I'd say that being grey is more an outlook than anything else, and a willingness to employ the dark side when it seems appropriate, while trying not to fall too far under its seduction.

^ This for me. If there's any system that lends itself narratively to encouraging this, it's this one.

I didn't mind Jolee Bindo - he was a crochety old man who also happened to be powerful in the Force. His 'grey'ness more felt like an opting-out of the religion moreso than personal approval to do whatever he felt was right.

This is exactly why I think it's a mistake to equate "Grey Jedi" with "semi-moral".

I didn't mind Jolee Bindo - he was a crochety old man who also happened to be powerful in the Force. His 'grey'ness more felt like an opting-out of the religion moreso than personal approval to do whatever he felt was right.

Pretty much this. Jolee's a good example of what an actual "Grey Jedi" should be.

He still did what was right, trusting the Will of the Force... he just deep-sixed a lot of the dogma that came with being a Jedi at that point in time, much as Qui-Gon didn't always adhere to the letter of the Jedi Code, but rather the spirit of the Code.

I think that in all the fuss, too many are emphasizing the wrong part of the term "Gray Jedi".
It is the JEDI portion that needs focus, not they GRAY.

They term is "Gray JEDI" not "Gray FORCE USER" for a good reason: The ambiguity is with the Jedi code not the with notion of morality.

The Jedi, however, (and us, naturally, as we learn about the Force mostly through that order) would see violations of the code as immorality and darkness.

They do not have to be the same thing, in our games... Or maybe the Jedi do have it exactly right, in your game.

I utterly despise the whoe "Grey Jedi" thing. It's the worst kind of fandom w@nk. It's basically someone writing bad fan fiction, saying "I want to shoot Force lightning and be dark and brooding and edgy and live by my own rules and have cool black clothes and a red lightsaber and kill anyone who looks at me funny but I'm not EVIL". It's the Star Wars equivalent of glittery vampires.

I agree with what kaosoe, Donovan and Aluminium Falcon said about Jolee Bindo. His thing was that he didn't agree with the Jedi philosophy as relating to things like love and relationships, poking your nose in other people's business, and so on. It's been a while since I played KotOR, but I'm pretty sure he never tried to say that the Dark side of the Force was the same as the Light side or any of that nonsense the worst parts of the EU burdened us with.

Yoda was pretty specific about this in the original trilogy: "Once you start down the Dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny". No babbling about how it was OK to fire off a few bursts of Force lightning as long as you didn't MEAN it or something. That's like saying "I'll only put the tip in". I still remember the ridiculous levels of retconning they had to pull after the whole New Jedi Order travesty with the Yuuzhan Vong war and how everyone got in touch with their inner darkness and won the war. Turns out it wasn't such a great idea anyway, with Jacen Solo falling out of the evil tree and hitting every single branch and twig on the way down.

My point is, the movies never ever mention "the Light side" at all. There's the Force, and then there's the Dark side. The Dark side being what creates imbalance, and the Force being in a natural state of balance unless the Dark side skewers things. You're either calm, at peace and acting without anger or malice, or you feed on fear, anger and hatred and pretty quickly find yourself saying stuff like "You have failed me for the last time". No middle ground where you get to be a little bit Darth Vader because he's cool.

My point is, the movies never ever mention "the Light side" at all. There's the Force, and then there's the Dark side. The Dark side being what creates imbalance, and the Force being in a natural state of balance unless the Dark side skewers things. You're either calm, at peace and acting without anger or malice, or you feed on fear, anger and hatred and pretty quickly find yourself saying stuff like "You have failed me for the last time". No middle ground where you get to be a little bit Darth Vader because he's cool.

To build off what Krieger22, said: It is natural to mentally insert a "light side" to counter the "dark side"... and since "The Clone Wars" certain aspects of that are floating around in canon, and not just the EU... but in all the original cinematic sources, the "light side" is not referenced.

With that in mind, it may be that the "dark side" isn't a philosophy to be balanced but is, itself, the imbalance.

The original "Star Wars" trilogy came out during a time when cynicism was a tad high in the US (I won't speak for other nations) so most of the fans could only grasp so much of philosophy being presented with casting a wary eye.

We loved "Star Wars" and for 16 years we grappled with trying to fit the purity of the Force into out actual worldview. We still are, and the results are mixed.

Say what you may about the prequels, they did manage to introduce an interesting level to the whole notion: Dogma.

Jedi dogma, Sith dogma and whatever Qui-Gon was going on about.

With this layer, our cynical views could find a home. The "dark side" wasn't a counter balance to be accessed in times of need, it was very wrong. HOWEVER, the Jedi were fallible even if they were facing the right direction and the Sith had a few good philosophical points despite having terrible methods.

Whatever else he did, Anakin kicked over the dogmatic tables. First the Jedi and then the Sith almost two decades after.

Balance to the Force may not have been nothing more than stripping away thousands of years of preconceived notions... both good and ill-intended.

@ Krieger22: All that that post told me is " if one has to choose between Star Wars and rule of cool, toss Star Wars overboard ".

I utterly despise the whoe "Grey Jedi" thing. It's the worst kind of fandom w@nk. It's basically someone writing bad fan fiction, saying "I want to shoot Force lightning and be dark and brooding and edgy and live by my own rules and have cool black clothes and a red lightsaber and kill anyone who looks at me funny but I'm not EVIL". It's the Star Wars equivalent of glittery vampires.

This. A billion times this. If someone really wants to play this way, they can already go "Dark" in F&D and do just that since nothing about being "Dark" actually compels you to do evil, unlike as hinted in the original trilogy.

The "you're either good, or evil" is just stupid to me. Perhaps some people like me just don't like to think in the extremes that are also present in fairy tales. Grey zones seem more realistic to me, despite it still being fiction.

It kinda all leads to either being good for the sake of being good or evil for the sake of being evil, which I consider to be very cheesy.

I guess it depends on how you like your cup of fiction.

Knights of the Old republic 2 did a good job portraying the grey zone aspect.

I utterly despise the whoe "Grey Jedi" thing. It's the worst kind of fandom w@nk. It's basically someone writing bad fan fiction, saying "I want to shoot Force lightning and be dark and brooding and edgy and live by my own rules and have cool black clothes and a red lightsaber and kill anyone who looks at me funny but I'm not EVIL". It's the Star Wars equivalent of glittery vampires.

This. A billion times this. If someone really wants to play this way, they can already go "Dark" in F&D and do just that since nothing about being "Dark" actually compels you to do evil, unlike as hinted in the original trilogy.

Good thing that's totally not how Grey jedi are to me then and I don't think anybody else mentioned them to be that way, except maybe for the haters.

From what I have seen of the system so far, you can have a light side jedi who uses force lightning. You will generate conflict each time you use it but the conflict system is relaxed enough that you could get three or four uses and still stand a chance to generate a light side shift.

This is taking in account that your using unleash on a viable threat, not just a innocent bystander. Such acts would definitely cause conflict to stack up (one for the power, four to five for striking an innocent, and another two for the psychological trauma inflicted on anyone watching you barbecue some poor sod, provided you don't kill the target which raises the conflict to ten).

So if you want to use unleash and not be completely sith, simply use the power limitedly. I am a fan of the one conflict because i imagine using unleash would require a hostile mindset regardless of what you plan to do with the power.

This is based off limited reading so please let me know if I read something wrong.

The dark side, as written, may not make you evil; but an individual who gains power from raw, unchecked emotion thrives on rage, jealousy, hatred - if you can manage those bombshells without blowing, then kuddos. But I don't think anyone can honestly say that, when overcome with emotion, they've always made the 'right' decisions - if anything, people who regularly let their emotions get the better of them tend to make the 'wrong' decisions.

And let's not forget that power is seductive. You may not claim to be evil; you may not even act evil; but the dark side gives you leniency to act by your own moral code, and that freedom is likely to become enthralling. When you become used to being able to torture someone for information, even if that torture gets you knowledge that can save lives, you begin to rely on that tool to achieve your ends; so what happens when someone happens along who tells you that you can't do that, because it's wrong ? What happens when all those people you killed (but didn't have to) because they threatened you are tracked back to you, and the law demands you stop and be held accountable for what you've done? To a dark sider, those now-dead folks were deserving of their fate - so why in the world would he stop and turn himself in?

I tend to think of Force vs Dark Side as less "Good vs Evil" and more "Rational Approach vs All-Consuming Passion": it's calm and logical forethought, with no personal or emotional bias, against strength from letting your heart guide you with little or no thought to what your head's telling you to do.

Yes, I know people won't agree with me. But this is what I think of when I imagine the Dark Side.

I tend to think of Force vs Dark Side as less "Good vs Evil" and more "Rational Approach vs All-Consuming Passion": it's calm and logical forethought, with no personal or emotional bias, against strength from letting your heart guide you with little or no thought to what your head's telling you to do.

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Total agreement and my previous statement was from a mechanics point of view not a story one. There is so much drama to the conflict of light and dark. Even the Je'daii who ignorantly mastered the balance fell hard when ideologies shifted which was the real story, not their near Utopian mastery of the Force. To me the idea of a grey Jedi tends to just miss the point of the story and the focus of F&D.

So if you want to use unleash and not be completely sith, simply use the power limitedly. I am a fan of the one conflict because i imagine using unleash would require a hostile mindset regardless of what you plan to do with the power.

This is based off limited reading so please let me know if I read something wrong.

That's pretty much what the rules suggest. Limit it if it's reasonable. Guy's about to lob a thermal detonator at some civilians? Except for the dark side points you may have used to power whatever force attack to kill him, you're essentially given a free pass.

Also, I thought this would be a good explanation of what the dark side is:

That is a really cool video! Thank you for sharing.

Amusingly, I found "Kung Fu Panda" handled it pretty well...

(edited below to apply to "Star Wars")

Vader: All I ever did, I did to make you proud! Tell me how proud you are Obi-Wan! Tell me! TELL ME!

Kenobi: I have always been proud of you. From the first moment I've been proud of you. And it was my pride that blinded me. I loved you too much to see what you were becoming, what I turned you into. I'm... I'm sorry.

Vader: I don't want your apology, I want those PLANS!

Well, that's unfortunate. I don't want to criticize the system just yet, but it seems like a big shortcoming, at least for me.

I'd not say "big shortcoming," it's a balance issue.

It is also an issue of storytelling. The Force works inherently on concepts of good and evil, selfishness and selflessness. They weren't an actual Grey Jedi, just people who claimed to be and were thus unaware of their position on the moral spectrum.

If you wish to play a Grey Jedi, and tell a good story at the same time, then have someone who claims to be such and it's really an illusion of the Dark Side tempting them in.

I pictured something similar their special ability was to be able to restore or lower Morality to their balanced level of 50.

Losing this ability by falling to either light or dark side needing to regain 50 Morality and keep it their for an entire game session so players have a reason to persist at this.

I imagined there should be three viewpoints ala Delenn's B5 comments about there being three versions of the truth was surprised to see this mentioned nice to give that third outlook a proper name even if still disputed!

Look forward to reading where this thread goes!

Read the novel Into the Void. Its about the Jedaii Rangers. The forefathers of the Jedi order and Sith. They, the Rangers, were required to stay "In Balance", meaning not too Dark and not too Light. The Force users at the time were punished for falling too far one way or the other, by being banished to moons until they were able to come back into balance.

I've generally been of the opinion that Grey Jedi are like Dual Wielding Good Aligned Drow of 1e D&D.

Can you play a partially-redeemed Darksider as a "grey jedi?" Acting as moral paragon... but spending those darkside pips to stay out of the heroic redemption area. Meanwhile having all the darkside powers at your command.

EDIT: yes, a Grey Jedi is someone between 30 and 70 morality who uses the dark force pips- paragon enough not to take the strain penalty, renagade enough to have more reliable powers.

Note that Luke apparently used Force Lightening in at least one encounter as the Grand Master, so I would think that would qualify him as a Grey Jedi as well.

Note that Luke apparently used Force Lightening in at least one encounter as the Grand Master, so I would think that would qualify him as a Grey Jedi as well.

As has been noted elsewhere, he had two Dark Side Points according to the WEG write-up for him at the end of ROTJ.

I, for one, think the conflict system works fine for Grey Jedi. I think someone mentioned it earlier, using lightning isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just what you're doing with it. Murdering your way through an orphanage, you're probably going to fall pretty quick. Using it to stop a mugger from stealing a lady's purse, not so much.

On the other hand, if you want to have something similar to the Jedai'i, I would say use Discipline with increasing difficulties based on the situation. Murdering your way through an orphanage is going to be nigh impossible to keep you from gaining conflict. Using lightning to stop a mugger might be an easy check to not gain conflict. I would think you'd have to be pretty disciplined to be a true balanced user of the Force without any consequences.

I, for one, think the conflict system works fine for Grey Jedi. I think someone mentioned it earlier, using lightning isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just what you're doing with it. Murdering your way through an orphanage, you're probably going to fall pretty quick. Using it to stop a mugger from stealing a lady's purse, not so much.

On the other hand, if you want to have something similar to the Jedai'i, I would say use Discipline with increasing difficulties based on the situation. Murdering your way through an orphanage is going to be nigh impossible to keep you from gaining conflict. Using lightning to stop a mugger might be an easy check to not gain conflict. I would think you'd have to be pretty disciplined to be a true balanced user of the Force without any consequences.

FFG doesn't seem to subscribe to the same view.

Force lightning is represented in this game as the Unleash power. The description for this power describes the ability as emotion manifested. The gray part in all of this can be that you use either light or dark pips to activate the power, but you are still using raw emotions (something that we are told is very much a path to the dark side) to cause harm to another individual. Because of this, the power explicitly calls out that the user generates 1 conflict.