Yes, they blew up a planet - so why the hell do you need FFG to hammer home the fact they're evil? Yes, perhaps by the standard, most of the Empire is evil, but a lot of players and GMs want to explore BEYOND that single-minded, black and white possibility and delve into a more realistic scenario.
Heck even TCW did that, legitimising desertions and nigh on genocide, and if I recall correctly the use of flamethrowers, by orders of Jedi...
Good people do terrible things in war. It's a fact of life, and an inescapable rule of combat. I've never heard of, or been involved in, a war that doesn't require you to do things that, in an RPG, you'd never allow, or expect, your heroes to do.
Good people do terrible things in war. It's a fact of life, and an inescapable rule of combat.
I agree, so people should, ideally, be as sure as they can be that it is worth it before they start a fight. Which is why the Empire kinda needs to be bad enough to start a war over.
Like I have said before, I am entirely fine with Imperials who think they are doing 'the right thing' for good reasons. All I ask is that from the lofty perspective of the audience, we know that they are mistaken.
Jeez, does this guy really get upset about people referring in jest to the Alliance as terrorists?
Erik, nobody believes that. We are just discussing a fictional world!
Noone thinks the Empire are the good guys, Erik. Go back to sleep.
Also, Filoni loves the Empire and thanked the 501st for making celebration Europe such a succes. How does that make you feel?
Edited by DanteRotterdamMy players don't want to be Space Al-Qaida - they want to be successful Polish Resistence and French 5th Column types. Both of which, historically, engaged in terrorism against Nazis.
Now, I've known a few WW II Nazi men. Nice guys, all three of them. Otto was in the German Navy, and a card carrying National Socialist during the war. Didn't know about the concentration camps being death camps until after the war. One was an SS Man - rank SS Mann. Also a nice guy. Played jazz in his 80's. Catholic. Had suspicions during the war, but was in an area where he didn't encounter many non-germans. The third was a Waffen untersharführer (roughly, a corporal). He joined at 17, and went to fight the commies... wound up a prisoner, and eventually came to the US. Not a one of them had any particularly evil traits - none were racist, all three were practicing christians (Catholic or Lutheran, to be specific), all three joined the party because it was the correct thing to do, and all three had no belief during the war in the death camps. But all three served a state that was decidedly evil.
Let's face it - the Empire isn't Lawful Evil - it's Lawful Neutral lead by some seriously Lawful Evil folk. Lawful Evil types tend to restrict each other too much.
And the Rebels aren't Lawful Good - they are, at best Neutral Good
Dude, I am asking you straight up:-
If FFG have a choice to put out a game where people play terrorists or a game where they do not play terrorists, which do you think they should go with?
Both.
After all, they've already put out one where you play members of the organized crime syndicates.
Edited by aramisAnd that's from someone who is no lily-livered-liberal, trust me.
That's a bit uncalled for, Maelora. You're beginning to sink to his level, which is a shame.
In closing, if I think you are even vaguely hinting at suggesting that Luke Skywalker is a terrorist I will do my best to f*ck up your sh*t because that really impinges on my fun. And if FFG and Disney are smart, so will they.
But he, and the Rebels, are terrorists, in the words of Obi-Wan, "from a certain point of view." They are fighting against the legitimate government of the Known Galaxy.
Not all terrorists, however, are fighting without a good reason, and it doesn't automatically make them bad. However, to any government that exists in the world today, if the Rebels were fighting against them, they would be terrorists.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, after all.
I appreciate not everyone can have the nuance or insight of someone like Chortles (who's taught me a lot, even changed my views on some things). But this stuff is just hurting your own argument.
Well now, thank you for the compliment!
I honestly and
earnestly
hope that you will find the following responses by myself to be similarly nuanced, insightful, educational and maybe even influential...?
Well, then you must play imperials, as they are the legitimate government, keeping order in the galaxy - trying to keep the rebels from letting it all spin out of control and turn into chaos.
Not all terrorists, however, are fighting without a good reason, and it doesn't automatically make them bad. However, to any government that exists in the world today, if the Rebels were fighting against them, they would be terrorists.
This is one of the really, really funny things about what happens when one goes "Rebels good, Empire bad"... if you don't define "good" and "bad" along specific lines of behavior with specific thresholds thereof ("Rebels good because..., Empire bad because..."), but rather "anything goes if it's against the Empire"... then yeah, that's eventually going to veer into "further than the players' own willingness to roleplay or GM's willingness to GM goes" territory.
Hell, we can push this further: governments will take issue with other governments that are perceived to be harboring or otherwise aiding and abetting such declared terrorists, maybe consider the presence thereof a casus belli with which to invade and occupy, or even carry out punitive strikes... gee, where have we seen that before?
Moral simplicity only exists where fundamentalists are concerned, whatever their flags, uniforms, beliefs and political colours.
That reminds me of one of the funnier things about how things went so,
so
terribly wrong with
Star Wars
... when Obi-Wan told Anakin that "Only Sith think in absolutes", how many of you appended
as do Jedi
to the end of that?
You sound like you too might end up a fan of The Ravages of Time ... although that story is almost contemptuous of the idea of any of its factions (as opposed to individuals) being "the good guys", and multiple protagonists voice the idea that history is written by the winners... or the usurpers. ( A sample chapter that works standalone while expressing the tone of the series.)
Heck even TCW did that, legitimising desertions and nigh on genocide, and if I recall correctly the use of flamethrowers, by orders of Jedi...
That's one of the funnier things about the prequel trilogy and associated properties... the moral ambiguity aside, they
demystified
the Jedi, made them mortal (saying "made them human" would be speciesist
), and therefore made them
valid targets
for criticism... and as far as what you describe the Jedi as indulging in?
That's why the Galaxy was so primed to accept the Great Jedi Purge! Back in the day, it was "oh hey, Vader got turned by Palpatine and went on a murder spree against other Jedi", but thanks to the prequels and Clone Wars-period media, it's "I'm not even surprised that so many people bought Palpatine's story..." (It's not regular "lies", Episode III and its novelization are both pretty clear that it was "twisting of the truth".)
One of the rules of making the bad guys "Flash Gordon-style evil" is not to give their believers rational (within the viewer's belief system) motives or ones that viewers can empathize with, yet
George Lucas completely blew it!
>I wouldn't say it is a parody exactly. It isn't exactly taking the piss out of the views presented.
??? C'mon, dude. It's by the guy who made 'Paranoia'. It has Bill Cosby, Bruce Springsteen and Olivia Newton-John on the front. It has a supplement named after a camp song and a g*y movie. It's a stealth parody. All those ridiculous passages about the cartoonishly evil soviets beating up little old ladies in wheelchairs and the prom queen. It's a mickey take of extreme right-wingers, and the crazy paranoia some felt at the end of the Cold War.
And that's from someone who is no lily-livered-liberal, trust me. I'm notably passionate in my defence of the West as the good guys, but I know a parody when I see one. It's 'Team America: The Role-Playing Game'.
You sound like you too might end up a fan of The Ravages of Time ... although that story is almost contemptuous of the idea of any of its factions (as opposed to individuals) being "the good guys", and multiple protagonists voice the idea that history is written by the winners... or the usurpers. ( A sample chapter that works standalone while expressing the tone of the series.)
That reminds me of a quote...
Let me give you some advice, Captain. It may help you to make sense of the world. I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.
You've got to love Black and Gray Morality .
Which, truth be told, is probably why The Sith Lords was my favorite of the Knights of the Old Republic games. Yes, the ending was unfinished, but it took such a unique and deconstructionist take on Star Wars.
Though perhaps that's a discussion best left to another thread...
Which, truth be told, is probably why The Sith Lords was my favorite of the Knights of the Old Republic games. Yes, the ending was unfinished, but it took such a unique and deconstructionist take on Star Wars.
Though perhaps that's a discussion best left to another thread...
If I recall, that deconstructionism of Star Wars is also why it's so disfavored by Lucasfilm Licensing that they brushed over it with later lore and TOR (more based on KOTOR), although "canonizing" the Exile's subsequent fate through TOR...
Fun thing re:
Ravages
-- although the trope entry is Gray and Gray, even the two "Black" exceptions
are
given valid points. The first rebuts his critics by pointing out that he broke his way into power
because
of the corruption and weakness of the central government -- 'necessitating' his deposing the apathetic boy emperor in favor of a more malleable cousin, and 'forcing' him to take on the mantle of regent (chancellor)* -- while the second has explicitly been declared by the author of
Ravages
to be his favorite character, because he was honest and not a hypocrite... unlike those exalted by history because they were simply more fortunate in covering up their own misdeeds... complete with the author saying that he cried over that second character's final downfall.
Then again, this is the same author who has one of the few "good guys" telling his fellow captives that it's okay to surrender to their captors: "
Disregard loyalty and such things, for they are mere tricks played by men of letters to enslave you all
."
* It's later explicitly stated in-universe that a subsequent such 'regent chancellor' is having his historians further denigrate this first character to make
his
regency look not so bad in comparison.
And that's from someone who is no lily-livered-liberal, trust me.
That's a bit uncalled for, Maelora. You're beginning to sink to his level, which is a shame.
No offence intended. Maybe I should have put that in quotations. I meant to convey it was a response from someone who agreed with the general tenet of defending western democracy, not a knee-jerk response from someone who was a polemicist.
Edited by MaeloraEven though I now know it's a parody. it still kinda scares the hell out of me. Definitely has overtones of this:
http://rpggeek.com/rpg/7779/racial-holy-war
The RPG community has never quite made up its mind as to whether RHW was a parody or not.
Well now, thank you for the compliment!
I honestly and earnestly hope that you will find the following responses by myself to be similarly nuanced, insightful, educational and maybe even influential...?
Yes, I did - thank you!
>Then again, I've suspected that ErikB pretends to be a fan of Star Wars but is actually a fan of a Star Wars rip-off that only exists in his head instead of the actual movies...
He's either utterly obtuse, or playing at being utterly obtuse, with his bizarre non-sequiturs as answers.
And you know what's really strange? This isn't a Star Wars board about the films. It's a gamers board about a game based on the films. A game in which we are explicitly told to change the canon if we want. So we can run it 'straight' if we wish, or invent a bizarre universe where all the species are My Little Ponies, or anything in between.
So with that in mind, why is ErikB getting worked up over what other players do in their games? The default is Alliance, but there's enough material there to play the other side if a group wishes. How does that 'impinge on his fun'?
Does he even play the games? Or is he just some crazy Alliance fanboy shouting everyone else down?
Shhhh, keep schtum or else he'll quote f*ck your pleasure up unquote!
That reminds me of one of the funnier things about how things went so, so terribly wrong with Star Wars ... when Obi-Wan told Anakin that "Only Sith think in absolutes", how many of you appended as do Jedi to the end of that?
Yeah, I'm glad that someone else noticed the hypocrisy in Obi-Wan's statement: because declaring that "only a Sith deals in absolutes" is, in itself, an absolute.
Crazy ol' Ben.
Then again, I've suspected that ErikB pretends to be a fan of Star Wars but is actually a fan of a Star Wars rip-off that only exists in his head instead of the actual movies...
I am pretty sure that I like Star Wars and you like trying to undermine Star Wars.
Given that as far as I can see Star Wars is built on all these things you claim to despise (power fantasy (unless it is you as the Red Baron flying your munckin TIE Sue natch), the idea of good guys and bad guys, mythbuilding etc.) I admit I wonder precisely what it is you like about Star Wars.
Edited by ErikBI wonder where your inability to understand comes from. Your ability to ignore everyone else and portray your own narrow minded interpretation as the only one, the only right one, is astonishing... Ludicrous really. No one here is undermining Star Wars, except perhaps you; the way you dumb it down, deny the possibility of a more complex and multifaceted interpretation. Sure, Star Wars can easily be enjoyed that simple way, by some (even many). It's not wrong, but neither is looking at it with more intelligence, wonder and wit. A more nuanced perspective is not undermining Star Wars, it's enriching for those that enjoy it. No one is enforcing that perspective on you, but you keep trying to enforce your perspective on everyone else, by calling people of different opinions "misguided" and similar. That's not just mean, it's wrong, inconsiderate and hyperbolic.
Yes....
you like trying to undermine Star Wars
I really am at a loss for words...
Erik, this is a messageboard about a game ...
A game in which it expressly says you can do what you like with canon. Follow the movies, or not. Use the EU, or not. Use the canon characters, or have them eaten by womp rats
Anything goes, as long as your players are on board with it.
Heck, you could even use the rules to run a game set in Firefly or Mass Effect if you want.
Honest question, Erik - do you play EoE or AoR?
Yes, I did - thank you!
And thank you in return! Check your inbox...
Even though I now know it's a parody. it still kinda scares the hell out of me. Definitely has overtones of this:
http://rpggeek.com/rpg/7779/racial-holy-war
The RPG community has never quite made up its mind as to whether RHW was a parody or not.
... that's one of the funniest things about this thread and ErikB posting TPOF as if it were a serious product... because I actually
did
think "RHW?" when I saw TPOF's premise.
Yes, I draw a moral equivalency between the premise of TPOF ("we're the American resistance against foreign occupation") and the premise of RHW. which if TPOF was meant to be serious I actually find much more damning of TPOF.
Yeah, I'm glad that someone else noticed the hypocrisy in Obi-Wan's statement: because declaring that "only a Sith deals in absolutes" is, in itself, an absolute.
That's one of the things that intrigued me so about Maelora's AU. Now, in and of itself, Canon!Luke was understandably disbelieving, maybe even aghast, in Episode VI: "
A certain point of view
???" But the thing is, we could excuse that as a Ben Kenobi who, even as a Force ghost, was clearly "post-Jedi" and melancholy in demeanor (or quite possibly still trying to put some distance -- and shut down any "hoping against hope" on his own part!) whenever it came to Anakin/Vader...
The thing is, based on some of what Maelora's said, I've been wondering just how far such a habit of "convenient interpretations of the truth" goes back, and just how widespread it is in the Order (before the events of Episode III) in her AU...
... that's one of the funniest things about this thread and ErikB posting TPOF as if it were a serious product... because I actually did think "RHW?" when I saw TPOF's premise.
Yes, I draw a moral equivalency between the premise of TPOF ("we're the American resistance against foreign occupation") and the premise of RHW. which if TPOF was meant to be serious I actually find much more damning of TPOF.
I think POF is a parody - the cover, the over-the-top situations, the fact it's by the maker of Paranoia, the name of the second supplement... I don't feel we were meant to take it seriously. It came out in 1986 when the Cold War was thawing, anyway.
RHW I just don't know... Apparently it even lacks proper rules, so the 'white warriors' are so inept, they can't actually attack anything
>That's one of the things that intrigued me so about Maelora's AU. Now, in and of itself, Canon!Luke was understandably disbelieving, maybe even aghast, in Episode VI: " A certain point of view ???" But the thing is, we could excuse that as a Ben Kenobi who, even as a Force ghost, was clearly "post-Jedi" and melancholy in demeanor (or quite possibly still trying to put some distance -- and shut down any "hoping against hope" on his own part!) whenever it came to Anakin/Vader...
The thing is, based on some of what Maelora's said, I've been wondering just how far such a habit of "convenient interpretations of the truth" goes back, and just how widespread it is in the Order (before the events of Episode III) in her AU...
Oh, I think my Jedi are fairly hypocritical... Self-appointed 'guardians of the world', economical with the truth at best, manipulative and sometimes ruthless. And I think that has some premise in the original movies too
One of my aims was to loosen the binary restrictions of the Force as either 'zen buddhist' or 'sadistic monster'. Shades of grey are what intrigue me, and I feel that the Force needs the dark side as much as the light. The jedi are mostly Light, and the Sith mostly dark... but those aren't absolutes. And other 'grey' traditions - like my Alliance Emergents, born and bred for war, are more than happy to draw on the Dark side when facing the Empire. Use of 'anger and hatred' are perfectly acceptable, providing you do it in battle and don't use it against your own.
I feel a lot of the canon Force stuff contradicts itself anyway. If Force-sensitives can't fall in love, as in the prequels, how come Luke and Leia get married and have normal families?
I'm interested in seeing what 'Force and Destiny' have to say, but I'm REALLY hoping they allow for Jolee Bindu types. I absolutely love the rules for Light and Dark points in EoE and AoR, as it makes it clear there is a penalty for using the Dark side, but it's still useful and relevant to do so in battle. I'm almost positive I'll keep using this even in F&D.
Edited by MaeloraI feel a lot of the canon Force stuff contradicts itself anyway. If Force-sensitives can't fall in love, as in the prequels, how come Luke and Leia get married and have normal families?
I think it was the Old Jedi code that said "you shall not fall in love" as emotions like love and affection could be used against him or lead Jedi to to the Dark side.
But when you go through Old Republic era comics and books there are many situations where Jedi have fallen in love and had families. It was frowned upon but not restricted like Pre-Clone Wars era. Don't know for sure what made them to become full celibate monks in space.