On 1/27/2019 at 9:14 AM, HappyDaze said:

Lucas even told us that, but he never really showed us that. While there wasn't enough time for it in EII/EIII, I wish more time in TCW would have focused on the other side. Specifically, I wish there had been a few episodes showing a group of sympathetic Separatist protagonists that are fighting for their freedom even if that means that they have to ally with greedy mercantile/industrial powers to get the financial and military backing to do so.

Ditto. There were so many episodes in the last half of the series that had little or nothing to do with the Clone Wars besides occurring during them. Would cutting some of these out for some sympathetic Separatist soldier focused episode, and hopefully some space battle focused episodes been so bad?

Well, collapse of the empire has Separatist Officer as a career
Dawn of the Empire has Imperial Academy Cadet
Both have clone soldiers.....and while the Empire switched to non-clone conscripts later on, there was a pretty long transition period from Clones to Freeborn.

I mean this is all a very touchy subject.
So, let's walk it back from Mid 20th Century Germany for a moment.

Lots of people see the USA as an imperialistic power, especially since Vietnam. I mean yeah, this is the home for most of the people on this board, so we can have a bit of myopia when it comes to examining the legitimacy of the actions taken by the US military. But a LOT of innocent people have been blown up by drone strikes (that is an objective and indisputable fact), and we started two wars on false pretenses (Vietnam and Iraq 2) while allowing worse regimes to continue on and put themselves into a place where they cannot be touched. Kinda hard to say that we are always only heroes.

What about cops? Man there are lots of cops who plant evidence, falsify reports, turn off their body cams, intimidate and lie to people about whether they're allowed to film them, take bribes, sexually assault people in custody, abuse prisoners and straight up murder people.
Are they all heroes or villains?
What if they're propping up a state that is potentially corrupt as from the military example.

I want an Imperial splatbook, but I want it focused more on organization, some planets, tech and stuff like that.

I don't want character creation stuff. That at least has the appearance of encouraging the creation of fascist characters. Also there's enough in the existing books that you can easily make Imperial characters if you want to.

Zrob, yeah, now let's get rid of the Imperial and First Order ships from X-Wing and Armada 🙄

Sweet mercy.

I don't mind the idea of an Imperial players' handbook, but the amount of equivocation in this thread is mindboggling. The Empire is evil and the Rebel Alliance is good. Pointing out how the space trains run on time doesn't negate slavery, dictatorship and planetary genocide. The moral failings of the Rebel Alliance are based on the desperation of its members to do good against such an immoral military power. I guarantee you that no-one who returns home to find their Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru killed by fascists would go "Yeah, but the other side is bad too".

Roleplaying as a Space Nazi is a far different thing than pushing around a miniature of one. That's why there are hundreds of tabletop wargames about WWII, and only a few RPGs about it. The amount of identification with the Empire and its goals is very high when you are roleplaying the character of a Stormtrooper: you follow orders, you believe you are not wrong, and want your society to continue on. The amount of cognitive disassociation a player would have to go through to ignore what the Empire is about, and the obfuscation that the GM would have to do to give the stormtrooper PCs only morally-unambiguous jobs, would be even worse than playing it straight: you would know that you're playing bad people OOC, but the IC masquerade is a deliberate attempt to ignore something you KNOW is wrong. And God help you if you don't think being an Imperial is wrong.

Some people enjoy playing outside the bounds of morality in order to further explore their own morality and views on the world. So this is likely a case of YMMV.

It's called Role-Playing. You aren't playing yourself in another outfit. Do you have this opinion about actors who play bad guys in movies? lol

On 7/17/2019 at 2:49 AM, Whiz Canmaj said:

Sweet mercy.

I don't mind the idea of an Imperial players' handbook, but the amount of equivocation in this thread is mindboggling. The E  mpire is evil and the Rebel Alliance is good. Pointing out how the space trains run on time doesn't negate slavery, dictatorship and planetary genocide. The moral failings of the Rebel Alliance are based on the desperation of its members to do good against such an immoral military power. I guarantee you that no-one who returns home to find their Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru killed by fascists would go "Yeah, but the other side is bad too".

Are they though? Over half the galaxy saw an improvement in their quality of life under the empire. It's not argued that they weren't heavy handed, but the republic had basically left the outer rim to the mercy of pirates and corporations. A few worlds are a small price to pay to bring safety to thousands of worlds. They people were safer and more secure than they had ever been. And the rebels were hardly good guys. Murder, terrorism, telling anyone who was a separatist to go F themselves so that the senators that lost their power in the empire can restore a corrupt and morally bankrupt republic putting them back on top. I don't see how anyone can forgive the atrocities committed by the rebels because we were told they were the good guys but hold the empire accountable for their atrocities because we were told that they're the bad guys.

No one is going to forgive their family being killed whether it's a couple of moisture farmers on dirtball executed by the empire or shoppers in the coruscant mall killed by a rebel terrorist bomb.

A lot of this depends on your point of view (see what I did there) of how you want to paint star wars. Is it a simple black and white good vs evil, is it a more nuanced grey with good and evil on both sides, or is it somewhere in between.

@Whiz Canmaj

How many historical (not alternate history, not fantasy loosely based on) RPGs are there period? I can't think of any outside of pirate and superhero games. Even then, there's 11 (plus one for a fantasy variant) WW2 books for GURPS and Golden Age books/sections for just about every Superhero game, which actually makes WW2 the most common historical setting for RPGs I'm aware of.

On 7/18/2019 at 11:59 PM, Ahrimon said:

Are they though? Over half the galaxy saw an improvement in their quality of life under the empire. It's not argued that they weren't heavy handed, but the republic had basically left the outer rim to the mercy of pirates and corporations. A few worlds are a small price to pay to bring safety to thousands of worlds. They people were safer and more secure than they had ever been. And the rebels were hardly good guys. Murder, terrorism, telling anyone who was a separatist to go F themselves so that the senators that lost their power in the empire can restore a corrupt and morally bankrupt republic putting them back on top. I don't see how anyone can forgive the atrocities committed by the rebels because we were told they were the good guys but hold the empire accountable for their atrocities because we were told that they're the bad guys.

No one is going to forgive their family being killed whether it's a couple of moisture farmers on dirtball executed by the empire or shoppers in the coruscant mall killed by a rebel terrorist bomb.

A lot of this depends on your point of view (see what I did there) of how you want to paint star wars. Is it a simple black and white good vs evil, is it a more nuanced grey with good and evil on both sides, or is it somewhere in between.

When you build yourself a weapon that is designed to kill billions of people a the push of a button, fully intending to use it on civilian populations, and then actually use it to blow up a planet of pacifists, you are capital E Evil, and all shades of grey go away, no matter how grubby grey and morally ambiguous the other side may be.

How much publicity was made of Alderaan's destruction by the Death Star ? I always wondered about that since the Death star was destroyed very shortly after. I doubt the Empire wanted anything about the Death Star be known after its destruction. Even if it was widely know in the Empire, how much people believed it to be true ? The point isn't about how evil we know the Empire was, but how many people living inside the Empire believed it be capital E Evil.

On 7/20/2019 at 3:02 PM, NanashiAnon said:

@Whiz Canmaj

How many historical (not alternate history, not fantasy loosely based on) RPGs are there period? I can't think of any outside of pirate and superhero games. Even then, there's 11 (plus one for a fantasy variant) WW2 books for GURPS and Golden Age books/sections for just about every Superhero game, which actually makes WW2 the most common historical setting for RPGs I'm aware of.

And almost none of those WW2 based games have any information or rulesets for the enemy soldiers, just soldier class types to use for the enemy soldiers and weapons and such. Thankfully in Force and Destiny, as well as Age of Rebellion, one can easily adapt the soldier templates for the Imperial soldiers; and the trooper template works perfect as is for the stormtroopers

On 7/25/2019 at 6:59 PM, micheldebruyn said:

When you build yourself a weapon that is designed to kill billions of people a the push of a button, fully intending to use it on civilian populations, and then actually use it to blow up a planet of pacifists, you are capital E Evil, and all shades of grey go away, no matter how grubby grey and morally ambiguous the other side may be.

When you build yourself a weapon that is designed to kill tens or hundreds of thousands with the drop of a bomb, fully intending to use it on civilian populations, and then actually use it to blow up a city of innocents, TWICE , are you capital E Evil? Or just capital A American? Do all shades of grey go away, no matter how many atrocities the other side may have committed Or good they had done?

8 hours ago, WolfRider said:

How much publicity was made of Alderaan's destruction by the Death Star ? I always wondered about that since the Death star was destroyed very shortly after. I doubt the Empire wanted anything about the Death Star be known after its destruction. Even if it was widely know in the Empire, how much people believed it to be true ? The point isn't about how evil we know the Empire was, but how many people living inside the Empire believed it be capital E Evil.

I believe it was something along the lines of the Empire tried denying it, but nobody believed them. It is kinda hard to explain why one of the core worlds is missing. I wouldn't discount the idea that the Rebellion recorded the Death Star either. Luke's binoculars were a handheld device that belonged to a bunch of poor moisture farmers on a backwater planet yet were enough to pick up something as small as a Star Destroyer, so I don't think it's implausible a military base would have some kind of detection array capable of recording the existence and destruction of something the size of the Death Star. For all we know R2D2 (or one of the other surviving astromechs) recorded everything given they have holorecorders.

It's more explicit that the outrage over Alderaan is what began open rebellion. Remember stealing the Death Star plans was the Alliance's first major victory against the empire and before they were founded it was just Bail Organa, Mon Mothma and Garm Bel-Iblis's groups plus some Separatist holdouts fighting the Empire with any earnest.

14 hours ago, NanashiAnon said:

I believe it was something along the lines of the Empire tried denying it, but nobody believed them. It is kinda hard to explain why one of the core worlds is missing. I wouldn't discount the idea that the Rebellion recorded the Death Star either. Luke's binoculars were a handheld device that belonged to a bunch of poor moisture farmers on a backwater planet yet were enough to pick up something as small as a Star Destroyer, so I don't think it's implausible a military base would have some kind of detection array capable of recording the existence and destruction of something the size of the Death Star. For all we know R2D2 (or one of the other surviving astromechs) recorded everything given they have holorecorders.

It's more explicit that the outrage over Alderaan is what began open rebellion. Remember stealing the Death Star plans was the Alliance's first major victory against the empire and before they were founded it was just Bail Organa, Mon Mothma and Garm Bel-Iblis's groups plus some Separatist holdouts fighting the Empire with any earnest.

I think they both denied and claimed credit. To the core they said no we didnt do that. That was an atrocity commited by rebels. To the outer rim they said you better toe the line or else.

On 7/20/2019 at 2:02 PM, NanashiAnon said:

@Whiz Canmaj

How many historical (not alternate history, not fantasy loosely based on) RPGs are there period? I can't think of any outside of pirate and superhero games. Even then, there's 11 (plus one for a fantasy variant) WW2 books for GURPS and Golden Age books/sections for just about every Superhero game, which actually makes WW2 the most common historical setting for RPGs I'm aware of.

We do have an imperial academy cadet universal spec in Dawn of rebelion. That combined with any other spec from age gives you all you need.

Quote

When you build yourself a weapon that is designed to kill tens or hundreds of thousands with the drop of a bomb, fully intending to use it on civilian populations, and then actually use it to blow up a city of innocents, TWICE , are you capital E Evil?

Yes, you are.

Quote

Do all shades of grey go away, no matter how many atrocities the other side may have committed

Nope

But you should be aware that the bombs were dropped at a time the war was practically over. It was just done for pure test and showing off reasons. Without communicating with your allies, nor implying to your enemy that you are going to annihilate two major cities with your A-bombs.

1 hour ago, dreenan said:

But you should be aware that the bombs were dropped at a time the war was practically over. It was just done for pure test and showing off reasons. Without communicating with your allies, nor implying to your enemy that you are going to annihilate two major cities with your A-bombs.

It's not quite that cut and dry or even that naively simplistic. Dropping the atomic bombs (the only two the US had that were ready to be deployed) was not a decision undertaken lightly. There's a great deal more on the topic that can be researched, but isn't germaine to this thread's own topic, but in short, the choice was either drop the bombs and force an early surrender (while hoping Japan didn't call the US' bluff on having more such bombs), or continue engaging in a long and drawn-out war that would have cost far more lives on both sides, both military and civilian as Japan showed no signs of capitulating even if the writing was pretty much on the wall.

Plus, that's overlooking that the Japanese were an opposing military power in which the US was engaged in an active war. The Galactic Empire deliberately blew up a non-hostile world and eradicated the entire populace simply as a demonstration of power, with the Death Star built as a means of oppression to be used pretty much at will on anyone that even thought to defy the Empire, making for a rather stark difference.

On 7/18/2019 at 4:59 PM, Ahrimon said:

Are they though? Over half the galaxy saw an improvement in their quality of life under the empire. It's not argued that they weren't heavy handed, but the republic had basically left the outer rim to the mercy of pirates and corporations. A few worlds are a small price to pay to bring safety to thousands of worlds. They people were safer and more secure than they had ever been. And the rebels were hardly good guys. Murder, terrorism, telling anyone who was a separatist to go F themselves so that the senators that lost their power in the empire can restore a corrupt and morally bankrupt republic putting them back on top. I don't see how anyone can forgive the atrocities committed by the rebels because we were told they were the good guys but hold the empire accountable for their atrocities because we were told that they're the bad guys.

No one is going to forgive their family being killed whether it's a couple of moisture farmers on dirtball executed by the empire or shoppers in the coruscant mall killed by a rebel terrorist bomb.

A lot of this depends on your point of view (see what I did there) of how you want to paint star wars. Is it a simple black and white good vs evil, is it a more nuanced grey with good and evil on both sides, or is it somewhere in between.

Holy rewriting history! Half the galaxy saw improvement? There was wide spread slavery. The Empire destroyed an entire planet of peaceful people. The Empire didn't do anything to stop piracy, corporate greed, or crime syndicates. They all continued to prosper under Imperial rule. On top of that, corrupt moffs and governors bilked the worlds they oversaw out of millions of credits for their own personal wealth. The corruption was MORE wide spread after the creation of the Empire than it had been under the Republic. Keep in mind that many of those outer rim worlds that weren't being protected by the Republic weren't even Republic worlds. The Republic didn't have control over every known system. Republic credits were no good on Tatooine because Tatooine wasn't a republic planet. Under Imperial Control, Tatooine was still controlled by the Hutts and was ripe with criminals and thugs. And how was anyone safer or more secure under Imperial control? It's not like there was massive suffering in Republic worlds where there was law and equality for all. After the Empire took over people lived in fear. Beyond that, the only evidence we have of suffering under the Republic were all machinations designed by Palpatine.

It's like stating that the Nazi Reich was ok because the German economy did better...so what if millions died. Or stating that Communist Russia was a great nation because it kept the peace...even though there was no freedom of the press, or freedom of speech and the military could just kidnap you and send you to a gulag to work and die. The Empire was an improvement in life to a small percentage of people. It was a massive loss in quality of life for nearly everyone.

Was the Republic perfect? Heck no. There was curruption and problems, but that same corruption and those same problems existed under Imperial control. However Imperial control added slavery, conscripted military service, destruction of entire planets of people (2 billion population). The only people who's lives improved were those involved in the Imperial government/military that towed the line, and only if they didn't make a mistake in the presence of Vader. At best you could say that life didn't really change much...for humans...in the core worlds. That's not a very high bar.

Light and Dark. Empire and Republic (rebellion, resistance). They were directly meant to represent straight good and evil. This was George's intention. It remains Disney's intention. The Empire was evil. The reason there isn't an Imperial RPG is because Disney doesn't want to glamorize the bad guys. They don't want to 'muddy' the waters of the main stories. They don't want to risk a PR nightmare from some overly imaginative parent making some press release about how Disney has a pro-fascist RPG that encourages slavery.

On 7/27/2019 at 2:38 PM, WolfRider said:

How much publicity was made of Alderaan's destruction by the Death Star ? I always wondered about that since the Death star was destroyed very shortly after. I doubt the Empire wanted anything about the Death Star be known after its destruction. Even if it was widely know in the Empire, how much people believed it to be true ? The point isn't about how evil we know the Empire was, but how many people living inside the Empire believed it be capital E Evil.

How much publicity was made of Alderaan's destruction? Unknown. How much was planned though? That is known. The Empire was going to use the Death Star as an active threat against rebellion. They were going to release publicity about how Alderaan was supporting the rebellion and this is what happens to those that collaborate with Rebel scum. The destructive power of the Death Star was going to be a clear threat to the entire galaxy. Maybe you aren't happy with the Empire, but you're not going to risk your entire extended family, friends, and neighbors over it. It would also convince people to turn in friends, relatives, and neighbors they suspected. "I don't like the Empire, but I don't want Joe from down the street getting myself, my children, my grandchildren, and my home blown into space dust...so I'm reporting him."

Covering up what happened would have been pointless had the Death Star not been destroyed. In fact it would have been impossible. The DS-1 had over 1.5 million people on board. The Imperial officers were all using their service aboard this station as a way to catapult their careers forward. There is no way you could have kept 1.5 million soldiers, techs, pilots, etc from talking about it. Beyond that, how many people were involved in the construction of it spread across the entire galaxy? It would have been a pointless effort to try to keep it info about it contained.

After the destruction though, the Empire of course no longer wants anyone to know about it. The loss of the station would be a sign of weakness. However the Rebels would have tried to make everyone aware of it. This is where propaganda comes into play again. The Empire would likely try to cover it up and say it's all just lies.

On 7/30/2019 at 10:53 AM, kmanweiss said:

After the destruction though, the Empire of course no longer wants anyone to know about it. The loss of the station would be a sign of weakness. However the Rebels would have tried to make everyone aware of it. This is where propaganda comes into play again. The Empire would likely try to cover it up and say it's all just lies.

For what it's worth, the Battlefront II: Inferno Squad novel has official Imperial news broadcasts referring to Iden Versio as a "survivor of the Death Star." It appears that, not only were they not trying to hide it, they were even open about its name.

19 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

For what it's worth, the Battlefront II: Inferno Squad novel has official Imperial news broadcasts referring to Iden Versio as a "survivor of the Death Star." It appears that, not only were they not trying to hide it, they were even open about its name.

Interesting...

I could totally see the Imps using the destruction of a space station by the Rebels as a news headline to paint the Rebels as evil. "Imperial base DS-1 Orbital station destroyed by rebel terrorist act, over 1 million lives lost!" But outright calling it the Death Star to the public seems...well, odd. Kind of a 'Are we the baddies?' moment there.

After getting home from work today, I looked it up. Here it is to give you full content (page 104):

Quote

"The daughter of renowned Admiral Garrick Versio of the Imperial Security Bureau and famous artist Zeehay Versio may be a traitor to the glorious Empire," holojournalist Alton Kastle stated, with just the right amount of horror in his smooth voice. "Captain Iden Versio has been recorded as spouting lies about the Empire and inciting violence, denouncing the brave subjects of the Death Star battle station who lost their lives while she survived. This is not in keeping with the behavior of the highly decorated captain hitherto, but the words are damning."

On 7/17/2019 at 2:49 AM, Whiz Canmaj said:

Sweet mercy.

People like to roleplay. I really can't stand behind the idea that people shouldn't be able to play who they want because of, like I said way back in this very same topic, personal politics or thoughts on how things should be. It's their game and they can play however they like, equivocations and all.

38 minutes ago, Galakk Fyyar said:

People like to roleplay. I really can't stand behind the idea that people shouldn't be able to play who they want because of, like I said way back in this very same topic, personal politics or thoughts on how things should be. It's their game and they can play however they like, equivocations and all.

I said in my post that playing Imperials wasn't my issue; it was wanting to play them as morally equivalent to the Rebels because you (the player, not the character) believe that they weren't that bad. They can do whatever they want in their games, but they should know that intentionally playing as Nazis and trying (emphasize on *try* ) to portray them in a favourable manner doesn't come across well for them.

Moreover, anyone trying to present this as a valid argument either doesn't understand the history of Nazis and their post-war whitewashing by certain groups, or know exactly what they're doing.

5 hours ago, Galakk Fyyar said:

People like to roleplay. I really can't stand behind the idea that people shouldn't be able to play who they want because of, like I said way back in this very same topic, personal politics or thoughts on how things should be. It's their game and they can play however they like, equivocations and all.

I can buy wanting to play as evil every now and then. I have played evil PCs in non-Star Wars RPGs.

What I can't wrap my head around is wanting to play as a dupe who buys into the Empire's propaganda and believes the Empire is a force of good unles it's set-up for a heel/face turn at some point, where the PCs realise they have been lied to and switch sides.

11 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

I can buy wanting to play as evil every now and then. I have played evil PCs in non-Star Wars RPGs.

What I can't wrap my head around is wanting to play as a dupe who buys into the Empire's propaganda and believes the Empire is a force of good unles it's set-up for a heel/face turn at some point, where the PCs realise they have been lied to and switch sides.

You not approving of it doesn't mean no one else does, or that no one else is free to run their games exactly as they choose.