Which system for a Star Wars game?

[Sunglar]

Balance doesn't mean everything a Jedi can do everyone else can too. Balance means there are multiple ways to be effective, and Jedi are best at some, but other characters have their own advantages and areas of strength as well.

Owen I agree wholeheartedly with that statement, and you have hit the spot with what I feel has been my biggest hurdle with the SW D20 revised rules as they stand. THE PERCEPTION (I realize this may be untrue in actual play with the right combination) of my players is that in the d20 rule set Jedis are the optimal choice and there all other choices pale by comparison. They feel that past certain levels all non-Jedi characters do is hang back and let the Jedi solve things.

(Mind you the following statement can sound conceited! You have been warned!)

I’ve been DM/GM long enough that I am confident I could run SW D20 as ease and find ways of making every character important. I run adventures where I pride myself in crafting encounters that need everybody’s special talents. I think role-playing can take care of some problems and my adventures have a lot of that…

(End of self adulation!)

However my players have been burnt by SW D20, call in inconsistent DMs, lack of understanding of the system, whatever, I think at this point trying to get them to play D20 as is will not fly.

All, well most, information on the Saga edition has some of them interested. I would say half of them want to wait for the Saga edition, half want to use True 20 and some simply don’t care.

I am going ahead with writing for the campaign. I do a lot of planning and conceptualizing beforehand and this can be done regardless of the system. Still the game is months away and I can with a little longer…

ValhallaGH thanks for the illustration on how True20 handles different power levels. Two of my players have the endless fights because I made the toughness save fear with the system. Has that been a problem for you?

Nebulous, you are right that in the prequels and some comics the have been portrayed as all powerful, but for the reasons Owen stated in his post I quoted here, and what I said at the top of this post, while that may work in movies and comics it may not be the most satisfying situation for a role playing game.

While the Jedi took center stage in the prequels, I think the original trilogy portrayed a better mix of different individuals pooling tighter for a common cause. I think a great analogy for an adventuring group, regardless of the genre.

I am really psyched about recreating the prequel movies. I know I am hijacking my own thread, but has anybody tried to do that? Re-imagining Episodes 1, 2 and 3 as THEY would have made them?

(End of terribly long post! Hope everyone is having fun during the holydays!)

 

[jeff37923]

Heh. That's like saying the Wright Flyer is tried and true for use in the airline industry.

Just because a game system doesn't work for you, doesn't mean it won't work for somebody else.

 

[Diggus Rex]

My SW campaign took place a century before Episode I ( a pre-prequel). I chose this era so the new trilogy being made at the time wouldnt disturb my camp.

Mainly it involved mini-Cold Wars across the Republic as more power was given to member systems to handle their own disputes. The government growing too big to manage itself was turning a blind eye to it's own internal conflicts. I saw this a possible cause of the Seperatist movement.

To insolate the Order from regional bias, the Jedi Council began centralizing authority in the main temple on Coruscant. This was the time when prohibitions against personal relationships and the sequestering of younglings began.

 

[Ranger REG]

Just because a game system doesn't work for you, doesn't mean it won't work for somebody else.

Your Campaign, Your Rules.^TM

You are right, though. Even if WotC isn't publishing the official SW RPG, even I would try to make Star Wars d20 game on my own.

 

[Sunglar]

Diggus, interesting… You mentioned some elements that I am also thinking of using for the campaign I’m planning.

It will be a total re-imagining of the prequels, and one of the things I’m aiming at is keeping the Jedi more in line with what we see in Episodes 4 to 6 rather than the super jedi of the prequels and later comics and books.

See all this talk is helping me! Thank you guys, let’s keep talking.

I still have not gone through the entire post on the SW adaptation to D20 Modern.

Jejeje… I was jokingly telling a friend of another post I made today here in EN World about having played Palladium (Robotech, Rifts, et al) and he reminded me he has some fan created stats for SW classes and aliens for the Palladium system!

Don’t worry we looked at each other, shook our heads and said, “Nah!”

(Sorry to any Palladium fans around here, just not my cup of tea!)

 

[Diggus Rex]

Sunglar, thank you.

So are ya going to have a PC young Anakin, or will he be some kid NPC your players pimp to buy a new hyperdrive?

Also, how do you mean the way Jedi were? Luke looked pretty uber once he was full trained (RotJ, pwning a sail barge full of criminal enforcers).

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Also, how do you mean the way Jedi were? Luke looked pretty uber once he was full trained (RotJ, pwning a sail barge full of criminal enforcers).

I'm guessing he was referring to the lack of excessive wire-fu in the OT that was quite abundant in the prequels.

Though I must confess that I kinda prefer the Jedi of the Prequels to the OT in terms of what they could do, if not how most of them acted. A few more liberal-minded Jedi on the Council and maybe that whole Empire business could have been avoided.

As for the d20 Modern conversion, the author generated a .pdf file that contains most of what he's got so far, though I'm not sure how up to date it is. If anything, it would make it easier to read what the dude's got so far.

Linkage

 

[Sunglar]

Diggus as far as Jedi power or capabilities lets call them, Donovan is right. I want to portray them as powerful but not as over the top (in my opinion) as in the prequels. When I used to watch the original trilogy Jedis were powerful but still not the indestructible, unstoppable fighters they became…

I cannot blame the prequels alone for that. Long before we had Dark Empire and Luke taking down an AT-AT, but I digress.

Diggus as far as your question, I am basing the story aon what is said, and not said, on the original movies, and some of the expanded universe I still read YAEAS ago that I and my players remember fondly.

So the story will be very different. Anakin will be an adult when he begins his training, already a hot shot pilot, he will be an NPC. The Clone Wars will happen some time before the original movies, and the Jedis will already be in decline by the beginning of the campaign.

That is another thing, how can the Galaxy simply forget the Jedi in 19 years! Ok, I don’t want to turn this into a “bash the prequels, bash Lucas” thread. I realize many people enjoyed them, I did in a way.

The whole campaign evolved out of the players desire to play a different story that may create a different prequel and still match what happens in the original trilogy. No small feat!

Donovan, I got to see the Link, but thank you anyway!

Happy holydays to EVERYONE, may you get the gamming loot you so readily deserve!

 

[ValhallaGH]

You're welcome Diggus. I'm glad someone found it useful.

ValhallaGH thanks for the illustration on how True20 handles different power levels. Two of my players have the endless fights because I made the toughness save fear with the system. Has that been a problem for you?

You're most welcome. I'd like to answer your question but I'm afraid I just don't understand what you're asking. What do you mean by "toughness save fear" and how is it causing endless fights amongst your players?


P.S. A liberal use of the minions rules easily recreates the Sail Barge fight. Luke kicks so much butt because he's the only PC that's armed. Everyone else is grappling, using improvised weapons, or blinded, making them not very effective no matter what their level is.
Sure, this is my opinion and it may be wrong but I'm confident in it and will stand by it.

 

[wingsandsword]

That is another thing, how can the Galaxy simply forget the Jedi in 19 years! Ok, I don’t want to turn this into a “bash the prequels, bash Lucas” thread. I realize many people enjoyed them, I did in a way.

Here's how I saw the Jedi being pretty much being erased from history:

First, the official government story is that the Jedi were religious fanatics who started the Clone Wars as an elaborate plot to sieze power. After all, Dooku, the public face of the Separatists, was a Jedi, and Windu et al tried to arrest Palpatine at the end. So, some spin doctoring puts a lot of the blame for the war as a Jedi plot. A lot of tie-in media during the prequels implied that there was building public frustration with the Jedi, including over things like their policy of taking infants away for training (ostensibly with parental permission, but pressured into it) and the Jedi were shown to have a certain pride or overconfidence in their abilities much of the time, like Jocasta Nu's opinion of their archives, or Mace Windu refusing to believe the Sith could have returned without Jedi notice.

Second, with the HoloNet mostly offline and heavy media censorship, pro-Jedi archives and media find themselves censored and confiscated. A generation of children are raised knowing of the Jedi only as fanatical religious warriors who tried to conquer the Galaxy by overturning the Republic, forcing Palpatine to rebuild it into the Galactic Empire to ensure that nothing like that would ever happen again.

Third, a lot of people do remember the Jedi, like long lived races like the Wookiees, but a lot of the races more sympathetic to Jedi find themselves enslaved or otherwise persecuted. Actually, it is canon (thanks to the novel Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader) that the reason wookiees were enslaved was as a sanction against Kashyyyk for providing sanctuary to fugitive Jedi.

So, through vigorous censorship, control of public education, and ensuring people who were sympathetic to them were largely ostracized, enslaved or marginalized the Jedi went from being seen as Heroes of the Republic to being a largely forgotten group of religious terrorists.

Not everybody forgot about them, Bail Organa and the Alderaanians remembered the Jedi, but a young smuggler like Han Solo had probably never met a force-wielder before Obi-Wan, and had been told most of his life they were fanatics, myths, or exaggerated in their ability.