EDIT: You plebian, Brad . They're totally, completely, hopelessly in love, that's what makes it "AAAAAWWWWWW!!!" Which is so much better than just hot chicks kissing!

Yeah. That’s

EVEN MORE MUCH HOTTER.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to … go … again … nevermind.

To be honest, Marcy, the binary morality aspect is what I think went wrong with the whole thing too, and why George Lucas seems to contradict himself all the time in the OT. If you look at how the Jedi behave, and what they choose to do, it's far more aligned to Yin and Yang behaviors - With the fundamental notions of the Dark Side (oddly) being associated with the Yin influence of sustained existence (evidenced through Anakin falls being motivated by keeping loved ones alive, and Vader and the Empire's motivation to keep an Ordered universe) while the Light Side shows the creative desire of change (through the healthy life/death cycle of the Jedi and the force for revolution of the Rebellion) through the Yang.

Because he chose to put heavy Good/Evil connotations on the Force, it got confusing to look at exclusively, and subsequent people ran with alternate ideas to what George considered the fundamental focus.

(Aieee, my eyes are melting! The pink, it burnsss...!)

But srsly, yeah, it's an odd mix of Abrahamic good and evil, and the conflicting Eastern spirituality. It seemed to contradict itself all the time. I mean, the entire premise of the pre-sequels was that 'Jedi can't fall in love' - but everything prior and after that show Jedi falling in love and raising normal families just dandy.

One of the main reasons we rewrote everything was to make our world more internally consistent. We gave a lot of thought to how each of our Factions acted in terms of morality, social considerations and behaviour.

That's kind of the angle I was thinking of for my character next time our group starts over. Someone with untapped potential who finds a holochron. . . a sith holochron.

See, the Holochron, it's smart - it could go all mustache twirly and cackle like Snidely Whiplash, but it wants to play the long corruption game. The knowledge and advice isn't necessarily "Go murder that person and gain strength through your anger", but more of a "That stormtrooper is in your way. You could easily push him off the balcony to his death with a simple nudge of Move. It'd be way easier and far less risk than sneaking up to him and taking him out."

So the character wouldn't necessarily be a bad guy, but perhaps a bit hard and expedient with the best of intentions - and nobody to show him how it's suppose to be done. I think a slow, completely accidental fall to the dark would be interesting.

Oddly enough, Desslok, one of the 4E D&D characters I GMed for was a non-evil Infernal Warlock, who made a pact with the Devil to get a little imp familiar. It would give her power and whisper in her ear, and everything it said was a kind of weird reverse-psychology. It would actively get her to think about the consequences of her actions, warn her about the pitfalls of taking the pragmatic, expedient approach. In other words, by acting as a Jiminy Cricket conscience, it did the precise opposite of what everyone expected. It had instructions to play the long game - the Devil didn't want to trick this person into evil... he wanted it to be a conscious choice, something that the warlock considered carefully and logically, and made a very firm and informed decision to take the Evil path after lots of careful consideration...

he wanted it to be a conscious choice, something that the warlock considered carefully and logically, and made a very firm and informed decision to take the Evil path after lots of careful consideration...

Well, that's my (extremely nebulous) background re-written! Consider this stolen!

Kyla, I just have to say: you're awesome! Don't let no one give you no guff about your text color ! Pink is great, anyway!

Awwww! Thanks! *hugs*

Well, that's my (extremely nebulous) background re-written! Consider this stolen!

Glad I could inspire!

Vanitas, the sith temptress in our SW game, is totally sincere about the Dark Side being 'good', and very committed to helping others break the shackles and conformity of the Light Side. 'Do as thou will is the whole of the law'.

A lot of 'evil' people don't actually see themselves as evil. Many see themselves as the good guys, even.

*hugs back*

*flies into jealous Dark Side rage!*

*Marcy's stormtroopers quickly do an about-turn and walk off in the other direction!*

*hugs back*

Purple is so much worse than pink.

*hugs back*

Hey now, none of that friendliness here.

Well it could be worse!

*hugs back*

*flies into jealous Dark Side rage!*

*Marcy's stormtroopers quickly do an about-turn and walk off in the other direction!*

Aww, Marcy! I'll hug you, too! *Hugz Marcy*

*hugs back*

Purple is so much worse than pink.

What an odd thread this has become.

That's mostly my fault. Marcy was good and only posted one little off-topic thing, and then I blew it up .

Sorry, folks! My bad!

What an odd thread this has become.

I get blamed for everything around here...!

Hey, didn't I just take the blame for this?

EDIT: Okay, but seriously, I'll stop now.

Unless the response is REALLY funny...

Then, when he is calm and at peace, he uses the Force to pick up a speeder truck and drop it on a crowd full of innocent civilians.

Because that's a lot of Conflict points, even for the GM's pet PC...

Innocent? I believe the innocents were on Alderaan.

Yeah, I know, I was just being a smartass again.

Old argument, but it just shows the holes in Lucas' concepts for me. Do Jedi get Conflict for Hiroshima-style actions? Is killing lots of people justified if it prevents the death of lots and lots of people later?

By and large, the movie heroes seem to get a free pass for all that stuff, because they're movie heroes. Kenobi's actions in the first film look pretty shady when you've watched the third one.

So meh, if Lucas can do that, so can I. So we don't use Morality or Conflict. Mostly because I grew out of endless alignment arguments with D&D and have no interest whatsoever in micromanaging my players.

Death Star 2, were they innocents?

Obligatory Clerks video :

Then, when he is calm and at peace, he uses the Force to pick up a speeder truck and drop it on a crowd full of innocent civilians.

Because that's a lot of Conflict points, even for the GM's pet PC...

Innocent? I believe the innocents were on Alderaan.

I'd say you had innocents in both incidents. There are certainly rational reasons why the Death Star had to be destroyed, but the same can be said of Tarkin's Fear Doctrine (Is that even canon anymore) leading to the conclusion that blowing up one planet would spare a hundred more the same fate. The Empire seemed big on the kill/imprison one to warn a hundred technique.

I'm pretty sure the guys cleaning the toilets and cooking food on the Death Star would be categorized as innocent by most. They blew up the Death Star to get at the few people willing to make the decision to use it, and Alderaan was destroyed for the few people who founded and pushed for the creation of the Alliance. Arguably both disproportionate responses with unnecessarily high body counts. Have to give it for Alderaan for the most involved folks killed for being on the wrong planet. Imagine being that poor sap just picking up a load of Nerf meat for a chain of restaurants and going "Huh, that's a new moon... what's that green light.."

To add to the actual thread, and the above kind of hints at it, I always have to divide intention from outcome to really weigh "morality", with or without impact of the Force. Tarkin destroyed Alderaan to make a point. Luke destroyed the Death Star to spare another world the same fate. Both killed a significant number of people, or more accurately, were responsible for their demise in Tarkin's case, but one had a more goodly reason when judged by common conventions of morality in most societies. I'd award less Conflict to Mr. Skywalker for that reason, but he'd get some. Even when you justify it and accept you had to do it, it'd still weigh on you.

And that's honestly as far as I take it. Some powers have inherent drawbacks to using one pip color versus another. If a character exists on the Paragon side of Light/Dark, I'll expect Strain expended to go so strongly against what is the best representation of your "philosophy of the Force" the system provides. I don't typically flip the Destiny Point unless it's drastically out of character. Otherwise, I tend to rule it based on intention/outcome. Using the Force to terrorize a Stormtrooper into fleeing a scene to avoid killing him wouldn't generate Conflict. Using it to inspire his sense of compassion to act aggressively and kill his superior who just summarily executed someone, would generate Conflict in my opinion. So far it hasn't caused many problems in my groups balance wise, but I have certainly played with folks who would find some way to exploit it.

Yes the Tarkin Doctrine is Canon. If I remember right it is in the Novel Tarkin.

Death Star 2, were they innocents?

Obligatory Clerks video :

-snip-

One word: droids.

I'd award less Conflict to Mr. Skywalker for that reason, but he'd get some. Even when you justify it and accept you had to do it, it'd still weigh on you.

I totally agree, but we never see any of that in the movies. I was seven and it didn't even cross my mind.

In fact, when we did this whole MarcyVerse concept (which sounds weird because we all contributed to it) I asked every player for a list of the things they didn't like or would change about Star Wars. The overwhelming winner was 'the Kardashians own the galaxy', (i.e. that SW isn't about one's own bravery or moral choices, it's about having the right name, the right genes and being a special snowflake.)

I knew that one was coming, we'd discussed it enough, but the next two slightly surprised me:

2) the galaxy bends over backwards so the heroes never have to make tough moral choices (but hey, it's a kid's film!)

3) redemption is cheap, morality is cheap, sacrifice is cheap.

It's the third one that comes into play here. A lot of players felt that nobody of any import ever dies - redshirts are casually redshirted ('Hi Luke, remember me? I'm your best buddy Biggs!'), but anyone of importance comes back as Casper the Friendly Force Ghost. The Death Star gets blown up, but they just build another one, Then another one. And yet another one. And doubtlessly more to come. 'Fall to the dark side'? Oh, no matter, you'll just 'unfall' at some point and everyone will automatically forgive you with absolutely zero consequences. Alderaan gets blown up, but its essentially just redshirted because nobody ever mentioned it before and everyone forgets it ever existed five minutes after Ben has his 'oh, the humanity!' outburst.

So I guess I took that to heart and made Alderaan the entire focus of the campaign. Nobody in history blew up a core world before, let alone just 'for the Evuls'. This was Year Zero for the galaxy. It's what forms the Alliance, splinters the Empire into warring factions, screws over all the Sensitives who feel it, and tears apart the galactic fabric of the Force. It's an open wound in reality; it's Hiroshima and the Holocaust and every other horrible thing rolled into one. It changed everything, forever.

So yeah, we may not measure conflict or morality, but these are the big questions, the kind of moral consequences we wanted to answer. (And with that depressing thought, I'm off to bed )

One word: droids.

And yet the movies show us that even the simplest droid is capable of feeling fear, affection and pain.

It's okay to blow them up if we made them in the first place?

One word: droids.

And yet the movies show us that even the simplest droid is capable of feeling fear, affection and pain.

It's okay to blow them up if we made them in the first place?

I'll field that one: No. No it is not.