If we drop you in the middle of a pristine wilderness with an AK-47 (or even a simple matchlock firearm) and told you to build a copy of it utilizing simple stone age tools and you fail (because you will), is your failure because you do not comprehend or understand the technology involved?

Both. My understanding of how firearms works is limited to pull the trigger, hammer hits gunpowder(I think?), death comes out of the barrel. Give me a gun smithy and you'll end up with a pool of slag, melted plastic and burned wood.

If we gave you three damaged AK-47s (with only enough functional parts between the three to produce one functional firearm), in a pristine wilderness, with simple stone age tools, you could probably (through trial and error) produce a functional firearm.

With stone age tools? I doubt it unless me bashing an AK with a semi-sharpened rock will magically disassemble a rifle held together with screws, bolts and other interlocking parts. Even a musket requires some specialized tools to maintain, let alone build.

There is no reason to suspect that Jawas are incapable of innovation. There is no reason to suspect that the Jawas do not possess a thorough and complete understanding of the technology they work with and work on.

They putter around a failed colony world in ancient steam-powered crawlers they didn't build and have mostly confined themselves - voluntarily or not - to the Star Wars equivalent to a sleepy little farm town. They collect shiny refuse and sell it to locals. At best, they know how to identify a usable piece of scrap or machinery (Is it rusted or not? Does it go?), a skill the average 19th century tinkerer would have. They've had contact with space-faring extra-terrestrials for at least 4000 years, and yet have not been shown to have ships of their own or even an interest in the affairs of the greater galaxy at large (see also Tusken Raiders). Unless they have some sort of cultural aversion to technology that would actually make their lives easier, I'm not seeing how they grok what they work on except at the most instinctual level or through simple trial-and-error.

However, given that they are scavengers and that the moisture farmers (and others) on Tatooine rely on them to supply parts and technology, it tells us that both the Jawas and the moisture farmers lack the logistical and population base necessary to manufacture new technology and that, in many ways, the Jawas are more capable than their client base.

If the Jawas are able to scavenge parts that the farmers can use, there's no reason for farmers to manufacture their own. Again, all that tells us is that the Jawas have - through trial and error - been able to identify stuff that can be sold, and stuff that can be left in the sand. That doesn't mean they get how it works, they just know what the people want.

Most guns will field strip with elbow grease and little else. If something's designed to maintained in the field it's typically uncomplicated.

They putter around a failed colony world in ancient steam-powered crawlers they didn't build and have mostly confined themselves - voluntarily or not - to the Star Wars equivalent to a sleepy little farm town. They collect shiny refuse and sell it to locals. At best, they know how to identify a usable piece of scrap or machinery (Is it rusted or not? Does it go?), a skill the average 19th century tinkerer would have. They've had contact with space-faring extra-terrestrials for at least 4000 years, and yet have not been shown to have ships of their own or even an interest in the affairs of the greater galaxy at large (see also Tusken Raiders). Unless they have some sort of cultural aversion to technology that would actually make their lives easier, I'm not seeing how they grok what they work on except at the most instinctual level or through simple trial-and-error.

There is so much wrong with this, I don't know where to start...

Where did you get that Jawa's are confined to Tatooine? Where did you find that they are confined to a sleepy farm town? I have seen Jawa scavenge on Raxus Prime in an FFG adventure. Heck, the now disfunctional EU had a Jawa jedi....

Just because you don't see their ships in the movies does it mean they don't have them?

Do Gamoreans travel to other worlds? Or how about Ithorians? We don't see "their" ships anywhere....

If we drop you in the middle of a pristine wilderness with an AK-47 (or even a simple matchlock firearm) and told you to build a copy of it utilizing simple stone age tools and you fail (because you will), is your failure because you do not comprehend or understand the technology involved?

Both. My understanding of how firearms works is limited to pull the trigger, hammer hits gunpowder(I think?), death comes out of the barrel. Give me a gun smithy and you'll end up with a pool of slag, melted plastic and burned wood.

If we gave you three damaged AK-47s (with only enough functional parts between the three to produce one functional firearm), in a pristine wilderness, with simple stone age tools, you could probably (through trial and error) produce a functional firearm.

With stone age tools? I doubt it unless me bashing an AK with a semi-sharpened rock will magically disassemble a rifle held together with screws, bolts and other interlocking parts. Even a musket requires some specialized tools to maintain, let alone build.

There is no reason to suspect that Jawas are incapable of innovation. There is no reason to suspect that the Jawas do not possess a thorough and complete understanding of the technology they work with and work on.

They putter around a failed colony world in ancient steam-powered crawlers they didn't build and have mostly confined themselves - voluntarily or not - to the Star Wars equivalent to a sleepy little farm town. They collect shiny refuse and sell it to locals. At best, they know how to identify a usable piece of scrap or machinery (Is it rusted or not? Does it go?), a skill the average 19th century tinkerer would have. They've had contact with space-faring extra-terrestrials for at least 4000 years, and yet have not been shown to have ships of their own or even an interest in the affairs of the greater galaxy at large (see also Tusken Raiders). Unless they have some sort of cultural aversion to technology that would actually make their lives easier, I'm not seeing how they grok what they work on except at the most instinctual level or through simple trial-and-error.

However, given that they are scavengers and that the moisture farmers (and others) on Tatooine rely on them to supply parts and technology, it tells us that both the Jawas and the moisture farmers lack the logistical and population base necessary to manufacture new technology and that, in many ways, the Jawas are more capable than their client base.

If the Jawas are able to scavenge parts that the farmers can use, there's no reason for farmers to manufacture their own. Again, all that tells us is that the Jawas have - through trial and error - been able to identify stuff that can be sold, and stuff that can be left in the sand. That doesn't mean they get how it works, they just know what the people want.

1- Guns are basically internal combustion engines that spit lead, gilding metal, and steel (and sometimes more exotic elements and alloys such as tungsten and depleted uranium).

The hammer and trigger are two levers. You pull the trigger, it trips the hammer. In modern firearms (such as the Kalashnikov rifle), the hammer strikes a firing pin. The firing pin strikes the primer, deforming it against a part of the primer called the anvil and igniting a short, hot jet of flame that shoots into the cartridge proper igniting the powder.

The powder burns, giving off gases which rapidly expand, forcing the bullet down the barrel while the cartridge expands to fill the entirety of the chamber. As the bullet passes down the barrel, it passes the gas port: The expanding gases pushing the bullet down the barrel are then syphoned off through the gas block and against the piston face, beginning the process of operating the action by moving the bolt carrier rearward.

The bullet (and most of the remaining gases and burning propellant) are expelled out the barrel. The cartridge case, no longer under pressure, contracts. With the momentum gained from that brief blast of expanding gas, the bolt carrier continues to move rearward, activating the bolt, which twists and breaks the friction of the cartridge from the chamber. The extractor (on the bolt) pulls the spent cartridge out of the chamber as the bolt carrier continues to move rear ward. The bolt carrier depresses the hammer and the bolt pulls the spent cartridge against the ejector, which then pivots out of the action on the extractor.

The next cartridge is presented to the magazine's feedlips by the pressure of the magazine spring and the action spring pushes the bolt carrier back forward, causing the bolt to strip the fresh cartridge and force it into the chamber whereupon the bolt locks back into battery and the extractor snaps over the cartridge's rim.

It's quite simple, really. Except in the ways that it isn't. (Rifling twist rates, bullet weights, charge weights, powder compositions, primer compositions, cartridge and projectile materials and construction, how large the gas port needs to be, how far the bolt carrier needs to move before unlocking the bolt to ensure that the bullet has left the barrel ideally before the bolt has begun to unlock, plus the rather complex field of internal ballistics, the rather simple field of external ballistics, and the extremely complicated field of terminal ballistics.)

2- All you really need is something to shape into a flat head screwdriver. The other tools (hammer, lever, dowels) can be pretty easily crafted from materials readily found in an all ready (or almost all ready) to use state in nature. You're not going to be swapping barrels, but replacing damaged handguards, gas tubes, stocks, pistol grips, bolt carriers, bolts, extractors, action springs and action spring assemblies, front sight posts and bases (but not housings), rear sights, and fire control group components - basically everything that isn't pinned and/or welded to the gun - is pretty simple and straight forward, if you have a modestly mechanical mind.

3- None of the moisture farmers have ships, either. (If they did, they probably wouldn't be moisture farmers.)

4- And yet they are magically able to keep enormous tracked vehicles functioning. Go ask someone who crews a tank or an APC how easy it is to keep an Abrams, a Bradley, or a Gavin running. Now imagine that you have an entire city built on those tracks, not just four guys, an engine, a couple guns, a computer, and some armor.

Where did you get that Jawa's are confined to Tatooine?

Jawas were a communal, compulsive scavenger species who spent most of their life devoted to scavenging the deserts of Tatooine in search of any scrap metal, droid or mechanical part left behind from millennia of star travel and technological advancement, where the dry climate of Tatooine preserved almost all debris.

Where did you find that they are confined to a sleepy farm town? I have seen Jawa scavenge on Raxus Prime in an FFG adventure.

Aliens can be transplanted to anywhere in the galaxy. WEG Star Wars gave Ewok as a player template option, with the caveat that they had been transported off Endor at some point after the Imperials began construction of the second Death Star.

Heck, the now disfunctional EU had a Jawa jedi....

That required a deep dig. Apparently, there was also a Hutt Jedi, a Droid Jedi (Skippy!), a Vampire Jedi and a Wampa (!) Jedi! More EU goodness at io9.com.

Anyway, if that's what you want to accept as canon, go for it, but you'd better be willing to bring Jedi Mickey into your game or else be labeled a hypocrite.

Just because you don't see their ships in the movies does it mean they don't have them? Do Gamoreans travel to other worlds? Or how about Ithorians? We don't see "their" ships anywhere....

I do include EU material in my argument and thus far I haven't seen anything that actually counters the evidence I've provided. Ithorian herd ships were introduced in, what? Graveyard of Alderaan? And Gamorreans seem to have mastered basic-level interstellar space flight.

None of the moisture farmers have ships, either. (If they did, they probably wouldn't be moisture farmers.)

They have aircraft that can hit trans-orbital altitude. While not technically a star ship, it's close enough that knowing how to fly one means you can fly the other. An X-Wing, anyway.

And yet they are magically able to keep enormous tracked vehicles functioning. Go ask someone who crews a tank or an APC how easy it is to keep an Abrams, a Bradley, or a Gavin running. Now imagine that you have an entire city built on those tracks, not just four guys, an engine, a couple guns, a computer, and some armor.

An Abrams tank is a horse-drawn carriage in comparison to your average Star Wars intergalactic vehicle.

You have a pretty weird idea of what constitutes “evidence” bro… Besides Wookieepedia is not really the purveyor of canon anymore now is it?

I guess that thing about Ewoks somehow had a bearing on your point? IT either was nonsense or it went completely over my head (that does happen from time to time.)

It does seem however that discussing this further with you is pretty much futile in so far that you seem to have made your mind up anyway, no matter what people say. Wonder how you dislike the Aqualish as a playable species seeing how they pretty much come from an equally uncivilized non technical society, as do the Dressellians for that matter… Oh and both have a visual gag factor that is pretty high…

Yeah, you’ve convinced me. From now on all I want is humans in my games anything else will be a hard sell to me both as a player as well as a GM.

Although since ACTUAL humans have not mastered interstellar sublight travel yet so I guess we too shouldn’t really be considered complex enough to be played in a fantasy RPG… Only our more advanced counterparts a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away would be.

Also, you seem to be oblivious that a system already exists for players to be hindered by and eventually shake off their primitive mindset (if this would even be the case) is already presented as part of the Dressellian PC. But I doubt this would be the case with Jawa.

They're one of the core signature species in the setting imo. In October 1977, all the kids were Jawas at Halloween. The were all the rage in the 70s....

Can confirm. I was THIIIIIIS close to being a Jawa for Halloween in '78 until I got a lightsaber and quickly converted my Jawa Robes into Obi-Wan robes.

A young Desslok....

Do you two remember the lightsabers that came out with Empire? They were plastic, hollow from end to end so that when you swung them they made the whistling noise like a lightsaber? So much fun ... though I usually got the blaster rifle instead cause that's what Leia used ... *sigh* if only we'd known Leia was going to be a Jedi too ...

You mean one of these? Man, Never had one, but I remember seeing them at the supermarket:

I would never dream of dating a jawa.

You mean one of these? Man, Never had one, but I remember seeing them at the supermarket:

I still have my Yoda Puppet!

You mean one of these? Man, Never had one, but I remember seeing them at the supermarket:

YES! OMG!! SQUEEE!!!!

I remember this one year we had a huge blizzard .... we had 5'6" of snowfall on the ground. My dad and I spend two days digging out the backyard to have all sorts of trenches and stuff to look like Hoth ... I lost my lightsaber until spring out there!

Brawn 1. Agility 2. Intellect 2. Cunning 3. Willpower 2 Presence 2 Jawas begin game with one free rank in mechanics

Are Jawa an attractive race for you?

Pervert...! You have a brown cloak fetish, don't you?

To weigh in on the discussion of how technological Jawas are, let me start by posting this story that will reinforce the point I am about to make.

http://gizmodo.com/5912640/real-life-tony-stark-turns-his-broken-down-car-into-a-motorcycle-to-escape-the-desert

I have a good understanding of a toaster. I know how it works, I know how to operate it, I even have a reasonably good knowledge of the specific parts used. If my toaster breaks tomorrow, I will have to go buy a new one.

"But wait! Here let me give you a second broken toaster and you can use the two of them to create a working toaster!"

No I can't. I guarantee that I can not take two different toasters, and make the parts from one work in the other even with modern day tools and google to help me. I would probably end up burning my apartment down. Now if I buy a new toaster and it actually needs to be assembled, I could do that probably. I could put all the parts where they belong by following the directions included. All the pieces are meant to go together, they fit properly and are designed to be assembled together.

Jawas are clearly very technologically minded, because while they don't craft anything from scratch because they don't have the facilities or resources for that, they can still manage to combine parts from dozens of different machines and make them fit together and work in a sand filled hot environment. Sand gets everywhere so it should be ruining all their machines, unless they are very well sealed up.

actually, anthropomorphized rodents make my skin crawl, I think they're hideous looking but if they happen to turn you on, who am I to judge, we all have our own standards of beauty

who am I to judge, we all have our own standards of beauty

Well said!

But with the legends changeover we don't know what they look like anymore. Who knows, they could be a whole race of glowy-eyed little supermodels.

My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think I heard mention that the novelizations of the movies could be considered canon except where explicitly contradicted by the official canon sources. The Episode IV novel described the Jawas as being smelly rat creatures beneath their robes. If the source can be believed, that would make it canon. But until we get an explicit answer, we can only speculate.

I think Tattooine being a backwater planet is exactly why so many characters during the Empire were either from, visiting, hiding out at, or something similar there. It's essentially the perfect place to get as far away from Empire rule as possible while still being able to get supplies with ease and having access to a major hyperlane.

Lol, no kidding. That and every criminal being compare to "Jabba the Hutt"...or all Hutts named "XXX the Hutt"...or stormtroopers...or ...

I'd never play a Jawa. It would be like playing a Kobold or a Rat Swarm.

Then again, maybe it's because I never get to play (always GM) that I've never gotten to play the types of characters I'd really want to play. Maybe, if I had my fill, I'd consider a Jawa...after a Weequay, Zabrak, Duro, Wookiee, Twi-lek, Bith, Gotal...

HEY! One of my favorite characters was Konimble the Swashbuckling Kobold who managed to become Pirate King of the Iced Seas! How dare you insult his scaliness!