As for the group I presented, searching for history on (sp) Rakatan from the KotOR series or Jedi and Sith history, even if none of the players want to play a Jedi, or some other extinct species (Taung), or even some fan made created secret sect of Jedi or Sith. Maybe even maybe delve into the whole Grey Jedi faction. Just depends on how cannon you want your game.

I like this. All of my players also played The Old Republic, and I bet that some of those old tie ins could be made into interesting game fodder.

And there's a game for playing that way too. It'll be out this summer. For now, I'd like to see how Edge can be done with less overtly anti-Imperial and pro-criminal themes.

I'd love to see less criminal EoE games. We ran a few explorer scenarios for our new PC and they were very different in tone.

But.

The fact that the Empire is very heavy-handed means many ordinary fringer PCs will have to cross it at some point. Even if they would rather not. My AoR PCs hate the Empire on a philosophical basis. The EoE crew hate it on a practical basis, but mostly try and remain under the radar and avoid it. But Force-sensitives and wookies are going to end up on its wrong side most of the time.

AoR is about actively opposing the Empire.

EoE seems to be mostly about 'getting away with whatever you can, when you can'.

Also - the starter adventure in the Beginner's Box has this set-up, with the players blasting TIE's out of the sky as they escape. So a lot of groups, including mine, will take this route.

But good luck to anyone who is trying something different, EoE is a big sandbox and I'd find an exploratory campaign a great change of pace.

A change of pace is exactly what I'm hoping to see.

As for the Empire being heavy handed, so too are many real world governments. You can disagree with them without opposing them. With the Empire you need to keep your mouth shut, but that's less true on the fringes. IMO, the whole appeal to playing on the "edge of the Empire" is that you don't have to deal with them all that much if you stay out on the fringes. That doesn't mean you have to play criminals just because you're in an area with weak governmental oversight.

My group has started out this way. We're all part of a small private company, Recovery Inc. We specialize in recovering things. Crashed ships, kidnapped people, etc. We're not quite half way through BtR, so we haven't really done any recovering yet though. I guess we'll see if we can stay legit or not.

But then one groups legit is anothers criminal, so we'll see.

The main problem here is, at some point in any premade adventure, you will swap blaster fire with stormtroopers, and that's the point most parties become outlaws...

The players can take the adventure off the rails. They don't have to exchange fire with stormtroopers. Sometimes such events can be seen far enough ahead of time that players that don't want to play outlaws will just say no to certain premade adventures. As long as the GM is onboard with such decisions, all is well.

Unfortunately, no one in my group is an expert GM. I've been waiting 4 years for one of my group to finish his WH 2nd edition game. My group dislikes pre-made adventures because it's so linear. While I can agree to that respect, that's as far as I can agree. As I stated in another thread, if the players want take a turn not officially printed, they need to make it happen, but the players need to stop thinking linear. So it's a catch-22 with them.

And there's a game for playing that way too. It'll be out this summer. For now, I'd like to see how Edge can be done with less overtly anti-Imperial and pro-criminal themes.

I'd love to see less criminal EoE games. We ran a few explorer scenarios for our new PC and they were very different in tone.

But.

The fact that the Empire is very heavy-handed means many ordinary fringer PCs will have to cross it at some point. Even if they would rather not. My AoR PCs hate the Empire on a philosophical basis. The EoE crew hate it on a practical basis, but mostly try and remain under the radar and avoid it. But Force-sensitives and wookies are going to end up on its wrong side most of the time.

AoR is about actively opposing the Empire.

EoE seems to be mostly about 'getting away with whatever you can, when you can'.

Also - the starter adventure in the Beginner's Box has this set-up, with the players blasting TIE's out of the sky as they escape. So a lot of groups, including mine, will take this route.

But good luck to anyone who is trying something different, EoE is a big sandbox and I'd find an exploratory campaign a great change of pace.

And that's personally why I love skill based games like WEG and EotE, over level based games. I pride myself on an old character in a different game who at the end of the game line, had 12 dice to figure out/know/speak any language over a level 20 character a buddy likes playing.

The group I run with is very much a non-criminal type.

The planetary system that we are in was terraformed by a company that has gone to great lengths to make sure the Empire didn't find out what they were up to. (We think the Empire knows, but isn't going to get involved until the company has things such as mining and other operations up and running) Our characters are nobody's in a system full of miscreants, thugs, former slaves, entrepreneurs, Alderan refugees, (think America when it was first colonized) and so on. The Bounty Hunters round up a bounty every now and then and we run jobs for one of the local entrepreneurs. Running parts to mines to keep them operational, surveying areas, all sorts of stuff. We just got our ship after meeting a very interesting NPC and doing him a favor, as well as getting him a new place to live. (His ship was buried in the sand, stripped of everything but the engines and used a house)

We have had several opportunities to make money being bad guys, but we all seem to just play helpful, nice characters and are broke because of it.

There isn't a single player in my campaign who is a criminal. We have a Bounty Hunter, a Mercenary a Twi'lek who more or less inherited a ship. Now, I'm not saying they might not eventually take on illicit jobs, but none are currently criminals, nor have they ever been.

I've got two campaigns running, and a third about to start. The first are classic wandering murder hobos in space, complete with the stolen ship. The second includes some characters with a shady past, but they're trying to start over, and have actually helped the Imperial Navy capture Rebel gunrunners.

The third, though, is going to actually be law-abiding civilians. Employees of Adascorp, on Arkania, they're hired couriers bringing medical supplies to and lab samples from distant worlds. Adascorp's got some shady experimentation going on behind the scenes, but that's not going to come up for a while. Their ship actually was stolen, or rather won in a rigged game of sabacc, but not even the original owner knows, and less than a third of the party have questionable pasts, with none of those being wanted criminals in any way.

How long this'll last, I don't know. But there are promising signs; the same group is wrapping up a Black Crusade campaign, and yet of six players we have one blaster rifle, and one character only has brass knuckles!

Another thing to consider is the difference between an Outlaw and a Criminal in the context of setting. In SW anyone opposing the Empire is an Outlaw and they might commit criminal acts as part of that opposition, or they might be just good people caught in a bad situation and have to resort to the occasional crime, but that's not really the same thing as a Criminal who's acts are deliberate and would do them regardless of necessity or who's in charge. Some players either aren't sophisticated enough or don't care enough to see the difference. As I mentioned before Firefly is the best example of generally good people who none the less are Outlaws who are basically forced to work with Criminals to get by.

Another thing to consider is the difference between an Outlaw and a Criminal in the context of setting. In SW anyone opposing the Empire is an Outlaw and they might commit criminal acts as part of that opposition, or they might be just good people caught in a bad situation and have to resort to the occasional crime, but that's not really the same thing as a Criminal who's acts are deliberate and would do them regardless of necessity or who's in charge. Some players either aren't sophisticated enough or don't care enough to see the difference. As I mentioned before Firefly is the best example of generally good people who none the less are Outlaws who are basically forced to work with Criminals to get by.

And they were broke because they are nice guys.

The Skype game I was in was pretty much a non-criminal group, with the first session having us be a bunch of freelance investigators for a small museum that needed people to do an initial recon of a set of ruins to see if it'd be worth sending a full team to do a proper investigation. The only person with any sort of criminal aspects to their background was my teenage Force-sensitive street rat, and that was more "guilty by association" for being chummy with a possible O66 survivor in his backstory than anything he'd actually done.

We'd gotten into the second act of Beyond the Rim before the game went on hiatus, and were only working for IsoTech as a sort-of favor for a Hutt (female that went by the name of Cupcake), but again it's (on paper at least) above the board. Granted, we probably won't be welcome back at the Wheel for a while, due to a firefight with some bounty hunters (one of whom was packing a disruptor rifle) that were looking to collect the bounty on my PC's head, as well as the less than genteel way we dealt with the Rodians that tried to make off with the protocol droid we were supposed to take deliver of. To be fair, in both instances the bad guys shot first (or at least that's how my PC remembers it), so we were simply defending ourselves or reclaiming stolen property.

Criminal?? That's so harsh. I prefer entrapaneur dealing in hard to find, in demand commodities. The customer is always right.....

Maelora makes an excellent point in that with a legal system as heavy-handed and restrictive as the Empire's, there's going to come a point where the PCs wind up breaking Imperial law at some point or another. The only way to avoid it is to pretty much be so far out on the fringes of the galaxy that the Empire doesn't have a presence, be a part of the Imperial machine and thus be exempt to a degree from some of those laws and regulations. or simply be a law-abiding citizen and don't really go do anything extraordinary.

Plus, there's the simple fact that for a lot of players who play Star Wars, they're going to want to mix it up with Stormtroopers and thumb their noses at the Empire in some form or another.

So becoming "criminals" in the eyes of the Empire if you're a PC is probably just a matter of time.

Plus, there's the simple fact that for a lot of players who play Star Wars, they're going to want to mix it up with Stormtroopers and thumb their noses at the Empire in some form or another.

So becoming "criminals" in the eyes of the Empire if you're a PC is probably just a matter of time.

This will always be the "norm" for this game I think. I mean, Han is on the cover. That's who most typical players that pick up the game for the first few times are going to want their adventures modeled after.

That said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with mixing it up now again. Sure, the players in my game are all escaping from a prison in the intro, but most of them aren't there for actual crimes, some were set up to take a fall. The adventure I have planned after that is non-criminal in nature and who's to say where it goes after that?

I guess I don't feel that a game necessarily has to be focused on being criminal or non-criminal. It can be both, depending on the current adventure and where the GM and players want to take it. If you want to move away from the outlaw aspects, offer the player characters more legitimate business opportunities.

I myself don't want a criminal campaign so that I won't have to relive past mistakes.

Currently, my group is a gathering of individuals that have escaped an ambitious Correllian noble/crime lord. They left him to join up with a secret colony hidden away from the Empire in the Unknown Regions, but he soon followed them and started to tail them and make them do his dirty work (he's pretty hard to say no to). He decided to eventually rehire them, and now they are more or less indentured servants.

Beyond that, they have only done relatively good jobs, mostly helping out the colonies and such. They've only done one overall bad guy mission, which was by taking some of the crime lord's enemies right to his doorstep so he could take 'em out.

Lots of great stuff here, very inspiring.

Criminals?? That's only because the bag guys are writing the laws.

Criminals?? That's only because the bag guys are writing the laws.

When I worked as a corrections officer, I heard that all the time here in the USA.

I think you also need to define just what being a "criminal" really is.

There's two concepts in law that apply here: malum in se and malum prohibitum. The first is something that is wrong, or evil in and of itself. The second is something that is wrong simply because there's a law against it. When you're flying around a galaxy controlled by an evil empire, there's going to be a LOT of acts that are against the law (malum prohibitum). That doesn't mean that these acts are necessarily evil (malum in se). Parties consisting of "good guys" may, of necessity, find themselves on the wrong side of oppressive laws, but remain "good guys" that, in essence, aren't really doing anything wrong. Some, however, give into greed and sociopathic behavior (common in a lot of D&D games) and go to the "dark side".

So, really, you can play decent, moral characters while breaking unjust laws and still be the "good guys". In fact, you could argue that some Imperial laws SHOULD be broken, and that following them would constitute evil behavior.

Something to think about, I guess

I think you also need to define just what being a "criminal" really is.

There's two concepts in law that apply here: malum in se and malum prohibitum. The first is something that is wrong, or evil in and of itself. The second is something that is wrong simply because there's a law against it. When you're flying around a galaxy controlled by an evil empire, there's going to be a LOT of acts that are against the law (malum prohibitum). That doesn't mean that these acts are necessarily evil (malum in se). Parties consisting of "good guys" may, of necessity, find themselves on the wrong side of oppressive laws, but remain "good guys" that, in essence, aren't really doing anything wrong. Some, however, give into greed and sociopathic behavior (common in a lot of D&D games) and go to the "dark side".

So, really, you can play decent, moral characters while breaking unjust laws and still be the "good guys". In fact, you could argue that some Imperial laws SHOULD be broken, and that following them would constitute evil behavior.

Something to think about, I guess

Well said OggDude.

I think you also need to define just what being a "criminal" really is.

There's two concepts in law that apply here: malum in se and malum prohibitum. The first is something that is wrong, or evil in and of itself. The second is something that is wrong simply because there's a law against it. When you're flying around a galaxy controlled by an evil empire, there's going to be a LOT of acts that are against the law (malum prohibitum). That doesn't mean that these acts are necessarily evil (malum in se). Parties consisting of "good guys" may, of necessity, find themselves on the wrong side of oppressive laws, but remain "good guys" that, in essence, aren't really doing anything wrong. Some, however, give into greed and sociopathic behavior (common in a lot of D&D games) and go to the "dark side".

So, really, you can play decent, moral characters while breaking unjust laws and still be the "good guys". In fact, you could argue that some Imperial laws SHOULD be broken, and that following them would constitute evil behavior.

Something to think about, I guess

It doesn't matter what laws you're breaking, both make you a criminal (consider that a crime of treason is not evil in itself yet its almost always considered one of the highest crimes). My first degree was in criminal justice, so none of what you wrote is unfamiliar to me, but I don't consider it particularly relevant since my point was that its possible to play a law-abiding group, at least at the start, but that I rarely see it attempted.

No criminals in my group... They were framed! Honest!

Wow, this topic blew up fast.

I play an older Rodian Colonist (Doctor) who used to go to med school on Coruscant, until the Empire took over and kicked him out. Since then he's been drifting, doing good where he can and mostly using his skills to help others and earn him a place to sleep. His Obligation is "Oath," since he's licensed and considers himself required to help others and do no harm. He doesn't even have a weapon.

It's possible to have non-criminal characters, but every so often they'll have to get involved in something that's at least a grey area of the law, if not outright illegal.

Once again, non-criminal characters are fairly common, but what kind of group is this character flying around the galaxy with? The most common answer I've seen is "a group of misfits on a smuggler's ship" and I'm hoping to see more variety.

Actually, our group is a legitimate merchant group, just occasionally pulled into iffy stuff. Granted, some of it's not-so-grey -- we recently assisted a Rebel-inspired jailbreak. Not because we're affiliated with the Alliance, but the subject in question was an Imperial officer who actually let us escape once before. We figured we owed him one. Not that the Empire will make the distinction.

None of the group plays an outright criminal. We only have two characters who skirt the edge: one assassin droid disguised as a barely-competent protocol droid and works as a bodyguard, and a Bothan using his spy connections to play the Imperials and Rebels alike. Everyone else is legit, if a little downtrodden.

I think you also need to define just what being a "criminal" really is.

There's two concepts in law that apply here: malum in se and malum prohibitum. The first is something that is wrong, or evil in and of itself. The second is something that is wrong simply because there's a law against it. When you're flying around a galaxy controlled by an evil empire, there's going to be a LOT of acts that are against the law (malum prohibitum). That doesn't mean that these acts are necessarily evil (malum in se). Parties consisting of "good guys" may, of necessity, find themselves on the wrong side of oppressive laws, but remain "good guys" that, in essence, aren't really doing anything wrong. Some, however, give into greed and sociopathic behavior (common in a lot of D&D games) and go to the "dark side".

So, really, you can play decent, moral characters while breaking unjust laws and still be the "good guys". In fact, you could argue that some Imperial laws SHOULD be broken, and that following them would constitute evil behavior.

Something to think about, I guess

It doesn't matter what laws you're breaking, both make you a criminal (consider that a crime of treason is not evil in itself yet its almost always considered one of the highest crimes). My first degree was in criminal justice, so none of what you wrote is unfamiliar to me, but I don't consider it particularly relevant since my point was that its possible to play a law-abiding group, at least at the start, but that I rarely see it attempted.

Perhaps not many people play "law-abiding" groups because to be "law-abiding" under Imperial laws is normally a bad thing. Let's say your intrepid group of "law-abiding" mercenaries are conscripted by the local Imperial government to go to a backwater planet, find a small settlement of farmers, and wipe them out in order to make way for an Imperial forward base to fight the Rebellion. If you do the moral (good) thing and refuse, you become criminal fugitives in defiance of the Empire. If you do the law-abiding (evil) thing and kill all the farmers, you've committed an unforgivable atrocity.

That's why I'm saying that you need to define what exactly being a "criminal" is under the Galactic Empire. Are you following your conscience and defying unjust laws, or are you smuggling drugs to pay off your gambling debt to a Hutt crime family?

Personally, I wouldn't use Imperial laws as a yardstick to measure criminal activity, since the narrative point of the Empire in Star Wars is that of tangible evil that needs to be eradicated.

Perhaps not many people play "law-abiding" groups because to be "law-abiding" under Imperial laws is normally a bad thing. Let's say your intrepid group of "law-abiding" mercenaries are conscripted by the local Imperial government to go to a backwater planet, find a small settlement of farmers, and wipe them out in order to make way for an Imperial forward base to fight the Rebellion. If you do the moral (good) thing and refuse, you become criminal fugitives in defiance of the Empire. If you do the law-abiding (evil) thing and kill all the farmers, you've committed an unforgivable atrocity.

There's always a middle option. Forcible relocation of a small farming settlement is easily done, but really - if it's a backwater planet and there isn't room for a small farming community and an Imperial base, then the sense of scale is way off.

I guess I should mention that I don't play the Empire (as a whole) as being batshit-crazy-evil. Most of the Imperials are going to avoid total atrocities if another option is open to them. Tarkin was a radical, and I don't use him as a benchmark for how most of the Empire operates.