.. so the I'm thinking the bloke that wrote this book may have a copy of 'The Star Wars Bible' sent out to certain WEG employees (and even some novel writers) from Lucasfilm, detailing what they could and could not put in their products... like Stormtroopers never defect and join the Rebellion .. oh wait! SOMEBODY WHO USED TO WORK FOR WEG MUST HAVE A COPY THEY COULD SCAN AND THROW OUT AS A PDF...*facepalm*

@DidntFallAsleep66

You should have fallen asleep, it may do you some good. (Joking)

Just because they have a copy doesn't mean they are free to distribute it. That being said, I'd also like to see it.

On 2/24/2020 at 8:15 PM, DidntFallAsleep66 said:

.. so the I'm thinking the bloke that wrote this book may have a copy of 'The Star Wars Bible' sent out to certain WEG employees (and even some novel writers) from Lucasfilm, detailing what they could and could not put in their products... like Stormtroopers never defect and join the Rebellion .. oh wait! SOMEBODY WHO USED TO WORK FOR WEG MUST HAVE A COPY THEY COULD SCAN AND THROW OUT AS A PDF...*facepalm*

If this is reference to Finn... he joined the Resistance, not the Rebellion. Whole different thing.

😂 🤣

22 hours ago, Xcapobl said:

If this is reference to Finn... he joined the Resistance, not the Rebellion. Whole different thing.

😂 🤣

That stormtrooper armor looked VERY familiar

15 hours ago, DidntFallAsleep66 said:

That stormtrooper armor looked VERY familiar

But still different. Alsmost like some sort of Star Wars - The Next Generation.

But, joking aside. I get you. Once upon a time, I read a Star Wars D6 RPG product, let's call it The Star Wars Roleplaying Game by West End from 1987, and in the section on Other Characters there is a write-up of a Stormtrooper as a generic NPC for the characters to battle and con. "Stormtrooper Loyalty" is a separate section in their stat block. " They are completely loyal to the Empire. They cannot be bribed, seduced, or blackmailed into betraying their Emperor.They can be conned and tricked - but they aren't stupid, and tricking them is not always easy. " This was one of the first times we heard of the difficulty of making game products under the Lucasfilm licences, as they had to send each and every little tidbit and change through some sort of Lucasfilm quality control to see if it complied to the Star Wars narrative and George Lucas's vision.

Then we have Finn in The Force Awakens, who, at the first combat he is in, sees FN-Bloody Helmet and then decides to (quite openly) not fire his blaster at those villagers when ordered so directly. Something I might surmise to be in full view of his squad mates and commanding officers. Then he defects. Something that might not have been an option if there was some sort of Star Wars Bible that hammered down such lore facts.

And then we see what looks like an entire squad of AWOL Stormtroopers riding sporsies (space-horsies)...

And they were all supposed to be abducted as children, indoctrinated more thouroughly than another youth organization somewhere around 1940-1945, and be utterly loyal.

Where is that rumoured Star Wars Bible now?

" They are completely loyal to the Empire. They cannot be bribed, seduced, or blackmailed into betraying their Emperor" is a good guide for a GM to run your regular run of the mill Stormtrooper, but terribly restrictive worldbuilding when it is also canon that Stormtroopers are regular humans who aren't under any kind of supernatural compulsion to be loyal to anything.

Even Sith lords aren't 100% unredeemably evil when push comes to shove. It's sort of one of the major points of the entire franchise.

I know. And I have played in a Star Wars RPG group where one of the more fun character concepts was a biker scout trooper who defected. He was the contact for our rebel cell during their first mission.

It is, however, a nice basis to start. And if somebody make a movie, or writes a novel, and they introduce one or a couple of new ideas deviating from that basis, it might have its own merits. But once you seem to throw everything "known" out the windows and just start inventing things (or re-inventing, as jetpack troopers are so old in the setting) because of visuals...

It's never made much sense there were never any defectors. Most same individuals that have any sort of moral compass reaches a point where they ask themselves if what they're doing is right.

In my first campaign, I had exactly 2 defectors of stormtroopers. One was a PC whose parents were secret Rebellion supporters, and that PC's squad was deployed to her home planet and ended up shooting the commanding officer that had ordered the successful execution of her parents.

The second was an NPC, last survivor of his squad, who was just a lucky and somewhat competent country bumpkin that had no true idea what the Empire was and how terrible some of its crimes were.

The blind loyalty comes from the hoards of propaganda. The lore behind the men and women of the Imperial forces has evolved much from even the OT days, and remember, Jan Dodonna, Crix Madine, Wedge Antilles, all were defectors in one fashion or another. Crix Madine (in Legends) was responsible for the release of a deadly plague on a planet with a special forces squad, which were arguably more fanatical than the rank and file stormtrooper.

Part of this may come from the old Legends dichotomy of Army Troopers and Stormtroopers. Stormtroopers were the elite loyals and Army Troopers were more common and less brainwashed. You might be able to grease the palms of an Army Trooper, and an Army Trooper might defect because they have not been "conditioned" to the same extent.

That said, Army Troopers are nearly non-existent in current canon (I blame Rebels low budget. See discussion about "Mr. Chin" in the "What's in Your Headcanon" thread) so what @GameboyAK said is pretty much accurate.

Crix Madine was an Imperial Army officer who trained the Storm Commandos. He hand-selected them from the Stormtrooper Corps. This fits with my belief regarding Stormtroopers vs. Imperial Army.

Jan Dodonna was a Republic holdover, and Wedge was never an Imperial in Legends.

3 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Wedge was never an Imperial in Legends

True, but Skystrike Academy Wedge has a bit more to him, rather than just orphaned and newly single man becomes ace pilot in Rebellion, at least in my opinion.

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

That said, Army Troopers are nearly non-existent in current canon (I blame Rebels low budget. See discussion about "Mr. Chin" in the "What's in Your Headcanon" thread) so what @GameboyAK said is pretty much accurate.

Interestingly, would Han Solo, in his formative years as (not) documented in Solo, a Star Wars Story be an Imperial Army Trooper?

8 minutes ago, Xcapobl said:

Interestingly, would Han Solo, in his formative years as (not) documented in Solo, a Star Wars Story be an Imperial Army Trooper?

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, Han Solo was an Army Trooper on Mimban.

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

That said, Army Troopers are nearly non-existent in current canon...

Aren't they nearly non-existent in pretty much every canon? They certainly have never been much of a presence in the George Lucas canon movies. What we see in the movies is that the Stormtrooper is the basic Imperial soldier, and not some kind of special, extra brainwashed elite unit.

8 minutes ago, micheldebruyn said:

Aren't they nearly non-existent in pretty much every canon? They certainly have never been much of a presence in the George Lucas canon movies. What we see in the movies is that the Stormtrooper is the basic Imperial soldier, and not some kind of special, extra brainwashed elite unit.

Legends had Stormtroopers elevated to a new level in many cases. In particular, if you look at the Thrawn novels, they treated Stormtroopers as rare, elite, and loyal when compared to the Army Troopers.

As far as the Original Trilogy, you can easily make the case that those were situations in which "the elite" were the proper choice (aside from their inability to hit anything).

Plus, in Legends, Stormtroopers were actually an independent branch. In Canon, they operate under the auspices of the Imperial Army, as in Canon they were the replacement for the Army Troopers which were phased out.

As far as Finn goes, the First Order kidnapped and brainwashed children (hmm... kinda reminds me of someone *cough* Jedi *cough cough*). If he was simply human, his defection wouldn't make a ton of sense. However, given that he is force sensitive, you can fairly easily explain that "he could hear the will of the force," comparable to a strong conscience.

27 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, Han Solo was an Army Trooper on Mimban.

Disney canon... not Lucas canon... pick the one that works for you

8 minutes ago, DidntFallAsleep66 said:

Disney canon... not Lucas canon... pick the one that works for you

The one that works for me is a very selective catalog of works (and a couple retcons/changes/additions of my own) between roughly 50 BBY to the current end of The Mandalorian.

However, I was answering a question about Disney's Canon.

51 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Legends had Stormtroopers elevated to a new level in many cases. In particular, if you look at the Thrawn novels, they treated Stormtroopers as rare, elite, and loyal when compared to the Army Troopers.

As far as the Original Trilogy, you can easily make the case that those were situations in which "the elite" were the proper choice (aside from their inability to hit anything).

Plus, in Legends, Stormtroopers were actually an independent branch. In Canon, they operate under the auspices of the Imperial Army, as in Canon they were the replacement for the Army Troopers which were phased out.

As far as Finn goes, the First Order kidnapped and brainwashed children (hmm... kinda reminds me of someone *cough* Jedi *cough cough*). If he was simply human, his defection wouldn't make a ton of sense. However, given that he is force sensitive, you can fairly easily explain that "he could hear the will of the force," comparable to a strong conscience.

I don't consider Legends particularly relevant when answering quastions about current canon. This is about Finn, after all. Who's never even been an Imperial Stormtrooper anyway so who cares about the defection rate of Imperial Stormtroopers.

And aren't the Thrawn books set after the Empire has been defeated? Thrawn didn't do things the way the old Empire did.

Why exactly wouldn't a simple human he able to resist some regular, plain, non-magical, non-chemical, purely propaganda-based brain-washing? In a series that is all about redemption?

Just now, micheldebruyn said:

I don't consider Legends isn't particularly relevant.

And aren't the Thrawn books set after the Empire has been defeated? Thrawn didn't do things the old Empire did.

Well, we were largely talking about Legends. The original topic was about something that dates to well before Disney took over, and we were discussing the differences between the two. Thus, Legends is extremely relevant.

1 minute ago, micheldebruyn said:

Why exactly wouldn't a simple human he able to resist some regular, plain, non-magical, non-chemical, purely propaganda-based brain-washing? In a series that is all about redemption?

Sure he might, but it was literally all he'd ever known. He'd been conditioned from probably before he could walk. If you look at the Clone Troopers, who are comparable in many ways, we know of only one who full-on defected. That could be treated as precedent for Finn, but it important to note that he was bribed as well as having already seen war, and he quite clearly had thought through his situation, it wasn't a snap decision. That's slow progress that I don't think we saw with Finn. (I'm not counting the Null-class ARC who fought for the Separatists because that's complicated and circumstances make it not relevant, and I'm also not counting desertion as that is different)

Aside from all of that, I liked Finn and thought he was the most promising (and consequently under-utilized) characters from the Sequel Trilogy. His defection never really stuck out to me as impossible, but I think it's interesting to wonder how possible defection in that scenario really is. I do like my force-theory though.

On 3/20/2020 at 9:13 PM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

The one that works for me is a very selective catalog of works (and a couple retcons/changes/additions of my own) between roughly 50 BBY to the current end of The Mandalorian.

However, I was answering a question about Disney's Canon.

TBH In my Edge campaign now it's a case MIUAIGO* as long as it's fun...

*make it up as I go along

On 3/20/2020 at 2:02 PM, DidntFallAsleep66 said:

Disney canon... not Lucas canon... pick the one that works for you

I enjoy all of the above, thanks. Plenty of things to enjoy more than anything bad. So it's all good.

I'd say clone troopers were even more hardwired, and there was at least one defector and at least one traitor. And both of those were on George Lucas's own watch.

It's great to say stormtroopers are super loyal. And it's great to break that ideal for the sake of story. However, it is not okay to do it over and over until the ideal no longer has merit.

Every other week, it seems, we learn of yet another Jedi surviving Order 66. It breaks the "truth" that the jedi were wiped out.