I know, I know, canon is a pointless argument that doesn't really mean much, but my players are always asking for a completely canon campaign so this matters in my universe. Just thought it was worth putting out there. Interesting to see that they had the pendant in Luke's house for the eagle-eyed.
Side note: Does anyone know if there are any stats, official or homebrew for the Sith Troopers?
Sith troopers can be found on a sister board . From KoToR that is.
Not sure anyone has taken a shoot at the tRoS Sith Troopers. But going with Stormtrooper, or perhaps Death Trooper, or a brew of something in between, could be an idea... depends if you want them to be rivals or minions.
Edited by JegergryteIt's amusing how fans stretch hard to reason their favorite characters in new canon.
Even if all that was true, all it means is there were Sith lords named Darth Revan, Desolous, and Phobos. Which are just names at this point.
The Force Unleashed pretty much can't be canonised without decanonising large amounts of canon, particularly anything dealing with the formation of the Rebel alliance, including Rogue One, much of the Darth Vader comic, and most of Rebels.
Desolous and Phobos were just two holograms he fought in some verions of the game.
Thrawn has been made explicitly canon, but that doesn't mean any of the stories he's been in have been too. The Mandalorian just canonised a character called Mandalore The Great, but that doesn't make Tales Of The Jedi or the Taung canon.
I’m just disproportionately giddy that, with Galaxy’s Edge considered canon, that after years of LFL making sure no Star Wars artwork had any...shoelaces are now canon. 😜
I suspect that we will continue to see familiar names sprinkled in to new canon. The people manning the helms of new content are fans and have been exposed to the Legends material we grew up with. It's not a stretch to name characters based on the stories they read as children.
As Kaosoe noted, right now it's just the names of Revan, Phobos, and Desolous have been included in the current canon, with no other details brought over.
As was noted, when Thrawn was brought over, pretty much his entire history and actions from Legends didn't cross over with him, with Thrawn's story being completely retold in addition to shifting his active time frame from years after RotJ to prior to ANH.
As for Sith Trooper stats, you can probably just use the base stormtrooper minion stats, as there's not really anything to indicate they're inherently superior to your stock stormtrooper. At most, they might have a couple additional group skills or perhaps an extra point added to their wound threshold.
14 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:As Kaosoe noted, right now it's just the names of Revan, Phobos, and Desolous have been included in the current canon, with no other details brought over.
Very well put. I agree. This is merely proof that Sith Lords of those names existed but says nothing about events that they conspired in or what they looked like or when they lived.
My interpretation of the Sith Troopers is that they were simply stormtroopers with a different paint job.
This isn't a direct answer, but when dealing with "canon" for running games its important to hash out the term and its attendant details with your players. Star Wars has been aggressively marketed in multiple medias beyond its native genre for over four decades . This can put you in a straitjacket of contradictions and suffocating detail. There was so much ancillary content licensed by Lucas Arts that Disney, when taking over the franchise, felt it had to wipe the slate clean to get a clean workbench for making new content. In other words, when you start talking about canon for a game, you need to establish what constitutes your tables "holy writ."
Question #1: "What is the scope of canon?"
Simple enough. What's in? What's out? I like to keep it lean. For my table I go with "studio canon." Episodes I-IX , The Clone Wars , Rebels , and The Mandalorian . Even then you end up having to reconcile contradictions and interpret "on screen evidence," but no one at your table needs to worry over having read any comics or novels, or played any video games, etc. Ask your players, "what corpus of works do you mean when you say 'canon'?"
Question #2: "How exclusionary is 'canon'?"
My experience is that players who want "strict" canon games haven't always thought that all the way through. Often those same players who demand "strict canon" often have definitions of canon that includes a sacral bovine or three from various "apocryphal" works. So, is there anything that your players or you yourself have absorbed from ancillary sources that really matter to you? That should be discussed in advance.
Beyond that, novels, comics, guides, and games are fantastic sources of inspiration! Does "strict canon" mean you can't raid apocryphal materials for characters, events, or ideas that end up in the game as it progresses? In other words, insofar as its not disruptive to the player's sense of "canon," is the occasional use of apocryphal sources acceptable? For my games I liberally raid "non-canon" sources for material. I just don't feel at all beholden too them.
In that same vein, the gaming supplements themselves have introduced a lot of "expanded" content. So, is that fair game? For my games I implicitly assume the gaming book materials are in. I also tend to use the hyperspace travel times from the old WEG books as a way of rationalizing events. Ask your players, "how exclusionary is strict?"
Question #3: "How compulsory is canon?"
Even if you decide to go with "strict studio canon" there may be elements there you or your players don't want to talk about or don't want in a game. My players, for instance, have a strong negative visceral reaction to "midichlorians" because they feel that it reduces the "boiled down religion" of the Force into biomechanics. I'm somewhat more sanguine about it and feel one can interpret those references in a number of ways, but at my table that one is a non-starter. Also, my players are not fans of Ewoks, Gungans, or Purgill. Do they exist? Sure. Do they show up? So far the answer is no. Ask your players, "is there anything you want out?"
For the record, while I find Jar-Jar Binks loathsome I like Boss Nass, so I'm not a Gunganist.
Question #4: "Is canon destiny?"
This is really the big question. How beholden are you to the events and timeline laid down in your "strictly canon" sources. Are the events in the movies history even if history hasn't been made yet? This has a huge impact on you and your players and the games you intend to run. Can the players change the course of Star Wars history? What happens if they do something major or remove a major non-player character from the board? Ask your players if they are married to the game-universe exactly matching the outcome of the films or television shows. Even if you decide that a "divergent timeline" is possible at your table, you can still refer to obviated canon-sources for how things work. As with all things gaming: communication is king. Talk. Talk. Talk.
More on point...
At this point all we know about Revan from a "canon" perspective is that a Sith Lord of that name existed. Who, what, when, where, why? His story? That's all up in the air.
Edited by Vondy2 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:My interpretation of the Sith Troopers is that they were simply stormtroopers with a different paint job.
The First Order clearly hired the hosts of Sith Eye for the Jedi to revamp the Empire's whole look.
Edited by Vondy
4 hours ago, Vondy said:The First Order clearly hired the hosts of Sith Eye for the Jedi to revamp the Empire's whole look.
Now we need stats for Darth Karson, Darth Ted, Darth Kyan, Darth Jai and Darth Thom.....
Edited by DaeglanOn 1/8/2020 at 12:40 AM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:My interpretation of the Sith Troopers is that they were simply stormtroopers with a different paint job.
According to the visual dictionary they're supposed to be more elite than the FO stormtroopers with marginally better gear. The ST-W48 blaster carbine/rifle they carry has a higher rate of fire than the F-11D carried by FO stormtroopers, and a secondary fire mode, not dissimilar to an underslung grenade launcher, that fires bowcaster-esque explosive bolts.
21 minutes ago, BipolarJuice said:According to the visual dictionary they're supposed to be more elite than the FO stormtroopers with marginally better gear. The ST-W48 blaster carbine/rifle they carry has a higher rate of fire than the F-11D carried by FO stormtroopers, and a secondary fire mode, not dissimilar to an underslung grenade launcher, that fires bowcaster-esque explosive bolts.
Well, sure its better. It has a splash of color! And, sure they're elite. They clash!
24 minutes ago, BipolarJuice said:According to the visual dictionary they're supposed to be more elite than the FO stormtroopers with marginally better gear. The ST-W48 blaster carbine/rifle they carry has a higher rate of fire than the F-11D carried by FO stormtroopers, and a secondary fire mode, not dissimilar to an underslung grenade launcher, that fires bowcaster-esque explosive bolts.
"More elite" with "marginally better gear" is basically just a standard minion group with a different weapon and fluff text. They aren't shown as particularly elite, they're just mooks 2.0, unlike the Death Troopers who were shown as top of the line elite soldiers, operating in smaller groups and constituting a significantly bigger threat to the good guys.
23 hours ago, Vondy said:The First Order clearly hired the hosts of Sith Eye for the Jedi to revamp the Empire's whole look.
After never wanting to costume as any sort of Imperial, I absolutely found myself eyeing the Final Order's uniforms and saying "I want!"
On 1/7/2020 at 5:03 AM, GM_Needs_A_Xanex said:Side note: Does anyone know if there are any stats, official or homebrew for the Sith Troopers?
They didn't seem any tougher than stormtroopers, just reskin them.
Edited by EoenOn 1/7/2020 at 7:13 PM, Vondy said:This isn't a direct answer, but when dealing with "canon" for running games its important to hash out the term and its attendant details with your players. Star Wars has been aggressively marketed in multiple medias beyond its native genre for over four decades . This can put you in a straitjacket of contradictions and suffocating detail. There was so much ancillary content licensed by Lucas Arts that Disney, when taking over the franchise, felt it had to wipe the slate clean to get a clean workbench for making new content. In other words, when you start talking about canon for a game, you need to establish what constitutes your tables "holy writ."
Question #1: "What is the scope of canon?"
Simple enough. What's in? What's out? I like to keep it lean. For my table I go with "studio canon." Episodes I-IX , The Clone Wars , Rebels , and The Mandalorian . Even then you end up having to reconcile contradictions and interpret "on screen evidence," but no one at your table needs to worry over having read any comics or novels, or played any video games, etc. Ask your players, "what corpus of works do you mean when you say 'canon'?"
Question #2: "How exclusionary is 'canon'?"
My experience is that players who want "strict" canon games haven't always thought that all the way through. Often those same players who demand "strict canon" often have definitions of canon that includes a sacral bovine or three from various "apocryphal" works. So, is there anything that your players or you yourself have absorbed from ancillary sources that really matter to you? That should be discussed in advance.
Beyond that, novels, comics, guides, and games are fantastic sources of inspiration! Does "strict canon" mean you can't raid apocryphal materials for characters, events, or ideas that end up in the game as it progresses? In other words, insofar as its not disruptive to the player's sense of "canon," is the occasional use of apocryphal sources acceptable? For my games I liberally raid "non-canon" sources for material. I just don't feel at all beholden too them.
In that same vein, the gaming supplements themselves have introduced a lot of "expanded" content. So, is that fair game? For my games I implicitly assume the gaming book materials are in. I also tend to use the hyperspace travel times from the old WEG books as a way of rationalizing events. Ask your players, "how exclusionary is strict?"
Question #3: "How compulsory is canon?"
Even if you decide to go with "strict studio canon" there may be elements there you or your players don't want to talk about or don't want in a game. My players, for instance, have a strong negative visceral reaction to "midichlorians" because they feel that it reduces the "boiled down religion" of the Force into biomechanics. I'm somewhat more sanguine about it and feel one can interpret those references in a number of ways, but at my table that one is a non-starter. Also, my players are not fans of Ewoks, Gungans, or Purgill. Do they exist? Sure. Do they show up? So far the answer is no. Ask your players, "is there anything you want out?"
For the record, while I find Jar-Jar Binks loathsome I like Boss Nass, so I'm not a Gunganist.
Question #4: "Is canon destiny?"
This is really the big question. How beholden are you to the events and timeline laid down in your "strictly canon" sources. Are the events in the movies history even if history hasn't been made yet? This has a huge impact on you and your players and the games you intend to run. Can the players change the course of Star Wars history? What happens if they do something major or remove a major non-player character from the board? Ask your players if they are married to the game-universe exactly matching the outcome of the films or television shows. Even if you decide that a "divergent timeline" is possible at your table, you can still refer to obviated canon-sources for how things work. As with all things gaming: communication is king. Talk. Talk. Talk.
More on point...
At this point all we know about Revan from a "canon" perspective is that a Sith Lord of that name existed. Who, what, when, where, why? His story? That's all up in the air.
Big Amen to your points. In fact I stick an expanded "studio canon", expanded by those novels and Dark Horse comics I have read of what is now considered Legends and to KotOR I, II and SWTOR to some extend (so mostly EU in fact). I just cut out the whole yuuzhan vong part as I find this whole flying in geneticaly modified giant potatoes and lobster star fighters too hilariously zerg-ish. The neat thing about having the massive treasure trove in form of the EU is, that the Story Group of "ould" Lucas Arts somewhat kept all this content consistent without extensive contratiction. So if a player comes up with EU info I was not aware of yet, I can be at least mostly assured, that it won't break the campaigns I play.
But even if you stick exclusively to studio canon whithout the EU, this on movies focused content is consistent and self explanatory.
This is not the case with the new canon. Now you are actually forced to read novels and comics made up after the movies were launched as plot hole fillers to explain what should have been eplained in the movies in the first instance or shoehorn logical fallacies as canon subsequently. There is sadly no actual capable Story Group keeping a vigilent eye on the consistency.
Don't get me wrong, I do understand Disney's desire to start with a clean slate to be able to be more creative, but keep it consistent and give guidelines to content creators so to not break canon.
42 minutes ago, DarthDude said:Now you are actually forced to read novels and comics made up after the movies were launched as plot hole fillers to explain what should have been eplained in the movies in the first instance or shoehorn logical fallacies as canon subsequently.
Who’s coming to your house and requiring you to read anything you don’t want to? Do they do it at gunpoint, or are they just physically intimidating?
On the subject of Canon. My players are all pretty big fans of the franchise, but none of them are huge canon-huggers. They know what is and isn't canon but like to see what extra bits of non-canon I include in my games or what I mess with.
For instance, In a Legacy Era campaign they had to venture to Korriban to visit a sith tomb where they ran afoul with a tribe of native sith purebloods. It was pretty amusing when they found out that the chief was really PROXY from the Force Unleashed in holographic disguise. They enjoyed the twist.
57 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:Who’s coming to your house and requiring you to read anything you don’t want to? Do they do it at gunpoint, or are they just physically intimidating?
Well, not at gunpoint but out of mere curiosity. If you are a curious person and expect from a movie - the seventh in a row of a saga (TFA) - to give at lieast a little explanation, where this strange First Order and their leader Snoke came from after the defeat of the Empire and why the Republic tolerated them in the first place and of all even disarmed in the face of a new threat by a new dark sider, to make some sense. Or not to speak of those "falling" bombs in space at the start of TLJ, where they were shoehorned into logic (even Star Wars has some consisten non scientific laws) by a novel as "magnetic" bombs afterwards. If you are content to be spoonfed by logical fallacies without questioning, all power to you.
Edited by DarthDude2 hours ago, DarthDude said:not at gunpoint but out of mere curiosity. If you are a curious person and expect from a movie - the seventh in a row of a saga (TFA) - to give at lieast a little explanation,
What wasn’t on screen that was necessary for the story being told?
2 hours ago, DarthDude said:where this strange First Order and their leader Snoke came from after the defeat of the Empire
“From the ashes of the Empire.” It’s right there in the crawl. And it’s all that’s needed for the movie’s story to proceed. We began the movies with the Empire in place, but there was no gnashing of teeth about lack of detail of how this oppressive regime displaced the “old republic” that Obi-Wan mentioned.
2 hours ago, DarthDude said:why the Republic tolerated them in the first place and of all even disarmed in the face of a new threat by a new dark sider
I don’t recall the movies saying the New Republic disarmed. That’s from the ancillary media. In fact, in his big speech, Hux says that firing Starkiller will not only put an end to the New Republic Senate, but also, “their cherished fleet.”
2 hours ago, DarthDude said:not to speak of those "falling" bombs in space at the start of TLJ, where they were shoehorned into logic
2 hours ago, DarthDude said:If you are content to be spoonfed by logical fallacies without questioning, all power to you.
But...your complaint is that they’re *not* “spoon feeding” you; that they’re *not* covering the sort of details that are either minutia or not relevant to the story being told; that they’re doing exactly what the OT did, and the audience didn’t blink.
On 1/10/2020 at 5:11 PM, Nytwyng said:“From the ashes of the Empire.” It’s right there in the crawl. And it’s all that’s needed for the movie’s story to proceed. We began the movies with the Empire in place, but there was no gnashing of teeth about lack of detail of how this oppressive regime displaced the “old republic” that Obi-Wan mentioned.
Honestly? I really mean, honestly? A sentence mentioning "from the ashes" in the opening crawl of what is supposed to be the 7th movie in a saga is your explanation? And you compare it with the empire in place of the first movie which started the whole franchise from scratch?
You compare the logical fallacies of "REEEEE...DIZNEHHHH alwuz rite" to the OT, while even well meaning journalists advise Terrio to just shut up because he tries to explain every hilarious plothole in panic mode. Don't remember that desperate behaviour from Lucas back then in the 80ies.
That's what the OT did so well, to generate a familiarity so that you felt to be in the middle of the story right from the start. "REEE....DIZNEHHH zo beautiful" failed doing so. And the box office tells us the rest of the story.
Btw, you are aware that the tie bombers used proton bombs in your gif and not ww2 bomb carpets?
17 minutes ago, DarthDude said:Honestly? I really mean, honestly? A sentence mentioning "from the ashes" in the opening crawl of what is supposed to be the 7th movie in a saga is your explanation? And you compare it with the empire in place of the first movie which started the whole franchise from scratch?
Yes. What else was necessary to know about the First Order to tell the story? Truly necessary?
18 minutes ago, DarthDude said:You compare the logical fallacies of "REEEEE...DIZNEHHHH alwuz rite" to the OT, while even well meaning journalists advise Terrio to just shut up because he tries to explain every hilarious plothole in panic mode. Don't remember that desperate behaviour from Lucas back then in the 80ies.
I also don't remember the masses losing their minds because Lucas didn't explain minutia that wasn't essential to the stories being told. So, there's that....
19 minutes ago, DarthDude said:That's what the OT did so well, to generate a familiarity so that you felt to be in the middle of the story right from the start. "REEE....DIZNEHHH zo beautiful" failed doing so. And the box office tells us the rest of the story.
What story is that, exactly?
20 minutes ago, DarthDude said:Btw, you are aware that the tie bombers used proton bombs in your gif and not ww2 bomb carpets?
I see. So, you can point us to the timestamp where the movie says that, right?
As an aside, I cannot take anyone seriously who uses the term "Reeeee". Am I the only one?