8 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

First off, I'm not making any kind of "judgement" on whether or not the idea is "stupid". To me that is completely irrelevant to the real issue. The issue is whether or not the canon establishes Jabba as being sexually attracted to humanoid females, and yes, it does. His actions in the movie are those of a pervert being aroused, the novels further support this. Whether or not I think it is a "good idea" or not is moot. This is what the canon establishes. And therefore it does fit within the "feel" of the movies, as long as it is kept within the PG/PG-13 level.

1. Aroused in movies
2. Movies = Canon
3. Aroused = Canon

Which has nothing to do with whether or not you trying to have a game that keeps the feel of the game within certain parameters includes having Jabba want to **** twi'leks. So is PG/PG-13 decided by computers or does a human subjectively make that distinction? How does one talk about Hutt deviant sexual practices in a PG/PG-13 way? I think at this point it's pretty obvious that you wouldn't dwell on this in your game like we have in this thread. That's because in the scheme of x-wing dogfights and blaster battles it doesn't really fit the overall theme. It's probably something like 15-20 seconds of time in the films, and yet you assert it belongs in the focus just like x-wings and blasters.

When you run a game with friends you don't have to obey canon, and it is at most a guide for the great majority of people who play this game. It's stupid man, it's just stupid. It's canonically stupid. But it's stupid.

Murder is PG, sexy is verbotten. Got it.

2 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

1. Aroused in movies
2. Movies = Canon
3. Aroused = Canon

Which has nothing to do with whether or not you trying to have a game that keeps the feel of the game within certain parameters includes having Jabba want to **** twi'leks. So is PG/PG-13 decided by computers or does a human subjectively make that distinction? How does one talk about Hutt deviant sexual practices in a PG/PG-13 way? I think at this point it's pretty obvious that you wouldn't dwell on this in your game like we have in this thread. That's because in the scheme of x-wing dogfights and blaster battles it doesn't really fit the overall theme. It's probably something like 15-20 seconds of time in the films, and yet you assert it belongs in the focus just like x-wings and blasters.

When you run a game with friends you don't have to obey canon, and it is at most a guide for the great majority of people who play this game. It's stupid man, it's just stupid. It's canonically stupid. But it's stupid.

That is your opinion . I have no judgement on its "merits" either way. It is what it is. It established Jabba as a complete degenerate slime , which it did very well. If you're running a game in the galactic underworld , then you need to show the seedier side of things, and this includes the sex (within a "PG" context), drugs , and other vices . All of these are consistent with the movies. And this includes deviants such as Jabba. It is part and parcel with the criminal underworld .

2 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

Murder is PG, sexy is verbotten. Got it.

Meme text, Aisle 5

2 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

That is your opinion . I have no judgement on its "merits" either way. It is what it is. It established Jabba as a complete degenerate slime , which it did very well. If you're running a game in the galactic underworld , then you need to show the seedier side of things, and this includes the sex (within a "PG" context), drugs , and other vices . All of these are consistent with the movies. And this includes deviants such as Jabba. It is part and parcel with the criminal underworld .

Ah now we get to it. You think it's necessary to dig through the dumpster to show the trash. I think everyone gets the idea of what Jabba is when his assassins show up to take someone out, or when bounty hunters clamor to catch a person who has particularly annoyed him. But no, you need to show the dirty needles in the gutter, the Columbian neckties, turds in the sewage, the real-world ugliness. While my thread wasn't about this, you obviously represent the counter viewpoint. You re-skin the real world as Star Wars. I specifically stated what I was doing in this thread, but you decided to challenge the idea, namely that you can't just put every real world analogue into the content or you start to violate the feel. The culture becomes to mundane, the sights too ordinary, the woes of the real world settle too heavily upon the fantasy and crush it.

There is some kind of a stigma attached to selectively choosing the content of the narrative, and yet this is something that is elemental to setting a feel or tone. I don't want to focus on space porn, space dirty needles, space child molestation, etc. Maybe they exist in the setting, just like other unseemly realities, but you have to be selective of what gets screen time as that is a big part of how you tell the story.

This thread took a big detour. I did get some great advice, and I appreciate that because attempting something as exacting as hitting the point of balance I am shooting for isn't easy. I think I have a good idea of some of the things I need to do beyond what I had already thought. I think this topic is just too irritating because no matter what, it turns into a right and wrong thing. I'm very much including myself in that too, but the original idea I had was to try and dismiss the "you don't like the movie I like so you suck" stuff and just see if the thought experiment could be the focus.

You are entirely a liberty to like or not like aspects of the setting as shown in Movies, and include them or not.

You were suggesting a list of things that were No no's for keeping Star Wars feel, and that would not include this seedier stuff. Whether your campaign goes there or not, it is still Star Wars canon (and this includes some pretty dark stuff going all the way up to Genocide).

If this thread is "what I want my campaign not to be", that is a very different thread to "What are No no's to keep Star Wars feel".

15 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Ah now we get to it. You think it's necessary to dig through the dumpster to show the trash. I think everyone gets the idea of what Jabba is when his assassins show up to take someone out, or when bounty hunters clamor to catch a person who has particularly annoyed him. But no, you need to show the dirty needles in the gutter, the Columbian neckties, turds in the sewage, the real-world ugliness. While my thread wasn't about this, you obviously represent the counter viewpoint. You re-skin the real world as Star Wars. I specifically stated what I was doing in this thread, but you decided to challenge the idea, namely that you can't just put every real world analogue into the content or you start to violate the feel. The culture becomes to mundane, the sights too ordinary, the woes of the real world settle too heavily upon the fantasy and crush it.

There is some kind of a stigma attached to selectively choosing the content of the narrative, and yet this is something that is elemental to setting a feel or tone. I don't want to focus on space porn, space dirty needles, space child molestation, etc. Maybe they exist in the setting, just like other unseemly realities, but you have to be selective of what gets screen time as that is a big part of how you tell the story.

9 hours ago, Darzil said:

You are entirely a liberty to like or not like aspects of the setting as shown in Movies, and include them or not.

You were suggesting a list of things that were No no's for keeping Star Wars feel, and that would not include this seedier stuff. Whether your campaign goes there or not, it is still Star Wars canon (and this includes some pretty dark stuff going all the way up to Genocide).

If this thread is "what I want my campaign not to be", that is a very different thread to "What are No no's to keep Star Wars feel".

@Darzil hit the nail right on the head. Yes, I am challenging your ideas of what you think "should" be a "no-no" for Star Wars, and I'm obviously not the only one. As you yourself sated, this is a thread for talking about what we as a community and individually feel is "appropriately Star Wars or not. As you can see, not everyone agrees, nor will we all agree. That is fine. However, when you say something that's actually shown in canon does not have "belong" in Star Wars , then expect people to raise some objections.

11 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

@Darzil hit the nail right on the head. Yes, I am challenging your ideas of what you think "should" be a "no-no" for Star Wars, and I'm obviously not the only one. As you yourself sated, this is a thread for talking about what we as a community and individually feel is "appropriately Star Wars or not. As you can see, not everyone agrees, nor will we all agree. That is fine. However, when you say something that's actually shown in canon does not have "belong" in Star Wars , then expect people to raise some objections.

I guess my view of it is that there are things in the movies that make the movies feel a certain way as a whole. There are things in the movies and canon that happen but are not a focus, or are there because of incidental situations on the set, etc. Your assertion that is no mater how small the detail it must be used to create that feel because it appeared, no matter how insignificant or against the flow of the rest of the techniques applied. It is also open to interpretation because I guarantee that Jabba wanting to **** twi'leks was not the central theme to the movie nor even that act. I am picking and choosing to a specific end, and as such there are elements that don't translate well to a table narrative versus the movie medium where you see it and then it is gone. In a role-playing game, if you mention something it is often that thing that the players key in on despite other more important things implied in the background.

So going into the ridiculous idea that this giant worm finds humanoids sexy is going to spin off the focus, whereas simply describing Jabba demonstrating his power over others in having slave dancers and taunting them keeps the focus on the imminent danger players are in should they be in the presence of a Hutt. I imagine the sexual part is something that you feel is much more in alignment with X-wings and blaster battles, but if that's true there is no point in talking about it any further.

I say this makes no sense, it's an awful explanation, and you respond that it's canon. You are abdicating any sense of taste and refusing to argue this thing on the merits, but instead you throw out definitions of deviancy that everyone knows and then you say see it's canon. I know it's canon, but it doesn't further the feel of the game toward the feel that I am talking about. And it's not just me, you can say that everyone doesn't share my idea about this but you can't say no one does.

So what is it you want here? You want me to admit that it's cool that Jabba wants to **** twi'leks? You want to be the champion of Dirty Gritty Star Wars? I went out of my way in the OP to describe what I was talking about, but you seem to want to parse everything until you feel you won and I have to admit that Star Wars is really about Jabba wanting to **** twi'leks. Do I even have to say this isn't going to happen?

I am absolutely not saying you have to use things because they are canon : " Whether your campaign goes there or not "

I am saying that whether you (or I) like it, there are things that are canon that other people may want to include, but you (or I) may not.

And it's our game, so we can not include it.

But we can't say it isn't canon or part of Star Wars.

On 9/19/2017 at 7:50 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

First off, I'm not making any kind of "judgement" on whether or not the idea is "stupid". To me that is completely irrelevant to the real issue. The issue is whether or not the canon establishes Jabba as being sexually attracted to humanoid females, and yes, it does. His actions in the movie are those of a pervert being aroused, the novels further support this. Whether or not I think it is a "good idea" or not is moot. This is what the canon establishes. And therefore it does fit within the "feel" of the movies, as long as it is kept within the PG/PG-13 level.

Canon actually is moot. Ten years ago we "had to accept" that the galaxy was attacked by outsiders after RotJ and that Boba Fett kept Greedo's Head in a jar of Bacta on Slave One. Now we "have to accept" that the Empire uses Giraffe-class Star Destroyers and that Boba Fett tracked down Ben of Tattoine. And when the rights to Star Wars go to someone else. All of the stories will be "Legends". Canon is simply a money grab. It's like saying you should buy a new set of encyclopedias every year because there is a new edition. As long as there are Star Wars tie ins, there will be a resetting Canon. Which is ironically oxymoronic!

45 minutes ago, Felswrath said:

Canon actually is moot. Ten years ago we "had to accept" that the galaxy was attacked by outsiders after RotJ and that Boba Fett kept Greedo's Head in a jar of Bacta on Slave One. Now we "have to accept" that the Empire uses Giraffe-class Star Destroyers and that Boba Fett tracked down Ben of Tattoine. And when the rights to Star Wars go to someone else. All of the stories will be "Legends". Canon is simply a money grab. It's like saying you should buy a new set of encyclopedias every year because there is a new edition. As long as there are Star Wars tie ins, there will be a resetting Canon. Which is ironically oxymoronic!

Saying that canon is moot is fine, if you never talk about Star Wars with anyone who doesn't share that view. There will always be parts of any sci-fi universe that the fans dislike, or outright hate. That doesn't mean either way if those things will be tied into something else in canon or not. Canon in a sci-fi setting mostly exists for the fans, either as a method for attempting to understand the fictional universe as something more complete than the movies show, a way to have a story told without as many contradictions as some universes have (I believe parts of the old EU, now legends, were like this), or yes a way to get money from them.

For myself I prefer Disney's way of doing things to trying to fit new stories into the quagmire that the old EU was, I read about 15-20 books and I don't think I even made that much of a dent in it. I also prefer it to some of the other methods of 'canon' that I've seen in sci-fi, such as what Games Workshop's 'canon' view for the Warhammer 40K universe, which was and I believe still is "Everything is canon, and nothing is canon." Which makes it almost impossible for fans to come to any kind of mutual understanding.

I think this topic has somehow devolved into an argument over canon. So for the sake of this discussion let's leave all versions of acceptable extra material out as they are too confusing to use as a guide per Felswrath's point. I saw A New Hope in the theatre when I was 6 years old in 1977, I'm going to have a different take on this stuff than someone who knew their first moments of Star Wars from Episode 1, or from reading Star Wars books in the long night between movies.

I guess I wasn't clear that this is of course about my game. I thought I had said as much in the OP, and I know that it's not going to match everyone's view of a quintessential Star Wars experience. But I also asked people to suspend that and to help me get the kind of experience I described. I gave some examples of both the driving forces as I see them, as well as some specific No No's that I need to keep out in order to keep the focus on what I feel is the basic recipe of Star Wars.

Any help along those lines would be great. I won't be arguing any other granular points that are blatantly not along the lines of the main Star Wars theme such as: Hutt Sexual attraction toward incompatible species, examples of the most base and desperate of conditions of lives in the galactic gutter (it's enough to know they are there, nobody wants to be a Star Wars crack addict prostituting themselves for another hit I hope, and if they do it's the stuff of a different take on Star Wars than what this thread covers), extra-galactic alien invasions, Force Unleashed type Star Wars/Marvel crossovers, and anything else that is pretty obviously not a part of maintaining the feel of the core experience.

The only thing I typically leave out of the spotlight in my games are canon characters and canon events in the timeline. The reason for this is because keeping the canon fixed gives me a great reference for what is happening in the rest of the galaxy and how events are changing. This can be seen even in the level of Imperial presence before A New Hope (large presence) to after A New Hope (smaller presence) to during & after Empire (larger presence once again). The reason I don't include the canon characters is because my players would just murder them if they got the chance and I want to keep the focus on them, as the players should be the main characters of the RPG, not characters from the movies.

Now, I have thrown in some Legends characters here and there as well as a single canon character who's fate was never written in canon or legends (E'lan Sleazebaggano) but that character could easily be killed off and it wouldn't matter to the larger whole of Star Wars, as long as his death is after the cantina scene from Attack of the Clones.

Aside from that, I'm generally open to player creativity on things and if someone goes too far with a joke or something I just shake my head and say no and we move on.

Next group I'm going to start will be set in the Old Republic era and my intent is to maybe borrow some themes and ideas from Legends but not be beholden to it. All that is really known in canon is the Jedi went to war with the Sith, there was a massacre on Malachor of both Jedi & Sith, the Rule of Two was created by Bane before Yoda was born, Mandalorians went to war with the Jedi & lost & at some point a Mandalorian became a Jedi and created the Darksaber that was later stolen from the temple and used as a ruler's scepter in leading the Mandalorian clans.

No place for real-world references? Let's consider Nute Gunray's name.

14 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

No place for real-world references? Let's consider Nute Gunray's name.

I prefer considering Elan Sleazebaggano's name.

8 minutes ago, GroggyGolem said:

I prefer considering Elan Sleazebaggano's name.

It's not a proper Stars War without Nute Gunray, Elan Sleazebaggano, and Ice Cream Maker Guy all sharing a scene.

On 9/19/2017 at 4:31 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

However, that's not the case. That wasn't the "only" source that mentions Jabba's "proclivities". It's just the most well known. To quote the Canon portion of Jabba's Wookkieepedia page:

Jabba was canonically a sexual deviant with an attraction to humanoid females.

It does not have to be about sex. **** is about power. Not sex. Same can apply here.

Here is a star wars no no.

Computers for the most part are not networked. Or networked in such a way that you require physical access to slice. You can't slice from across the galaxy. No one was ablle to slice chopper till chopper was connected to an imperial network.

On 9/23/2017 at 4:27 PM, Stan Fresh said:

No place for real-world references? Let's consider Nute Gunray's name.

I have wondered for a long time how Jon "Dutch" Vander became known as Dutch. Is there a space Holland?

3 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

I have wondered for a long time how Jon "Dutch" Vander became known as Dutch. Is there a space Holland?

No, but there is a space Netherlands.

I vaguely remember in the novelisation for "A New Hope" that Luke is "thinking about a dog he once owned", and Obi-Wan murmurs something about a duck being taught to swim.

1 hour ago, Daronil said:

I vaguely remember in the novelisation for "A New Hope" that Luke is "thinking about a dog he once owned", and Obi-Wan murmurs something about a duck being taught to swim.

Eh, if humans exist in the far-away galaxy there's no good reason why dogs and ducks shouldn't.

I mean, Luke is a perfectly normal name in the real world, too. So clearly the Star Wars galaxy can't be *that* divorced from real life.

10 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Here is a star wars no no.

Computers for the most part are not networked. Or networked in such a way that you require physical access to slice. You can't slice from across the galaxy. No one was ablle to slice chopper till chopper was connected to an imperial network.

This was kind of a hard episode to watch. Nothing was connected to be able to slice into Chopper or the Imperial ship... but hey, slap some giant satellite dishes on the Imperial ship and ignore how technology works in Star Wars and it's A-OK.

19 minutes ago, GroggyGolem said:

This was kind of a hard episode to watch. Nothing was connected to be able to slice into Chopper or the Imperial ship... but hey, slap some giant satellite dishes on the Imperial ship and ignore how technology works in Star Wars and it's A-OK.

Umm actually chopper was.connected to the imperial network.