3 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

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.

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.

Lol ok I thought it was something dumb like that. Thanks for looking that up for me it has been many years since I bought that book. This is the kind of stuff that was pulled in novels for convenience of narration. Zahn apparently thought a translator or protocol droid was too much trouble.

2 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

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.

I think that trying to only get a movie pace isn't going to work as you said. There is just too much exposure to the world to have but be 100% like the movies, but minimizing the damage is something I think that can help. Every time the game gets bogged down in earth analogues, too much detail, or boring mundane routine it's a hit on immersion and tone.

4 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

13 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.

Even more complicated. Ralrracheen's speech impediment made his Shyriiwook easier to understand by speakers of Basic. I'm pretty sure his dialogue had different markers in the text rather than quotation marks. Brackets maybe?

1 minute ago, rogue_09 said:

Even more complicated. Ralrracheen's speech impediment made his Shyriiwook easier to understand by speakers of Basic. I'm pretty sure his dialogue had different markers in the text rather than quotation marks. Brackets maybe?

Yeah I think that was a wrongheaded move for what needed to be accomplished as far as information there. I feel like it was unnecessarily weird. I can't remember exactly what was being discussed but that scene was the penultimate section before I put the book down permanently. I felt like Thrawn was doing things like he had read the script, the C'boath character seemed pretty dumb, and that book was the first time I remember seeing someone referencing Yoda fighting, which was terrible to me.

5 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

Yeah I think that was a wrongheaded move for what needed to be accomplished as far as information there. I feel like it was unnecessarily weird. I can't remember exactly what was being discussed but that scene was the penultimate section before I put the book down permanently. I felt like Thrawn was doing things like he had read the script, the C'boath character seemed pretty dumb, and that book was the first time I remember seeing someone referencing Yoda fighting, which was terrible to me.

If you ever want to give it another shot, I recommend the Dark Horse Comics version of the Thrawn trilogy. Those are my all-time favorite Star Wars comics.

This is a great example of how even real purists can disagree about what feels like OT Star Wars. To me, the Thrawn trilogy comes pretty close to nailing it, and it was easy for me to ignore details like Ralrracheen's speech impediment, but clearly for others those things can get in the way.

1 minute ago, DaverWattra said:

This is a great example of how even real purists can disagree about what feels like OT Star Wars. To me, the Thrawn trilogy comes pretty close to nailing it, and it was easy for me to ignore details like Ralrracheen's speech impediment, but clearly for others those things can get in the way.

Yeah and this topic is difficult for me because I don't enjoy these tastes, I just have them. I try to understand that others have the same condition, and be polite, but sometimes the dialogue just gets nasty and you can't argue the points without emotion. I appreciate your viewpoint.

15 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Yeah and this topic is difficult for me because I don't enjoy these tastes, I just have them. I try to understand that others have the same condition, and be polite, but sometimes the dialogue just gets nasty and you can't argue the points without emotion. I appreciate your viewpoint.

Some even passive-aggressively or just blatantly insult others who don’t share their views. (And some do it both ways.)

I recently met a new player who actually shares my views on the setting. I noticed in talking with this person that similar to me he was born early enough to have seen Star Wars when it wasn't referred to as ANH, and grew up with the notion of Star Wars that I did. Watching Episode 2 recently it did occur to me how much this could be an issue of generational differences between Star Wars fans, as the bulk of my players grew up with the prequels as their first exposure to Star Wars. Perhaps I would be better off saying the Original Trilogy Feel: The No No List.

There can be some of that, but to be honest the movie always had a lot of different things to different people even to start with. Some loved the hive of scum and villany where cutting off an arm or shooting someone dead barely raised eyebrows.

I speak not as someone who saw Star Wars on the first day, as I had to queue up three times before I got in to see it !

3 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I recently met a new player who actually shares my views on the setting. I noticed in talking with this person that similar to me he was born early enough to have seen Star Wars when it wasn't referred to as ANH, and grew up with the notion of Star Wars that I did. Watching Episode 2 recently it did occur to me how much this could be an issue of generational differences between Star Wars fans, as the bulk of my players grew up with the prequels as their first exposure to Star Wars. Perhaps I would be better off saying the Original Trilogy Feel: The No No List.

36 minutes ago, Darzil said:

There can be some of that, but to be honest the movie always had a lot of different things to different people even to start with. Some loved the hive of scum and villany where cutting off an arm or shooting someone dead barely raised eyebrows.

I speak not as someone who saw Star Wars on the first day, as I had to queue up three times before I got in to see it !

Darzil is correct here. I too remember watching ANH back in 1977 when it was simply called Star Wars . However, that does not mean I feel the same way you do about what is or is not " Star Wars ". Therefore, the issue is not a generational one.

17 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

I too remember watching ANH back in 1977 when it was simply called Star Wars . However, that does not mean I feel the same way you do about what is or is not " Star Wars ". Therefore, the issue is not a generational one.

Agreed. I was 14, it was my first date. Even then I knew the universe was bigger than what was on-screen.

On ‎12‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 0:17 PM, Darzil said:

There can be some of that, but to be honest the movie always had a lot of different things to different people even to start with. Some loved the hive of scum and villany where cutting off an arm or shooting someone dead barely raised eyebrows.

I speak not as someone who saw Star Wars on the first day, as I had to queue up three times before I got in to see it !

Yeah I agree that it's different things to different people, and that's why in order to have a product I could enjoy as I did the movies I had to look at what elements were coming in unchecked and put up the filter. In looking through Legends content you can see that what they most often did not understand is that even though you can do something it does not automatically follow that you should. I wish Lucas film had put in a requirement in those days to have the works edited from the standpoint of what they were introducing, and have someone putting a check on much of that stuff that went in as path of least resistance creativity.

The most problematic part of what I was doing here in this thread is that other people extrapolate what they want from Star Wars just like I do, and some people extrapolate stuff to me that is offensive to the setting as I see it. But I guess to some people Jabba having sex with his dancers just screams Star Wars to them.

3 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

Yeah I agree that it's different things to different people, and that's why in order to have a product I could enjoy as I did the movies I had to look at what elements were coming in unchecked and put up the filter. In looking through Legends content you can see that what they most often did not understand is that even though you can do something it does not automatically follow that you should. I wish Lucas film had put in a requirement in those days to have the works edited from the standpoint of what they were introducing, and have someone putting a check on much of that stuff that went in as path of least resistance creativity.

The most problematic part of what I was doing here in this thread is that other people extrapolate what they want from Star Wars just like I do, and some people extrapolate stuff to me that is offensive to the setting as I see it. But I guess to some people Jabba having sex with his dancers just screams Star Wars to them.

I think they kind of DID put in some editorial stuff when they set up the different levels of canon and put a guy in charge that said what was and wasnt canon.

Just now, tunewalker said:

I think they kind of DID put in some editorial stuff when they set up the different levels of canon and put a guy in charge that said what was and wasnt canon.

For sure. I wasn't being specific but I meant in the time before that when they first started licensing novels and what not. Good point though.

On 12/07/2017 at 5:20 PM, Archlyte said:

But I guess to some people Jabba having sex with his dancers just screams Star Wars to them.

You're obsessed with slug sexuality. You keep bringing this up again and again and again.

Like someone telling everyone all the time they're totally not gay at all.

Don't google jabba or slug sex, please don't....what has been seen can not be unseen...

On 10/8/2017 at 3:35 PM, Maelora said:

So following canon is fine, if that's your thing, but that's a concept that's always changing anyway. This is an RPG, so every table can decide if there are Grey Jedi or midichondria-whatsits or whatever. Other sci-fi has liberally borrowed from Star Wars over the years (the original 'Mass Effect' is essentially Drew Karpyshyn's love-letter to the series) and has liberally borrowed from other sources itself. Is 'Star Wars' a children's show like 'Droids' or 'Caravan of Courage'? Is it a young adult cartoon series like 'Rebels' or 'Clone Wars'? Is it straight-up sci-fi horror like 'Death Troopers' and 'Red Harvest'? It can be all these things, or none of them.

I love hearing about other people's games and interpretations, even on threads where I just lurk, but let's not get 'purer than thou', huh? (or the FFG Forum will literally blank out every word we write and we'll just be reading stars , so **** ****!)

"What is" and "What Isn't" Star Wars as an RPG is something I really haven't thought about in detail, and the 7 (so far) pages of "No-No List" discussion (minus the Jabba derailment) has been very instructive as what is "appropriate", "tone", "style", "intended audience", "explicit vs. implicit themes" and so much more. This is something I will bring up in a separate thread at a later time, as I need to figure out some of this for my GiorgioVerse WIP campaign.

On 10/17/2017 at 10:33 PM, Archlyte said:

I have been trying out some things along the lines of this topic.

• Serious gore or torture happens off-screen except for needed moments of dialogue.

I agree that dialogue, especially in the prequels, can be tortuous.

I think there are a few different kinds of Star Wars fans, and I am one of the older Original Trilogy oriented fans who looks to capture the magic of episodes IV and V specifically. There are also people who see Star Wars as just Sci-Fi and therefore anything is really game. There are still others who feel like you can extrapolate anything you like and it fits as long as you like it. The latter two types seem to be the ones I have the most trouble with, as they see it as offensive to filter out material that they find unobjectionable. I really don't have a choice though, If I'm going to enjoy it then it has to at least be an effort toward hitting the original marks in style.

I should have specified in the beginning of the thread that really only people looking to emulate IV and V's style would find this useful.

Yes, yes, by this time, we’re well aware of your disdain for “less discerning casuals.”

On 10/9/2017 at 2:25 PM, Maelora said:

My favourite setting was what became known as 'Mystara'. It's the only metaplot in my 38 years of gaming that I actually thought worked.

Clues :

Red Box

Mystara

Dragonlance

Forgotten Realms

Dark Sun; always wanted to play

Eberron; it came out when I already had too many pies in the oven. Perhaps in the far future I will run a Pathfinder 2nd Edition campaign of it.

Star Frontiers/Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World; to young to afford them; going to get them all as PDFs one day...

Question:

-At what age did I start RPG-ing?

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

Yes, yes, by this time, we’re well aware of your disdain for “less discerning casuals.”

Let it go. People have opinions. Different strokes.

31 minutes ago, Vondy said:

Let it go. People have opinions. Different strokes.

The thing of it is, I get that. Logic suggests that someone who routinely insults others for those different opinions doesn’t.

But, yeah...I’m the one who should have a Frozen moment.

1 hour ago, Giorgio said:

Clues :

Red Box

Mystara

Dragonlance

Forgotten Realms

Dark Sun; always wanted to play

Eberron; it came out when I already had too many pies in the oven. Perhaps in the far future I will run a Pathfinder 2nd Edition campaign of it.

Star Frontiers/Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World; to young to afford them; going to get them all as PDFs one day...

Question:

-At what age did I start RPG-ing?

Ah, all that applied to me too, but I played the **** out of Star Frontiers. Such a bright, glamorous, clean sci-fi world. So very different from our SW game. I was such an innocent then

'Dragonlance' in particular influenced me hugely, and you can see why I loved Dragon Age and Mass Effect so much. A focus on character, personality, motivations, and with romance? And Larry Elmore art! Sign me up for that. It blew my mind in 1984, the same year I went from wanting to be Princess Leia to just wanting her...