Certainly players are welcome to weigh-in, but as a GM’s definition will have more influence on the game, I am reaching out to them, specifically.

I have seen many threads that enter into this discussion but none that focus on it (correct me if I missed it) so I figured I’d start one.

I am curious as a budding “Edge of the Empire” GM (veteran GM in other games), born-again “Star Wars” fan and armchair philosopher… How do you define the Force in your games?

The canon material has been (by design) vague which empowers us, as storytellers, to interpret somewhat freely within the mechanics (or even outside of them, for some of us).

In my games, there is no “light side”. There is only the Force.

The Force, in its most natural and tranquil state, is the cycle of life and harmony of the universe… but it has a dark side. Death is not that dark side. Not when it merely ends one cycle to make way for another. A predator killing to feed itself is not that dark side nor is prey killing to defend itself. These are all simply facets of the Force.

The dark side comes (and, yes, there will be various notable exceptions that I won’t go into, here) in the interactions of the Force and sentient beings (more so, but not exclusively, with Force Sensitives). Sentient beings have more choices than other forms of life. That is their natural way and in keeping with their facet of the Force. However, the power to choose (and, more dramatically, interact with the Force by choice) is what dredges up the dark side of the Force. Yes, the so-called negative emotions are a part of our nature (and thus tied to the Force) but our ability to reject them and find a different way is our nature, as well.

The Jedi might argue that choosing to transcend our negative nature is our “truer nature” and thus the correct harmonious path.

The Sith might argue that denying the so-called negative emotions is the truly unnatural act.

The fact that both schools of thought have produced powerful Force-wielders can be taken (in my games) as evidence that both arguments contain merit.

That said, in my games (and, in my opinion, Lucas’ intent) the "truth" is that of the two the Jedi are far more correct (but not 100%).

My favored (but by no means the strongest) evidence is the notion of “hard to see, the dark side is”. The Force is an outgrowth of harmony and the dark side runs counter to the harmony and is just enough “outside” the natural flow that it becomes obscured.

Continuing with the idea that the dark side is “wrong” despite being rooted in aspects of our nature, I reject various theories that “bringing balance to the Force” is a balance of the light side (which I don’t even really think exists) and the dark side (which I characterize as an “incorrect” path)… despite acknowledging that some canon evidence to that effect does exist.

“Wrongness” may be the opposite of “correctness” but the Force isn’t balanced by striking more discord within it.

The balance that Anakin brought to the Force, at the risk of sounding a bit Pollyanna, was hope. Hope that when we morally fall that we can rise again.

The Jedi obviously saw falling to the dark side as a spiritual “death sentence”. They were wrong. Anakin did terrible evil and came back. The fruit of the obsessive attachment that drove him to the dark side lit his way back. The galaxy may not ever know what happened in that moment and certainly wouldn’t appreciate it (he killed countless but saved his own son… big deal) but we as an audience know.

More importantly, Luke knows. Luke revered the Jedi but had none of the baggage that a life of indoctrination brought the Order over THOUSANDS of years. He had no reason to see Vader as fully irredeemable (just mostly). With the Jedi and the Sith so sure that once you fell you fell for all time, that little glimmer of goodness in Anakin went unnoticed. Luke was pure and sensed it and learned what hope could do. That philosophy will guide the new Jedi he trains.

“A New Hope”, indeed.

The force is a quasi-mystical energy field that surrounds us penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together. There is a light and dark side, and one tougher to master, but stronger, and the other is easier and faster, but not as strong in the long run. How seductive it is to you is a personal choice, the darkside isn't gonna show up in a black nighty and promise you a good time (well... not usually anyway).

Also midichlorians are something sprinkled on top of frozen yogurt and Qui-gon Jinn was a crazy person with no force abilities that the Jedi Council humored because he seemed like a nice guy and they didn't have the heart to tell him the truth.

"If one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects, not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi."

I totally forgot about midichlorians (telling, no?)

In my games (if the notion even comes up and is in some way pressed) Qui-Gon had it backwards. Midichlorians are drawn to the Force, but not in any way a part of its use. Thus they may provide a decent gauge but only incidentally and by no means reliably.

"If one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects, not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi."

And what have you learned, Icosiel?

As a GM I specifically do not define the Force. This helps to keep it mysterious and nebulous. Meaning it can mean whatever I need it to mean to drive the story.

My personal view is that it is a mystical energy field created by life. Calling on the Dark Side corrupts the Force and affects all life. Midichlorians are as they are stated in the films; something that allows living organisms to feel the Force and manipulate it.

I do add a caveat in my house rules (from Saga edition) that states:

I will not warn you if the action your character is about to take will give you a dark side point or not. I also will not define what the Force, the Light side and the Dark side are in an attempt to rationalize whether or not a dark side point is warranted for a character’s actions. We are all level headed people and have a somewhat firm grasp of good and evil, but know that this campaign is a heroic one. With that said I encourage players to flirt with the dark side if it befits you character concept, there really is no penalty to having dark side points, until you get enough to equal your Wisdom score that is! So have fun!

I like the way you think, Falcon, and its funny, because I had a conversation with someone where I said many of the same things recently

Thank you, Macool.

As a general statment, I do get that the Force should maintain mystery. I just happen to prefer mysterious but contextually consistent so I give things a bit of structure that may not need them in other arenas.

I believe that it has been established in multiple sources (one of which survived Disney's purge) that Anakin actually rejected his destiny and plunged the Galaxy into chaos. Without spoiling anything, I think it was implied that the "balance" was more about both order versus chaos AND good versus evil similar to true neutral on the D&D alignment spectrum.

I pretty go with has been in the movies and The Clone Wars. We all have our own view of it, and eve the Jedi had different views on it. I purposefully do not get into the inner workings of it though. This is something that we can not and do not understand. And like politics and religion, you will never be able to persuade someone who thinks differently. (Which is ok in my opinion, I'm not saying it is bad.)

In my last game I had a Force Emergent who claimed that he did not move his hands to use the Force. I said no way. And he brought up some EU examples of Force users not moving their hands. We talked (argued) about it for far too long, and I didn't want to be the male reproductive organ, but he left me no choice, I finally said this is my game, my universe, my rules. You move your stupid hands when using the Force! He did not like this and whined, and said I should have told him before he created his character... Blah, blah, blah. In reality he was just trying to munchkin his character so that he could have all the benefits of using the force, and none of the consequences. Mainly people seeing him lift his hands to lift people or objects.

Some people state that there is no light or dark side, that you can walk the middle. I go with George's vision. It may not always make sense, but we have yet to figure out our own world and laws of physics. Our top scientists don't even understand the complete workings of gravity or light, so how can we or the SW universe completely understand the Force.

My favorite is when people tell me they are going to play a gray Jedi. I ask why, and they give me some meta-physical quasi religious mumbo jumbo about being in balance. I have never seen any one actually play this though. It means they want to power game and be a badass Jedi and use both light and dark side powers with out any risk of turning to the dark side because they don't believe in it. Sorry, no, that to me is not in the spirit of Star Wars.

George himself has laid out what his vision of the force is, and he states that the force contains a light and dark side. This is not just some Jedi tenant. This is fact from the creator of the this Universe.

So anyway back to the OP: here is a copy of a Lucas interview on StarWars.com

When Episode I came out a few people were upset by the role midi-chlorians played in the Force — particularly when a drop of Anakin’s blood revealed an unusually high number of them in his system. As Lucas explained in a talk with author Terry Brooks, who was about to start writing the novelization of the film, “In Anakin’s case, there are, instead of one or two or three midi-chlorians in each cell, there’s like a thousand. It’s unbelievable how many midi-chlorians are in there.”

So…what are they? Lucas expounded: “I’m assuming that the midi-chlorians are a race that everybody knows about [in the world of Star Wars]. The way you interact and interface with this larger energy field [the Force] is through the midi-chlorians, which are sensitive to the energy. They are at the core of your life, which is the cell, the living cell. They are in a symbiotic relationship with the cell. And then, because they’re all interconnected as one, they can communicate with the larger Force field. That’s how you deal with the Force.”

At least a few people felt that this negated the democratic aspect of the Force, despite the fact that in Return of the Jedi the story and dialogue had already made it clear that the Force was, at least in some ways, hereditary. The film had lines such as, “The Force is strong in my family,” which Luke tells Leia.

Indeed until that line in the film — or perhaps until we found out that Vader was Luke’s father in Empire — many viewers of the very first film, in 1977, might have entertained the possibility that he or she, too, could become a Jedi. After all Ben Kenobi hadn’t said that Luke needed any special abilities or blood testing when he asked him to start his training in Episode IV. Luke just needed to learn how to tap into the mystical energy field called the Force. Lucas, even after Empire, said as much in his story conference talk with scriptwriter Lawrence Kasdan and director Richard Marquand before they started shooting Jedi:

Kasdan: The Force was available to anyone who could hook into it?

Lucas: Yes, everybody can do it.

Kasdan: Not just the Jedi?

Lucas: It’s just the Jedi who take the time to do it.

Marquand: They use it as a technique.

Lucas: Like Yoga. If you want to take the time to do it, you can do it; but the ones that really want to do it are the ones who are into that kind of thing. Also like karate.

In this Lucas was consistent with what he’d said in the summer of 1977 — the first time he’d had to explain in more detail many of his concepts:

“The Force is really a way of seeing; it’s a way of being with life. It really has nothing to do with weapons. The Force gives you the power to have extra-sensory perception and to be able to see things and hear things, read minds and levitate things. It is said that certain creatures are born with a higher awareness of the Force than humans. Their brains are different. The Force is a perception of the reality that exists around us. You have to come to learn it. It’s not something you just get. It takes many, many years…Anyone who studied and worked hard could learn it. But you would have to do it on your own.”

[Please note: While we were preparing the text for The Making of Star Wars, Lucas added a note to this passage about midi-chlorians, bringing his original words in line with his later thoughts and the events of the prequel trilogy.]

It’s interesting to see, however, that in 1977 Lucas was already talking about creatures with a more natural capacity to interact with the Force; perhaps he was already thinking of a creature such as Yoda. Perhaps, in a way, that idea morphed into Anakin (a “creature” born without a father — a result of the “will of the Force”).

But the question is, does the advent of midi-chlorians really change anything? Lucas never said that regular people have no midi-chlorians (except when he was joking: “Han Solo has no midi-chlorians. He’s a zombie.”). In fact, he said just the opposite. When speaking more seriously about them, he stated: “Midi-chlorians are like a single entity: meaning each one doesn’t think individually and have a life to itself; they think as a unit because there’s so many of them and they’re everywhere. They’re in every single cell. And sometimes there’s more than one in a cell. Sometimes there’s a whole bunch in a cell. But there has to be at least one in a cell, otherwise the cell can’t reproduce. All cells. Plant cells. Every life form has a midi-chlorian living inside of them.” [

So, despite blood-tests that show your aptitude, learning the Force is still like Yoga, or boxing. You might be born more lithe, or bigger and stronger, but, because we all have midi-chlorians in us, we can all develop the Force to lesser or greater extents — in the world of Star Wars.

In the real world, Lucas may have been making an analogy between the Skywalker line and bloodlines — a subject that has obsessed royalty throughout history, continuing to this day. But that’s a topic for another blog…

I believe that it has been established in multiple sources (one of which survived Disney's purge) that Anakin actually rejected his destiny and plunged the Galaxy into chaos. Without spoiling anything, I think it was implied that the "balance" was more about both order versus chaos AND good versus evil similar to true neutral on the D&D alignment spectrum.

Source(s)?

From Wookiepedia (bold mine)... And this certainly does not contradict the notion that Anakin rejected his destiny but the last snippet implies (to my mind) that he didn't beat destiny... that he met it, just not as expected. That he rejected, perhaps, only what he was told was his destiny but still met his actual destiny.

George Lucas himself has stated that Anakin is the Chosen One and that the prophecy is true, although it had been misinterpreted by the entire Jedi Order.^[9][10]

This (sort of) says more about the Sith than the dark side, but it offers food for thought:

"So the idea of temptation is one of the things we struggle against, and the temptation obviously is the temptation to go to the dark side. One of the themes throughout the films is that the Sith lords, when they started out thousands of years ago, embraced the dark side. They were greedy and self-centered and they all wanted to take over, so they killed each other. Eventually, there was only one left, and that one took on an apprentice. And for thousands of years, the master would teach the apprentice, the master would die, the apprentice would then teach another apprentice, become the master, and so on. But there could never be any more than two of them, because if there were, they would try to get rid of the leader, which is exactly what Vader was trying to do, and that's exactly what the Emperor was trying to do. The Emperor was trying to get rid of Vader, and Vader was trying to get rid of the Emperor. And that is the antithesis of a symbiotic relationship, in which if you do that, you become cancer, and you eventually kill the host, and everything dies." - George Lucas

The most compelling (if stll not explicit), canonical, argument in favor of the more D&D view, thus far, seems to be the Mortis arc on "The Clone Wars". Even then, however, more is implied than stated but the show definately had a number of "yin and yang" points to make.

To R2builder

That is a nice bit of food for thought. It almost seems to put the idea of "learning the Force" as opposed to having to be born a Force Sensative back on the table and that all the infants and younglings the Jedi scoop up are the ones born ahead of the game, but not the only potentials (perhaps these potentials are not even aknowledged by the Jedi).

Thoughts? Impressions?

From Wookiepedia:

Throughout the films, the "light side" of the Force was never directly named, rather it is considered the Force itself. It is only mentioned by name in other sources from the expanded universe. In all six films, the actions of the Jedi and the Force itself can be interpreted as the "light side". However, from an in-universe philosophical standpoint, this can be debated.

I was too busy enjoying the Mortis arc of "The Clone Wars" with my son to actually pay attention to this specific detail, but certainly it mentioned the term "light side" or did even that story manage to dance around it?

Regarding the Mortis arc, like so many things on this topic, it offers a very compelling look at the Force but tells us more about a particular group of Sensitives than the Force itself. I absolutely believe that this is by design and of particular importance to GMs who can run the Force under one philosophy in one game and under another, later (underlying consistentcy being my own prefernce, but by no means a philosophy I would push on other GMs).

As you said, the Mortis episodes are the surviving example of this, but Anakin's rejection of taking his place as the "avatar" of order has very serious ramifications 65 years later during the Fate of the Jedi series and is specifically called out in Apocalypse.

I believe that it has been established in multiple sources (one of which survived Disney's purge) that Anakin actually rejected his destiny and plunged the Galaxy into chaos. Without spoiling anything, I think it was implied that the "balance" was more about both order versus chaos AND good versus evil similar to true neutral on the D&D alignment spectrum.

Source(s)?

Rejecting "The Father" may or may not be the same as rejecting his destiny.

It may yet just be another example of a specific (albeit poweful) Force User setting a more personal agenda.

Sure, perhaps taking over as an "avatar" would have been a good idea for a certain chain of events... But was it the will of the Force?

We tend to see impressive displays of the Force as evidence of understanding it's true nature*, but there is always a bigger fish.

We meet Obi-Wan, who is powerful, and we learn truths (from a certain point of view)... Then we meet Yoda, who is more powerful, and we are inclined to see his wisdom as the bottom-line... Then we go back and see the Jedi order as a whole, collectively powerful (if waning) and are apt to feel we are seeing things as they must be... We then meet "The Father" and he is immensly powerful and we think "here, at last, we see the true nature of the Force"... And so on.

I think as long as a writer can sell the pitch, we will always see another more powerful (or differently powerful in some significant way) Force User and feel we are getting to the "reality".

I also think we are meant to have our own pet interpretations of the prophecy and to debate them endlessly. I also think the prophecy was fulfilled... but that we are in the dark as to how (by design) and intended to debate that, as well.

Interestingly, this sort of brings me back to the function of this thread: As GMs we actually become not only THE most powerful Force User in our little corner of the Galaxy Far Far Away but we are, really, the Force itself, in this context.

We may have chosen to accept the rules of the game mechanics for reasons of fairness and consistency, but the game accepts that we can blow off any roll or rule to suit our wills.

The better of us, of course, tend not to so that the peoples of our little storytelling galaxies can rise or fall by their own choices.

*It's worth noting that midichlorians, particularly in Aniken's case, may be evidence that Force power and wisdom DO NOT go hand in hand and that power may be a very poor guage (the Ewoks certainly show that Lucas has a thing for simplicity toppling power). Midichlorians may grant an increased ability to sense the universe as it truly is, but that says nothing about the wisdom to interpret and act on what you are sensing.

It could very well be (and this is but one example) that Anakin's heated nature was his way of expressing the feeling of "no, not that path" that the Force tries to whisper to him. Yet Anakin has, what was it, THOUSANDS where just a few is more common? That whisper could come across as a scream and Anakin just can't process it even if he understands the core message. He gets angry, moody, etc. The Jedi have no frame of reference so they fall back on the tried and true and attempt to stifle. Palpatine, on the other hand, essentially preaches "just go with it". Both philosophies are woefully underequipped to deal with what Anakin is and is capable of and both sides ultimately fail him. As Vader, he gets 20 years to process and vent (in horrible and violent ways that should have been prevented but weren't and maybe couldn't have been... maybe the Forces just accepted these as tragic but needed "growing pains"). By the time Luke rolls up, Vader may finally have been able to relax and just listen to the Force rather than rush around trying to save/conquer the galaxy for once in his post-slave life.

Or some other thing.

Interesting topic, and I've enjoyed reading the replies. You guys definitely have better ideas than much of what we see in 'canon', anyway.

I'm happy to keep things vague and mysterious; Ben's original comment that it was 'an energy field that joins all things, surrounds us and penetrates us' is good enough for me.

I push the concept that the Force is in all things; in our game, Luke was born to Owen Lars and he's the biggest proponent of this concept, that you don't need a Special Snowflake bloodline to use it.

It goes against the theme a bit, I know, but we equate 'light side' to law - order, tradition, duty, honour, discipline - and the 'dark side' to chaos - passion, emotion, 'anger is an energy'. Our Sith and Jedi are actually divergent strands of the same organisation; they are as likely to be allies as rivals, and either can be good or evil and fight for what they believe in. The Sith actually encourage this; the Jedi need to be a bit 'creative' to act against their superiors. However, I still believe strongly in 'karma' so doing really nasty stuff still makes Force-users 'corrupt' in mind and body, though simply channelling dark-side passions does not.

(In our world, it all went wrong for Anakin when he was forced to join the Jedi when he was clearly cut out to be a Sith, and he rebelled against his own nature. It didn't end well for him or Palpatine.)

As an aside, we only allow lightsabers for Force-sensitives, there's no 'on switch' and they are activated purely by thought. They are also the symbol of the Jedi and Sith, hated by the Empire and Alliance alike. Imperial and Alliance forces have their own Force traditions, shunning the weapons of the 'betrayers'.

We also interpret all of the Signature Abilities as low-level Force powers - the Force is in everything to a degree, even the muggles. When Reya gets her 'Last One Standing' on, she's channelling that energy, whether she knows it or not

Finally, as much as I loathe the prequels, Clone Wars and FU, midichlorians exist in our world. What they don't do is measure the strength of a given Force user, or indicate the potential for Force use in an 'unawakened' person. In fact, nobody actually knows what they do, only that they have something to do with the Force. The Empire and Alliance have wasted lots of credits on 'midicholorian theory' (Emperor Tarkin in particular hates the Force and is obsessed by it) all to no avail. It might even be measuring diabetic blood sugars or something equally useless. Research goes on, but by and large, midichlorian theory is dismissed as quackery...

Finally, though I'm not sure I like it, the players voted overwhelmingly for Force use to have visual and sonic effects, as if our game didn't already feel like some Star Wars/Mass Effect hybrid...

In my last game I had a Force Emergent who claimed that he did not move his hands to use the Force. I said no way. And he brought up some EU examples of Force users not moving their hands. We talked (argued) about it for far too long, and I didn't want to be the male reproductive organ, but he left me no choice, I finally said this is my game, my universe, my rules. You move your stupid hands when using the Force! He did not like this and whined, and said I should have told him before he created his character... Blah, blah, blah. In reality he was just trying to munchkin his character so that he could have all the benefits of using the force, and none of the consequences. Mainly people seeing him lift his hands to lift people or objects.

Sorry, but if you want to go off of "Lucas's Vision", he has it right. And you have to look no further than Empire Strikes Back to prove the point. When Luke is doing handstands and lifting rocks, he is NOT gesturing towards the rocks at all. He lifted one hand off the ground, but he is holding it out in the opposite direction of the rocks for balance.

Also, when Luke and Vader are fighting on Bespin, Vader rips a piece of machinery off the wall by just looking at it, both his hands are on his lightsaber. He then proceeds to stand perfectly still while beating Luke repeatedly with TKed items.

If you want to claim that you are going off of "Lucas's vision" I suggest you do your research.

Do the research, but pay attention to all of your source, not just the parts that support you.

The flip side of Emperor Norton's citations is that there are also plenty of times when we see Force Users gesture, therefore saying that they "always have to gesture" is not strictly supported, but neither is "never have to gesture".

A GM could suggest that on Dagobah in the midst of the training exercise and such that Luke was in the process of learning Force use without gestures and that a PC could eventually acheive that ability.

Or that X number of light pips generated denotes a strong enough connection to forego the focusing gestures.

Perhaps Vader acheived somthing akin to my latter suggestion or he's making a super-concentration face under that helmet.

More likely, he's just freakin' Darth Vader and the likes of he and Yoda are not the best examples of Force use at the PC-level,

Also, in "Empire Strike Back" we have Luke in the Wampa cave where Luke was wounded/strained/criticaly injured (to use the game parlance). It could be argued that he was gesturing to bring the saber to him OR that he was simply setting out the destination for the saber and the real "work" was done in that moment of calm before. In either event, there was a visual component that an onlooker would be able to see (though perhaps not understand/recognize what they see... Despite never having to worry about mind tricks, Watto recognized the gesture as a silly Jedi thing) so completely invisible uses of the Force don't seem to be the norm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By-CKsffwKA

The famous "these aren't the droids you are looking for" scene is equally ambiguous. On one hand (no pun intended), Kenobi uses the gesture even though he expressly needs to keep a low-profile. Does he need to use the gesture (as in has no options) or does he want to just be sure it works (gesturing is optional but helpful) and knows that if it does, the gesture will be unnoticed as a side-effect (which it seems to).

What if someone in the know spotted the gesture from a distance? Kenobi was low-key about it but it's possible.

Simply put, the narrative of the films is unconcerened with this and can flip-flop... but Force Sensative PCs on the run in a game should be very concerened and GMs have to make a call.

Personally, I like the extra pip needed, perhaps with a concentration face, to forego more dramatic gestures.

Do the research, but pay attention to all of your source, not just the parts that support you.

The flip side of Emperor Norton's citations is that there are also plenty of times when we see Force Users gesture, therefore saying that they "always have to gesture" is not strictly supported, but neither is "never have to gesture".

And that is not the wording he used. Player said that force use didn't require hand motions, he said it did.

To prove that hand motions are REQUIRED they would have to be used every single time, and even then its not proven, its only strongly supported. To prove that they aren't required, ONLY ONE INSTANCE of Force use without hand motions is required.

He didn't say "The difficulty is increased" or "You have to roll better" or "You have to be in a serene place and concentrating" He said that force use requires hand motions. And it doesn't.

Do the research, but pay attention to all of your source, not just the parts that support you.

The flip side of Emperor Norton's citations is that there are also plenty of times when we see Force Users gesture, therefore saying that they "always have to gesture" is not strictly supported, but neither is "never have to gesture".

And that is not the wording he used. Player said that force use didn't require hand motions, he said it did.

To prove that hand motions are REQUIRED they would have to be used every single time, and even then its not proven, its only strongly supported. To prove that they aren't required, ONLY ONE INSTANCE of Force use without hand motions is required.

He didn't say "The difficulty is increased" or "You have to roll better" or "You have to be in a serene place and concentrating" He said that force use requires hand motions. And it doesn't.

That is exactly my point. You correctly pointed out a flaw but only took it so far as to undo R2builder.*

I just took the proverbial ball and ran with it.

Neither POV has absolute primacy based on the source material. In fact neither extreme is correct, obviously.

With that in mind, various "middle-of-the-road" concepts were mentioned.

*Which I presumed was your goal and I apologize if I was incorrect.

Sounds like arguing about 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin' to me.

Your table, your rules; Lucas and his 'vision' shouldn't have any say as to what goes on in your game.

However, a good GM will communicate these things to the players, so they know in advance what to expect, and how their powers are going to work.

Sounds like arguing about 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin' to me.

Not arguing (in my case, at any rate) as arguing implies an intent to change a mind or assert a "rightness".

Neither is on the agenda.

Rather this is sharing both opinions and the factors that led to forming them.

Meetings of minds and all that sort of thing.

Case in point, breaking from canon to the level that you, Maelora, have is not something my players would be interested in, but I found the glimpse into your tabel and your rules to be both lovely and fascinating.

Fair point, Falcon. I just don't like one player telling another that he's 'doing it wrong'. RPG rules are suggestions, not holy orders from on high. But as you say, I'm sure that's not happening here anyway.

I think the main thing in a case like this is to tell the players up front what to expect, whether they need to use hand signals (or anything else) or not, and enforce that fairly and consistently with all PCs and NPCs.

If the "Light Side" is about order, peace, tranquility and all the sort of thing, while the "Dark Side" is about passion, chaos, and all that sort of thing, then the examples given of Force-users not using their hands to use the Force could be interpreted differently. On Dagobah, when Luke is doing handstands, he's in a tranquil place, a peaceful setting. It is the setting most conducive to the Light Side. Thus he was able to use the Force without a hand motion. Likewise, during the fight on Cloud City, Vader is amidst chaos, a setting most conducive to the Dark Side. Therefore he was able to use the Force more easily and throw objects at Luke without hand motions.

Not saying this is how it is, but just spitballing ideas to balance things out.

If the "Light Side" is about order, peace, tranquility and all the sort of thing, while the "Dark Side" is about passion, chaos, and all that sort of thing, then the examples given of Force-users not using their hands to use the Force could be interpreted differently. On Dagobah, when Luke is doing handstands, he's in a tranquil place, a peaceful setting. It is the setting most conducive to the Light Side. Thus he was able to use the Force without a hand motion. Likewise, during the fight on Cloud City, Vader is amidst chaos, a setting most conducive to the Dark Side. Therefore he was able to use the Force more easily and throw objects at Luke without hand motions.

Not saying this is how it is, but just spitballing ideas to balance things out.

To explore that some, what are your thoughts on the good/light having a tendency toward diversity and the chaos of democracy and individualism and the evil/dark being all about rulership, control and conformity?

I may not see it as light=order and dark=chaos, but I am very interested in that philosophy none-the-less.

To explore that some, what are your thoughts on the good/light having a tendency toward diversity and the chaos of democracy and individualism and the evil/dark being all about rulership, control and conformity?

I may not see it as light=order and dark=chaos, but I am very interested in that philosophy none-the-less.

That's more or less precisely why I removed 'good' and 'evil' from light and dark side use in our games...

Hand Motions : Seems to me that yeah, it seems clear that people can use the Force without the hand motions. It also seems clear to me that people seem to chose to use the hand motions. This supports the notion in my mind that the gestures help. When Luke levitates things on Dagobah, that is a training exercise. It's easy to imagine Yoda was having him do it the hard way. When Vader is pummeling Luke with crates in Cloud City, he may not have moved, but he seemed awfully focused, for as much as a face mask can emote. I'm a supporter of the 'can without gestures, but harder' camp, for the moment.

Anakin's Destiny : I don't think Vader did abandon his destiny at all. I think he just fulfilled it later. His act of bringing balance to the Force was to overturn the Emperor in the final showdown. Everything that happened, including the mass slaughter of the Jedi, put him in the perfect position to defeat the Emperor.

Force Theory : At the moment, until some of our other fellow forumites bring up reasoning to the contrary, my personal vision for the Force is that it is Obi-Wan's explanation, an energy field that surrounds us and binds us together. The Force lets it's users manipulate the universe, bringing it 'under their sway' if you will. Their telekinetic effects allow them to manipulate objects and people as though they were under the Force user's power. Their ability to foresee the future, as well as to act and react instinctively, is again about them being closer to their surroundings. Their ability to affect the 'weak minded' again is about manipulating another into acting how you want them to.

The Light side of the force are the positive emotions. Love, kindness, resolve, duty, and mercy. It is the things that bring communities together and bind them, forging the strongest of ties between beings. The Dark side of the force is negative emotions. Hatred, jealousy, fear, the things that drive living creatures apart. The emotions behind them are strong, knee jerk, reactive. They very quickly drive wedges between living beings, alienating them from one another. Hence, the reason why the Dark side is so 'wrong', and reviled by the Jedi. The Dark side's emotions act quickly and powerfully. The Light side's emotions can be even stronger, but such trust and respect takes time to develop, a 'slower road to power'.