My group of jedi padawans (and a bounty hunter) just had a turning point in the campaign. 3 players chose to intentionally fall to the dark side for power offered to them by the Sith, 3 players resisted the temptation. 2 party members stayed behind at the sith academy to be trained whereas the other 4 (including one that accepted power) went back to their ship and their mission. The party is split up and unsure what this means for one another. We're all having a blast with this dramatic turn of events!

I'd love to hear your stories of dark side falls, redemptions and how your parties managed to find a common ground after such events.

Well obviously those who went to the academy are now competing against each other and should be pared from three down to one fairly quickly as they fight for supremacy. The other characters have a mission to attend to and will be on their way to it I imagine. The survivor of the academy will one day find them and assert their right to rule the party.

In my experience every time someone falls to the darkside the PvP light comes on in the GM instrument panel

The question you must ask really is.... who has the high ground now? ?

In the group I'm currently playing in we found common ground in still having a common cause. Which was to try to survive whatever stuff the Empire threw at us and finding a way to stop the Shard Jedi we were sorta tricked into unleashing onto the galaxy. Said Shard is currently flying around in a Tho'Yor and planning to build her own Death Star to combat the Empire. Meanwhile we're flying around in a Gthroc-720 and trying to figure out how to get that done without causing more chaos, we always cause chaos though.

2 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Well obviously those who went to the academy are now competing against each other and should be pared from three down to one fairly quickly as they fight for supremacy. The other characters have a mission to attend to and will be on their way to it I imagine. The survivor of the academy will one day find them and assert their right to rule the party.

In my experience every time someone falls to the darkside the PvP light comes on in the GM instrument panel

I expressed in detail to my players that PvP is allowed in this campaign, as long as it makes sense for it to happen in the story and as long as all parties involved are okay with it. So no attacking someone else cuz the rules allow it but a duel between allies turned against one another due to one of them falling to the Dark Side? Sure.

Only 2 stayed behind at the academy. The one that accepted the power but went with the group has unlocked their Force potential but is still determined to see the mission through.

57 minutes ago, warchild1x said:

The question you must ask really is.... who has the high ground now? ?

That is a good question, because we are like 4,000 years before the existence of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obviously someone has to have the high ground, the question is who had it before him?

3 minutes ago, Darth Revenant said:

In the group I'm currently playing in we found common ground in still having a common cause. Which was to try to survive whatever stuff the Empire threw at us and finding a way to stop the Shard Jedi we were sorta tricked into unleashing onto the galaxy. Said Shard is currently flying around in a Tho'Yor and planning to build her own Death Star to combat the Empire. Meanwhile we're flying around in a Gthroc-720 and trying to figure out how to get that done without causing more chaos, we always cause chaos though.

Nice! The common cause this group initially had was to find the secret power the sith were after and destroy it. No doubt the Sith will want to send the new recruits to claim that power eventually, once they have been trained up a little. Between that and the tests they will undergo (Sith tests are gonna have to be pretty dark), I feel like they will have good reason to rejoin their group, even if they were to stick to a darker path.

On 9/17/2018 at 9:26 AM, GroggyGolem said:

I'd love to hear your stories of dark side falls, redemptions and how your parties managed to find a common ground after such events.

<<<Sigh>>> You had me until "redemption." Go dark, stay dark, make merry!

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

<<<Sigh>>> You had me until "redemption." Go dark, stay dark, make merry!

Tell me about your stories without redemption ?

1 hour ago, GroggyGolem said:

Tell me about your stories without redemption ?

My little sisters is playing a character who was actually already a darksider before the campaign started; and although she joined the other PCs in the hopes of finding redemption, she's been doing a woefully mediocre job so far. Thankfully her malice has thus far (mostly) been confined to minor acts of cruelty.

For example, in a recent session she was among a handful of PCs who had infiltrated a psychiatric hospital. While in the common area, she noticed a patient who appeared to be walling herself into a corner with a long and low card-house. When she asked about the patient, she was told that she believed that a monster roamed the hospital at night and that the sabbac cards were the only things that would ward it off so that she could sleep. A moment later, the PC used Move to knock the wall down; then giggled to herself as the poor woman frantically scrambled to start over.

And now she has an 11-year-old NPC apprentice who was already an emotional wreck when the PCs found her. Suffice to say that the PC is... not helping.

18 minutes ago, Vorzakk said:

Thankfully her malice has thus far (mostly) been confined to minor acts of cruelty.

Interesting! I threw out the Morality scale and Conflict in my game, just told the group that we all know what a darkside character is like from the movies, so if you take any dramatically dark actions you will fall. So I tend to not track the small infractions that the book has GM's track. It's allowed players to let their characters be a little more aggressive, coercive, and generally stretch their roleplaying more without fear of getting Conflict points.

I think setting up a 1v1 fight between your current master and a sith, then asking to confirm the sith have killed him when he is already beaten and blinded is definitely an act that warrants a fall. Oh also then that character and another faced their moral weaknesses and gave into them, bleeding their kyber crystals and choosing to become dark side characters (I informed them it was their choice and allowed them to narrate out their entire visions and decisions on their own). A third who wasn't force sensitive agreed to live by the teachings of a Sith holocron in exchange for the strength to protect and lead his people and has now unlocked his Force potential but did not stay at the academy like the other two.

The other 2 that were there for the game resisted the darkness and the final player character wouldn't have fallen either (player couldn't make it to that game).

One of my previous Star Wars games went dark with PvP, infighting, backstabbing, theft and was on it's way down.

So as a GM I've had enough with "evil PC's" and I made it clear up front that if anyone's morality dropped below 1, that PC would become and evil NPC, run by me as a new adversary.

All of the current PC's are light side paragons . . . odd.

On ‎9‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 10:00 AM, Mark Caliber said:

One of my previous Star Wars games went dark with PvP, infighting, backstabbing, theft and was on it's way down.

So as a GM I've had enough with "evil PC's" and I made it clear up front that if anyone's morality dropped below 1, that PC would become and evil NPC, run by me as a new adversary.

All of the current PC's are light side paragons . . . odd.

Playing bad guys never seems to involve the penalties it should in games. The fantasy of doing what you want without consequence or conscience combined with controlling the exploits of a psychologically empty drone of a character makes it attractive to a lot of people. It seems to me that the dark side exacts a cost of your personal life and relationships in exchange for power. No ally is your ally if they can, by action or omission of action, jeopardize your power. Anyone whom you care about is a weakness to be exploited.

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

Playing bad guys never seems to involve the penalties it should in games. The fantasy of doing what you want without consequence or conscience combined with controlling the exploits of a psychologically empty drone of a character makes it attractive to a lot of people. It seems to me that the dark side exacts a cost of your personal life and relationships in exchange for power. No ally is your ally if they can, by action or omission of action, jeopardize your power. Anyone whom you care about is a weakness to be exploited.

Or, you could try playing a bad guy that isn't totally bat-crap sociopathic. Plenty of bad people still have friendships and alliances along with being more than a "psychologically empty drone."

If they play the game, I dont think I would have a problem with dark jedi, but the second it turned into backstabapalloza, I would institute the old WEG Star Wars RPG darksider rule.

You can be an evil bastard, but you had better be pretty magnificent.

That and I will be right up front about the fact that you are at best a very distant second in magnificent bastardy to the Emperor, and distant second in badassery to Vader, so right when you think you have won, all you will here is laughter, and you really will have been doing everything according to his plan. It will be documented in the game notes

16 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Playing bad guys never seems to involve the penalties it should in games. The fantasy of doing what you want without consequence or conscience combined with controlling the exploits of a psychologically empty drone of a character makes it attractive to a lot of people. It seems to me that the dark side exacts a cost of your personal life and relationships in exchange for power. No ally is your ally if they can, by action or omission of action, jeopardize your power. Anyone whom you care about is a weakness to be exploited.

As the sith way is; once you fall to the darkside you no longer see people as people; just as either opportunities to exploit or foes to crush. A darksider can find plenty of ways to work with a player party; especially if they aren't the major force in the galaxy and actually need more power that they themselves cannot generate. The Empire generally seem to step down on force factions fairly indiscriminately.

15 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Or, you could try playing a bad guy that isn't totally bat-crap sociopathic. Plenty of bad people still have friendships and alliances along with being more than a "psychologically empty drone."

Oh aye. Being evil doesn't necessarily being anti-social. Sidious managed to maintain a normal Façade for decades with the people he knew that he would kill one day. Just the only hard and fast rule of the closed fist style is that generally, everything that character does is from a self satisfying perspective. Needless to say being very insignificant to the party would have them working along side for some time, but to me it is an inevitability that eventurally the interests of the dark sider and everyone else would eventually divide.

Being lawful evil means recongising that there is an order to everything; you don't win by killing everyone, you win by having everyone think you are the good guy and get rid of anything that can impede that goal. That includes your comrades if they get in the way, but not a moment sooner.


Re: The original situation. Falling to the dark side is more then just a statement, it's a fundamental change in a characters pathological thinking. In my campaign, unless there is a great desire to unite, those two would become powerful NPC's that would be strongly influenced by the players who will likely need a new character. Kinda like create your own nemesis, their paths have now diverged and unless you want to spend a great deal of time covering two entirely different story threads, it's much easier to keep the splits down to a few sessions at a time.

15 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Or, you could try playing a bad guy that isn't totally bat-crap sociopathic. Plenty of bad people still have friendships and alliances along with being more than a "psychologically empty drone."

That's fine when there isn't a supernatural yet objective Force that defines these things for Force users. The OP was talking about Sith Academies and such, not your average street corner. Well the character is evil you see, but only when it is convenient. By that I mean the whole thing is this sort of advantage-only version of evil favored by RPers where it is just used as an excuse to have the character aggress constantly and persistently. It's a bit like the D&D Chaotic Neutral meta-dodge of wanting to be able to do whatever you want to do without any internal constraints for the character. It's always a straightforward thing for me when a player chooses this behavior pattern because cause and effect isn't nullified by the excuse of "I'm eeevil." They always paint themselves into a corner.

4 hours ago, korjik said:

If they play the game, I dont think I would have a problem with dark jedi, but the second it turned into backstabapalloza, I would institute the old WEG Star Wars RPG darksider rule  .

You can be an evil bastard, but you had better be pretty magnificent.

Interestingly enough they have not decided to stop their mission but one of the player characters did betray the group's NPC Jedi Knight leader in order to see if Sith or Jedi are stronger (arranged a 1v1 and basically ordered the Jedi's death).

Beyond that, the two that stayed behind at the academy haven't done anything against the other player characters. It seems the driving force for the one is to obtain power and the other one just doesn't want to disobey his former master (who was always Dark Side but is now Sith).

2 hours ago, Archlyte said:

That's fine when there isn't a supernatural yet objective Force that defines these things for Force users. The OP was talking about Sith Academies and such, not your average street corner. Well the character is evil you see, but only when it is convenient. By that I mean the whole thing is this sort of advantage-only version of evil favored by RPers where it is just used as an excuse to have the character aggress constantly and persistently. It's a bit like the D&D Chaotic Neutral meta-dodge of wanting to be able to do whatever you want to do without any internal constraints for the character. It's always a straightforward thing for me when a player chooses this behavior pattern because cause and effect isn't nullified by the excuse of "I'm eeevil." They always paint themselves into a corner.

So far the characters are just gaining power. This could very easily be an Ezra sort of situation where they realize the error of seeking power sooner rather than later.

Oddly enough, one of the player characters that resisted the temptation of the dark side feels so betrayed that the two stayed behind, he is considering an airstrike on the academy with the ship they used to get to Moraband. He knows there are children at the academy too, so that's an interesting situation. It's actually made him seek knowledge from a stolen holocron, so the betrayal was deep for the character, deep enough to betray his own training and upbringing.

Outside of the game, the players that went dark basically said they want to pursue the dark side but they still want to work with the group, so it's not like they are going dark with the intent of being jerkwad murderhobos or outright attack the others. So I've been working on creating a common goal/enemy to unite them but the choice is ultimately theirs.

45 minutes ago, GroggyGolem said:

Outside of the game, the players that went dark basically said they want to pursue the dark side but they still want to work with the group, so it's not like they are going dark with the intent of being jerkwad murderhobos or outright attack the others. So I've been working on creating a common goal/enemy to unite them but the choice is ultimately theirs.

Yeah but that is basically the situation I was describing, namely edgelord posing. I hope it turns out good for you and I imagine you won't have any trouble with the situation but the cosmetic evil thing kind of irritates me. It gets into the problem of whether or not the person is being evil or just persistently rude. I would say if they are perfectly cooperative and can work together without death and betrayal they are just playing at being "dark," not actually evil. IN which case when real evil shows up the contrast will be pretty apparent.

23 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

Yeah but that is basically the situation I was describing, namely edgelord posing. I hope it turns out good for you and I imagine you won't have any trouble with the situation but the cosmetic evil thing kind of irritates me. It gets into the problem of whether or not the person is being evil or just persistently rude. I would say if they are perfectly cooperative and can work together without death and betrayal they are just playing at being "dark," not actually evil. IN which case when real evil shows up the contrast will be pretty apparent.

Well yeah only time will tell. They just decided to learn the dark side and one player definitely pulled off an evil move by orchestrating the death of their jedi teacher just to see who was more powerful, a Sith or a Jedi. That is definitely evil. We'll see how far they will go come next weekend.

6 hours ago, korjik said:

That and I will be right up front about the fact that you are at best a very distant second in magnificent bastardy to the Emperor, and distant second in badassery to Vader, so right when you think you have won, all you will here is laughter, and you really will have been doing everything according to his plan. It will be documented in the game notes

That sounds about as fun as telling them that no matter how heroic they are, they will never measure up to Luke, Leia, and the rest. If that's how you'd plan to run it, I'd suggest you just don't run it.

3 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

Well yeah only time will tell. They just decided to learn the dark side and one player definitely pulled off an evil move by orchestrating the death of their jedi teacher just to see who was more powerful, a Sith or a Jedi. That is definitely evil. We'll see how far they will go come next weekend.

Well you know as they say; you hitch a ride with the devil, your gonna pay a price. One of our old PC's who joined the inquisition had been subject to a powerful mental ability that made him compelled to obey instruction from the Gran Master. Needless to say it was heart breaking when we finally had a heated confrontation; and he disobeyed his orders, only to turn into a mental omelette before the parties eyes. Harrowing stuff.

Simply put, you gave them power so naturally there will be consequences. Personally half of the fun is finding out various ways to make my own character/the life of others difficult. After all, that's what creates drama (which is different to actually starting trouble. I am a team player, but I am a fan of supporting the living universe where I can and forwarding suggestions to the GM to digest.)

8 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

That sounds about as fun as telling them that no matter how heroic they are, they will never measure up to Luke, Leia, and the rest. If that's how you'd plan to run it, I'd suggest you just don't run it.

They arent being heroes so no, they wouldnt measure up. They bad guys dont win in the end. Those are my conditions to run the game, so the players would have to accept them for me to run it, so no, I dont think I would be running it in the end.

Kinda the point.

The players might take it as a challenge, or take it as a good role playing opportunity. The group may find it interesting to be the Kylo Ren of the piece, knowing that in the end they will fail or be redeemed.

Besides, I susbscribe to a 'small cog' view on heroics. Everyone who jumped in on the Battle of Endor is a fully qualified Big **** Hero, From Luke fighting Vader in the throne room, to the unnamed fighter pilots dying to buy time to that Mon Cal walking back and forth behind Akbar. So should I ever have a game which goes on long enough to actually reach Endor, they players wont be replacing the original heroes. Ive just not had a game last the decade plus in real life that it would take to get there, but it has been more than 20 years since I figured out how it would go down.

9 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

That sounds about as fun as telling them that no matter how heroic they are, they will never measure up to Luke, Leia, and the rest. If that's how you'd plan to run it, I'd suggest you just don't run it.

And besides, the players wouldnt actually see the Emperors influence in all this until the very end any more than anyone else did. I would spend considerable effort making them think they were their own masters right up to the point of the laughter beginning.

That kind of seems like a rigid pathway you want for your game. Personally if I were playing I'd want little to do with the stories in the movies because we already know the outcome of those. Now if it was a non-canon game where our help actually mattered and it's possible for the Empire to win, then it gives a reason to join the Rebellion.

On ‎9‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 2:20 PM, HappyDaze said:

That sounds about as fun as telling them that no matter how heroic they are, they will never measure up to Luke, Leia, and the rest. If that's how you'd plan to run it, I'd suggest you just don't run it.

I don't feel like PC's need to feel that they are going to be able to eclipse the main characters though. I would never put it to them like that or participate in a discussion about it, but I don't feel PC's made in this system would not be able to measure up to the movie primary characters in many ways. Heroes are not gong to be as influential, and bad guy characters would be laboring under a delusion of being more powerful than Vader or Palpatine. I don't know why you would set out to do that and see it as a condition of enjoying the game. I'm gonna blow up 3 death stars so that Luke looks like a loser compared to my character Bruce Starnugget.

But I'm open to hearing how I am getting this wrong.