7 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Again, Palpatine was more than content to let the last few Jedi live out their years in misery and irrelevance, because he was at that point confident that they posed no threat to his plans.

I have a slightly different view - I think Palpatine did fear the Jedi and their power. Didn't he say as much when talking with Vader about Luke in Ep V? I don't think Palpatine was wasting the resources to destroy any place that saw a Jedi or had a connection to the Jedi (and in fact with Rebels we know that isn't the case as Lothal is not wiped out) but he does have the Inquisitors and Vader to deal with such things. And as you say, bounty hunters as well.

Or maybe Sidious didn't really worry about the Jedi until Luke appeared and caused a "disturbance in the Force"?

Also, let's not forget that RPGs are meant to cast the PCs as heroes - and maybe those heroes are surviving Jedi working against the Empire.

In the Force and Destiny game I play, we're all survivors of Order 66 - essentially Padawans who got away as their Masters sacrificed themselves - and now they're hoping to ensure people remember the Jedi and that the Force is still with them. We have two campaign antagonists in the form of Inquisitors and it's been a blast so far.

Having an Empire like that - the overly sadistic type - doesn't make for a good story, really. Plus, with the Rebellion in the mix, if the Empire acts that way it could give legitimacy to the Rebels, and push more people into the Rebel ranks.

Casting the PCs as heroes is one thing, but imo even more important is that if you prevent use of any obvious force powers and lightsabers by brutal massacres, you drive those PCs out of FaD and right into retirement or AoR. Which is from a narrative standpoint terrible when you actually wanted to play FaD. Doing everything to make force sensitives feel like soldiers and stop caring about individual loss of life was a great strategy for the clone wars, but it seems like a poor one for a game table which wants to explore force sensitive characters in a cinematic setting and larger than life characters. But hey, at least it could drive people to the rebellion in spades, which would allow you to have plenty of larger battles long before endor as the rebels become far less understaffed and underfunded. So if you want to go for a full Apocalypse Now AoR campaign …the tone sounds about right.

4 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Casting the PCs as heroes is one thing, but imo even more important is that if you prevent use of any obvious force powers and lightsabers by brutal massacres, you drive those PCs out of FaD and right into retirement or AoR. Which is from a narrative standpoint terrible when you actually wanted to play FaD. Doing everything to make force sensitives feel like soldiers and stop caring about individual loss of life was a great strategy for the clone wars, but it seems like a poor one for a game table which wants to explore force sensitive characters in a cinematic setting and larger than life characters. But hey, at least it could drive people to the rebellion in spades, which would allow you to have plenty of larger battles long before endor as the rebels become far less understaffed and underfunded. So if you want to go for a full Apocalypse Now AoR campaign …the tone sounds about right.

Both of the Jedi (one was a Knight that walked away during the Clone Wars, the other a Padawan from Obi-wan's hidden academy on Yavin 4) are members of the Rebel Alliance. Another player is a Spy: Slicer. So it is a heavily AoR themed campaign. I've got 2 players who are not part of the Rebellion but work for it and come from the Edge side of things. So it's a very mixed campaign. And I hope to explore the themes of each line. I don't have time to come up with most of the game planing myself so I plan on running most of the campaign from FFG published adventures (the module books as well as adventures in the core books and GM kits) so this will happen naturally.

I do want a cinematic setting with larger than life PCs and there will be epic confrontations with the Empire and costs and sacrifices and loss involved. I just don't think brutal massacres on a recurring basis really do much for the tone or fun of the game. A few appropriate significant events in the campaign will hopefully do the trick.

54 minutes ago, Jedi Ronin said:

I think Palpatine did fear the Jedi and their power. Didn't he say as much when talking with Vader about Luke in Ep V?... Or maybe Sidious didn't really worry about the Jedi until Luke appeared and caused a "disturbance in the Force"?

I think it was a combination of the latter, and of him being "the son of Skywalker." Palpatine knew that Luke would be powerful, and have a very personal connection to his valued apprentice. It's why he was immediately on board with the idea of turning Luke: he knew that Luke could potentially become even more powerful than his father. I would say that the reason Luke couldn't be allowed to become a Jedi was less to do with fearing the Jedi and more from fearing the Skywalker bloodline, specifically.

5 hours ago, Jedi Ronin said:

I have a slightly different view - I think Palpatine did fear the Jedi and their power. Didn't he say as much when talking with Vader about Luke in Ep V? I don't think Palpatine was wasting the resources to destroy any place that saw a Jedi or had a connection to the Jedi (and in fact with Rebels we know that isn't the case as Lothal is not wiped out) but he does have the Inquisitors and Vader to deal with such things. And as you say, bounty hunters as well.

Or maybe Sidious didn't really worry about the Jedi until Luke appeared and caused a "disturbance in the Force"?

I took his concern being more that Luke was taking an active role in resisting his rule of the galaxy, and was showing every sign of being just as powerful as his father could have been prior to the Duel on Mustafar. Sidious even said to Yoda just prior to their fight in RotS that Anakin would become more powerful than either of them, and they were like the two most powerful Force users around. So the last thing he'd want is someone with Anakin's raw potential working against him.

There was an Infinities comic where Luke (after failing to blow up the Death Star above Yavin 4) did actually fully train under Yoda, and the Emperor had every right to be worried about the sort of Jedi Knight that Luke could become, especially since he didn't have nearly the emotional hang-ups that Anakin had at a similar age.

The other Jedi Padawans/Knights/Masters that had survived Order 66, he was content to let them be, so long as they kept to the shadows and didn't actively try to oppose him. Kanan Jarrus is a prime example of this, being able to survive quite a while prior to the events of A New Dawn by staying under the radar and not advertising his Jedi status; the moment he openly stood up to the Empire, the Grand Inquisitor got involved.