Would Luke and Leia's relationship in the original movie be "It's Complicated'

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This is related to your post, I assure you, just not the overall thread.

On-topic, though, I tend to play up communication and travel difficulties far more than in the films (and definitely more than in the TV series). Instantaneous communications are possible, but horrendously expensive/difficult the further out they must go. Secure communication is often handled via couriers (automated or not) or heavily-encrypted transmitter installations. Messages between systems almost always have some sort of time-delay, even using subspace transceivers.

We could also handwaive the ease of communications in any of the movies as the fact the characters would all have been in the positions of being able to afford the best communication equipment available.

Surely each Jedi Star Fighter was equipped with excellent comm equipment(either in the star fighter or the hyperspace ring)

The Jedi also likely seeded the Galaxy with transmitter relays. The Empire would also have a similar setup. After all all those Military ships have Class1 or better Hyperdrives, they can also afford top notch communication gear.

Our PCs on the other hand are likely not that lucky unless they work form or have worked for, those who could get them that equipment. Its probably not that uncommon, but it might not be something every average Joe has.

Kinda like how cell phones were 25 years ago.

Not all of the military ships have Class 1 Hyperdrives. For example, the Imperial-class Star Destroyer has a Class 2 Hyperdrive.

Some stuff from the Saga-Edition RPG - maybe it helps someone:

And another source to expand on subspace mentioned in the above post: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Subspace_transceiver

Apparently inerior to HoloNet.

I realize you can justify slower travel and less reliable communication, but I don't see why you would want to. Star Trek was based on age of sail adventures like Hornblower where the lack of communication gave ship captains great latitude to accomplish their goals. The show was all about a single ship alone in the galaxy confronted with a problem they had to solve by themselves. Star Wars, OTOH, was based on the old Buck Rogers movie serials, In those, science just worked. No one really cared how or why it worked. Technology was subservient to the action and adventure.

Last night, I came up with some reason why instant galactic communications and super fast hyperspace travel are good for your Star Wars game:

1-The players can't outrun their Obligations. No matter where they go in the galaxy, their trouble can find them. Avoiding this trouble becomes more about subterfuge than speed.

2-The speed of travel means the whole galaxy is open to the players. They can be hunting gundarks on Vanqor one session and hanging out in a trendy Coruscant bar the next.

3-There's no travel downtime to explain away. A guy in a single seat fighter doesn't really have to worry about eating or going to the bathroom during the trip.

4-Political intrigue is just a holonet call away. Even if the players are exploring an unknown world, contact with the party's allies and enemies can add social or political encounters right in the middle of otherwise combat or exploration focused adventure. This can not only give the face characters something to do but can advance background story elements, bring background story elements to the forefront, or add new time pressure to the current adventure.

5-Mystery is everywhere! When zipping from Tatooine to Ryloth, any one of the thousands of stars passed by can hold a secret: an abandoned base, a fortune in precious metals, a strange alien artifact, etc. You don't need to spend weeks traveling to the "unknown region". Anything from a broken down old droid to a strange transmission can lead the PC to one of these forgotten places. Great for a quick one session side adventure and a change of pace.

Some stuff from the Saga-Edition RPG - maybe it helps someone:

That information looks exactly like the stuff in WEG's version.

Well, both ways have their own advantages. With time lag in communications, critical information may arrive late, which can add to the drama and give smaller, clever groups a better chance to take on a seemingly omnipotent behemoth like the Galactic Empire by exploiting this weakness.

Same thing for hyperspace (which still takes hours or days, at least if you go by the charts in the older RPG books).

If both comms and hyperspace were near-instantaneous, the Empire would just drop an entire fleet of Star Destroyers whenever some patrol boat or recon drone spots a rebel ship. It would become impossible for the Rebels to raid anything, simply because it will be reported and immediately acted upon.

That information looks exactly like the stuff in WEG's version.

That's why I like(d) the Star Wars canon so much.

Consistency.

First I have to admit I'm not much into any EU stuff. So for me my main inspriration is derived from the films this forum and the rule books.

Now to the topic:

I personally prefer the setting where accessing the holonet is restricted but might be accomplished under several conditions.

As already said we sure have some planetary and interplanetary means for communication. While communication on a planet and in its orbit works instantly the communication in a solar system will have delays up to several minutes to hours depending on the distances and the equipment used for the communication.

For communication between solar systems the holonet is the way to go. I expect nearly every planet that has some relevance to the empire, to have a communication facility with access to the holonet and thus an instant communication channel across the galaxy.

From a roleplay standpoint this makes perfect sense for me.

If a planet is important to the empire it just would be silly to only rely on the communication-systems of stardestroyers asign to the sector or system. If those troops need to leave the area it would basicly shout down communication to and from the system and thus isolating empire facilitys on the said planet.

With that said I think I would handle holonet access limited to these imperial communication facilitys which also may be space stations in orbit. Access to those facilitys is very restricted and the places are heavily guarded. Nonetheless these communication-facilitys are connected to the local communcation subsystem.

This would allow a very talented slicer to gain access to the holonet, if only for a few minutes. Such hacking attempts will most likely be identified and the empire will react accordingly, tracing back the signals and search for the slicer who dares to bypass their firewalls.

So accessing the holonet would be able for players if they are willing to take the consequences (stormtrooper squads showing up near the traced location of a slicer, obligation if they could identify the person accessing the systems) of either gaining direct access to such a facility or slice their way through.

Maybe I'm stretching the lore a bit too much with this aproach, please let me know what you think of this.

Anyway:

One last problem with communication between starsystems is still present: How will a group of heroes be contacted by potential clients, rebels, scum that has some dirty work to do and credits to spend?

At the moment my group escaped from Mos shuta and reached Ryloth and basicly not many people know who they are or where they are at the moment. Of course the hutt they are owing their their live and their ship knows and they met a few people on Ryloth.

But at the moment I find it hard to come up with logical reasons why and HOW the heroes could be contacted by a new client who is need of their services but is light years away.

With no holonet access how shall a player be informed that a part of his family (obligation) is in need of his help.

I find it very immersion breaking to have some kind of courier to show up on a planet to hand over a holo-disc. How should anyone know were your group is? Without the holonet your group can't even tell the people where they are going next.

The empire maybe knows some way or the other by monitoring the hyperspace lanes. But I imagine the starwars heroes to have numerous contacts in many places. I just don't have a logical way to make use of those contacts.

Has anyone an idea on that?

Well, both ways have their own advantages. With time lag in communications, critical information may arrive late, which can add to the drama and give smaller, clever groups a better chance to take on a seemingly omnipotent behemoth like the Galactic Empire by exploiting this weakness.

Just because the connection may be relatively lag-free, doesn't mean that the communications is always guaranteed to get through. There could be a network outage. Someone might subvert a hyperspace relay point and selectively stop, alter, or generate traffic between certain parties. The message might arrive in someone's box, but not be read for hours, or days, or weeks. Or maybe that message gets tossed away with the spam. Or maybe they have their communicator turned off, or are in a space where communications are hindered due to natural rock formations or ion storms.

There's all sorts of ways that messages can be lost or delayed, even if the communications themselves are supposedly nearly instantaneous.

You just have to decide what fits into your narrative.

First I have to admit I'm not much into any EU stuff. So for me my main inspriration is derived from the films this forum and the rule books.

Now to the topic:

I personally prefer the setting where accessing the holonet is restricted but might be accomplished under several conditions.

As already said we sure have some planetary and interplanetary means for communication. While communication on a planet and in its orbit works instantly the communication in a solar system will have delays up to several minutes to hours depending on the distances and the equipment used for the communication.

For communication between solar systems the holonet is the way to go. I expect nearly every planet that has some relevance to the empire, to have a communication facility with access to the holonet and thus an instant communication channel across the galaxy.

From a roleplay standpoint this makes perfect sense for me.

If a planet is important to the empire it just would be silly to only rely on the communication-systems of stardestroyers asign to the sector or system. If those troops need to leave the area it would basicly shout down communication to and from the system and thus isolating empire facilitys on the said planet.

With that said I think I would handle holonet access limited to these imperial communication facilitys which also may be space stations in orbit. Access to those facilitys is very restricted and the places are heavily guarded. Nonetheless these communication-facilitys are connected to the local communcation subsystem.

This would allow a very talented slicer to gain access to the holonet, if only for a few minutes. Such hacking attempts will most likely be identified and the empire will react accordingly, tracing back the signals and search for the slicer who dares to bypass their firewalls.

So accessing the holonet would be able for players if they are willing to take the consequences (stormtrooper squads showing up near the traced location of a slicer, obligation if they could identify the person accessing the systems) of either gaining direct access to such a facility or slice their way through.

Maybe I'm stretching the lore a bit too much with this aproach, please let me know what you think of this.

Anyway:

One last problem with communication between starsystems is still present: How will a group of heroes be contacted by potential clients, rebels, scum that has some dirty work to do and credits to spend?

At the moment my group escaped from Mos shuta and reached Ryloth and basicly not many people know who they are or where they are at the moment. Of course the hutt they are owing their their live and their ship knows and they met a few people on Ryloth.

But at the moment I find it hard to come up with logical reasons why and HOW the heroes could be contacted by a new client who is need of their services but is light years away.

With no holonet access how shall a player be informed that a part of his family (obligation) is in need of his help.

I find it very immersion breaking to have some kind of courier to show up on a planet to hand over a holo-disc. How should anyone know were your group is? Without the holonet your group can't even tell the people where they are going next.

The empire maybe knows some way or the other by monitoring the hyperspace lanes. But I imagine the starwars heroes to have numerous contacts in many places. I just don't have a logical way to make use of those contacts.

Has anyone an idea on that?

Players these days expect everything to happen with no downtime, but consider how people kept in touch in the 1970s (and much earlier). If you didn't know where someone was, you sent a letter to their relative/friend and asked them to pass it on. It wasn't quick, and it does suppose that people have some intent to maintain connections.

If both comms and hyperspace were near-instantaneous, the Empire would just drop an entire fleet of Star Destroyers whenever some patrol boat or recon drone spots a rebel ship. It would become impossible for the Rebels to raid anything, simply because it will be reported and immediately acted upon.

I'm not talking about instantaneous hyperspace, just as fast as it appears on the movies/shows. But it's true that the Empire would be able to quickly respond to rebel attacks but that's why the rebels only raid things; get in, blow it up, and get out. Of course, diversion could help with that.

However, if hyperspace travel was as fast was the movies, then it would take far fewer Star Destroyers to cover the entire galaxy which means the Imperial Star Fleet can be much smaller than is typically presented by the EU. This makes the Empire's hold on the galaxy much more tenuous which gives individual rebel actions a greater significance. There's a bit of canon that is often ignored; that the fleet attacking the DS2 at Endor was the entire rebel fleet. Every single rebel starship participated. [this is stated in the novel and repeated in the radio drama]. Making the Empire's Star Fleet smaller makes the puny rebel fleet more of a threat.

Making the Empire's Star Fleet smaller makes the puny rebel fleet more of a threat.

I wouldn't say that is actually necessary. Another oft-ignored bit of (EU) canon is that the Imperial Navy was mostly busy hunting pirates, maintaining customs checkpoints to catch smugglers, and generally projecting the New Order throughout the galaxy. And since this galaxy is a very big place, even a fleet as vast as the Empire's was very thinly stretched to maintain control, giving the rebels sufficient opportunity to have the upper hand in a number of select engagements where, unlike the Empire, they were able to pool their resources.

Ironically, the New Republic would later find itself in much the same situation. The Rebel fleet did not have the responsibility of the Imperial Navy when it comes to protecting the government's member systems and space lanes - but when the Rebels took over, they were suddenly faced with the very same problems.

From the old Imperial Sourcebook:

Yeah, nobody wants to see 3 hours of Wedge playing Angry Mynocks while waiting for the jump to Endor.

Or Strip Sabbacc with a pa'lowick, in case of Lando on the Falcon.

*shudders*

Hmmm, I wonder if thats how Lando lost the Falcon to Han