In Aftermath: Life Debt it seems clear that Wookies were not a part of the Alliance/New Republic as Kashyyk was under Imperial control. Han, Chewie, Wedge, and Acbar basically performed a mutiny to help free Kashyyk.

1 minute ago, jcmonson said:

In Aftermath: Life Debt it seems clear that Wookies were not a part of the Alliance/New Republic as Kashyyk was under Imperial control. Han, Chewie, Wedge, and Acbar basically performed a mutiny to help free Kashyyk.

There were LOTS of planets that had to be "freed"

Technically Alderaan was under "Imperial Control."

I'm sure Kashyyk went into more open rebellion after this dissolving of the senate and the battle of Yavin....but I'm sure that was true of lots of places.

3 minutes ago, Zrob314 said:

There were LOTS of planets that had to be "freed"

Technically Alderaan was under "Imperial Control."

I'm sure Kashyyk went into more open rebellion after this dissolving of the senate and the battle of Yavin....but I'm sure that was true of lots of places.

That's not the impression I got from reading the book, though it has been a while so I might be remembering it wrong. It seemed like most of the wookies were in slave camps still, and the ones that got free were trying to liberate Kashyyk. Since Kashyyk wasn't a priority for the Alliance, and that was what the wookies were fighting for, it seems as though they weren't working together.

13 hours ago, BigBadAndy said:

Edit: I am not a big fan of the Clone Wars cartoon (it is a cartoon guys - I have nothing against cartoons). I’m always baffled how people can have such disdain for the prequels then gobble up the badly written, hokey, wooden acting of a cartoon...

I don't hate the prequels, they just aren't as good as some of the other films for various reasons I won't get into here. The episodes vary in quality admittedly, but sometimes I just want to watch a mindless show with blasters, jedi, droids, and if I'm lucky an episode with the greatest space pirate ever ? . Not every piece of media I intake has to be a work of art, and as a cartoon written for the 10-14 year old demographic of 2008, it's easy to follow while I paint miniatures.

Personally I feel that having "mercenary" units that can be hired by any faction waters down the differences between the factions. So far their game design has been "mirrors," very similar but slightly different units, like the Scout Troopers vs the Commandos. Having the option of taking the exact same unit to fulfil a given role (such as Mandalorian Jump Troopers) removes much of the difference in strategy of running "Jump troopers."

12 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

Have they brought that into the new Canon?

Many of the new books make reference of the vast majority of the Wookie race being enslaved by the Empire in both the Aftermath trilogy (which I'm in the process of listening to during my commute) and the first Thrawn book. There are references to freed slaves in the first Thrawn book as well, which would fit with the small number in the unit/the total number than could in theory be in a single army. We also see one Wookie slave owned by the Empire in Solo. In new canon, the Empire reclassified Wookies as non-sentient following the repeal of anti-slavery laws. From the Wookiepedia canon article on Wookies: " The Empire enslaved the Wookiees not because they were a meaningful threat to the Empire but because their massive, robust physiology allowed them to work long and hard in extreme conditions."

1 hour ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Many of the new books make reference of the vast majority of the Wookie race being enslaved by the Empire in both the Aftermath trilogy (which I'm in the process of listening to during my commute) and the first Thrawn book. There are references to freed slaves in the first Thrawn book as well, which would fit with the small number in the unit/the total number than could in theory be in a single army. We also see one Wookie slave owned by the Empire in Solo. In new canon, the Empire reclassified Wookies as non-sentient following the repeal of anti-slavery laws. From the Wookiepedia canon article on Wookies: " The Empire enslaved the Wookiees not because they were a meaningful threat to the Empire but because their massive, robust physiology allowed them to work long and hard in extreme conditions."

Chewie was shown as a prisoner, not a slave. An abused prison for sure, but not a slave.

Why would they use wookiees in a universe where droids are ubiquitous? Droids don't eat, don't tire can be given restraining bolts and don't have rights you have to strip away and can easily be repaired when broken. They also operate in far harsher environments than any biological.

5 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

Chewie was shown as a prisoner, not a slave. An abused prison for sure, but not a slave.

Why would they use wookiees in a universe where droids are ubiquitous? Droids don't eat, don't tire can be given restraining bolts and don't have rights you have to strip away and can easily be repaired when broken. They also operate in far harsher environments than any biological.

He was an escaped slave captured by a bounty hunter and turned in to the Empire on Miriban (source: Solo:a star Wars story official guide it's in the wookiepedia canon article (FYI Wookiepedia is used as a reference by the Lucas Story Group)).

For one thing because it's a fictional story and convenient plot device for quickly inicating "these are the bad guys!" Secondly, from the minister selling the clone army: " They're immensely superior to droids, capable of independent thought and action."

So, the Empire has the option of paying to produce millions of droids that it has to carefully babysit to ensure they don't put the walls on backwards, or wander into a spining turbine, or just enslave millions of Wookies that already exist, and were probably going to resist and need to be suppressed anyway. Droids still have to shut down and recharge, and their power isn't free. I'd rather not delve deeper into this topic personally, but there are other arguments to made. Suffice to say, despite your objections, it is canon that the Empire enslaved the Wookie race and occupied Kasyyk.

6 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

So, the Empire has the option of paying to produce millions of droids that it has to carefully babysit to ensure they don't put the walls on backwards, or wander into a spining turbine, or just enslave millions of Wookies that already exist, and were probably going to resist and need to be suppressed anyway. Droids still have to shut down and recharge, and their power isn't free.

And yet all other evidence in the star wars universe suggests that droids are plentiful, competent, cheap, easily controllable, highly specialized and that power is cheap and plentiful (any society that has FTL speed as a standard option on personal craft does not have a scarcity of power problem)

Slavery had never made any kind of economic sense and automation is always the cheaper and more efficient option.

ALL wookiees being slaves OF THE EMPIRE is just a plot point that grows more absurd with it's justification.

I'll even buy that wookiees are oppressed, that they were declared non-sentient by the empire (that's a little shakey to me but then the absurdly comic racism plot point of the empire hasn't sat well with me since we saw the senate in the prequels.) and that they are subject to all manner of atrocity. I just don't buy the wholesale antebellum south style chattel slavery system as plausible knowing all other facts of the universe.

14 minutes ago, Zrob314 said:

I'll even buy that wookiees are oppressed, that they were declared non-sentient by the empire (that's a little shakey to me but then the absurdly comic racism plot point of the empire hasn't sat well with me since we saw the senate in the prequels.) and that they are subject to all manner of atrocity. I just don't buy the wholesale antebellum south style chattel slavery system as plausible knowing all other facts of the universe.

Because slavery is always purely about economic efficiency and has nothing to do with power and dynamics of preserving social castes, or sheer genocidal racism?

The Wookies are slaves in 'work camps' recalling the Nazi holocaust. They are intended to work, *and* to die as a race.

Furthermore slavery has always been part of the uncomfortable background of the Star Wars universe and part of the reason that the Republic is not just an implausible utopia, but a system with real flaws and injustices which can be amplified and used to justify the descent into the Empire's totalitarianism.

Han and Kira are child slaves at the beginning of Solo, and given that they work as mere theives they're some of the lucky ones.

The Clone soldiers are slaves.

The droids, yes even the good guys' droids, are slaves.

Slavery comes in many flavors.

So, here's the problem I have with the Star Wars Universe and how the EU screwed all this up.

So, George Lucas is a visual storyteller. When he made a new hope he was remixing a ton of other stories. (there's a million sources on this).

So, in making the empire he gave it a Nazi Germany visual aesthetic and filmed most of the interior in England. This means that there were lots of English actors in parts both named and unnamed. We tend to think of all of the Imperial officers having British accents (not even close, watch it again) because of Peter Cushing.

Anyway so over the years the literature sprung up to justify Lucas's decision to appeal to our reptile brains and understand that the Space Nazis are the bad guys rather than recognizing that this was a casting decision.

When Lucas showed us how big and how vast the Star Wars universe actually was in The Phantom Menace no one bothered to update the lore.

Why would Sheeve be a racist as comically racist as he is portrayed to be? His immediate two forebears in the Sith line were a Munn and a Bith and he initially was going to pass the line on to a Zabrak. Now, being from Naboo I'm sure he's at least sort of racist (but then Padme very likely was as well) seeing the history between the humans and the Gungans. He certainly kept Mas Ameda around a heck of a lot longer than one would expect.

However the problem with all of this lies with our real world experience.

We only know what we know, right? Human history is the basis for all of our myths, if it doesn't exist in human history in at least some analogous form then it becomes fantastical and hard to believe. I'm not talking about technology, or things we haven't developed yet. I'm talking about psychology and sociology.

So, you could say that the Empire is basically Nazi Germany springing up from the Weimar Republic. Unfortunately that doesn't quite fit because the perpetrators of the Nazi laws on racial superiority were always in the majority. I don't mean ideological Nazis were in the majority, I mean that the German People of white-european descent were always the majority. Their targets were Jews, Romani and Slavs. Then it was the influx of those deemed non-aryan gained through Lebensraum and later outright invasion. When they expelled the non-aryans they just got them again when they took over the next place. This led to the Wanasee conference. Conspiracy is a great movie, you should watch it if you haven't. Instead of actual Nazi Germany what we have is a case where Bavaria declares all 12 other German states to be lesser states, kicks them all out of government jobs and the military and enslaves them with a force of purely Bavarian troops. Oh and only Bavarian's are allowed to be members of "the Party." This is implausible. You can certainly make a case for Bavaria taking over the culture of Germany but not in such a hamfisted way.

Okay, what about Antebellum southern America or Jim Crow America?

African slaves never had a position of power or equality in America. They were initially and always seen as inhuman. Show me some Tusken Raider slaves and I can accept this conceptually. Heck, even show Gungan slaves (a little too on the nose though). An indigenous culture oppressed by Colonials and then sold off to others because said colonials never saw them as worth of anything. Certainly never gave them a seat in the Senate.

South Africa?

Basically Naboo again. Colonial invasion oppressing the indigenous population, later becoming Apartheid.

Rome?

Rome's slavery system was wholly different than American slavery. Descendants of slaves were rarely born into servitude, as opposed to American slavery where if you were born to a slave you were automatically a slave. A Roman slave could reasonably expect to obtain freedom and citizenship in their lifetime. Slavery status was not based on race or ethnicity. Roman slaves who were freed had full rights and privileges as though they were born on the floor of the Senate. Rome as certainly authoritarian AF but it wasn't specifically race based. Everyone could be a Roman.

Palpatine had no entrenched human majority to use to take everything over. He had to use many many non-humans. Humans are, at best, a majority-minority in the star wars universe. If they had always been the holders of all or a majority of the power then you could see it, but we know for a fact they have not. For instance the Munns control the money. This isn't like your racist uncle saying "the jews control the banks" this is actually shown in the universe, the Munns own all the banks and control all the money and have a specific council and publicly recognized organization devoted to controlling all the money. They own the computers that account for all the money and they are shown in the Clone Wars. They probably print t-shirts.

Now yeah, a society can marginalize a population, but the more entrenched that population is, the more they are commonly recognized as an integral part of the society and the more actual (not perceived) power they wield the harder it is. Now you're going to do that to every non human race and do it in 19 years. I just don't buy it. It's like Han not believing in the Jedi. He was alive during the clone wars. How could he not have at least seen a vid of a Jedi. Even if you believe Chewbacca never told him about being friends with Yoda I'm sure they both swapped war stories and Chewie fought in the battle of Kashyyk.

I wholly agree that droids and clones are slaves. They were also manufactured to be slaves.

They were also programmed for loyalty.

Han and Kira were slaves the same way that Oliver Twist, or the migrant worker in a sweatshop are slaves. Yeah, it's slavery but it's not institutionalized slavery.

I wholly agree that the Republic was not a utopia.

As I've gotten older and I've spent all but two years of my life with this universe I've wanted it to be more complex that people are willing to make it. The stuff in it looks lived in, the politics and sociology should too.

1 hour ago, Zrob314 said:

And yet all other evidence in the star wars universe suggests that droids are plentiful, competent, cheap, easily controllable, highly specialized and that power is cheap and plentiful (any society that has FTL speed as a standard option on personal craft does not have a scarcity of power problem)

So why didn't the CIS win when they had a plentiful specialized droid army? Besides R2-D2 and some other "hero" droids, when are we shown droids are competent? Whe see more instances of incompetent droids than competent ones. Why does uncle Owen need Luke at all when he has droids? Why is any organic lifeform working a non-creative job if droids are all of the things you claim? A high degree of specialization actually makes it more expensive, as now you need a Droid to lift heavy things, and a droid to run wires, and a droid to install plumbing. Or you can make the same group of organics do all of those jobs without extensive redesign or reprograming because of the innate adaptation that comes with having an organic brain.

As for power, we are shown in Solo that FTL requires a very specialized fuel source, that is ONLY used to power the reaction that allows for FTL. Star Wars physics =/= real world physics, especially since Hyperspace works in canon (old AND new) by having the ships travel in an alternate dimension, with gravity shadows cast by planets, stars, black holes, etc that can interact with a travelling ship and destroy it.

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Slavery had never made any kind of economic sense and automation is always the cheaper and more efficient option.

If the Empire is already keeping a planet full of organics that can do work subjugated already, then why also expend resources building droids? By scattering the species throughout the galaxy the likelihood of a mass uprising lessens, and by working them to the point of exhaustion the chance of escape lessens. Some of the other slaves shown in Star Wars are prisoners guilty of some crime or another, varying in severity from bumping into a Stormtrooper by accident to open Rebellion.

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ALL wookiees being slaves OF THE EMPIRE is just a plot point that grows more absurd with it's justification.

But FTL, droids, the Force, single biome planets, noise in space, lightsabers, blasters, walking tanks, etc are all perfectly reasonable by comparison.

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I'll even buy that wookiees are oppressed, that they were declared non-sentient by the empire (that's a little shakey to me but then the absurdly comic racism plot point of the empire hasn't sat well with me since we saw the senate in the prequels.) and that they are subject to all manner of atrocity. I just don't buy the wholesale antebellum south style chattel slavery system as plausible knowing all other facts of the universe.

The point of showing the multi-species senate in the prequels is to emphasize the fall of the galactic government into the state we see it in the OT. The Emperor took massive amounts of power from the Senate by creating an atmosphere of fear and desperation and offering security and a false hope if they only give him a LITTLE more power. By inches he gets them to sign away their freedom and say in the government. Given how many times the Senate flat out ignores other members doing things like blockading entire worlds and starving the people, I don't quite get how subjugation of a world is implausible in universe. The fact that the Empire dissolves the Senate in the beginning of New Hope with no repercussions really emphasizes that the Senate is powerless, and to be honest there would be a fear of standing up for another planet because that would be noticed, and makes you and your planet a target.

The first Thrawn book speaks a bit to the hatred of rimworld humans and non-humans: the most visible members of the CIS were non-humans, therefore the war was the fault of ALL non-human species, and people from the rim were inferior to humans from the Core worlds.

Edit: Giving you people an outside enemy "LOOK FEAR THIS OTHER! I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM THE OTHER!" is a good way to keep power. Palpatine didn't have to be xenophobic, he USED xenophobia as a tool. Heck he willingly took in Thrawn.

Edit2: This is a fictionalized pulp universe built upon three movies made in the 1970s to cash in on the sci-fi craze. There are plot holes, and lots of other flimsy justifications. If you don't like that something is or is not canon then it doesn't have to be in YOUR Star Wars RPGs or fan fics. But not liking it does not mean it is not the official canon.

3 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

The first Thrawn book speaks a bit to the hatred of rimworld humans and non-humans: the most visible members of the CIS were non-humans, therefore the war was the fault of ALL non-human species, and people from the rim were inferior to humans from the Core worlds  . 

And yet, every time they make a map of the universe more and more non-human planets get put into the core.

Nemoidia, Cato Nemoidia, Bith, Duros (you know, the people that invented hyperspace travel), Selonia, Drall....

Why did the CIS lose when they had droids?

Because Darth Sidious and Darth Tyrannus were manipulating the conflict so that it would be a stalemate civil war?

Oh and then Darth Sidious sent his new apprentice to Mustafar to assassinate the entire CIS leadership and send a command to have the droid armies stand down.

There were literally two movies and a 5 year TV show explaining this.

3 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

And yet, every time they make a map of the universe more and more non-human planets get put into the core.

Nemoidia, Cato Nemoidia, Bith, Duros (you know, the people that invented hyperspace travel), Selonia, Drall....

Why did the CIS lose when they had droids?

Because Darth Sidious and Darth Tyrannus were manipulating the conflict so that it would be a stalemate civil war?

Oh and then Darth Sidious sent his new apprentice to Mustafar to assassinate the entire CIS leadership and send a command to have the droid armies stand down.

There were literally two movies and a 5 year TV show explaining this.

So what if the non-humans are in the core or not? They aren't HUMAN. I was indicating that non-humans from anywhere and humans that weren't from the core were both looked down on.

A 5 year show that showed droids lose over and over to the clones. How many times was the CIS on the edge of defeat until Palpatine intervened? The manipulation you mention is what kept the Republic from winning before the vote for emergency powers, which was one route to success. The other route to gaining the power he wanted was for the CIS to win the war, and then reveal himself as the true leader of the CIS. Palpatine was playing a win-win game with the universe.

2 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

Slavery comes in many flavors.

[...]

As I've gotten older and I've spent all but two years of my life with this universe I've wanted it to be more complex that people are willing to make it. The stuff in it looks lived in, the politics and sociology should too.

I don't even know what your arguing anymore.

I thought you had a beef with the fact that canonically Wookies are slaves and this rubbed you the wrong way because they didn't map exactly to slavery in the American South, and you couldn't imagine why slaves would exist when droids were around.

Now it seems you acknowledge that there are different kinds of slavery which arise for different reasons, but instead it bugs you that there is no single exact historical analogue, even while acknowledging that Star Wars is an impressionistic pastiche of iconic highs and lows of human history.

I mean the stuff *looks* lived in, but it's all ridiculous and impractical and not plausible if you pay too much attention with a nitpicky eye.

The politics and sociology are at about the same level in my opinion.

*pops in to the forum to see whats up*

Yup still arguing about everything...

Scum don't have the numbers or organisation to fight a galaxy wide war.

19 minutes ago, jocke01 said:

Scum don't have the numbers or organisation to fight a galaxy wide war.

They don't need to, Legion is focused on individual battles, not the entire war.

12 minutes ago, jocke01 said:

Scum don't have the numbers or organisation to fight a galaxy wide war.

I keep seeing this all the time. Is 30-40 people really galaxy wide? We live on one single planet and there are gangs and criminal groups here that can manage to fight government forces in full on battles. Can we just accept that different people might want different things out of legion? The game is big enough to allow that. As much as I think that ewoks would be a horrible idea, I accept that there are people out there that like them and would rather that they get to play what they want instead of excluding them. If you think that criminals mustering 30-40 smugglers and pirates with support from gammorean warriors, mandalorian mercenaries, thug droids and swoop bike gangers is such a crazy idea then I think you should rewatch the beginning of the return of the jedi. Every battle doesn't have to represent a key fight in the war. You could be playing a local criminal group sticking it to the imperial occupiers or attacking the vulnerable rebels to steal their gear.

20 minutes ago, jocke01 said:

Scum don't have the numbers or organisation to fight a galaxy wide war.

Why does it have to be a galaxy-wide war that they're fighting?

The sizes of battles in this game aren't even at the platoon level, so the engagements are in fact quite small-scale.

On 8/2/2018 at 4:08 PM, BobaIcedTea said:

When you say cartoon you make it sound like Tom and Jerry on Saturday morning for kids. Its an animated series.

I bet you always made sure to correct people and tell them that your dolls weren't dolls, they were "action figures"

On ‎8‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 7:05 AM, AintNoPoser said:

After the announcement of Clone Wars being added, those who say scum will be the next faction can finally sit down. I'm glad scum isn't in and we got CW. There are far better characters and everyone loves it; if you hate it, you belong in the Sarlaac. Hopefully the word scum is only mentioned to those rebel players.

Yeah, that's the spirit - being glad that some players and fans do not get what they'd love to see and enjoy to play. Childish, ill-wishing glee like in that quote above is the antithesis of enjoying a game and a hobby in a positive and constructive fashion. What a lame poser...

On 8/2/2018 at 12:09 PM, Vineheart01 said:

Scum makes no sense in a Legion setting. it made sense in Xwing because a band of 2-4 ships randomly working together made sense, about ~40 individual bounty hunters or smugglers does not.

Not to mention they have no "Commander" type that would even do anything. All the big boss guys are like Jabba, they themselves dont do anything theyre just very influential and smart. The badass guys that do the work are solo operatives, not generals.

They would be far, far better off as "hired hands" not a normal army.

Worked just fine in D6. Back in my day we had squads of bounty hunters and gammoreans and mercenaries and wookies and ewoks and mon cals and everything else and we liked it! Ha-rumph! You kids get those clones off my lawn!

On 8/5/2018 at 12:19 AM, ElricStormbringer said:

I bet you always made sure to correct people and tell them that your dolls weren't dolls, they were "action figures"

Clone Wars isn't a cartoon, it's a televised graphic novel.

I strongly disagree with the OP. I think the inclusion of CWE now means scum will be coming eventually. I say this because of the role Mandos, Hutts, Hondo, Cade Bane etc played in thoose films. Scum has proven to be a unique and important faction in Imperial Assualt. If Legion stayed just Original trilogy than I might concede that scum will not be it’s own but two other successful FFG Star Wars games say other wise. Until then we do get Boba Fett in all is awesome glory.

I reckon treat the 'Scum' faction like the Mercenaries they are. We have operatives, so why not Mercenaries. I remember the old-40k days (circa 3rd and 4th ed.) the Kroot were a mercenary force that existed outside the force organisation chart, but they had their own force org chart.

In Legion terms, 1 merc commander to 1 to 3 merc troops, Opens possibilities for a Special crew (or two), and some heavy kit (all old CW kit that's been kit-bashed, or new Imp kit that's been kit-bashed).

That way the Mercs are open to both sides 9as I'm sure they were inclined to do.

As my final words - the issue with Droids vs Wookiees, is that the Droids need to be programmed with blueprints, Wookies have an instinctive nature with tech and don't need to learn it. That's why (in part) they've lived the way they have for thousands of years, they probably have issues designing complex tech (apart from the Wookiee Bowcaster, of course), but when it comes to looking at something and making it work they don't need plans or prints it's almost like the ability is imprinted into their brain (the Empire would have some serious trust issues regarding keeping documentation around).

10 hours ago, Fourtytwo said:

Yeah, that's the spirit - being glad that some players and fans do not get what they'd love to see and enjoy to play. Childish, ill-wishing glee like in that quote above is the antithesis of enjoying a game and a hobby in a positive and constructive fashion. What a lame poser...

I hate the mentality that "i don't like it so you shouldn't get it" It's so dumb and, as you said, is just childish. Every idea should be welcomed if it's related to Star Wars and could fit into Legion. Why shun people for wanting armies or characters put into the game