So this was a random thought that got legs then wheels as it became a full train of thought. I thought you guys might want to join me on this ride.

Looking at my beta wishing it metamorphosis into a CRB I was looking at my favorite threat in it the Dark Trooper (did they introduce phase 1 or 2 btw?). Oh, yes the Empire can be evil with their new weapons but a thought occurred to me. Was this truly evil? It was a program designed to prevent the loss of troops in dangerous situations. Now don't get me wrong I have no doubt they would use them in very poor form. However, the project did have some nobility to it. This led me to wonder what other projects the Empire had? this led me to wonder what it was the Alliance was up to as well? What projects did they conduct to counter the Empire? Admittedly they did not have vast resources the Empire did but what if a few just went out of their way on their own side projects? What if a sector leader arranged for his cells to gather the materials to revive the Dark Trooper project on the side of the Alliance? What if they decided the Separatist forces needed resurrecting? What if they tried to recreate the Grand Army of the Republic (Alliance)?

But wait isn't the Alliance the 'good guys'? Well, I followed more thoughts and wondered if they were all good? I mean many of their numbers could be from both Old Republic and Imperial forces both civilian and military? Is any organization truly free of corruption or graft? So what to prevent that in the Alliance?

Plot ideas (None of which are fleshed out but hey run with it)

-Sector group is trying to reconstruct the Dark Trooper program. High Command finds out this and decides to send in a team to shut them down.

-An Imperial Intelligence group has set up a false Rebel cell to trap and capture true Alliance members. The group may be recruited under the false pretense or acting as spyhunters.

-A cell begins gathering the materials to start a clone/droid factory to build an army. The group is tasked to provide support or burn it all to the ground.

In general terms, no government is all good, few are all bad, there are exceptions. That's reality. Star Wars is about caricature arch types. The Empire is evil, period. It enslaves, it destroys terrestrial worlds, it commits genocide on a whim on a system sized scale. The Alliance are supposed to be the freedom loving progressive representatives of the people. That's what's presented in the material. Now, does everyone have to play it completely like that? No, but in broad strokes it should be handled in that way. To make it too gray makes it something other than Star Wars imo.

Was the Alliance all good, or utterly uncorrupt? No it commuted immoral acts, and I'm sure a number of members were corrupt.

Was the Alliance better than the Empire? Absolutely. It pretty much takes trying to be absolute evil to top a government where one of the highest ranking officials orders the death of millions and probably billions of citizens just to show what their new weapon can do and almost no one in the chain of command even blinks.

Alliance Special Operations (SpecOps) are often fairly independent and just stick it to the Empire however they can. The downside to such freedom is that some of them invariably cross lines they shouldn't. Did I mention that many PC groups are SpecOps?

The Alliance is human(and alien and droid and cyborg etc.). Corruption, greed, hate and anger are all flaws in the Alliance. While no where as near as evil as the Empire they still cross boundries. With my players they fight corrupt Alliance representetives half the time as they fight Imperial Stromtroopers. Personally I prefer the crime families and empires so I see both with a neutral view. Both are good and bad.

For some adventure seeds heres one. If you watch the Clone wars(hey my brother watches it!) then this idea may seem familiair.

A Rebel cell on a planet has a problem. The planet is starving, because the Empire has stopped giving food and supplies because of the Rebels. The leaders who are Rebel supporters make a meeting. They decide to start buying food and supplies from the Black Market, however the governers are enraptured by the power. They can decide who gets food and medicine so their enemies starve or die of disease. They still support the Rebellion but news of this has reached Mon Motha. She sends out a small dedicated team to take out the Governers. Though they don't know what is happening they have a hired guard of Rebels and criminals. The Imperials are sending an Invasion force to kick out the Governers and put new ones. Combat, politics and diplomacy will be seen often. The players may think Mon Motha is wrong and try keep the Governers alive. Remember the most feared criminals have a good deal going on, they don't like party crashers.

Just throwing this out there - a lot of these missions/ideas to weed out people in the Alliance that are more crossing the line into evil, would fall under the "Internal Security" Duty.

Bunch of **** terrorists...

Bunch of **** terrorists...

Actually the Empire fits te definition of a terrorist movement much better than the Alliance does. Hell Tarkin's use of the Death Star was straight out of How to be a Terrorist 101.

No after all your PCs have to aspire to something!

Bunch of **** terrorists...

By modern definitions, no. The rebels in the movies only attack military targets and combatants wear uniforms clearly designating that they are members of the alliance. Not to say you can't play up some grey or IRA type terrorism in your games but the most "basic" interpretation is "not terrorist.

I still think we could use a separate forum for people who cheer for the Empire.

I still think we could use a separate forum for people who cheer for the Empire.

Oh don't start that.... I'd tell you about another forum user we haven't seen in a while, but I'm afraid that like Candyman or Beetlejuice if we say his name enough he'll magically appear to destroy troll us all...

I still think we could use a separate forum for people who cheer for the Empire.

Oh don't start that.... I'd tell you about another forum user we haven't seen in a while, but I'm afraid that like Candyman or Beetlejuice if we say his name enough he'll magically appear to destroy troll us all...

You're talking to him friend. Candyman just changed his name to Beetlejuice.

Bunch of **** terrorists...

By modern definitions, no. The rebels in the movies only attack military targets and combatants wear uniforms clearly designating that they are members of the alliance. Not to say you can't play up some grey or IRA type terrorism in your games but the most "basic" interpretation is "not terrorist.

In the movies that's true, but Alliance SpecOps are another story.

My post was done facetiously.

However, to open a can of worms, the destruction of Alderaan could be compared to the real world tradegy of August 6, 1945. A destruction so horrific, it effectively ended the war. This act was perpetuated by a nation that, by Vonpenguin and RogueCorona's definition, should be declared a terrorist state.

The point is, that while the black and white nature of the Star Wars films let's the audience know who to cheer for, many want a more grey tone for their game. Evil men can fight for a good cause as easily as good men can fight for an evil one.

My post was done facetiously.

You can stop pretending now. The book is written and printed and in the hands of customers, and for better or worse its too late to change it.

I think this satirical post sums up my thoughts on the subject pretty aptly.

Bunch of **** terrorists...

By modern definitions, no. The rebels in the movies only attack military targets and combatants wear uniforms clearly designating that they are members of the alliance. Not to say you can't play up some grey or IRA type terrorism in your games but the most "basic" interpretation is "not terrorist.

In the movies that's true, but Alliance SpecOps are another story.

While specops are supposed to hold themselves to military targets yeah of the Alliance forces they and the local cells are almost certainly the groups most likely to go renegade and hit civilians.

My post was done facetiously.

However, to open a can of worms, the destruction of Alderaan could be compared to the real world tradegy of August 6, 1945. A destruction so horrific, it effectively ended the war. This act was perpetuated by a nation that, by Vonpenguin and RogueCorona's definition, should be declared a terrorist state.

The point is, that while the black and white nature of the Star Wars films let's the audience know who to cheer for, many want a more grey tone for their game. Evil men can fight for a good cause as easily as good men can fight for an evil one.

I'm not ing into the historical conditions, or the differences between the nuclear bombings in World War II, or the bombing of Dresden and what happened to Alderaan though I do think the second nuke was definitely unneeded overkilll, if not the first.

The last part is all too true unfortunately.

My post was done facetiously.

However, to open a can of worms, the destruction of Alderaan could be compared to the real world tradegy of August 6, 1945. A destruction so horrific, it effectively ended the war. This act was perpetuated by a nation that, by Vonpenguin and RogueCorona's definition, should be declared a terrorist state.

The point is, that while the black and white nature of the Star Wars films let's the audience know who to cheer for, many want a more grey tone for their game. Evil men can fight for a good cause as easily as good men can fight for an evil one.

The difference between Alderaan and Hiroshima is that Alderaan was destroyed while no active war was being engaged. Hiroshima was destroyed as part of open hostilities between nations where each was very much aware that war was going on.

The destruction of Alderaan would be more like if the US government bombed Denver as a way to deal with drug dealers.

As far as WW2 goes, the reason the targets were cities was because the Japanese were forcing their citizens to build guns and parts for vehicles in their own homes, there was no distinction between residential and industrial zones. The second bomb was because they turned down a demand to surrender after the first. The lines on "civilian" get really fuzzy when they start teaching 2nd graders to stab people with makeshift spears.

Sorry for the rant.

I think the best comparison of star wars to real events would be the European theater of WW2, the Polish and dutch resistances to be precise (most accounts I've read describe these folks as much more organized and effective than the more well known french, who pretty much only had guts going for them).

Uh-oh, don't like where this is headed... I feel an Adolf reference is only a few angry posts away.

Every time someone starts this topic, George Lucas kills an ewok.

Won't somebody think of the ewoks????

Non-facetious answer: Yes, the Alliance are the good guys.

SW is supposed to operate on fairly black and white morality. And that's fine.

In an RPG however, we may explore shades of grey if we wish. EoE already provides a fertile ground for this.

In our game, the Alliance (nobody calls them 'rebels') tries to fight a just and moral war. They gain considerable support and moral high ground for doing so, especially as the Empire lacks a master of propaganda and is really bad at disguising how evil it is.

However, some Special Ops teams push the boundaries of what High Command would like, and one 'black ops' team, which is nicknamed 'Bad Company', are straight-up terrorists, being extremely ruthless and cruel, but also successful in the war effort. While High Command rails against then publically, privately they know someone needs to do the dirty work. The 'Bad Company' are intended to be rivals of the PC group, a moral lesson about what happens when you adopt the methods of the enemy.

Our Empire is actually riven by a destructive four-way civil war that has almost brought it to its knees. The man in charge is a brilliant, but ageing and ailing dictator who has grown paranoid and xenophobic as his control begins to slip, as he tries to bring his Death Star back online (it was sabotaged by his own naysayers!). This faction is pretty evil, or at least accepting of it.

The three rival factions are:

a) a faction that wants to bring more non-humans into the Empire, and who want Thrawn as Emperor. They are still pretty evil, in a slightly more refined way.

b) a faction that misses the deceased Palpatine and would like to have the Sith or the Jedi in charge again. They're big fans of 'Evil Wizards', so they are pretty evil.

c) the 'rebel' faction who look to a grudging Wullf Yularen to lead them, who are mostly long-serving military types and were sickened by Alderaan. They think the Empire would be a good thing providing a brutal dictator wasn't calling the shots. This faction isn't evil, and would sooner make peace with the Alliance if they could.

That's my 2$, but I wanted to preserve the moral balance while offering the players options that good and bad might be found on both sides.

The three rival factions are:

a) a faction that wants to bring more non-humans into the Empire, and who want Thrawn as Emperor. They are still pretty evil, in a slightly more refined way.

b) a faction that misses the deceased Palpatine and would like to have the Sith or the Jedi in charge again. They're big fans of 'Evil Wizards', so they are pretty evil.

c) the 'rebel' faction who look to a grudging Wullf Yularen to lead them, who are mostly long-serving military types and were sickened by Alderaan. They think the Empire would be a good thing providing a brutal dictator wasn't calling the shots. This faction isn't evil, and would sooner make peace with the Alliance if they could. Maelora said this.

This is set after the destruction of the Death Star II and the death of Palpatine right? I like the idea(go faction Thrawn) but Bad Company sounds familiar... I wonder if one of them wanted to make a Death Star III. And even go as far as destroying Corusant to ensure it doesn't fall into Rebellion hands?

My own political and philosophical insights aside, here are some of the ways I've played with this question in my own game:

On one world, a team of Rebel advisers (in the recruiting and training sense) are very concerned at the fact that they are training and equipping violent criminals. The criminals certainly oppose the Empire, and the recruiters are reasonably sure that these particular ne'er-do-wells haven't actually harmed innocent people in the past, but the guerrilla leader is still wary. After all, an ambitious and charismatic enough person could turn them into her own personal gang, and the Alliance would be partly to blame.

The commander of a certain star system has a reputation for getting his agents whatever gear they need to complete their missions. However, he also has a reputation for arranging gambling events on Alliance bases, and often seems to know the outcome in advance. And now, some of his agents are becoming suspicious as to the source of the cheap, second-hand supplies that he always manages to buy for them.