They have to listen to the stormtroopers roll around, slowly dieing from the gut shot they just inflicted upon him.

Every time they kill someone needlessly, play the "Han getting tortured" screams from E5.

... ErikB, the OP called it indiscriminate right in the very excerpt you quoted, why are you asking? Frankly, it sounds like after they're done with the Empire the Heroes of Yavin's next target would be... the players, who sound like they pretty much are "shooting everyone" as you mentioned.

For me the baseline is shown in Return of the Jedi. The rebels round up the troops on the base and escort them away. They don't just gun them all down when it's no longer a fight.

Now, anyone can run their game the way they want, but that is where I believe the setting default is.

... he just called it indiscriminate, why are you asking? Frankly, it sounds like after they're done with the Empire the Heroes of Yavin's next target would be... the players.

Because the general problem I think with players trying to kill everything is that you can't then do other types of interactions. Everything turns in to a gunfight. You want a quiet chat in a bar and they try to torture the informant. Seriously guys, stop trying to kill the quest givers etc.

If, however, they only shoot at Imperials and a lowly shopkeeper or even a Hutt crime lord won't be instantly shot at, you can do something with only having Imperials show up when you want the interaction to be a fight.

Put them in situations where their guns are taken away temporarily, or where the use of unnecessary force is clearly going to get them killed? It's only temporary, but it might condition them to trying different tactics than just gunning everyone down.

I suppose the way I would handle it, if I weren't attempting to get the players to empathize (the soft way of doing things) is to continually ramp up the difficulty and repercussions of their acts, the more that they continue to just shoot everything in sight (the hard way). I mean, no matter how lawless space can be, if you're just shooting everyone in the face and leaving them for dead, you're going to attract a reputation and probably a number of bounties. It won't just be another day in the park for them.

Because the general problem I think with players trying to kill everything is that you can't then do other types of interactions. Everything turns in to a gunfight. You want a quiet chat in a bar and they try to torture the informant.

... welcome to his player group, then.

To me the real test is whether the players play their characters as though they're human beings, with a sense of consequences to their actions, and attachments to other people. Sonny Corleone in The Godfather is a murdering criminal, but he has attachments to the people in his family, he cares about them, and he does have a sense of right and wrong. He's not just a psychopathic murderer.

The problem is I couldn't even use this yard stick for the characters.

I could play with 'Intelligent Evil' - the Profit or Dexter Model.

I could play with 'Self Promoting Evil with attachments" - the Godfather or Sopranos model.

Unfortunately what I appear to have is the mayhem for kicks model. I cant help wondering if other games rewarding killing with XP might have conditioned their response to anyone who doesn't appear to be a 'quest giver'.

Yeah, it sounds like your players are in "murder hobo" mode. It might just be worth talking to them about what they're looking for in a campaign and what kind of experiences they're interested in having.

... welcome to his player group, then.

Well, they may have decided that no matter how nice this guy is, if the Empire isn't stopped many more beings will die like those on Alderan so even if he loves his cats if he doesn't get out of the way fast enough he is going down. With a side order of wondering if he is such a nice guy where was he when they were (insert whatever nefarious scheme the Empire was up to in the last Star Wars product they enjoyed, or what Aku did in Samurai Jack or Sauron did in The Lord of the Rings or whatever Dark Lord did in whatever they were last watching. Including pretty much any documentary on the History channel.).

In that case, humanising Imperials won't do anything to slow them down.

I had friends on the Death Star.....they died that day when the Empire was attacked ....

I had friends on the Death Star.....they died that day when the Empire was attacked ....

It was called the Death Star. Was anyone really all that surprise when it was used to blow up a planet?

Still, it's not like the Rebels captured the moon sized space station filled with people and then dismantled it after taking all the crewmen into custody.

Nope. They just blew them all up.

(And we generally consider revenge a bad thing. Or at least an anti-hero thing. But I kind of think that killing thousands of people at once is a bit beyond the scope of anti-hero. )

Edit: Also, if you like EU, it was actually called the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station / Imperial Planetary Ore Extractor. Besides, what are you really going to call a giant space cannon? Project Moonbeam?

I had friends on the Death Star.....they died that day when the Empire was attacked ....

I think poor Erik's head just exploded or something...

Just as the movies didn't show the Empire in any humanist light, due to to plot and time constraints, neither did it show the extremes that a rebellion would go to. At the end of the day, there is more to both of these factions than the limited Pollyanna view we were given.

At the end of the day, there is more to both of these factions than the limited Pollyanna view we were given.

There really isn't. It isn't that kind of show.

At the end of the day, there is more to both of these factions than the limited Pollyanna view we were given.

There really isn't. It isn't that kind of show.

Well, surely there *can* be. Our RPGs don't have to confirm exactly to the way things were shown in the movies, do they?

I would prefer that a Star Wars rpg reflect the Star Wars setting yes. I ain't bored of it yet.

(in before ErikB derails topic!)

Hi!

They've sunk lower than the Empire

That implies you haven't been having your villains kick enough dogs.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KickTheDog

(In Star Wars, Vader comes on and instantly snaps a prisoners neck. Then the Empire kill Lukes aunt and Uncle (and a bunch of Jawas). Then vader force strangles a subordinate and tortures Leia. Then the Death Star blows up a defenceless planet. All classic dog kicking.

In Empire Vader keeps on strangling subordinates, tortures Han and Chewie, and doesn't play straight with Lando.

And Jabba drops a slave girl who objected to him molesting her in to a rancor pit to be eaten, and his droid master is just sitting around torturing droids.

Are you putting in as much effort as the Star Wars movies do to establish how loathsome the bad guys are?)

And the best one yet, you see that Jedi, the one who was the chosen one who will save the galaxy?

Well, now he's slaughtering innocent toddlers.

I agree with showing the players true evil. Say, "Hey guys, so you come out of the cantinaa after killing off all the patrons, and then wamo! This dude just randomly attacks you by throwing a thermal detonator your way. As you scream like wee little babies, he kicks a little alien baby in the face burns the whole town down."

Now, don't say this like I did, but go ahead and have some random serial killer attack the group if they get too sadistic. You have to fight fire with fire, and if that means saying, "Welp, if you're serial murderers, then so is he," then go ahead and do it.

And don't just have some hobo attack them. Have their best friend attack them. Or an ally of some sort, lacking a friend.

However, you can't just throw this in. Only do this if the players are being horific monsters and you want to show them the error of their ways. If they get mad that some random, high level warrior attacked them for no reason, just say "YOU ARE THE MOST WANTED CRIMINALS IN THE GALAXY! YOU'VE ALREADY KILLED TWENTY WHOLE POPULATIONS! DEAL WITH IT!"

Again, don't =quote me exactly. Or say I gave you the idea. I was never here...

At the end of the day, there is more to both of these factions than the limited Pollyanna view we were given.

There really isn't. It isn't that kind of show.

See, I just feel like that's an incredibly unrealistic way to view the setting. Yeah, we're trying to keep the RPG in the relative theme of the SW movies, but having two large factions of people existing as nothing but pure stereotypes seems both incredibly boring and also stretches the limits of my suspension of disbelief. They're people, not droids. Why should they display no variation of emotion, loyalty or principle?

Edit: I'm not saying that you can't do it that way. It just sounds kinda unfun, if I'm being honest. I always felt like the relative cliche nature of the two factions was just a storytelling device and not straight-up the exact, 100% way it is.

At the end of the day, there is more to both of these factions than the limited Pollyanna view we were given.

There really isn't. It isn't that kind of show.

See, I just feel like that's an incredibly unrealistic way to view the setting. Yeah, we're trying to keep the RPG in the relative theme of the SW movies, but having two large factions of people existing as nothing but pure stereotypes seems both incredibly boring and also stretches the limits of my suspension of disbelief. They're people, not droids. Why should they display no variation of emotion, loyalty or principle?

Edit: I'm not saying that you can't do it that way. It just sounds kinda unfun, if I'm being honest. I always felt like the relative cliche nature of the two factions was just a storytelling device and not straight-up the exact, 100% way it is.

I am hearing 'I do not like Star Wars very much'.

At the end of the day, there is more to both of these factions than the limited Pollyanna view we were given.

There really isn't. It isn't that kind of show.

See, I just feel like that's an incredibly unrealistic way to view the setting. Yeah, we're trying to keep the RPG in the relative theme of the SW movies, but having two large factions of people existing as nothing but pure stereotypes seems both incredibly boring and also stretches the limits of my suspension of disbelief. They're people, not droids. Why should they display no variation of emotion, loyalty or principle?

Edit: I'm not saying that you can't do it that way. It just sounds kinda unfun, if I'm being honest. I always felt like the relative cliche nature of the two factions was just a storytelling device and not straight-up the exact, 100% way it is.

I am hearing 'I do not like Star Wars very much'.

relative cliche nature of the two factions was just a storytelling device

Cliches are not strictly bad. Based on the mindset I've put forth in multiple posts, you should be reading, "I like Star Wars quite a lot, but I don't think that the tone of movies translates perfectly to a compelling game!" But whatevs, I guess.

I had a fringe type of campaign using SAGA. My two teenage players quickly became outlaws and their actions became worse and worse. They aren't psycopaths in real life, but were having fun with a, "game". The worst moment was when they needed a ride and executed a passerby for his landspeeder. I had been using a website between sessions which included news broadcasts, both intergalactic and regional. The news between sessions included an entry about a moisture farmer, and father of 5, who had been brutually killed by bandits. The characters ended up leaving an anonymous donation for the family. Also, during the next session the characters met their first rebel contacts and the campaign was saved by quickly moving into a Rebel Alliance campaign.

EotE campaigns might have the same problem. A quick fix might be moving on to an AoR campaign to remind players they are supposed to be the good guys.

I remember my first D&D game in 1979, Caves of Chaos. We'd killed the orc guards and were bewildered as to what we had to do with the women and whelps. Someone said: 'We leave them. Don't know about you but I'm not up for killing kids, regardless of what colour they are.' I've been that way ever since, and I'm lucky I've played with others who feel that way.

Memories. My first ever D&D experience was in the Caves of Chaos. AdvD&D was used not the Basic set the Caves of Chaos had come in. We ran into the same moral dilemma. The Lawful Good Paladin, of all people, waded into the female and young, slaying them left and right. He preached that orcs are evil incarnate and young/female orcs will just create more full grown warrior orcs, and thus must be removed from existance. It actually made sense in the end that the strict, Lawful Good Paladin would desire this solution even if a Chaotic/Neutral Good character would be against it.

At the end of the day, there is more to both of these factions than the limited Pollyanna view we were given.

There really isn't. It isn't that kind of show.

TCW is a lot more nuanced that way. Episode Heroes on Both Sides explores this, the Separatist Senator thinks all the stuff about Dooku being a Sith Lord is just propaganda. Like Lucas said about TCW vs the movies, they have more time to explore a theme. I think if Lucas had had the capability to tell the original tale in serial format, he would have shown this side of Imperial life as well, not the narrow, time-constrained view he was limited to.

Star Wars is good guys vs bad guys. Stormtroopers are bad guys, Good guys kill bad guys. Luke is a good guy, so he killed thousands of bad guys in the first movie alone.

Wow this topic moved fast. A guy goes to work and... bam, 4 pages.

I don't really agree or disagree with anything that was said except a broad Maelora-ism:

I mean, Boba Fett is broadly one of the bad guys, and even he never killed anyone just for laughs.

He never was a "bad guy" to start. Unless your definition of "bad guy" is "Guy who has no dog in the fight hired to get a bounty on Han Solo". There are a lot of Han Solo fans in the Star Wars universe I find who have some sort of Boba Fett is an evil dude complex going on.

Anyway, on topic.

There really are two ways to handle a party that slides further and further to the evil side of their characters. You either:

A. Let them

B. Give them increasing consequences that end up eventually to them dying.

You either roll with it or you put the fear of "______" into them, whatever you determine it to be. And then they either make the conscious decision to stop or face the consequences. No GM likes killing characters. Nor should you. But sometimes, a guy has got to die. And sometimes it means wiping the party and starting over. It's cruel, but sometimes object lessons have to be taught. If you aren't comfortable with option A, then you have to slowly ramp up option B. If the characters ignore the increasing threat of their own actions, it is not your fault they get run over.