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.

You really need to brush up on your history.

At the time Japan and the US were at war with eachother. The US was planning a land invasion of Japan and were expecting casualties in the hundreds of thousands. So many purple heart medels were made that we are still using the same ones printed back in the 1940s. Bombing Hiroshima AND Nagasaki (a lot of people forget the second one) gave a slim opportunity for the Japanese to surrender, a surrender that almost didn't happen.

When Alderaan was destroyed, the Empire was not at war with another sector spanning government. Alderaan was pacifistic and was no threat militarily. But it was a symbol of dissent towards the Emperor. There is no real world example of such a horrific act during peacetime except maybe the crusades. A real world hypothetical example would be the united states nuking Switzerland in 1946 because they wanted to try out their new 1000 megaton nuclear bomb, and they would use a second 1000 megaton bomb on anyone who objected to the previous action and there would be nothing anyone could do about it

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.

C is basically what happens in the EU but I agree the Empire could have been a good thing if the leader hadn't been so evil. Hell I had one character in a setting that stretched 4 major wars and 40 years set in an AU Vong and Legacy era setting who became a benign military dictator of his home system after he got sick of his conscience driving him to commit treason against every nation he served, and decided the way to prevent that was run one himself.

Not sure if the Empire counts since he wasn't part of any military until he joined the Rebel Alliance but when the New Republic turned against the Jedi in the Vong War he took his gunship and crew and joined a group of NR personnel who allied with the Jedi in protest. Got pardoned for that and eventually became a carrier group commander in the GA than his homeworld left to join the Coalition (something slightly similar but much different than the LOTF Confederation) He remained loyal to the GA until a meeting to discuss the GA's reaction to an Intrasystem civil war going on between pro IR and pro Coalition elements in an IR system. He became convinced that the GA and IR were going to use that conflict to press a full scale war against the Coalition and resigned than later became commander of his homeworld's defense fleet than launched a coup and seized control of his homeworld decades after the war when the Coalition threw out the mutual defense pacts it had signed with the GA and IR at the end of the war in favor of a peace treaty with a newly emerged empire complete with Death Star.

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?

Too complicated to go into detail here and derail the thread, but... Anakin turns early and is tortured and killed to get Palpatine's plan. Jedi/Sith strike a deal with Tarkin so that he can be Emperor when they leave, Tarkin rescinds Order 66 when it happens and the Sith/Jedi kill Palpatine and leave for the far reaches of the galaxy. Tarkin becomes Emperor and uses the DS basically 'for the evulz' and destroys Alderaan. Luke is born to Owen Lars, never becomes a Jedi or 'rebel' and so the attack on the DS fails, but it's internally sabotaged not long after. Lucas Lars becomes his world's Bruce Lee, Ben survives to join the Alliance having defected from the Jedi and trains their force-sensitive troops, the 'Emergent Project'. The Imperials have their own Force orders and the Jedi/Sith faction are due to return at any moment. The GCW is precariously balanced with a wounded but still dangerous Empire ravaged by civil war and an Alliance that has slowly grown over 20 years into a full military machine. But if the Empire gets its Death Star back on line, it's Game Over.

My aim was to keep the 'karma' aspect of SW - that doing bad stuff eventually comes around to bite you on the ass - while allowing for modern shades of grey and that not everyone on one side is always good or evil.

Too complicated to go into detail here and derail the thread, but... Anakin turns early and is tortured and killed to get Palpatine's plan. Jedi/Sith strike a deal with Tarkin so that he can be Emperor when they leave, Tarkin rescinds Order 66 when it happens and the Sith/Jedi kill Palpatine and leave for the far reaches of the galaxy. Tarkin becomes Emperor and uses the DS basically 'for the evulz' and destroys Alderaan. Luke is born to Owen Lars, never becomes a Jedi or 'rebel' and so the attack on the DS fails, but it's internally sabotaged not long after. Lucas Lars becomes his world's Bruce Lee, Ben survives to join the Alliance having defected from the Jedi and trains their force-sensitive troops, the 'Emergent Project'. The Imperials have their own Force orders and the Jedi/Sith faction are due to return at any moment. The GCW is precariously balanced with a wounded but still dangerous Empire ravaged by civil war and an Alliance that has slowly grown over 20 years into a full military machine. But if the Empire gets its Death Star back on line, it's Game Over.

My aim was to keep the 'karma' aspect of SW - that doing bad stuff eventually comes around to bite you on the ass - while allowing for modern shades of grey and that not everyone on one side is always good or evil. Maelora said this.

A totally different story to the original but it makes sense and is interesting. Really good! I like it how Tarkin becomes Emperor because he makes a better candinate. The 'Emergant Project' is a highlight and with Ben leading it...

Cool! Is this the setting for your players and do they like it? Quick question.

Are the Rebels the good guys compared to the Empire? Yes.

As long as they do not repeat the mistakes the Republic made.

Which is kinda what they did in the Legends EU which enabled inter-system quarrels and wars.

So it depends on how you handle them as a GM.

For my group that is currently no issue since the Empire was just founded and the last Seps are getting arrested. There is no Alliance.

If my group runs into any rebels it will depend on the planet and the time. There will be people fighting for their independence or another form of goverment, those who want to rule instead of the Empire, and the few loony ones who just want to see the world burn.

But wait isn't the Alliance the 'good guys'?

Yep.

Man this one was easy.

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?

Too complicated to go into detail here and derail the thread, but... Anakin turns early and is tortured and killed to get Palpatine's plan. Jedi/Sith strike a deal with Tarkin so that he can be Emperor when they leave, Tarkin rescinds Order 66 when it happens and the Sith/Jedi kill Palpatine and leave for the far reaches of the galaxy. Tarkin becomes Emperor and uses the DS basically 'for the evulz' and destroys Alderaan. Luke is born to Owen Lars, never becomes a Jedi or 'rebel' and so the attack on the DS fails, but it's internally sabotaged not long after. Lucas Lars becomes his world's Bruce Lee, Ben survives to join the Alliance having defected from the Jedi and trains their force-sensitive troops, the 'Emergent Project'. The Imperials have their own Force orders and the Jedi/Sith faction are due to return at any moment. The GCW is precariously balanced with a wounded but still dangerous Empire ravaged by civil war and an Alliance that has slowly grown over 20 years into a full military machine. But if the Empire gets its Death Star back on line, it's Game Over.

My aim was to keep the 'karma' aspect of SW - that doing bad stuff eventually comes around to bite you on the ass - while allowing for modern shades of grey and that not everyone on one side is always good or evil.

OT: I'm doing an AU game too! We're starting this Saturday. The basis of my game is "Obi-Wan never made it to Mustafar." Therefore Anakin never became a cyborg and the twins were never hidden. They've been trained as Sith since birth and are first among the Emporer's Hands.

As I told my players, Han is still out there but will never get dragged into the Rebellion most likely, same with Lando. Hmm...looks like there is room for some new heroes! We're starting in EOTE and will transition to AOR when the players get asked to deliver a certain data packet to a contact on Alderaan. Yes, they'll be delivering the Death Star plans but hopefully won't realize it until later.

I'm considering having Ahsoka fill the Obi-Wan role as her connection to Vader is as personal, if not more so, than Obi Wan's was.

On topic:

Yes, yes they are the good guys. This is Star Wars, not the real world.

A totally different story to the original but it makes sense and is interesting. Really good! I like it how Tarkin becomes Emperor because he makes a better candinate. The 'Emergant Project' is a highlight and with Ben leading it... Cool! Is this the setting for your players and do they like it? Quick question.

Thanks! Yes, the players like it - they wanted something that felt familiar, but where the details were different. They wanted lots of different factions and the choice of who to help.

Or 'Alliance Emergents' are the padawans the Sith and Jedi left behind when they went off to fight the Vong. Feeling betrayed after Anakin's death, Ben took them to the Alliance and trained them as a military unit. They don't use lightsabers and feel a bit like Shepard or Kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect. They are looking forward to fighting the Jedi and Sith when they return.

The villains of the original series are dead; let the PCs find their own nemeses. The good guys are still awesome, but they are not the protagonists here, so are moved to mentor roles. Han is 52, raising twins with Brea Organa and longing for one last adventure. Ben is also in his fifties here, quietly awaiting a reckoning with his former allies in the Jedi. Lucas Lars is 37, possibly the most powerful and influential man alive, but he's very subtle and careful, manipulating from behind the scenes and gently nudging the various factions towards balance and responsibility.

I actually got quite a bit of help with this on the boards here, especially from a chap named Chortles who helped me with a lot of the EU stuff.

My favourite highlight is... Lucas Lars.

Manipulater and mastermind steering the factions to where he wants them and making movies at the same time. Wow, that itself deserves a gold star. Good on you Maelora!

My favourite highlight is... Lucas Lars.

Manipulater and mastermind steering the factions to where he wants them and making movies at the same time. Wow, that itself deserves a gold star. Good on you Maelora!

I had originally intended to kill off the movie heroes to make way for the players. But after some debate, we decided to keep them on, as still awesome, but as older characters in mentor roles. One of the main themes I wanted to show was 'the Force is in everyone', so Luke is nothing to do with Anakin. He's awesome because he's awesome, not because he has a Special Snowflake bloodline. 'Luke Lars' didn't sound right, so I renamed him 'Lucas' in honour of his creator, it rolls off the tongue better. He's essentially the SW version of Bruce Lee with his own 'Jeet Kwon Do' Way of the Force. He admires the Alliance but he's not part of it because he bitterly opposes the use of Force-sensitives as military assets like the Emergent Project. He quietly manipulates the Empire, Fringe and Sith/Jedi factions towards more responsible and enlightened approaches.

I'm derailing the thread so I'd probably best make a new one for Alternative Universe stuff.

My character sheet:

...........................

Weak Cause: Overthrow the Empire.

Believes it impractical. "Moral revolutionaries should have a chance of success before starting something like that, given how many people they are going to get killed"

...........................

Of course, our setting is slightly before the Battle of Yavin. I'm looking forward to my character's one whole day of I-told-you-so!

To add to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki discussion to both restate and add a reason that they were very different from the destruction of Alderaan.

1. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both military targets, yes they were cities, but they housed military manufacturing and other types of supply targets. Alderaan was a pacifist planet.
2. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both publically part of an enemy nation during a war. Alderaan was not publically allied with the Alliance.
3. Hiroshima and Nagasaki both had leaflets dropped over the city warning the civilian populace to evacuate two days before each bombing. Alderaan was given no such notice.

I would only consider Point 2 valid:

Counter-1. Alderaan was housing, funding and supporting members of the Alliance/Rebels. Being a supply and training camp is making it a valid target.

Counter-3. Parties usually drop leaflets onto enemy territories/cities. Reading or collecting the is usually considered a crime and punished. While it may be a noble effort it is usually ineffective.

ANd comparing a fictional event to a historical one makes me queasy. I think i won't continue such a discussion.

Lets run a hypothetical scenario. A minor guerrilla movement arises in a nation, and wins one notable victory against the nation's military, along with a few successful hit and run raids on government allied targets. The nation's government has access to nuclear weapons, and discovers that the daughter of the mayor or equivalent of a highly populated city, who is a representative of that city is discovered to be aiding the guerrillas. Do you honestly believe that discovery justifies dropping a nuke on that city? Because that's the equivalent of what the Empire did by destroying Alderaan.

You're posing a hypothetical scenario in regards to morality. It's really never possible to be right or wrong in a hypothetical opinion so it's essentially impossible to provide a definitive answer to a moral quandary hypothetically.

And comparing a fictional event to a historical one makes me queasy. I think i won't continue such a discussion.

Very wise.

I think there might be some argument as to how much Star Wars owes to real life, as Lucas grew up watching post-war films and they did colour his views to some extent.

But as 2P51 said, he clearly wasn't trying to make 'Platoon in Space' and real-life comparisons to Star Wars always end badly...

Sooner or later, Godwin's Law will be invoked, and You-Know-Who will pop up and completely derail the thread...

You're posing a hypothetical scenario in regards to morality. It's really never possible to be right or wrong in a hypothetical opinion so it's essentially impossible to provide a definitive answer to a moral quandary hypothetically.

I disagree I think the hypothetical act in question is so Immoral that it could never be justified. The only way I would consider an government using a nuke on one of its own cities, or blowing up an inhabited planet populated by its citizens would involve a bio weapon or plague outbreak so virulent and so fatal that the city's or world's.population is beyond help and there is no other way to prevent the outbreak from spreading.

The simple fact that you pose an out to yourself by pointing out the use of some sort of plague proves my point. A hypothetical question controls all the variables of a question in which case there is no way to give a definitive moral answer to a hypothetical question. Morality doesn't exist in a vacuum it's inherently a measure of actions that occur in reality.

The simple fact that you pose an out to yourself by pointing out the use of some sort of plague proves my point. A hypothetical question controls all the variables of a question in which case there is no way to give a definitive moral answer to a hypothetical question. Morality doesn't exist in a vacuum it's inherently a measure of actions that occur in reality.

The original conditions I gave were identical to the ones in the film with two variables changed, In the film the Nukes were replaced by the Death Star and the city was replaced by the planet Alderaan. While the existence of extreme conditions like the plague I mentioned could justify a reaction like the destruction of Alderaan those conditions did not exist therefore the action was unjustifiable.

By destroying Alderaan the Empire not only failed in its duty to protect any law abiding citizens on the planet one of its high officials deliberately acted in a way that insured that the Empire would fail in those obligations, and no Imperial military personal as much as protested or asked for confirmation of the order. And please don't claim something like every single person on Alderaan was working for the rebellion, including any underage children without some form of proof.

You clearly just don't understand the point that I'm making. If you control the details of the question then you pretty much dictate the results of the answer which means the question is more or less pointless in the first place.

You clearly just don't understand the point that I'm making. If you control the details of the question then you pretty much dictate the results of the answer which means the question is more or less pointless in the first place.

Right but I didn't control the details of what happened to Alderaaan the writers of Star Wars did. I simply created the closest equivalent that could occur in a current RL setting. The only things I changed were scale issues. I scaled an interstellar empire down to a nation, a planet down to a city, and a planet destroying laser down to a nuke.

This is an interesting topic.

We can definitely say the Empire was bad, although the degrees of its evil are definitely up for debate. The one major accusation levied at the Empire(Xenophobia and ethnic cleansing) is rather shaky aside from lack of Aliens in Imperial aligned forces as we don't see any of it in the films and the EU was always a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Now the Alliance, this is where things are weird.

On one hand, opposing the Empire who was definitely bad. But they were attempting to restore the Republic...

The Republic. A shining example of Democratic failure and incompetence.

Say what you will for the Empire, but Palpatine's stated accusations of the Senate being a hive of corruption were 100% true. And it wasn't because of him. He simply used that as his means to overthrow it.

The Republic was incredibly flawed at its core. It didn't even have an army to enforce its laws or protect its members from aggressors(the real miracle was that the Republic stood for thousands of years without an army) The reality was that any rogue state could have risen and done whatever it wanted with only individual systems to stand in its way, while the Senate would simply shake their fingers at the offending party.

This is the system the Alliance is fighting to restore. Aside from Palpatine being an evil Sith lord and having a very long term plan of slowly exterminating Aliens, how is a Republic preferable? The Empire did bring peace and order, but the Alliance would go back to the old ineffective form of government.

The 2 sides are definitely not as black and white as George would have us think.

The Republic was incredibly flawed at its core. It didn't even have an army to enforce its laws or protect its members from aggressors(the real miracle was that the Republic stood for thousands of years without an army)

The Republic didn't need a standing army to protect anyone. They had the Jedi to step in when things got bad enough. The Republic's fate was entwined with the fate of the Jedi for a very long time.

The Republic became corrupt because they never had to take any true responsibility. Let the situation get bad enough, then the Supreme Chancellor would unilaterally send a Jedi diplomatic team in to set the situation right. After the Jedi left the area, things would settle back into place, except the balance was a little more fragile there. After a while, certain groups found ways to exploit this fact.

Then the Jedi had their failing. After so long of coming to the rescue of the Republic, it became habitual. They stopped being the protectors of peace and justice, and became the protectors of the Republic. Embroiled in politics; along with their sworn enemy apparently having been defeated, and no other power opposing them, the Jedi became complacent.

The most brilliant stroke of genious Palpatine had was engineering the Separatist situation to force the Jedi into military positions. Once he completed that, the fall of both the Republic and the Jedi was almost assured. Qui-Gon Jinn said it in Episode One (paraphrased): "We are protectors of the peace, we cannot fight a war for you."

The beginning of the Empire from an in universe perspective probably seemed to be a relive from the insecurities of the Clone War. Then in the 20 years after the declaration of the New Order, more and more atrocities occurred until the ultimate travesty; the destruction of Alderaan.

Bringing this back on topic, after the demonstration of the Empires ultimate weapon, on a pascafist society, the Alliance all but became the embodiment of good in the universe. No evil they could commit would ever appear as bad when compared to the outright destruction of an entire, civilized planet.

Sadly, after the Alliance gave way to the New Republic, no safe guards were put in place to stabilize the galactic political front. Allies once united in the persuit of a common enemy turned on one another. Remnant Imperial Forces proposing securities to a galaxy again ravaged by a civil war. One galactic crisis after another. The Jedi Order never having the time or opportunity to rebuild to perform their original function. All it took was a zealot species invading from another galaxy to break the New Republic.

This is an interesting topic.

We can definitely say the Empire was bad, although the degrees of its evil are definitely up for debate. The one major accusation levied at the Empire(Xenophobia and ethnic cleansing) is rather shaky aside from lack of Aliens in Imperial aligned forces as we don't see any of it in the films and the EU was always a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Now the Alliance, this is where things are weird.

On one hand, opposing the Empire who was definitely bad. But they were attempting to restore the Republic...

The Republic. A shining example of Democratic failure and incompetence.

Say what you will for the Empire, but Palpatine's stated accusations of the Senate being a hive of corruption were 100% true. And it wasn't because of him. He simply used that as his means to overthrow it.

The Republic was incredibly flawed at its core. It didn't even have an army to enforce its laws or protect its members from aggressors(the real miracle was that the Republic stood for thousands of years without an army) The reality was that any rogue state could have risen and done whatever it wanted with only individual systems to stand in its way, while the Senate would simply shake their fingers at the offending party.

This is the system the Alliance is fighting to restore. Aside from Palpatine being an evil Sith lord and having a very long term plan of slowly exterminating Aliens, how is a Republic preferable? The Empire did bring peace and order, but the Alliance would go back to the old ineffective form of government.

The 2 sides are definitely not as black and white as George would have us think.

I'm guessing we are going into Legends territory since the only Old Republic corruption we actually saw on screen was the work of Palpatine and cronies.

A: You assume that the Empire was somehow less corrupt than the Republic when based on what we know of the Imperial government it had fewer safeguards against corruption. The very fact that they changed slavery from a banned institution practiced in regions where the Republic had little or no authority to a state sanctioned practice should tell you something about just how corrupt the Empire was. It would be like the US repealing the 13th amendment. That along with how Palpatine used corruption to gain power should make it clear just how un-corrupt the Empire was, namely not very. Not to mention the old saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely would apply to the Emperor.

B: The Empire was far more brutal in its suppression of peaceful dissent than the Empire. What Tarkin did to earn his promotion to Moff, namely landing a ship on a peaceful protest, was a perfect example and there are numerous other examples in the Legends material of citizens who are doing no harm to the Empire other than explaining that they are unhappy about some of its practices or participating in a peaceful orderly protest being executed or arrested en masse and sentenced to hard labor for life. There's also at least one case we know of where an entire town was tried and convicted for treason with no knowledge that the trial was taking place until an Imperial strike force arrived to bomb the town.

Was the Republic flawed? Definitely

Did the Republic Senate make some incredibly stupid decisions? Certainly whoever came up with the bright idea of responding to piracy by allowing corporations to control warships more powerful than the Judaical Starfleet's ships of the line was an utter moron since there is little or no needs for Heavy Cruisers, Destroyers (as the term is used in Star Wars) or Battlecruisers to fight pirate. Corvettes, Frigates, or smaller cruisers should have filled their needs fine.

Do I believe that despite all of its problems was the Republic the lesser of two evils compared to the Age of Rebellion era Empire. Absolutely.

An empire, monarchy, or dictatorship isn't an inherently bad thing IMO but to avoid going bad it needs to keep its upper ranks free of corruption. The Galactic Empire came into existence with a grand master of corruption at its highest position so it was born rotten.. It just took some time for the rot to become visible.

But Maelora... what about Jar Jar? Where in the holiest of heavens is Jar Jar Binks in your campaign?!!?