1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

Just finished Thrawn: Treason . Almost entirely Imperial protagonists. And not a mustache twirling villain in sight (save for a few brief appearances by the Emperor, Tarkin, and Krennick).

They’re military personnel performing standard military duty. While some of those more...extreme...personalities clearly rise to the top, most are just average people. I’d say there’s nothing inherently difficult about an Imperial campaign, and it doesn’t have to inevitably lead to the characters having to acknowledge the evil they’re helping carry out.

It's not hard at all to play that way. Morality doesn't even have to be a thing to begin with. It's a galactic civil war, the guys in uniform don't care about some philosophical war debate, they're fighting to stay alive. If you do want to talk morality, you can show off the good things the Empire does, or even have the players working with reformers on the inside or doing it themselves, people who acknowledge the Imperial system ain't great but it's not totally awful and it can get better. Acknowledging the Empire's flaws doesn't mean you want to join their enemies and destroy it.

1 hour ago, Galakk Fyyar said:

Is this really necessary?

No.

1 hour ago, Galakk Fyyar said:

I think there's more to it than that. Yeah, as far as Operation Cinder and such goes, the Emperor and the Imperial structure are wholly evil, but in the old setting where that never happened, there were things to suggest the Emperor didn't intend it to be that way. He was still evil, but so it goes he intended the Empire to be a good thing to rescue the galaxy in some fashion, and tried to make it an effective, benevolent organization, at least in his mind. For that, I'd argue that the Empire isn't entirely evil, as in rotten to the core, but just very misguided from otherwise good goals. Far to the edge of the ends justify the means. With that there are good things the Empire's done, and good people in it, to the point that I don't think anyone who's in it is inevitably a horrible person.

In full-on Legends (I use Canon and blend in non-contradictory Legends that I like), you could make a case for that yes, but I still disagree that Palpatine had the galaxy's best interests at heart. I believe that Palpatine was evil and self-interested and that an intentional side-effect of his method of securing and maintaining power was the galaxy being more prepared for the Yuuzhan Vong or whatever, though since that is contradicted by Canon, I disregard it for my head-canon.
I don't think that everyone involved in it is necessarily a bad person, but in many cases you would come to the point of evil orders (many would never have that situation though, as they might never even see action), and they would have to choose how to react to it.

2 hours ago, Galakk Fyyar said:

What do you mean by roleplaying a bad guy and playing a statblock with affiliation? I think the difference there is only what you make it to be.

Playing a statblock with an affiliation means that you are not playing a character, someone with their own motivations and beliefs, but rather a collection of numbers that allow you to play a game (i.e. Battlefield). Playing a character would be playing someone who has their own motivations and beliefs and makes their own choices (i.e. Mass Effect, KOTOR, AoR, etc.). A "character" in an FPS is simply a bunch of numbers that allow you to move around and shoot things. That's it. A completely amoral "character" as it makes no decisions. In Mass Effect, where you make choices for the character, the character is not Amoral and (I don't play Mass Effect, so I don't know how dark side you can get) the decisions the character has to make have a moral weight to them.

40 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Just finished Thrawn: Treason . Almost entirely Imperial protagonists. And not a mustache twirling villain in sight (save for a few brief appearances by the Emperor, Tarkin, and Krennick).

They’re military personnel performing standard military duty. While some of those more...extreme...personalities clearly rise to the top, most are just average people. I’d say there’s nothing inherently difficult about an Imperial campaign, and it doesn’t have to inevitably lead to the characters having to acknowledge the evil they’re helping carry out.

It doesn't have to inevitably lead the characters to a reckoning, but my main point is not that they must be evil or else leave the empire, my point is that if they are at all important or they actually are involved in actual military campaigns, it becomes very hard to avoid seeing the bad side of the Empire, and thus to be "good" and yet still have no qualms about serving the Empire requires shielding or blindness. If you want to play a campaign where the Imperials in your story do no evil, see no evil, and hear no evil (I know, I tweaked it a little bit) then more power to you, but it is unlikely. As far as the propagandists go, do you really think that they hadn't seen/heard enough to no somewhat what the Empire was really like? I don't know how high up they were and how much they know, but it seems that they would be more the types to say that the Empire's bad actions were justified and move on.

I'll sum up my position as this: It is not just the individual actions of a PC that make them "good" or "bad" per se, it is also their broader beliefs and what actions they support, justify, and overlook.
The Empire is evil.
You can play your game the way you want, and if you want to have a "good Imperials" campaign, more power to you, but you can play Imperials with the careers and options already available to you, and I find it unlikely that FFG will release a sourcebook for playing as the Space Nazis.

I don't want to be rude but its YOUR campaign how why and where the Empire does what it does or the Emperor's motivations are yours to decide not anyone else!

The Star Wars game I've been playing in for years my GM chose Luke to join Darth Vader at the end of ESB instead of what happened in the movie so seriously does it matter how your campaign unfolds as long as you and your players are having fun?

Maybe the Emperor was possessed by Darth Sidious prior to the events of the The Phantom Menace or maybe everything you know about the Jedi is a complete pile of BS that even its members don't know about that Dooku was actually representing the true Jedi Order rather than Mace & Co because the Jedi Council wasn't considered "fit" to know the truth!

There are literally dozens of ways this could be resolved and you're bickering over an Imperial Campaign?

Sorry, but Biggs was a former Imperial, isn't Wedge Antilles also one now courtesy of Star Wars Rebels?

If Disney can do this so can you, it just won't be canon except to you.

Go forth and most importantly enjoy yourselves!

On 8/25/2019 at 2:01 AM, Nytwyng said:

Just finished Thrawn: Treason . Almost entirely Imperial protagonists. And not a mustache twirling villain in sight (save for a few brief appearances by the Emperor, Tarkin, and Krennick).

They’re military personnel performing standard military duty. While some of those more...extreme...personalities clearly rise to the top, most are just average people. I’d say there’s nothing inherently difficult about an Imperial campaign, and it doesn’t have to inevitably lead to the characters having to acknowledge the evil they’re helping carry out.

So your idea of a good campaign based as Imperial Players is to roleplay "I vos only vollowing orders", don't confront any of the moral themes or discussions and actively pretend to take part in a genocidal regime.

Sounds delightful.

Exactly the kind of thing that will really grow the RPG community as a whole.

2 hours ago, copperbell said:

I don't want to be rude but its YOUR campaign how why and where the Empire does what it does or the Emperor's motivations are yours to decide not anyone else!

The Star Wars game I've been playing in for years my GM chose Luke to join Darth Vader at the end of ESB instead of what happened in the movie so seriously does it matter how your campaign unfolds as long as you and your players are having fun?

Maybe the Emperor was possessed by Darth Sidious prior to the events of the The Phantom Menace or maybe everything you know about the Jedi is a complete pile of BS that even its members don't know about that Dooku was actually representing the true Jedi Order rather than Mace & Co because the Jedi Council wasn't considered "fit" to know the truth!

There are literally dozens of ways this could be resolved and you're bickering over an Imperial Campaign?

Sorry, but Biggs was a former Imperial, isn't Wedge Antilles also one now courtesy of Star Wars Rebels?

If Disney can do this so can you, it just won't be canon except to you.

Go forth and most importantly enjoy yourselves!

I think you have missed an important thrust of more than a couple of the commentators here. They are not looking to play a redeemed Imperial Character - like Biggs or Wedge (or Sabine /Kallus) . They want to play an Imperial Campaign where the Empire are the protagonists of the story - the viewpoint they want to adopt for the campaign is the meme "The Empire did nothing wrong" (hurr hurr the Empire reduced Unemployment to Alderan to zero).

I don't think anyone minds people running homebrew campaigns exploring their own canon or stories. Many of us are objecting to the idea that FFG should release a pro-Imperial Sourcebook encouraging players to take on a Facist point of view. I would argue it was perfectly acceptable pre 2016 when western society seemed to largely understood Fascism is bad.

On 8/16/2019 at 5:03 PM, WolfRider said:

Why for you a imperial soldier must be duped, I mean being a supoter of Empire discovering how evil is the Empire ? Why not just being someone who doesn't give a **** about politics, doesn't care about the Empire's evilness, and is here for personal reasons ?

I've ran an AR campaign with all characters were near-human or human stormtroopers. Not a single one was a supporter of the Empire because they believed the Empire was the good guys. In fact no players <were interested about this good guy versuss bad guy stupid **** or to play the over-abused tropein RPG of good versus evil.

I know the Star Wars canon says it's a Good / Light versus Evil / Darkness fight and the Good / Light must prevail at the end. That's fine for telling a story in movies. That isn't as fine for telling a story through an RPG. Mudding the waters, adding shades of grey, having players and non-players characters with a flexible morality alongside purely good and purely evil characters. All of that make a lot more interesting story and, imo the most important things in an RPG, make for more roleplaying by the players.

You can call it "political ****" but when it comes down to it people are defined and changed by the actions they take. If you are part of an organisation ordering you to murder civilians and commit Alien genocides it doesn't matter if you "don't care about politics" you are evil. Ignoring the issues - for instance playing a race of people privileged not to be persecuted and then actively persecuting other "lesser" races is an ideological issue - strongly implies you lack the emotional maturity or life experience to address these story themes. I have friends who have been assaulted for various characteristics in their lives (race, sexual identity, politics, etc) and when we roleplay they would find it deeply offensive to play out the role of "people who don't give a **** because it doesn't effect me".

It's Star Wars, I can't state enough times how one faction blew up a planet. 6 planets if you count the FO. There is a right and wrong when one side is annihilating civilisations.

On 8/23/2019 at 9:50 PM, Galakk Fyyar said:

That's opinion. I disagree, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. There isn't anything inherently good or evil about the Empire or the Rebellion, it's the individuals within that hit both ends of that spectrum. I'm sure some disagree with that opinion too, but asking for more options doesn't mean saying I'm right, you're wrong. That's the basis of what players have wanted in this topic, to have the options to do what they want for their own games.

There kind of is tho. One side annihilates entire civilisations. The most demonstrably evil thing in the setting.

The other doesn't do that. In the wider EU Canon the "Good Imperials" are the characters that follow on from the trilogy of films. The post ROTJ Era, and in a time of social upheaval where neither faction can annihilate worlds, and both sides are more traditional polities than an All Powerful Empire and it's resistance it is certainly possibly to play the morally grey Star Wars. During the GCV not so much.

9 hours ago, Spartancfos said:

I would argue it was perfectly acceptable pre 2016 when western society seemed to largely understood Fascism is bad.

What do you mean by that?

Really it all goes back to that core storytelling. A villainous campaign that DOESN'T cast the players as mustache twirling villains leaves the option of a shift from Star Wars as Comedy (in the classic sense) that of Star Wars as Tragedy. Such a shift would be well within the core function of Star Wars as a modern/sci-fi exploration of classic story telling. Indeed while a rather silly example in the big picture, the prequels are more or less the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. In an RPG, much like a TV series, you'd have more time, ands could really explore the characters a bit more than George had available to him. It would be a story not of how the Party is a group of terrible people, but a story about how they became terrible people, a story about things like loss and betrayal. A road paved with good intentions that leads somewhere not so great. Very much a story not about the destination, but the journey.

It's not the story of the Imperial Admiral that ordered his fleet to open fire on one of Leia's surrendering transports full of women and children. It's the tale of the young Imperial Lieutenant who ordered his Patrol Boat to capture one of Saw's surrendering transports only to lose 20 good men, including his best friend's little brother, when upon being boarded, the transport sent it's reactor supercritical crippling the Patrol Boat to cover the escape of other transports filled with weapons and guerillas.

It's not the story of an Imperial Colonel that looks at non-humans as barely intelligent animals. It's about the Major that genuinely tried to make some backwater a better place, only to watch the indigenous sapient species sabotage an aqueduct multiple times, despite his best efforts to protect it and repair it, and leave an entire city of their own people to die of thirst to try and stop him for reasons that, even to them, don't really make sense.

Not the ISB Captain that is willing to interrogate and even torture his own people to find the spy. It's the Cadet who covered for his classmate, a good guy and promising future officer, to go out with a girl even when the Academy was on lock down after an attempted rebel attack, only to learn that girl was a rebel agent who not only planned the attack, but killed the classmate when security started to suspect him.

But, this requires more mature themes and storytelling that, depending on your certain point of view, Star Wars may or may not support.

It's easy to point to the guys that made a planet destroying super battle station and say "that's the Black. Those are the bad guys." It's harder to talk about what it takes for someone to get there. To put a face and story on the Daemon that stands there now.

That requires work. It requires you test yourself and who you are. That requires you stare into the Abyss, and allow it to stare back. To look at the worst the universe has to offer, understand why it happened and realize that, had you lived that life, you may have made the same choices. That's something not everyone can do. It's an RPG story not everyone can stomach a play through.

Can it be Star Wars? Depends on your certain point of view.

To me...Star Wars, in it's original theatrical form, was a study and reflection of classic storytelling, a mirroring of the classic archetypes so solid in it's depiction that Star Wars is shown in high school English classes to teach the very concept.

So... you could make the lateral move. The Tragedy is as old and as relevant as Archetypes. A tragic story like the play MacBeth, with some adjustment, could easily be told in a galaxy far far away... but of course, someone will have to embrace the title character...

But... there's another view. As George moved forward, Star Wars has become more about the kids. George's life and priorities changed, so it's not a surprise his artwork did as well. Is Star Wars still a story for all? A tale for all? A classic revival of the kinds of tales told around campfires, in stone theaters, and wooden stages? OR is it a kid's show that adults nostalgically look upon, hoping to see in their kids the same spark they had when they first saw a lightsaber?

Not for me to say...

9 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

What do you mean by that?

He's suggesting that a Villain themed sourcebook with tips on running a villainous campaign involving a fictitious authoritarian Galactic Empire would somehow legitimize real-world political movements.

Me... I'll say what I've said all along: Running a Villainous Campaign requires you put on your big boy pants, and not everyone owns a pair. Were I in charge of FFG, I wouldn't bother making such a sourcebook for Star Wars for that exact reason (though something more generic like Genesys might work, assuming I wanted to dedicate the resources to such an endeavor).

18 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

He's suggesting that a Villain themed sourcebook with tips on running a villainous campaign involving a fictitious authoritarian Galactic Empire would somehow legitimize real-world political movements.

We do live in an age where fascists have become bold enough again that they can openly have rallies and demonstrations with swastika flags everywhere and the response of the party in power is "good people on both sides" despite only one side having killed somebody.

Quote

Me... I'll say what I've said all along: Running a Villainous Campaign requires you put on your big boy pants, and not everyone owns a pair. Were I in charge of FFG, I wouldn't bother making such a sourcebook for Star Wars for that exact reason (though something more generic like Genesys might work, assuming I wanted to dedicate the resources to such an endeavor).

What was being discussed was running properly Heroic campaigns, with at best minor shades of grey, with the Empire as proper heroes.

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

What do you mean by that?

It's political BS which is honestly getting annoying to see. I think this topic's run its course.

28 minutes ago, micheldebruyn said:

What was being discussed was running properly Heroic campaigns, with at best minor shades of grey, with the Empire as proper heroes.

I'd still probably classify that as a villainous campaign to maintain a level of clarity, though you could do some interesting things like setting the campaign in the Tapani Sector. That would certainly allow the Empire to behave more heroically without requiring any real changes, though it will take some work to maintain that Star Wars "Feel" in such a location.

1 hour ago, micheldebruyn said:

We do live in an age where fascists have become bold enough again that they can openly have rallies and demonstrations with swastika flags everywhere and the response of the party in power is "good people on both sides" despite only one side having killed somebody.

Again, I don't want to get into political arguments, but I can't let that slide without a counter-point: He specifically condemned the Neo-Nazis and the white supremacists, he was talking about the people peacefully protesting the removal of the statue. By the same logic you're using, he would have been calling Antifa "good people" when he specifically condemned them too.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/03/21/trump_didnt_call_neo-nazis_fine_people_heres_proof_139815.html

14 hours ago, Spartancfos said:

So your idea of a good campaign based as Imperial Players is to roleplay "I vos only vollowing orders", don't confront any of the moral themes or discussions and actively pretend to take part in a genocidal regime.

Sounds delightful.

Exactly the kind of thing that will really grow the RPG community as a whole.

Because that’s exactly what I said... 🙄

Using the current canon Thrawn novels (or Lost Stars , for that matter) as a springboard for an Imperial-centric campaign, it would appear that the vast majority of the Imperial armed forces did not have the full, objective omniscient viewer status that we have the privilege of looking at the stories through. Their actions appeared to them to be standard military operations - quelling uprisings, policing the spaceways, and generally keeping a watchful eye out for threats to the legitimate government. An Imperial campaign could be run as either a road to realization of what (we as the audience know) the Empire is really all about, or it could be run as a straightforward military campaign, fighting against threats to the security of the Empire, whether those threats are another galactic power such as the Grysk or internal threats like the “terrorist” Rebel Alliance that seeks to overthrow the government.

Take a look at any of the four books I mentioned (the new Thrawn trilogy and Lost Stars ) and tell me which of the central Imperial characters are evil.

It’s a matter of the campaign’s Certain Point of View (TM).

ETA: it’s interesting to consider that Thrawn can be the clear-cut villain on Rebels, but the not-so-bad protagonist in his own novels. It’s kind of like discussions that came up during the Walking Dead seasons when the Saviors and Negan showed up. They were the “bad guys” because we’d been following Rick and company’s story from the beginning. But the Saviors’ introduction to the main group was for our heroes to infiltrate a Savior outpost and kill everyone there, based on the say-so of the relative strangers at the Hilltop. If we’d been following Negan for seasons instead of Rick, we’d only know these characters as a group that ambushed and murdered people in their sleep.

The amount of people leaping to defend fascism both real and pretend in this thread is probably the strongest argument against an Imperial Navy Sourcebook that could be made.

3 hours ago, Spartancfos said:

The amount of people leaping to defend fascism both real and pretend in this thread is probably the strongest argument against an Imperial Navy Sourcebook that could be made.

That is a weird claim. I saw no one defend it.

3 hours ago, Daeglan said:

That is a weird claim. I saw no one defend it.

It's weird as we're mixing real-world and fiction.

Essentially, even a totally good Imperial who personally commits no atrocities, suppression, repression, genocide, or what have you, still is someone who would be in support of leaders who do. Your good-guy Imperial still looks at things like the destruction of Alderaan and says: "I'm ok with this."

Is that's a show of support for real-world politics? Maybe not, but it could be... depends on who you are... and even then, to a passerby, they might not know the difference.

Any Imperial story risks treading into some awkward territory, and how a character is supposed to handle that, and if a players is willing, and will find it "fun" to play such a character is tricky.

You can look at something like TIE Fighter, where the player played a TIE Pilot and potentially special secret agent of the Emperor as well, but that game also insulated the player quite a bit. There wasn't any "No Russian" missions where you commit an obvious and explicit atrocity. No back and forth debate with the other pilots in the mess over current imperial policy. You just attended briefings, flew your TIE, shot down X-wings, and that was more or less that.

In an RPG there's expected to be a more personal experience, and that's where it can start getting strange, because that layer of insulation isn't as easy to keep in place, and it take a really mature GM and Player to handle such a game.

Now, EotE is essentially centered around bad guys in many cases. players run spice, and guns, commit heists... but those cases it's almost always simple criminal activity with a overarching motivation of money. And that's works, you can run your Breaking Bad campaign about a spice runner, or Sons of Anarchy about a swoop gang who runs guns without getting weird because the end goal is just money (and that personal Obligation of course). Nobody expects to feel like the good guy, though you can have the Firefly moments, or Rebel entanglements that can balance out the hutt robot torture rooms.

When you switch to an Imperial Campaign, the money takes a back seat to ideology, and that's what makes running a truly Villainous campaign really challenging. You're not playing the mere antagonists, or criminals, you're playing the guys that are ok with some pretty reprehensible things, and it can be easy for a playgroup to get really offensive to each other and others.

At that point you have to either TIE Fighter it, and find was to insulate the players from particular nasty themes, while still regularly reminding them they aren't the good guys. Accept that you're playing mustache twirling villains, and roll with it on a similarly melodramatic level. Make the story more tragic in tone to allow the character to be more 3 dimensional, while still not glorifying the terrible things he will do along the way, or his reasons for doing it. Or otherwise address the fact you're playing for the wrong team.

Can you do any of those things? Sure!

But it's not easy to do, and there's a fine line that's easy to cross.

When you look at doing Empire as Good Guys, that line can shoot behind you pretty fast. You don't merely insulate the players from the real nasty, you ignore it. Instead of "bringing peace and order to the galaxy" being a kind of ironic black humor you acknowledge is false, you start getting into to the theme that the ends really do justify the means, and the Imperial view on the galaxy is acceptable.

If everyone playing the game were my age, and had my experience or more, this wouldn't be an issue. I'm ready for a "let's be bad guys" sourcebook. But... it's not me I'm worried about, it's that mule-hat 14-year-old. It's the kid that's going to run a game in his English classroom during lunch, say something horribly offensive, in jest or not, that will be posted to youtube, hit the CNN front page, and be a black eye on the whole community.

19 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

Essentially, even a totally good Imperial who personally commits no atrocities, suppression, repression, genocide, or what have you, still is someone who would be in support of leaders who do. Your good-guy Imperial still looks at things like the destruction of Alderaan and says: "I'm ok with this."

Not to be repetitive (I hear some saying, “Too late!” 😜 ), but we’ve got a couple of stories dealing with Imperial protagonists having to process the destruction of Alderaan. It’s been a while since I’ve read Lost Stars , so I can’t recall the details of how that narrative justified it. While it led to Thane Kyrell deserting to join the Rebellion, Ciena Ree believed the official line that justified why it was necessary. Battlefront II: Inferno Squadron showed a “true believer” in Iden Versio regarding Alderaan, but she ultimately did defect to the Alliance.

We could push buttons and draw real-world parallels to otherwise good people being OK with horrible actions being performed by those in power in the name of “good,” but it would likely get really nasty really quickly (but would probably stand a good chance of demonstrating exactly the point).

Long story short: wanting to run an Imperial campaign isn’t an inherent endorsement or excuse of fascism.

Or are we going to go further and suggest that by telling stories centered on Imperial protagonists, Timothy Zahn, Claudia Gray, and Christie Golden (among others) are endorsing and excusing fascism?

And that's basically the entire rest of my last post.

You can have Villainous/Imperial stories, but it requires appropriate framing and context.

Even then you've got to be aware of what you're doing and where you're doing it.

I'll happily run a super dark villainous campaign in my living room, or on a private discord/roll20 channel if that's what my players want. Not so comfortable doing so at a Con where some noob might walk by and think that what we're doing is normal RPG behavior.

9 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

And that's basically the entire rest of my last post.

You can have Villainous/Imperial stories, but it requires appropriate framing and context.

Even then you've got to be aware of what you're doing and where you're doing it.

I'll happily run a super dark villainous campaign in my living room, or on a private discord/roll20 channel if that's what my players want. Not so comfortable doing so at a Con where some noob might walk by and think that what we're doing is normal RPG behavior.

Modern politics shouldn't dictate entertainment and hobbies.

There was a time, not that long ago, that RPG writers didn't care who they offended or why because it's entertainment. If you don't like it, don't partake in it. That was how the story went and to me it's sad that we've gone away from that.

19 hours ago, Spartancfos said:

The amount of people leaping to defend fascism both real and pretend in this thread is probably the strongest argument against an Imperial Navy Sourcebook that could be made.

That hasn't happened at all, and even if it did, why do you care what someone else's politics are in the sense of playing RPGs? When I play I don't care if the person at my table is a Republican or a Democrat or Left or Right or Center or any of that. If nobody's bluntly forcing their beliefs on you, I don't see the problem. RPGs are not about politics and politics of real-world sorts don't have any business at a gaming table, unless you yourself want to include them. They shouldn't be the norm and they shouldn't be a basis for what games get a pass and what games shouldn't be allowed. I'd say the majority of people who play RPGs have at least some expectation of getting away from real world concerns, whatever they may be.

4 minutes ago, Galakk Fyyar said:

Modern politics shouldn't dictate entertainment and hobbies.

There was a time, not that long ago, that RPG writers didn't care who they offended or why because it's entertainment. If you don't like it, don't partake in it. That was how the story went and to me it's sad that we've gone away from that.

I mostly agree, but this is a game with broad appeal, so it makes sense for the company to not want to release a space nazis sourcebook. If the Empire wasn't so directly analogous I would probably think differently.
With smaller games and companies, controversy can really only help them, regardless of their intentions.
And I can certainly see @Ghostofman not wanting a casual passerby or onlooker to get the wrong impression. I think you can run your game however you want, and if you want to run an Imperial campaign at a con, go for it, but I can understand people not wanting to.

9 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I mostly agree, but this is a game with broad appeal, so it makes sense for the company to not want to release a space nazis sourcebook. If the Empire wasn't so directly analogous I would probably think differently.
With smaller games and companies, controversy can really only help them, regardless of their intentions.
And I can certainly see @Ghostofman not wanting a casual passerby or onlooker to get the wrong impression. I think you can run your game however you want, and if you want to run an Imperial campaign at a con, go for it, but I can understand people not wanting to.

I can understand it too, but I also feel strongly against the idea that we as gamemasters need to tailor our games and change their content to avoid even the possibility of someone getting offended or having a disagreement. Mentioning again the video saying that people shouldn't be allowed to play as the German side or as Terrorists because it can be offensive, there's a level of understanding and acceptance when you go into a game. You chose to play a game about WWII, or a shooter about counter-terrorists versus terrorists, and therefore there's an underlying acceptance of that.

If someone wants to make an Imperial game, whether they want to cast the Imperials as good guys, bad guys, or gray guys, there's a level of implicit acceptance from people who want to join. If you join an Imperial game and are offended by playing an Imperial, the gamemaster shouldn't be expected to change things up and adjust it for you, you should be expected to find a different game. Nobody is making you play it. If you're playing at a con and someone comes to watch your Imperial game, then get offended that you're playing as Imperials, it's not the gamemaster's fault when that person chose to get involved. If they don't like it, it's as easy as going to another table, not setting the players into panic mode thinking they've done something wrong.

I feel that that mentality leans too far towards mollycoddling.

5 minutes ago, Galakk Fyyar said:

I can understand it too, but I also feel strongly against the idea that we as gamemasters need to tailor our games and change their content to avoid even the possibility of someone getting offended or having a disagreement. Mentioning again the video saying that people shouldn't be allowed to play as the German side or as Terrorists because it can be offensive, there's a level of understanding and acceptance when you go into a game. You chose to play a game about WWII, or a shooter about counter-terrorists versus terrorists, and therefore there's an underlying acceptance of that.

If someone wants to make an Imperial game, whether they want to cast the Imperials as good guys, bad guys, or gray guys, there's a level of implicit acceptance from people who want to join. If you join an Imperial game and are offended by playing an Imperial, the gamemaster shouldn't be expected to change things up and adjust it for you, you should be expected to find a different game. Nobody is making you play it. If you're playing at a con and someone comes to watch your Imperial game, then get offended that you're playing as Imperials, it's not the gamemaster's fault when that person chose to get involved. If they don't like it, it's as easy as going to another table, not setting the players into panic mode thinking they've done something wrong.

I agree with pretty much everything you said there.

However, I believe that @Ghostofman 's point was not that we should avoid offending people, just that we don't want to give someone the wrong impression.

Also, anyone who would actually be offended is overreacting. There is no reason to be offended by this, however, I have seen article(s) (can't give a source, sorry it's been a while) calling people who dress up in Stormtrooper gear tantamount to wearing the Nazi uniform, so I understand the concern.

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I have seen article(s) (can't give a source, sorry it's been a while) calling people who dress up in Stormtrooper gear tantamount to wearing the Nazi uniform, so I understand the concern.

That's their fault though, not the people dressing up.