On ‎11‎/‎1‎/‎2017 at 7:14 PM, whafrog said:

Because your premise is self-serving and misguided. There's nothing casual about my enjoyment of Star Wars. I really really like it. The difference between us seems to be more about inclusion vs exclusion. I think I have an expanded view of what Star Wars can be. Star Wars is broad enough to include all themes found in westerns, spy novels, byzantine political drama, film noir, and seedy/sexy angst-ridden tragedies...among others. Since you seem to find it important, my view is *strongly* supported by what is implied or directly on display in TCW and Rebels.

In contrast, your view seems to be rather myopic . You appear to be stuck in the opening scroll of E4. So calling the rest of us "casual" is so far off the mark as to be laughable.

And meanwhile, I still get to play the game -- and enjoy it *as* Star Wars -- with people who aren't even Star Wars fans. Imagine that.

It was just a description. The rest of that baggage wasn't indicated. There is a spectrum of fidelity to which I am referring. You can say that it doesn't exist but I think it's obvious that I'm not going to agree. As for the myopic thing, that's like saying that because there are other fuel injectors on the market I don't need the right ones for my car. I guess you want to use derision and insults and that's ok, but it tells me what I want to know about your arguments.

On ‎11‎/‎1‎/‎2017 at 3:22 PM, Nytwyng said:

C'mon now. Let's not be disingenuous. It's not just the use of "casual" (although more on that in a bit), but your entire context of its use:

You've agreed that how "something feels like Star Wars" can vary among people, then turn around and say this. (Here's where the more I mentioned above comes in.) It reads an awful lot like those challenges we hear about more and more, where people declare others to not be a "real" fan of something if they don't share all identical views of that work. "Gatekeeping," it's called. And, I must say, the so-called gatekeepers tend towards the toxic end of their particular fandoms.

As a comics fan, I used to participate in the forum of a well-known, once quite popular writer/artist. The regular posters there (and the writer/artist) would routinely refer to those who didn't know chapter and verse of characters' histories or weren't intense collectors as "civilians." They seemed to take pride in setting themselves at a different tier than other fans...all the while mystified as to why comics fandom was viewed as insular and exclusionary, and was hemorrhaging readers. "Civilians." "Casuals." It all smacks to me of elevating oneself above one's fellow fans in a condescending manner.

Then there's:

The clear implication here is that taking different approaches to a game with its roots in a property we all share an affection for makes one "less discerning."

I can give the benefit of the doubt that you may not have intended the post to come across that way, but now, after a few of us have remarked on it, it looks like you're doubling down.

At any rate, I wish you the best in your gaming endeavors.

Thanks for pure argument against the post with no discussion on the topic itself.

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

Thanks for pure argument against the post with no discussion on the topic itself.

Except, of course, that I have briefly contributed to the topic shortly after it began. Sorry if it was too “casual” or not “discerning” enough to be memorable.

So I feel the need to get the thread back on track. In a positive manner, I was looking for descriptions of what people do when they run SWRPG to try and make editing decisions as to what they include in order to try and achieve a Star Wars feel. It's obvious that this process involves exclusion, and explanation of why exclusion is chosen. Rather than defense of material that is excluded by individual posters, what I am curious about is the editing decisions that you make in presenting your content at the table. Alternately, I would be interested in what you include as must-haves to try and keep the game in a very movie-like feel.

I start with a place on Earth with an extreme environment, exaggerate it, make it a planet and give it some effects to skills. Then make sure anywhere there is an encounter is interesting and changes combat from normal. Characters are good wanting to do good, bad wanting to do bad, or bad finding it currently profitable to do good, or just following orders. Everyone has an agenda.

We tend to run about 80% "classic" Star Wars; that is, primarily original trilogy material and feel (now with the occasional prequel or Rogue One reference thrown in), or a throwaway to something else. For example, Ryan, the bounty hunter played by my wife, wields a EL-16HFE blaster rifle, which fires a blue bolt (it's the same as the one used by Poe in "The Force Awakens").

The other 20% are "special" episodes. I usually throw them in as a homage to something else. So it might have a horror theme and take place in an old Sith temple, rife with nasty traps and entombed spirits of ancient Sith Lords. Or it might be a sci-fi suspense thriller, set on an abandoned space station, crawling with some alien beastie ala "Alien" or "Pitch Black" (or that episode of "Rebels" set in the asteroid field with the creepy, light-hating creatures). Perhaps a "heist" episode that we run in "flash forward" style. Could be a competitions - a sabacc tournament, or a swoop race. It might be a jail-break episode, or something with a period feel, ala "Firefly". We also run the occasional "military" episode, when I heavily borrow from movies such as "Saving Private Ryan", "Tora Tora Tora", or "Band of Brothers".

I'm lucky that I have a group that is happy to play any genre in Star Wars, as long as I file off the serial numbers.

On 17.9.2017 at 3:27 AM, kaosoe said:

On behavior I try to discourage (though I don't make a rule of it), it corpse looting. Even for games other than Star Wars, it just seems... uncool.

To this end, I prefer to have NPCs give out loot, rather than have it found after killing a foe.

I actually think corpse looting is great and very star wars like in the right situation.

One of the things about star wars is that usually combat happens in a context, with an agenda and within an environment which makes corpse looting undesirable. BUT there are great moments for that as well, prison brakes, taking away weapons or clothes from enemies, infiltration missions, piracy, etc

So basically as a GM you have to make sure that combat happens in the "right" circumstances. A character who gets chased by a brigade of stormtroopers will not stop to loot the guys he shot dead and you can easily maintain the movie atmosphere with building the correct scenes and encounters to fit the theme you want.

4 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

I actually think corpse looting is great and very star wars like in the right situation.

One of the things about star wars is that usually combat happens in a context, with an agenda and within an environment which makes corpse looting undesirable. BUT there are great moments for that as well, prison brakes, taking away weapons or clothes from enemies, infiltration missions, piracy, etc

So basically as a GM you have to make sure that combat happens in the "right" circumstances. A character who gets chased by a brigade of stormtroopers will not stop to loot the guys he shot dead and you can easily maintain the movie atmosphere with building the correct scenes and encounters to fit the theme you want.

I wonder though if by corpse looting what the other poster was referring to was playing the game out like a computer RPG where you of course loot every body because it is one of the few points of interface with the world. In computer games you can't interact with anything except that which is coded for you to be able to take/move/destroy. Some people play like they are in a computer game and like that very mechanical exploration and resource management play style. One of the great things about TTRPG is that you have a complete interface with the environment.

My current game I am both a very new GM with a bunch of very new players. I am pulling from just about everything to keep the game fun and exciting for my players. I only have 1 player that is set up for combat, and the other 3 are diplomats and spies (one commander that really wants to get a capital ship and I intend to give that to him at the right time) my story started out with the team on a big swamp moon orbiting a planet with minimal imperial presence, because a couple players were moving away I finished it up faster then intended and they kicked the empire off the planet just as the players that had to leave were leaving (had 6 now down to 4) then it became a big political campaign while dealing with being on the other foot as the empire became the insurgence and that is the main plot of the game, but each adventure that the team goes on I pull on all kinds of different movies and books, from Black Dog a movie about a trucker who was hired to deliver something while the company is actually a criminal organization trying to steal it and then claim insurance premiums from having it "stolen" to Treasure Island, I don't have Sex and the like visual at the table simply because I don't like going into those details at table no one is comfortable with that, but I do have references to it happening off screen, specifically **** and prostitution being implied or outright stated when the party comes to a group they need to save, but refuses to be grouped with some of the players allies because the allies remind the people being saved of earlier trauma's. The only drug use shown on screen so far has been drinking like in a cantina.

Truthfully I feel my games could use more focused direction some times and definitely have varied feelings from game to game simply because while I have a plan for the over arcing story as a very new GM I feel like I am still learning and I do feel like I am refining both my game and my story telling. I still ask after every game if my players are having fun/ are being challenged/ are excited for the next game, and they still say their only complaint is that we have to go home and stop playing. At the end of the day I think the number 1 priority is to make sure your players are having fun, gags are good and fit within star wars (especially sarcastic quips between players I think is an absolute must in less "serious" situations) and truthfully the part I feel most necessary is to maintain the fantasy of star wars, between giant monsters, huge castles (space stations) run by evil people and their minions and magic (tech or Force) protecting their troves all while they have a plan for world (planet, system, sector) domination. The very first movie had a Dark Lord aboard his castle (space station) who captured a princess that was saved by a farm boy that was recruited by a wizard and travels with a dog man and a rouge.... gotta keep that level of fantasy in mind, it doesnt have to be THAT but it's the reason I feel a lot of pure fantasy stuff is suited for star wars stuff. There are a lot of things that make star wars...... Star wars, you can include, exclude or mix which ever ones that you want i feel. (Players are currently on an agriculture planet as without imperial supplies the people of the planet they just "liberated" are now starting to run out of food and medicine)

On 11/4/2017 at 3:57 PM, Archlyte said:

So I feel the need to get the thread back on track. In a positive manner, I was looking for descriptions of what people do when they run SWRPG to try and make editing decisions as to what they include in order to try and achieve a Star Wars feel. It's obvious that this process involves exclusion, and explanation of why exclusion is chosen. Rather than defense of material that is excluded by individual posters, what I am curious about is the editing decisions that you make in presenting your content at the table. Alternately, I would be interested in what you include as must-haves to try and keep the game in a very movie-like feel.

My overall operating philosophy on keeping this game feeling like a Star Wars movie:

I look at the films that Lucas and company ripped off - Akira Kurosawa/samurai movies, monster movies, 1950s "jungle adventure" movies, Spaghetti Westerns, 1950s-1970s mobster/noir movies, and World War 2 commando or spy movies - and I emphasize that Star Wars is a space fantasy setting with a simple good vs. evil morality. If I'm running an adventure and it doesn't neatly fit into one of those categories, I'm doing something wrong.

Star Wars is a mash-up of Golden Age and early-to-mid New Hollywood tropes as well as ethics that a child can easily digest. This is not a bad thing. Bad guys can have interesting motivations and can be redeemed but when we start thinking "Well, Jabba the Hutt is sort of right..." you're falling out of Star Wars territory and into Trek territory. Evil is not mundane or banal, as it is in the real world. Every character fits comfortably in the D&D Alignment Chart though they have the freedom to change as long as they are willing to be redeemed... or to fall from grace in an interesting way. Han Solo started out as a drug-running mercenary but evolved into a freedom fighter. That arc is part of his character as he's a Rebel officer for two of the three films. Anakin Skywalker is the inverse of this in the prequels.

Edge of the Empire gives players the tools to play selfish, disreputable and flat-out immoral characters but there should be no confusion that what they're doing is unethical. I don't have a problem with Edge players playing an evil gangster. I do have a problem when they start justifying their actions as "good." Jabba the Hutt isn't a criminal and a murderer because Mama the Hutt didn't love him enough or Uncle Ziro got handsy. He's just selfish and wants to protect what he's got. Lean into the evil, don't justify it.

Rogue One really opened up the toolbox for playing a Rebel. Not everyone fighting the Empire is a scrappy white knight. While they're still on the side of "good," the method by which goals are reached are sometimes in conflict with Mon Mothma's noble vision. I'm okay with a player killing a potential leak or assassinating a high-level target, like Cassian. I'm not okay with a player (inadvertently) killing civilians like Saw Guerra.

Conflict and the dark side are important part of Force use as they act as both story and mechanical checks against abuse. Force powers are expensive but they're also powerful abilities that a character gets to keep, unlike, say, a ship. And when your only tool is Force choking the opposition, every problem becomes a neck to be choked. Players who want to play as Force sensitives have got to be willing to keep their worst instincts in check, else the game becomes very boring, very fast.

1 hour ago, Concise Locket said:

I look at the films that Lucas and company ripped off - Akira Kurosawa/samurai movies, monster movies, 1950s "jungle adventure" movies, Spaghetti Westerns, 1950s-1970s mobster/noir movies, and World War 2 commando or spy movies - and I emphasize that Star Wars is a space fantasy setting with a simple good vs. evil morality. If I'm running an adventure and it doesn't neatly fit into one of those categories, I'm doing something wrong.

Whole post was great but to me this may be the essence right here. You could probably boil the whole thing down to the two elements: Samurai/Spaghetti Western/WWII/Arthurian + Cinematic Presentation.

A whole bunch of exposition, routine day to day details, sci fi political or issues exploration are all things that will start to drag down the pace or throw off the feel of the game so that it won't feel as much like Star Wars. Cinematic is really the key. The balance between inhabiting the galaxy in a free form way and having a screenplay-like sense of detail is the test of it as I see it. Great insight, thank you.

16 hours ago, tunewalker said:

My current game I am both a very new GM with a bunch of very new players. I am pulling from just about everything to keep the game fun and exciting for my players. I only have 1 player that is set up for combat, and the other 3 are diplomats and spies (one commander that really wants to get a capital ship and I intend to give that to him at the right time) my story started out with the team on a big swamp moon orbiting a planet with minimal imperial presence, because a couple players were moving away I finished it up faster then intended and they kicked the empire off the planet just as the players that had to leave were leaving (had 6 now down to 4) then it became a big political campaign while dealing with being on the other foot as the empire became the insurgence and that is the main plot of the game, but each adventure that the team goes on I pull on all kinds of different movies and books, from Black Dog a movie about a trucker who was hired to deliver something while the company is actually a criminal organization trying to steal it and then claim insurance premiums from having it "stolen" to Treasure Island, I don't have Sex and the like visual at the table simply because I don't like going into those details at table no one is comfortable with that, but I do have references to it happening off screen, specifically **** and prostitution being implied or outright stated when the party comes to a group they need to save, but refuses to be grouped with some of the players allies because the allies remind the people being saved of earlier trauma's. The only drug use shown on screen so far has been drinking like in a cantina.

Truthfully I feel my games could use more focused direction some times and definitely have varied feelings from game to game simply because while I have a plan for the over arcing story as a very new GM I feel like I am still learning and I do feel like I am refining both my game and my story telling. I still ask after every game if my players are having fun/ are being challenged/ are excited for the next game, and they still say their only complaint is that we have to go home and stop playing. At the end of the day I think the number 1 priority is to make sure your players are having fun, gags are good and fit within star wars (especially sarcastic quips between players I think is an absolute must in less "serious" situations) and truthfully the part I feel most necessary is to maintain the fantasy of star wars, between giant monsters, huge castles (space stations) run by evil people and their minions and magic (tech or Force) protecting their troves all while they have a plan for world (planet, system, sector) domination. The very first movie had a Dark Lord aboard his castle (space station) who captured a princess that was saved by a farm boy that was recruited by a wizard and travels with a dog man and a rouge.... gotta keep that level of fantasy in mind, it doesnt have to be THAT but it's the reason I feel a lot of pure fantasy stuff is suited for star wars stuff. There are a lot of things that make star wars...... Star wars, you can include, exclude or mix which ever ones that you want i feel. (Players are currently on an agriculture planet as without imperial supplies the people of the planet they just "liberated" are now starting to run out of food and medicine)

So there is undoubtedly a thing which is fun (satisfying, gets the job done, inspires players) and is an RPG that uses Star Wars as its source material, but isn't really all that much like the cinematic experience. I am not trying to crap on the RPG home version of Star Wars, but rather I am looking for those elements that make the other thing, a very strongly cinematic version of the game, work to the highest level of fidelity possible.

I don't begrudge anyone the fun they have doing the game they do, but in this thread I was looking for the things that are congruent with the movies and which are the tools to get that feel. You sound like you do a lot of that in your game, and since the players are happy your game is undoubtedly a success it sounds like.

On 11/7/2017 at 11:30 AM, Archlyte said:

Whole post was great but to me this may be the essence right here. You could probably boil the whole thing down to the two elements: Samurai/Spaghetti Western/WWII/Arthurian + Cinematic Presentation.

If you really want to get nitty-gritty, the Arthurian sub-genre you're looking at are the French tales of Lancelot. Arthurian tales are across the board in terms of morality but the modern concept of the "moral white knight" originate from the Lancelot-Grail cycle.

2 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

If you really want to get nitty-gritty, the Arthurian sub-genre you're looking at are the French tales of Lancelot. Arthurian tales are across the board in terms of morality but the modern concept of the "moral white knight" originate from the Lancelot-Grail cycle.

Where is the SUPER LIKE button when I need it most. lol. Great point I agree 100%.

On 11/8/2017 at 2:49 PM, Archlyte said:

Where is the SUPER LIKE button when I need it most. lol. Great point I agree 100%.

This is almost a catch phrase now.

My player and I (who have been running a solo campaign for many years) stake a lot of importance on the OT Star Wars feel of our game. Here's what that means to us:

Cool approach Wattra.

9 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

My player and I (who have been running a solo campaign for many years) stake a lot of importance on the OT Star Wars feel of our game. Here's what that means to us:

--Money management doesn't feel like Star Wars to me. If we feel it would be cool for one of the PCs to have a particular piece of gear, the PC acquires it either on-screen or off-screen. We don't keep track of credits.

--More generally, gear shouldn't matter to most characters (with the exception of Boba Fett types). This applies doubly to Jedi. A Jedi's strength flows from the Force, not his/her lightsaber crystal. The Jedi in our game get basic lightsabers and that's it.

--The image of characters shooting up stimpacks feels very un-Star Warsy to me. Instead, the PCs in our game use a "recover" maneuver to gain the same mechanical effect stimpacks provide.

--Swearing was mentioned earlier: I like the Han Solo model of using "D---" and "H---" rather than "Sith spit" and "Bantha poo doo," but I agree, no F-word and no B-word in Star Wars.

--Some Force powers don't feel like "real Star Wars" to me: Misdirect, Imbue and Manipulate. We don't use these.

--The one thing we do do in my campaign that feels a bit more like a Prequel trilogy thing and less like "real Star Wars" is to focus on politics. But that can be done in a Star Wars-y way, I've found, and one of the PCs is a Politico who wants to become a senator.

Obviously it's a matter of taste what feels like "real Star Wars" to any given person, so I wouldn't criticize anyone else's choices, but these are my own preferences.

I think HEAVY money management isnt a thing, but money management is definitely a thing think about episode 4 where they negotiated with Han and had to see Luke's speeder for the upfront payment. Also Think Episode 1, but basically if it is a thing it needs to be a major Plot point like for a Smuggler who needs a lot of money to pay some one off, or needs to be the focus of a major adventure because of some form of despair.

8 hours ago, tunewalker said:

but money management is definitely a thing

...meh. Your examples are also good examples of "narrative money management". The amounts thrown around are just to give a sense of verisimilitude. They didn't bean-count before or after those scenes. They are basically "Despair, you have a money problem" or "Obligation, you have a money problem".

Some people do like a game where they track all their coinage, blaster shots, arrows, iron spikes... if I want that I'll play a video game, because a computer does it better and faster.

I'd prefer to treat money in my game more like World of Darkness, and mostly I do. We really only track the big ticket items, like "do I have enough to install a quad turret on my ship?"

22 minutes ago, whafrog said:

...meh. Your examples are also good examples of "narrative money management". The amounts thrown around are just to give a sense of verisimilitude. They didn't bean-count before or after those scenes. They are basically "Despair, you have a money problem" or "Obligation, you have a money problem".

Some people do like a game where they track all their coinage, blaster shots, arrows, iron spikes... if I want that I'll play a video game, because a computer does it better and faster.

I'd prefer to treat money in my game more like World of Darkness, and mostly I do. We really only track the big ticket items, like "do I have enough to install a quad turret on my ship?"

100% agreed, like I said if there is a money management issue it needs to be more plot driven than the usual bean counting style.

I'm on the same page with both of you. The type of money management I don't like to use is the type where (1) you keep close track of the PCs' total wealth and their individual purchases for all items they carry (2) the money and equipment available to the PCs has anywhere near as much of a role in setting their power level as their XP level does.

(2) seems to be the way the devs intended the FFG SWRPG to be played, but to me that's not Star Wars. Fortunately it's easy to largely omit the money-and-equipment part of the game they had in mind, and still end up with an excellent game.

On ‎11‎/‎29‎/‎2017 at 0:39 PM, DaverWattra said:

My player and I (who have been running a solo campaign for many years) stake a lot of importance on the OT Star Wars feel of our game. Here's what that means to us:

--Money management doesn't feel like Star Wars to me. If we feel it would be cool for one of the PCs to have a particular piece of gear, the PC acquires it either on-screen or off-screen. We don't keep track of credits.

--More generally, gear shouldn't matter to most characters (with the exception of Boba Fett types). This applies doubly to Jedi. A Jedi's strength flows from the Force, not his/her lightsaber crystal. The Jedi in our game get basic lightsabers and that's it.

--The image of characters shooting up stimpacks feels very un-Star Warsy to me. Instead, the PCs in our game use a "recover" maneuver to gain the same mechanical effect stimpacks provide.

--Swearing was mentioned earlier: I like the Han Solo model of using "D---" and "H---" rather than "Sith spit" and "Bantha poo doo," but I agree, no F-word and no B-word in Star Wars.

--Some Force powers don't feel like "real Star Wars" to me: Misdirect, Imbue and Manipulate. We don't use these.

--The one thing we do do in my campaign that feels a bit more like a Prequel trilogy thing and less like "real Star Wars" is to focus on politics. But that can be done in a Star Wars-y way, I've found, and one of the PCs is a Politico who wants to become a senator.

Obviously it's a matter of taste what feels like "real Star Wars" to any given person, so I wouldn't criticize anyone else's choices, but these are my own preferences.

What a great post. I agree with most of your ideas and I learned something from them so thank you. I love that you don't use Stimpaks, that's just an awesome idea. I don't know if I can pull off not doing accounting but I have to say you are right about that.

Starting a new campaign tomorrow and I will be using a lot of what was discussed on this thread that is in alignment with what I feel is good by putting it through a filter of whether it is like Movie/Game/Book with Movie being the highest standard and going from there. I feel books are actually the worst offenders because games and movies have to register a kind of fast, good impression whereas books are the reason for the Jabba wants to have sex with his dancers type stuff. Some of the pulp writers had very bad ideas.

Speaking of that does anyone here have a copy of Heir to the Empire? Does it describe Wookiees as being able to speak basic and Chewbacca being an anomaly because of a speech impediment? Did I remember that wrong or what?

8 hours ago, Archlyte said:

What a great post. I agree with most of your ideas and I learned something from them so thank you. I love that you don't use Stimpaks, that's just an awesome idea. I don't know if I can pull off not doing accounting but I have to say you are right about that.

Thanks! You have to have the right group of players to make it work. Some players really enjoy spending money and fitting out their characters in detail.

8 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Speaking of that does anyone here have a copy of Heir to the Empire? Does it describe Wookiees as being able to speak basic and Chewbacca being an anomaly because of a speech impediment? Did I remember that wrong or what?

It's the opposite: Ralrracheen had a speech impediment which allowed him to speak Basic.

I do think the Thrawn trilogy was quite good overall when it comes to the Star Wars feel, although I still go back and forth about the ysalamiri. Once Kevin J. Anderson started writing for Bantam, though, the whole Star Wars atmosphere went right out the window.

And yeah, the games have often been sort of a middle ground between movies and books, and a lot of them felt more Star Wars to me than the Prequel Trilogy did. Knights of the Old Republic is an inspiration to me, because it achieved the OT's "cinematic" feel at its moments of great drama, but it also slowed down and allowed the player to live within the world, which is something we only see a little of in the movies but is valuable.

I don't always insist on movie-level pacing in my game. My PCs get "side quests." For example, one time they were in the middle of a mission on Tatooine when they discovered that a human podracer pilot was using Battle Meditation to win races (which in my headcanon is a very rare ability for Force-users to have, as it's implied to be in KOTOR). To convince him to come train with the Jedi, they first had to convince his true love's possessive swoop gang-leader boyfriend to let her go, and then convince her Hutt owner to part with her (she was a slave).

All of this did connect with the main plot (the podracer's Battle Meditation-fueled nightmares were causing the Sand People to rise up in organized armies and attack civilized settlements), but many aspects of the story very much followed the "side quest" model.