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SW rpg in ancient times

Aaziroth

First Post
My question is this...

If a campaign is set deep in the old republic, centuries before the clone wars. How do we come up with the available tech? Sure the kotor cg has some, but very little and other books that have "old republic" tech is almost all clone war era. Either d20 revised or saga info will do, thnx
 

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My understanding is that the SW universe hasn't evolved that much technologically for the last few millennia. The spaceships have gradually gotten a little faster and a bit shinier, each year's new blaster model is slightly better balanced than the year before, and each new version of DroidOS has more languages installed. It's been stagnant for a good long while, just slowly rolling towards the Death Star.
 
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I'd probably go so far as to say that the Jedi purposely suppressed technology. The most important advances in weapon tech seem to be initiated by the Sith during the times/places where they were in charge. Remember just who was developing those clone armies, Death Stars, and Super Star Destroyers!
 

WotC made a Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide for SAGA Edition.

More than a decade prior to that, West End Games made the Tales of the Jedi Companion for the old d6 Star Wars RPG. Tales of the Jedi was a comic book series set a few decades before the KOTOR games, and was the first look at that era, and that was the first Star Wars RPG book to really step away from era of the films and what immediately happened after.

Basically technology is roughly the same. Remember, the Galactic Republic was founded ~25,000 years before the films, and there were older Empires than that (the Hutt Empire and the Rakata most famously). Generally, technology from the films exist, but is either new (like astromech droids), or is ancient and been around for many millennia but notably weaker than what existed later (hyperdrives, lightsabers, most droids, blasters).

The main differences in technology, from a gaming perspective, from the epoch of the films to the ~4,000 BBY era of KOTOR and the Tales of the Jedi comics (taking notes from both books):

1. Hyperdrives are much slower. Multiply all hyperdrive modifiers by 3 or 4. Most ships have x6 to x8 hyperdrives, with the fastest military and smuggling ships getting x4 or maybe x3. Backup hyperdrives, if used at all, can be x24 or even slower. For over 20,000 years a network of hyperspace beacon satellites have made safe hyperspace travel a reality, leading to wars to protect or control this network of navigational beacons. Now, breakthroughs in miniaturized sensor and computing technologies are leading to more portable navigational computers and astromech droids allowing starships to plot their own routes. Remember that in the era of the films, starfighters with their own hyperdrives were expensive and uncommon, and they are virtually unheard of in this era.

2. Droids need more time to recharge, more on the scale of like a human needing to sleep. We only saw C-3PO in the films need to "close down for a while" once. Due to less efficient processors and power supplies, droids needed as much rest, maybe just a little less, than organics.

3. Weapons are a little weaker. Instead of "blasters", the "pulse wave blaster" is the typical small arm, which has a shorter range and tends to be bulkier and more power-consuming, even if of comparable destructive strength. Most lightsabers are not as strong. Converting the dice over, most lightsabers would do 2d6 instead of 2d8, because of inferior crystals from the Adegan system (the best widely available at the time). The crystals to make "modern" lightsabers exist, but are rare and difficult to find. Only later discoveries of better sources of crystals (like the Crystal Caves of Ilum) and the Sith improving crystal synthesis technologies for their signature red crystals would make 2d8 lightsabers standard.

4. The Holonet does not exist, it has not been built yet. While subspace communications keep the Republic (and when it exists, the Sith Empire) together, the vast wide bandwidth of the Holonet providing real-time communications, entertainment, and information exchange of the late Republic does not exist. The galaxy is connected more like Earth circa 1910 with telegraphs making international communications and radio for important relatively short-range traffic, instead of the modern internet and satellite communication providing instant connectivity worldwide.

5. The galaxy is a smaller place. Not literally, but it's a lot less explored and scouting the hyperlanes is big business. Wild Space hasn't been discovered yet, and the Outer Rim Territories are the very edge of space and a lot of Outer Rim worlds known in later eras like Tatooine or Dac (a.k.a. Mon Calamari) are either undiscovered, or brand new discoveries.

6. A lot of races haven't been discovered yet, and others are brand new. No Ssi'ruuvi, no Chiss. The planet Dac was just discovered only a century or so ago, so Mon Calamari and Quarren are uncommon and new on the galactic scene. Kashyyyk has just been discovered within the last few years, away from charted Republic space, and the Czerka corporation has been enslaving wookiees claiming them to be non-sentient beasts of burden to get around Republic anti-slavery laws (proving their sentience and winning their freedom in this era is a story that has not been told). The Yuuzhan Vong invasion is thousands of years off, and there is only a single wild story that indicates that just maybe the first scout ship arrived in the galaxy around this time, maybe.
 

So, I'm thinking aprox 10 years before the mandalorian wars/Jedi civil war era...
I'm finding in books that most vehicles and weapons that state "old republic" they're actually meaning clone war era... so looking at what those say, I'm sort of at a loss for equipment, I know that there's non-repulsor vehicles, but can't find any prior to clone wars..
 

[MENTION=6678350]Aaziroth[/MENTION] - just a quick note. There's a Star Wars option in the prefix selection; the "EN World" prefix is reserved for site-related threads by admins and such, and you've used it for all of your Star Wars threads so far.

Many of us use the "Favorite Prefixes" option to sort threads according to subject which means that (a) your threads aren't showing up for those who choose to look for Star Wars threads, and (b) your threads are appearing in the EN World threads for us admins who are looking for people posting about site issues.

Would you be so kind as to make sure you select the right prefix? I don't wanna have to follow you round and fix them all! I've fixed a few for you now, but I'd really appreciate it if you spent the extra second.

Thanks. :)
 
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Yes, Old Republic Campaign Guide is your resource for all things OR Era. That said, if you didn't have the book, the easiest thing to do would be to simply hand wave it. The droids look a little different, but basically the same. The ships run a bit slower, but not so much as to radically affect gameplay. And blasters and lightsabers work exactly like they do in the ROTE and NR eras.
 

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