instant death sentence.

Instead I will buy that superior Blaster rifle with scope and underbarrel grenade launcher. With that I just might face a fine or some prison time at worst, and still have plenty of credits for some grenades

As for Jedi and the force. Here is my take. Most people who lived through the clone wars probably still blame the Jedi to some degree for the conflict. They might not buy the New Order line that the Jedi threatened to take over the government, but the Clone Wars were costly in both material and in a personal sense for many people. I would think if someone came across a person using the force they'd be concerned. If the person was old enough to have been in the Wars they probably would happily report them to the authorities. If the person was younger than that, they'd probably at least be concerned and shun them. I don't think anyone had forgotten the force, it was just better to ignore it, to pretend it didn't exist or that it was "evil". Let's look at terms used for Jedi or the force in A New Hope. Owen calls Obi Wan a "wizard" and General Motti mentions Vader's "sorcerer's ways". People remember they've just vilified the force and simplified anyone who uses it to be dealing with powers that are best left alone.

That's my take at least.

I can get behind this, the fact is that GL made a huge, dumb flub with the timeline. The Clone Wars needed to be recent enough in memory for Luke's dad and Obi-Wan to have been in them and for people to be aware of them, but old enough that the disappearance of the Jedi after them would seem like a long time ago. (Just like the failure to justify how Obi-Wan aged so much in 20 years, going from looking like a 30-something to a 70-something. But I guess being in th desert can do that to you, it's just always stuck out as incongruous to me).

I mean part of the mishandling is that the Clone Wars only lasted like 3 years, and the Jedi were pretty well-regarded before that. Imperial censorship and the "conspiracy proposition" that the Jedi were trying to overthrow the government aside, it's hard to believe people didn't remember them. It's been 100 years but we remember World War I participants better than Star Wars remembers the Jedi after < 20 years.

You want to talk about mistakes? How about the idiocy of the second Death Star having to wait until it gets around the planet to have the Rebel fleet in sight when it could have just, you know BLOWN UP THE PLANET likely destroying the rebels on the other side.

All sorts of nonsense throughout the movies. Go read Darths and Droids to see some examples of just how little sense much of the plot and character decisions make throughout the films.

On the specific point you make: well, while most people had heard of the Jedi, and probably had some respect for them (in a remote sort of way), few had any direct experience with them, and probably knew to some degree that they were somewhat reclusive and secretive/mystical, so when the "good and just" emperor, vested in power by the Senate, announces that the Jedi have turned upon the Republic, attempted a coup and tried to assassinate him, most folks don't have anything else to go on, really. And they know that the Jedi are powerful, so it doesn't take a stretch to imagine them seeking more power.

Still, there are plenty of examples in both the movies and the EU of people not buying into the anti-Jedi propaganda: obviously the rebels think Jedi are okay, and in one of the comics there is an Imperial officer who finds some Jedi in trouble on a planet under his command and he helps them out then keeps them secret, because he recalls working with them in the Clone Wars, and recognizes the anti-Jedi propaganda for what it is.

You want to talk about mistakes? How about the idiocy of the second Death Star having to wait until it gets around the planet to have the Rebel fleet in sight when it could have just, you know BLOWN UP THE PLANET likely destroying the rebels on the other side.

Is there any reason to believe that would have been successful? The DS's superlaser was capable of destroying a terrestrial world, but that same amount of energy may be utterly incapable of doing the same to a gas giant.

You want to talk about mistakes? How about the idiocy of the second Death Star having to wait until it gets around the planet to have the Rebel fleet in sight when it could have just, you know BLOWN UP THE PLANET likely destroying the rebels on the other side.

Is there any reason to believe that would have been successful? The DS's superlaser was capable of destroying a terrestrial world, but that same amount of energy may be utterly incapable of doing the same to a gas giant.

Of course it could. SW is science fantasy . A space opera, not a NOVA documentary.

The script simply wasn't written to reflect the possibility. Timing and viewer tension were more important than science.

You want to talk about mistakes? How about the idiocy of the second Death Star having to wait until it gets around the planet to have the Rebel fleet in sight when it could have just, you know BLOWN UP THE PLANET likely destroying the rebels on the other side.

Is there any reason to believe that would have been successful? The DS's superlaser was capable of destroying a terrestrial world, but that same amount of energy may be utterly incapable of doing the same to a gas giant.

Well, it's never said to not be sufficient to destroy a gas giant. There's not really any discussion about how the Death Star laser works, but it could potentially ignite the flammable gases that make up the planet. I don't know. The point is that no explanation is ever provided for why they can't do that, so all we have to go on is that they have a world-destroying super-laser that they stupidly wait to use for far too long in order to wait until they're in a position to take shots against far less suitable targets--sure, it can blast a capital ship to bits in one shot, but it's a slow firing weapon with a multitude of targets, and the Imperials already know that even a starfighter can destroy a Death Star. It could be overpowering arrogance on the part of the Emperor, but, while he clearly suffers from that fault, he also is portrayed as being a careful, calculating person as well (not so much in the original trilogy, but certain in the prequels).

Best not to get into discussions about the DS and what is and is not practical or possible, because on the practical side it is silly on a number of levels. Best to just enjoy it.

Best not to get into discussions about the DS and what is and is not practical or possible, because on the practical side it is silly on a number of levels. Best to just enjoy it.

There are differing levels of suspension of disbelief, and the matter of internal consistency.

One can watch the movies and just accept that they have a moon-sized super-laser capable of blowing up a planet while still feeling confounded by the decision to not use that weapon in a logical fashion.

I don't need to know how a lightsaber works to enjoy the movies, but if someone has a lightsaber do something inconsistent with what we know about them, like causing a limb severed by the saber to bleed (ahem), then it can be a problem without also having to unravel the blind faith placed in the existence and functioning of the lightsaber.

Depending on the angle an artery is struck and its size, it will bleed regardless of cauterization.

I don't think it's real hard to think up a very plausible fictional reason for why the DS didn't fire on Yavin proper, the fact they didn't in the movie I accept as prima facie canon that doing so wouldn't produce the desired result.

I don't think it's real hard to think up a very plausible fictional reason for why the DS didn't fire on Yavin proper

I just go with the simple explanation that the DS's superlaser isn't powerful enough to have the desired effect on something the size of a gas giant. Not all planets are created equal, nor do they need to be equally vulnerable to a superlaser.

I just assumed they didn't blow up Yavin because the Death Star had to cool down or otherwise recharge before firing again.

Am I the only one that is reminded of this video?

I just assumed they didn't blow up Yavin because the Death Star had to cool down or otherwise recharge before firing again.

That's what I figured too. The Death Star is a great blunt instrument, but you get one shot with it and then you have to wait. If you're trying to kill all the Rebels potentially needing two shots to finish them isn't the best way to use the Death Star. It means putting in a vulnerable position. For the first Death Star it was pure hubris that got it destroyed. They just didn't think fighters would go up against it. For the second Death Star, they had the shield from Endor's moon. That was all part of Palpatine's plan. The shield was bait for the Rebels and Luke. But he didn't plan that Han would succeed because no one expected teddy bears to beat Stormies (ok now there is the real mistake from RotJ right there if you ask me) and he didn't see that Vader would betray him.

The recharging argument doesn't hold up when the Death Star gets used to take shots at individual capital ships...that's going to be dozens of shots.

There being imaginable explanations for why it wasn't used doesn't mean that what we saw in the movie wasn't kinda dumb--one line would have served to make the plot line up intelligently (at least that part of it).

Yeah, I agree that the ewoks beating stormtroopers was preposterously pandering. For one thing, what the hell is the point of the stormtroopers wearing armor, which obviously hampers movement at least a little bit, if it can't stop blaster bolts or apparently anything else? I think the ewoks failed to take down one stormtrooper with an attack of...what, some pebbles they threw, or a very crude bow (I don't recall exactly which weapon they used), but everything else they tried worked. The troopers were incredibly inept in that engagement.

Like I said, the whole notion of the DS is kinda dumb. If you can move a planetary sized object through hyperspace you don't need a super laser to destroy a terrestrial world. Just fly by it, the resulting gravitational stresses would cause all manner of tectonic volcanism hell on the world in addition to stripping away its atmosphere. Pretty much why it's best to just not worry about it and enjoy it I think.

I always thought the reason the DS didn't fire on Yavin 4 right away, was because of sheer arrogance. They wanted a perfect shot, dead center of the moon, full power, and complete destruction. They did not consider the threat of star fighters a concern, and even if they did, the simple act of THINKING the star fighters were a threat would ruin all credibility and fear that the Death Star is suppose to represent.

The Death star was more then a giant hyperspace capable battlestation with a planet destroying laser. It's existence and the threat of utter destruction was suppose to keep everyone under the control of the Empire and prevent any resistance.