4 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

It has pretty **** good ratings, actually:

https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/76tvtn/ratings_growth_in_canada_episode_3_breaks_records/

I also find calling it an "F bomb" deeply hilarious. Like people are afraid they'll summon an evil clown or something if they say it out loud, or just type it out.

I wasn’t impressed with what little I was able to watch. (I’m not paying for a streaming service just to watch one show.) This is the first Trek series in my life that I’ll never see a full episode of. (I turned the pilot on partway through.)

To be fair, if we type it out here, it would come out ****, which could be any number of words. At least by saying “f-bomb,” the word in question is clear.

4 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

I wasn’t impressed with what little I was able to watch. (I’m not paying for a streaming service just to watch one show.) This is the first Trek series in my life that I’ll never see a full episode of. (I turned the pilot on partway through.)

To be fair, if we type it out here, it would come out ****, which could be any number of words. At least by saying “f-bomb,” the word in question is clear.

I like it a lot. Beautifully shot. Quick paced. Little unnecessary exposition.

32 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

I like it a lot. Beautifully shot. Quick paced. Little unnecessary exposition.

Nothing about it felt particularly Trek-like to me. Didn’t even grab me enough to use the CBS All Access free trial to watch the conclusion of the first story. I’m finding that The Orville is demonstrating a better understanding and execution of the Trek philosophy, despite being ostensibly a parody (and that’s coming from someone who can’t stand any of Seth MacFarlane’s other work).

As a lifelong Trek fan (from even before SW came out), it makes me a little sad that the three most recent series have turned me away increasingly faster.

Glad you’re enjoying it, though.

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

Nothing about it felt particularly Trek-like to me. Didn’t even grab me enough to use the CBS All Access free trial to watch the conclusion of the first story. I’m finding that The Orville is demonstrating a better understanding and execution of the Trek philosophy, despite being ostensibly a parody (and that’s coming from someone who can’t stand any of Seth MacFarlane’s other work).

As a lifelong Trek fan (from even before SW came out), it makes me a little sad that the three most recent series have turned me away increasingly faster.

Glad you’re enjoying it, though.

Moral dilemmas on a starship. It's quintessential Trek. :-)

On topic, I've remembered an old RPG article about translating the feel of the movies into a game. It's about the way the movies tell their story, how everything is immediate and big and personal at the same time, and how you should keep piling on complications in scenes.

http://ptgptb.org/0022/theforce.html

16 hours ago, Degenerate Mind said:

What was that about the module telling you to keep the venerable Mr. Zarovich bland? I haven't looked into the Curse of Strahd yet, but this raises concerns for some of the new DMs that have at my college.

The new module pretty much tells you not be tempted to give him any shades of grey or go for the Vampire: Masquerade concept of 'humanity within the beast' and tragically hip angst. They expressly call out Twilight and say you shouldn't make him nuanced or sympathetic - he's a straight-up evil guy doing it for the Evulz. They clearly hate the concept of vampires as 'dark heroes' or even anti-heroes.

That to me is horrifically bland. I like my PCs and major NPCs to have nuances and believable motivations.

Seeing as how I made Strahd the hero back in 1984, you can imagine what I felt about that...

But to be honest, that seems typical of modern D&D and Pathfinder and the like; heavy on the 'encounters' combat and disinterested in role-playing. All the 5th edition adventures have felt very vanilla to me and none of them have caught my imagination like One Ring or FFG's WHFRP adventures. An antagonist is just a bag of XP and an MMO-style 'boss fight' so why bother to make him interesting or motivated?

On 10/18/2017 at 11:34 AM, Maelora said:

The new module pretty much tells you not be tempted to give him any shades of grey or go for the Vampire: Masquerade concept of 'humanity within the beast' and tragically hip angst. They expressly call out Twilight and say you shouldn't make him nuanced or sympathetic - he's a straight-up evil guy doing it for the Evulz. They clearly hate the concept of vampires as 'dark heroes' or even anti-heroes.

That to me is horrifically bland. I like my PCs and major NPCs to have nuances and believable motivations.

Interestingly, the "I'm a vampire but I'm not evil, I'm really a good guy" kind of hero/anti-hero, to me, is horrifically bland. Because it's been done to death (no pun intended). It reminds me a lot of the Grey Jedi tendency of "I want to be a bad guy, but not REALLY be a bad guy." behavior. You can have a perfectly evil character, who has nuance and motivation, without them having to be an anti-hero, or hero. And if you combine it with the romance angel of Vampire: "My life is an eternal night of pain and anguish!" Maiden: "Don't worry! My Magical ****** (Rhymes with Va-gina, silly censor on this site is silly) will heal your dead heart and we can live forever in not-evil love/romance/kinky sex!" then I'm even more tired of it And that's not just a dig on Twilight, I used to work in a book store, and good lord the romance novel section was infested with the things, they're worse than cockroaches!

Of course, that's my personal preference when it comes to undead. I dislike them as sympathetic characters, and find it rather uninteresting in stories. Now, give me a vampire like the Dracula from Van Helsing, and I'm so in love with him. Or the vampires from the Buffy-verse, minus Angel, and the later incarnation of Spike.

I think the best way to do a character like that, is to take a page from Jim Butcher's novels, and look at Nicodemus. He thinks he's the hero, but his actions are so clearly not those of a protagonist. Going down that route is fine, in my book anyway.

I had a bit of an epiphany about this. Ok so your gaming session has a duration, a certain amount of time. In this session you will be dealing with a lot of things. I generally look at a session as having paced scenes that are paced according to what is going on if everything is going right.

Given finite time, every moment you spend on Non-Star Wars things is a moment you lose that could have been spent doing something that is actually like Star Wars .

• But we have to live in this setting! It's not like the movies where it's constant action.

Yeah, but there are things you can explore in the slower pace that are not anathema to the feel of the setting. You can haggle over power converters, you can empty moisture Vaporator tanks, you can even have breakfast around the table. George himself messed this up in the prequels, he had some things in there that actually didn't do anything good for the actual setting. Now I imagine that people here have some tolerance for and even like the prequels, but they were not the same thing as the original movies. I don't know if it was because George had no one to tell him No or what, but his first impulse seemed to be what he went with, and for a writer that is almost always a terrible idea. Worse still, there are mundane details that you can put in that will mess up the pacing, and will also detract from the feel rather than add to it.

• But in my other games we always do Gritty. I want to convey the side of life that the movies don't

Ok but the problem with this to me is that it is essentially coming from the idea that the setting is easy to portray, almost autopilot easy, and so you can shove whatever you want in, and it's automatically Star Wars because there are x-wings and stuff. I feel that this just isn't true. Star Wars is the opposite of that, it requires an exacting sense of what to put on the screen . So much so that even the creator of the original movies largely failed in this in the prequels. The Force Awakens attempted to get back on formula, so much so that they aped much of the original screen play. If it were that easy to do Star Wars, the EU would still be in effect because it would all have been fit for consumption. They would have deemed it worth it to go in and just rule on contradictions, but since it was all pretty much just other stories re-skinned as Star Wars it all went in the dustbin. Showing sand people ****** schmi skywalker isn't going to make the game feel more like star wars, it will feel more like clockwork orange.

• Well there is room for other kinds of Star Wars stories

Yeah if you aim the bar low you of course won't have any trouble getting over it. Tacos with whipped cream. Someone probably loves it but you won't see it on the menu. This thread is about attempting to hit the mark, to put rounds on the target in the smallest circle. The issue of doing whatever you want in your game is something I should have ignored in posts with that as the subject, because it doesn't even pertain to this. If you are doing a mish mash then clearly you aren't talking about what I am talking about. You can do anything in a Role-Playing game. That's fine, but it's also not the point of what I am talking about. I'm not interested in how far from Star Wars you can go but still call it Star Wars. Anyone can do that with no effort. That's a task on par with playing with legos.

What Is the Star Wars equivalent of X

That question right there is where most of the trouble begins. When you start to answer that question and time, being uninspired, downplaying the importance of your answer all synthesize to give you a real world or other move/game/story answer to the question, it has begin. The incremental break down of the feel of the game starts with that one little thing, usually associated with something small.

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

Yeah if you aim the bar low you of course won't have any trouble getting over it. Tacos with whipped cream. Someone probably loves it but you won't see it on the menu. This thread is about attempting to hit the mark, to put rounds on the target in the smallest circle. The issue of doing whatever you want in your game is something I should have ignored in posts with that as the subject, because it doesn't even pertain to this. If you are doing a mish mash then clearly you aren't talking about what I am talking about. You can do anything in a Role-Playing game. That's fine, but it's also not the point of what I am talking about. I'm not interested in how far from Star Wars you can go but still call it Star Wars. Anyone can do that with no effort. That's a task on par with playing with legos.

Yeah, let's condescend to other people for liking Star Wars differently than you do. We're talking about pretending to be star princesses and space cowboys, after all! Those are serious matters that make it necessary to **** on others in the pursuit of ideological purity.

Hey Stan it shows that you posted but I guess it doesn't tell you I have you ignored. Just so you know I'm not reading anything you are posting. Just wanted to save you the time.

Yeah I feel like I have the essence of it now. The problem is that where you go wrong (in trying to hit movie feel) much of the time is by trying to put normal societal and routine life situations into star wars. I am playing in a game right now with a GM who is very much an RP guy and who likes to do dialogue around a bit of normal activity. Because the GM in question is not a fanatic, the details are often just normal life stuff re-skinned as being Star Wars. The best alanogue I can think of is D&D. In D&D I don't make a character who is a fighter and then go about in a daily routine that is just like mine here in 21st century Earth. This is one of the things I see as a common mistake made in GMing Star Wars. All of the stuff that we see in everyday Earth seems to be fair game for putting into this very alien and fantastic setting.

George had it in mind that he wanted the first movie to be like what it was like for him t watch samurai movies.

You can tell what is going on in the story but you don't understand the society it is in.

It doesn't get more perfect than that. This is it exactly. Earthopomorphizing the Galaxy robs it of it's mystique.

3 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Hey Stan it shows that you posted but I guess it doesn't tell you I have you ignored. Just so you know I'm not reading anything you are posting. Just wanted to save you the time.

Ah, living in a filter bubble instead of dealing with your ****. Cool.

4 hours ago, Archlyte said:

George had it in mind that he wanted the first movie to be like what it was like for him t watch samurai movies.

My memories of most samurai movies of the period that inspired him, and I have several on the shelf, is that they intercut normal life with the sudden violence of the conflicts. This life is often very gritty indeed. The pacing is generally slower than Star Wars, building up to short and sharp combat.

At the end of the day for me Star Wars is different things to different people, and can have varied pacing and style. Our Edge campaign was grittier and involved salvaging, til the scores got larger and we are now heading into Force and Destiny archaeology. Our rebellion campaign is faster and higher fantasy but encounters the occasional war crime. But, for me, as long as the settings are over the top and you never have a simple, boring fight in the open, it’s Star Wars. But I am not going to insist that vision is correct.

I kind of see where you're coming from, Archlyte, but there's no Tablets from Mount Sinai that tell us what is 'Star Wars' and what isn't. It can be 'Death Troopers' or 'Red Harvest'. It can be 'Caravan of Courage' or 'Droids'. The old EU was 'anything-goes' between thousands of different writers with different ideas, often playing an escalation war so that their creations were more awesome and badass than everyone else's. Disney cleaned all that up, but threw a lot of baby out with the bathwater, and they're perfectly happy to change established elements like Bothans if it means more $$$. The Disney 'canon' is purely to shift units and sell merchandise - which is absolutely fine and I'd do the same if I was them. But we didn't want child heroes or cute animals, so we did it our own way. My players simply didn't want a PG13 game and that wouldn't have held their interest.

But I'm not Disney, and that's not where I come in to this. I've always felt every table has to define these things, as a group. FFG's SW Game is not a movie or a cartoon series. It's an RPG, and that needs entirely different things to a movie or TV show. That's pretty much why we re-wrote everything from Ground Zero instead of just tweaking it. The original material wasn't fit for our purpose. So we ended up with something that used the FFG rules, and (like Mass Effect) was a homage and inspired by Star Wars, but the MarcyVerse isn't Star Wars and it never wanted to be.

If nothing else, we are 40 years older than when we went into cinemas in 1977 to see a film that changed our lives. It's not wrong to want different things at 47 to 7, just as its not wrong for 40 year olds to play a kid's game that evokes their childhood memories. That's the beauty of RPGs - you get what you want.

While I see where you're coming from with the inclusion of 'mundane' elements, I think that's essential for an RPG. Even the much-maligned Holiday Special was about normal beings doing normal things. That's not usually the stuff of exciting pulp sci-fi adventures, no, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

FFG sensibly tries to tell its stories with the tone of the movies, but freely admits you can use plenty of other genres if you wish. A 40+ year old franchise has plenty of room to make it whatever you want. For me, the game got me back into Star Wars, my interest having dwindled since the WEG games we used to play, and it died entirely with 'Force Unleashed', which I felt was not only the nadir of Star Wars, but entire human civilisation. For in 2013, the words 'New Star Wars game? By FFG?!?!? ' literally rekindled and resurrected an old love that I never imagined I would revisit. The freedom to strip everything down and rebuild it, then play in that reimagined world, was a labour of love and the focus of many years of my life.

Our vision of science-fiction in 2017 is very different to what it was in 1977. We are more sophisticated as a culture, In many ways, real-life has caught up with science-fiction, with things like the internet that were not even a distant dream in 1977. The movies about artificial intelligence that came in the 80's informed our views on what such a future might be like, and had us asking questions of the future and imagining it. 'Star Wars' is now competing in our culture with many other kinds of entertainment.

I think elements like sex or violence, or the tone of adventures, are matters for every table to decide, and there is no wrong or right. The Marcy Cinematic Universe was bespoke-built for its players, and I have no doubt that many wouldn't like it, any more than I'd enjoy playing their games. But again, such is the beauty of RPGs. My players like 'Game of Thrones' and 'The Witcher', so these things inform many of our characters. As GM, I dial those elements back and shoot for things like Mass Effect and Dragon Age (or Firefly) , which contain elements of adult behaviour like sex and violence without completely focusing on them.

Also, table-time for us is precious. Our table-top games are frequently run as exciting, fast-moving pulp science-fantasy stories - both as homage to the original movies and those that inspired Lucas, and because this style is easy and fulfilling to run at a table with half-a-dozen players clamouring for attention. For us, the email play and artwork is an opportunity to explore the world and characters beyond the frenetic adventures. Such things allow for more intimacy and character development, and will naturally bleed in to the table-top adventures in turn.

TL;DR maybe, but I don't think a 'No-No List' will ever be universal because we're all very different and want different things. We spent a long time working out what we wanted, and then did that, compromising a fair bit in the process. Go with something that works for you.

13 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I'm not interested in how far from Star Wars you can go but still call it Star Wars. Anyone can do that with no effort. That's a task on par with playing with legos.

I usually enjoy your posts, Archlyte, and I admire your unwillingness to conform and to 'post outside the box'. I think vigorous debate is essential for a forum's health.

But here I think Stan actually has a point. You may not have meant it, but I feel these words do come across as dismissive and condescending. I can assure you that planning an RPG setting of any complexity takes a good deal more than 'no effort'.

Other people aren't wrong for wanting a different genre, tone or pace to the movies.

Even within our games, there is quite a difference of style and tone across the various groups. Some feel quite classic with a modern twist. Others feel more like a Tarantino movie or something like 'Prometheus' in tone.

On ‎20‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 0:46 AM, Desslok said:

Exactly. I could spend time designing and describing an in-universe social media information exchange and come up with a cool star wars-y name. . . . or I could just call it Spacebook and get on with telling the story.

This is kind of how we operate. For good or bad, we are humans rooted in our place and time, and have a certain frame of reference. Many things we take for granted are just assumed to be there in a sci-fi game. For the most part I let that happen, though I'll put my foot down over some things (no mobile phones in or out of game, and the HoloNet has 1990 dial-up speeds and is mostly pictures of cats)

Mundane things happen, even if they are not usually the focus. Humans and other species eat, drink, reproduce, use the toilet and have leisure pursuits. Things like music, entertainment and drugs are baked-in to existing Star Wars lore.

People have political and social views and express them in a number of ways. Our galaxy has a multi-faction war that colours a lot of what is said and done by almost any character, and your allegiance or lack of one goes a long way to how you behave in the game. As I don't actually want to run a parody game, I won't have - say - direct expys of Donald Trump or Social Justice Warriors, but politicians or organisations with controversial views do exist and may be the focus of adventures. 'Droid Rights' was, from the start, intended to be the hot-button topic, because I've always felt it was the 'big untold story' in Star Wars. Our Jedi were very much intended to be controversial, being neither heroes or villains, and how people feel about them and their influence in the galaxy is a matter of much conjecture and debate (drawing on such topics as Marvel's Civil War storyline or Alan Moore's Watchmen ).

Music is frequently used at the table or in stories to convey a mood or a tone, for us. A love song or protest song might suit the moment - even if it's not the exact song being sung in a galaxy far, far away. For example, one character (our Chiss, Reya) likes to use 90's era 'gangsta rap' lyrics to illustrate her personality. Reya's an elite enforcer for a Black Sun Vigo; her life is dangerous and exciting and violent. Using lyrics from the likes of Wu Tang Clan conveys a sense of criminality, glorification of violence, using words that are ugly, aggressive, crude, sexual and mark those who use them as a dangerous person who would kill you as soon as look at you (whether or not these are actually true, I leave to you; most music has a great deal of artifice, and gangsta rap has more than most). Is there actual Gangsta Rap in the MarcyVerse? I don't know. But someone, somewhere is making urban music with violent, aggressive sounds and lyrics. As we don't know who, we'll use existing real-world lyrics to convey the desired intent and tone - that Reya is an urban predator, an amoral, violence-loving, spice-taking cheerful psychopath who adores mayhem, explosions and the grimy night-life and clubbing.

4 hours ago, Darzil said:

My memories of most samurai movies of the period that inspired him, and I have several on the shelf, is that they intercut normal life with the sudden violence of the conflicts. This life is often very gritty indeed. The pacing is generally slower than Star Wars, building up to short and sharp combat.

My point here was simple. What he managed to capture was the feeling of being in an exotic place where you can follow what is going on, but you don't have such routine knowledge of every little thing that it essentially seems like normal life. It's normal life for the characters, but that shouldn't look like normal life for you and me. Once that happens, a destructive interface forms.

15 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

My point here was simple. What he managed to capture was the feeling of being in an exotic place where you can follow what is going on, but you don't have such routine knowledge of every little thing that it essentially seems like normal life. It's normal life for the characters, but that shouldn't look like normal life for you and me. Once that happens, a destructive interface forms.

But that's possible in the passive environment of watching a movie. It's not really possible when you're playing a character that lives within the game world, and is intrinsically a part of it.

Again, it's what @Desslok said about simply calling social media 'SpaceBook' and then moving on with the story.

I just don't think the level of remove you're looking for is possible in an RPG, unfortunately. Immersion is part of the experience.

We have to use analogies so that the players understand what is going on.

They do this in the movies too. KanjiKlub look like an eastern crime syndicate so we know at a glance they're meant to represent the Triads or whatever in the narrative of the story.

1 hour ago, Maelora said:

I kind of see where you're coming from, Archlyte, but there's no Tablets from Mount Sinai that tell us what is 'Star Wars' and what isn't. It can be 'Death Troopers' or 'Red Harvest'. It can be 'Caravan of Courage' or 'Droids'. The old EU was 'anything-goes' between thousands of different writers with different ideas, often playing an escalation war so that their creations were more awesome and badass than everyone else's. Disney cleaned all that up, but threw a lot of baby out with the bathwater, and they're perfectly happy to change established elements like Bothans if it means more $$$. The Disney 'canon' is purely to shift units and sell merchandise - which is absolutely fine and I'd do the same if I was them. But we didn't want child heroes or cute animals, so we did it our own way. My players simply didn't want a PG13 game and that wouldn't have held their interest.

But I'm not Disney, and that's not where I come in to this. I've always felt every table has to define these things, as a group. FFG's SW Game is not a movie or a cartoon series. It's an RPG, and that needs entirely different things to a movie or TV show. That's pretty much why we re-wrote everything from Ground Zero instead of just tweaking it. The original material wasn't fit for our purpose. So we ended up with something that used the FFG rules, and (like Mass Effect) was a homage and inspired by Star Wars, but the MarcyVerse isn't Star Wars and it never wanted to be.

If nothing else, we are 40 years older than when we went into cinemas in 1977 to see a film that changed our lives. It's not wrong to want different things at 47 to 7, just as its not wrong for 40 year olds to play a kid's game that evokes their childhood memories. That's the beauty of RPGs - you get what you want.

While I see where you're coming from with the inclusion of 'mundane' elements, I think that's essential for an RPG. Even the much-maligned Holiday Special was about normal beings doing normal things. That's not usually the stuff of exciting pulp sci-fi adventures, no, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

FFG sensibly tries to tell its stories with the tone of the movies, but freely admits you can use plenty of other genres if you wish. A 40+ year old franchise has plenty of room to make it whatever you want. For me, the game got me back into Star Wars, my interest having dwindled since the WEG games we used to play, and it died entirely with 'Force Unleashed', which I felt was not only the nadir of Star Wars, but entire human civilisation. For in 2013, the words 'New Star Wars game? By FFG?!?!? ' literally rekindled and resurrected an old love that I never imagined I would revisit. The freedom to strip everything down and rebuild it, then play in that reimagined world, was a labour of love and the focus of many years of my life.

Our vision of science-fiction in 2017 is very different to what it was in 1977. We are more sophisticated as a culture, In many ways, real-life has caught up with science-fiction, with things like the internet that were not even a distant dream in 1977. The movies about artificial intelligence that came in the 80's informed our views on what such a future might be like, and had us asking questions of the future and imagining it. 'Star Wars' is now competing in our culture with many other kinds of entertainment.

I think elements like sex or violence, or the tone of adventures, are matters for every table to decide, and there is no wrong or right. The Marcy Cinematic Universe was bespoke-built for its players, and I have no doubt that many wouldn't like it, any more than I'd enjoy playing their games. But again, such is the beauty of RPGs. My players like 'Game of Thrones' and 'The Witcher', so these things inform many of our characters. As GM, I dial those elements back and shoot for things like Mass Effect and Dragon Age (or Firefly) , which contain elements of adult behaviour like sex and violence without completely focusing on them.

Also, table-time for us is precious. Our table-top games are frequently run as exciting, fast-moving pulp science-fantasy stories - both as homage to the original movies and those that inspired Lucas, and because this style is easy and fulfilling to run at a table with half-a-dozen players clamouring for attention. For us, the email play and artwork is an opportunity to explore the world and characters beyond the frenetic adventures. Such things allow for more intimacy and character development, and will naturally bleed in to the table-top adventures in turn.

TL;DR maybe, but I don't think a 'No-No List' will ever be universal because we're all very different and want different things. We spent a long time working out what we wanted, and then did that, compromising a fair bit in the process. Go with something that works for you.

Yeah and I agree with you 100%. There is not a universal condemnation in my thoughts here, there is a creative kick in the *** for myself , so I really don't want to be taken as attempting to dictate to all Star Wars RPG players that this is the way to do it. I feel like you and I are siblings in this family of Star Wars children, people who have known this longer than they haven't, and who have a different perspective than others. I feel your way of doing things is just as valid as mine or anyone else's, and given that other people have different experiences like you said, it makes sense that they have different takes. I should have been more clear about what I meant but sometimes I get impatient and want to post my thoughts. It is lonely to have the view I have, so naturally I look for company, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to find it.

Over the years, I have seen countless products come out, and I too watched that wretched Christmas Special lol. Even as a kid I remember what may have been my first episode of cognitive dissonance over watching something that was plainly Star Wars, but feeling like it was somehow wrong. This leads to a logical discussion. Many proceed from the idea that if it is canon, it must be right. If it's in the movies it is canon and therefore it's right. But this is predicated on the idea that George, and now Lucasfilm, is always right. George put it in, so it must be right. I submit that this simply isn't the case. After the original Trilogy George lost his mind or something. Lucasfilm has tried to recapture original George thinking, but without the system of artists and pressures that actually worked to create that version of his thinking, they are just trying to emulate. By right, I specifically mean: being a device for imparting the best Star Wars feel and content. We know, though, that George wasn't always right . He made mistakes quite a bit in his later work, even to the point where he is still more known for Star Wars than other things, and arguably his best other works were collaborations like Indiana Jones. So if George isn't always right, why is canon (or whatever content you like) always accepted as being content? Well it is in the media. It is in the products so it is by definition Star Wars. But I would say to you that just because something is in Star Wars it isn't of that character of the original movies. The original movies broke the world, they made their mark. The other stuff is all still riding on those coattails. So being in Star Wars really isn't the qualifier for being Star Wars in the sense of the original magic. It means it has official license, but it has the impact of any of the other lesser entries into the setting. If what I want is 100 proof Star Wars, I have to go back to the original trilogy, or to material that was just as good (and there are some bits and pieces out there). I can use any of the other material, but I am diluting the solution at that point.

8 hours ago, Archlyte said:

what it was like for him t watch samurai movies.

You can tell what is going on in the story but you don't understand the society it is in.

I don't think George would agree with your puritanical approach. Star Wars is fluid, even the movies have been refactored a couple of times, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth by some fans. But it's obvious if you watch TCW, and he was heavily involved in almost every story. He incorporated plenty of real world culture, darker and grittier themes enhanced by music ranging from reggae to techno, along with plenty of drug and sexual references. Inter-species relationships abound, whether romantic or casual. All the Hutts seem to find both Palowicks and Twileks sexy, so Jabba is hardly unique.

Even technology changes between seasons, adapted to conform to real life. Case in point is using gestures when interacting with devices. It's a subtle running gag in the prequels and early TCW that getting a device to do something, whether showing a hologram or making a call on the comm requires pushing exactly one button. This continues until the the iPhone and iPad were released, and suddenly this interaction changes and gestures are everywhere.

George wasn't afraid to make changes if he thought it served the setting. Besides, even if you don't understand the culture or society, you can always relate to the basic needs of the people in that society.

5 minutes ago, Maelora said:

But that's possible in the passive environment of watching a movie. It's not really possible when you're playing a character that lives within the game world, and is intrinsically a part of it.

Again, it's what @Desslok said about simply calling social media 'SpaceBook' and then moving on with the story.

I just don't think the level of remove you're looking for is possible in an RPG, unfortunately. Immersion is part of the experience.

We have to use analogies so that the players understand what is going on.

They do this in the movies too. KanjiKlub look like an eastern crime syndicate so we know at a glance they're meant to represent the Triads or whatever in the narrative of the story.

I think the less is more thing would apply here. Sometimes the idea can be conveyed in a manner that is less specific. As the storytellers at the table, why are you focusing on those elements? Is it just to try and simulate normal life in such an exotic place? The galaxy far far away is like vacation. Nice place to visit, but if you try to live there you'll lessen it. I think that these detail often come up and entice us to answer the question, but how many times in stories are unanswered questions better? I received a message is all they had to say.

Archlyte, that's understandable, and I think I get it. The debate is interesting anyway (as I sit and wait for the washing machine repair guy in vain!)

I just feel that your 'perfect' setting can only exist in your games (and hopefully your gaming group's). That's why I rewrote everything with the input of my players, because while we loved the original movies, we needed our own environment shorn of all the baggage to tell our own stories as adults in their 40's and 50's.

I think George Lucas is good, even great, at what he did best. He writes everything as a movie, not as an RPG. He has no interest in world-building beyond that moment. He captures our attention for that moment, moves on, and never looks back. He doesn't know (nor care) what a rodian or a twi'lek is. He lives in the moment, and everything is directed towards making that movie moment awesome.

He made many mis-steps in the prequels, of course. Perhaps he lost the plot, believed his own hype or became too powerful for others to rein in. Likely, the entire concept of a prequel was doomed because it didn't have room to breathe or do it's own thing. Everything becomes straight-jacketed by what we know comes after.

The MarcyVerse is its own thing that's not trying to be canon. It was made for its audience. But even then, I try to keep to the basics of 'what makes Star War s'. It's fast-moving pulp science-fantasy, but its also invokes our emotion - it's not some witless Michael Bay monstrosity. At its heart, there are themes of responsibility, legacy, friendship, and sacrifice. These are things we can all employ if we wish, irrespective of everything else.

1 minute ago, whafrog said:

I don't think George would agree with your puritanical approach. Star Wars is fluid, even the movies have been refactored a couple of times, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth by some fans. But it's obvious if you watch TCW, and he was heavily involved in almost every story. He incorporated plenty of real world culture, darker and grittier themes enhanced by music ranging from reggae to techno, along with plenty of drug and sexual references. Inter-species relationships abound, whether romantic or casual. All the Hutts seem to find both Palowicks and Twileks sexy, so Jabba is hardly unique.

Even technology changes between seasons, adapted to conform to real life. Case in point is using gestures when interacting with devices. It's a subtle running gag in the prequels and early TCW that getting a device to do something, whether showing a hologram or making a call on the comm requires pushing exactly one button. This continues until the the iPhone and iPad were released, and suddenly this interaction changes and gestures are everywhere.

George wasn't afraid to make changes if he thought it served the setting. Besides, even if you don't understand the culture or society, you can always relate to the basic needs of the people in that society.

Good to hear from you Frog George was the original apostle, but he succumbed to something and lost his sense of it. He started a religion and then began breaking its commandments, so I have been forced to view him as a heretic to his own original vision. Furthermore I would say that George alone was not the creative force behind much of what was created, he was the managerial approach, but without Ralph McQuarrie, John Williams, Dennis Murren, Ben Burrt there is no Star Wars as we know it. His original successes were artistic compromises made under pressure. The stuff he did later lacked that counterforce and unleashed the terrible power of his Dad jokes onto the screen. By the time the Clone Wars is being made it's really in that era where no one would challenge George. In movies too you also have the thing where stuff is done to move the story along. Qui Gon is basically doing all kinds of ends justify the means behavior and it really only serves to have the story go on. If I am a movie guy who lives in the real world and doesn't dream of this stuff all the time I don't give two ***** about that kind of continuity. Using the newer material will ultimately lead to the death of the old material. Given the quality of the new material I can't let that happen in my sphere of influence.

3 minutes ago, Maelora said:

Archlyte, that's understandable, and I think I get it. The debate is interesting anyway (as I sit and wait for the washing machine repair guy in vain!)

I just feel that your 'perfect' setting can only exist in your games (and hopefully your gaming group's). That's why I rewrote everything with the input of my players, because while we loved the original movies, we needed our own environment shorn of all the baggage to tell our own stories as adults in their 40's and 50's.

I think George Lucas is good, even great, at what he did best. He writes everything as a movie, not as an RPG . He has no interest in world-building beyond that moment. He captures our attention for that moment, moves on, and never looks back. He doesn't know (nor care) what a rodian or a twi'lek is. He lives in the moment, and everything is directed towards making that movie moment awesome.

He made many mis-steps in the prequels, of course. Perhaps he lost the plot, believed his own hype or became too powerful for others to rein in. Likely, the entire concept of a prequel was doomed because it didn't have room to breathe or do it's own thing. Everything becomes straight-jacketed by what we know comes after.

The MarcyVerse is its own thing that's not trying to be canon. It was made for its audience. But even then, I try to keep to the basics of 'what makes Star War s'. It's fast-moving pulp science-fantasy, but its also invokes our emotion - it's not some witless Michael Bay monstrosity. At its heart, there are themes of responsibility, legacy, friendship, and sacrifice. These are things we can all employ if we wish, irrespective of everything else.

I love your posts Yeah and the Marcyverse, or the Whafrog-verse or anyone else's version is fine. It serves it's purpose and I have no doubt is super entertaining. I agree 100% that George/Lucasfilm do not have our interests in mind when they work. They are creating movies. FFG might have an interest, but they won't be issuing any orders to the movie people. So to my mind it's up to me to try and create a style guide for my games. I have to figure out what works and what doesn't. Thank you for your patience with me, it is a comfort.