How to game in the Star Wars universe

I have a new gaming group (yes, that's all I've blogged about recently) and I asked them what they might like to play after we've run the course of the current campaign. A couple of people seem quite keen on playing something in the Star Wars universe. And why not? It's an evocative setting and reasonably well known.

It made me think about all the different kinds of ways to play in that universe. Some initial thoughts:

FATE (Spirit of the Century style): Lots of Jedi and Rebellion missions. Could be used for any period in the saga.

Don't Rest Your Head: Geared around a fall into the dark side of the force. This could be a simple re-skin, but I wonder what to substitute for Fight and Flight responses.

My Life With Master: All players are Sith who will rise up, like Vader, and kill the Master.

Poison'd: Another Sith game, except this is after the Master has died.

Dogs in the Vineyard: Done, done and done. There are plenty of rules out there for this hack.

Agon: Mission based Jedi stories. This doesn't leave much space for dark side temptation, except perhaps exchange Divine Favour for the Dark Side and when it's all consumed, one point becomes permanent. When all points are permanent, a Jedi they ain't.

Apocalypse World: Nuh-uh. Not touching this. That's way too much work for me right now.

3:16: Great idea for a Clonetrooper or Stormtrooper campaign. Not much reskinning required.

A Penny For My Thoughts: How did you fall into the dark side of the force?

What about you? Which game would you use for a Star Wars story, and what kind of story would it tell?

Star Wars Prequels

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few people in the world who enjoyed the Star Wars prequels, with some annoyances. The key annoyance was the script. Some of the dialogue is terrible. However, I like the setting and the characters and some of the major plot features. This might just be confirmation bias at work, but that doesn't actually detract from my enjoyment.

However, this isn't a defense of my taste in movies. It's supposed to be a blog post about another way the prequels could have been done. Something that helps here is that Lucas is happy to leave big steps in the story arc to the scrolling text at the start of movies. When I read those texts, I see entire movies in them all by themselves.

The way the prequels work now are a bit like this:

• Episode I: Find the child of the prophecy and start laying pipe beats for later.
• Episode II: Anakin is tempted to the dark side through love and other emotional attachment
• Episode III: Anakin turns to the dark side, destroys the Jedi and becomes Darth Vader

It hits several steps that are required to get the audience to the starting place of Episode IV. In doing so, it labours a few points and condenses others. The labouring is laboured (midichlorins, pod racing, shouting "Yippeee!"). If I could reboot it, I'd suggest these:

• Episode I: Find the child of the prophecy in the temple, follow his training through until he is out in the field. Let him age within the film.
• Episode II: Anakin is tempted to the dark side through love and other emotional attachment, turns against the Jedi and becomes Darth Vader at the end of the film.
• Episode III: Anakin hunts down the Jedi, and the Jedi desperately try to put the Skywalker newborns into hiding.

To put it another way, condense the current prequels into two movies, and embellish the chase into hiding while establishing Vader as the Dark Lord of the Sith. We'd see more of Vader as a villain and see the Jedi retreat, perhaps leaving the audience with the same feeling we have at the end of Episode V.

Prequels

I've been thinking about prequels this week. It started as some thoughts about the Star Wars prequels, and I might blog about them another time. Where it ended, though was this thought:

Space Rat is the prequel to My Life With Master

The femme babes are all vying to be in Jack's orbit (so to speak, ahem!) and to do so they need to undergo a series of challenges. The reward is the attention of Jack Cosmos - a rat who turns out to really be a rat. Once the femme babes realise this, it's too late! They're caught continually running demeaning little errands for Jack. It's no wonder they end up with an amount of weariness and self loathing. All that effort for a rat? Eventually, one of them will recover enough self esteem to rise up and kill Jack.

The shift from Space Rat to My Life With Master is a bit like the tilt in Fiasco. "You find out the truth about Jack: he's a shallow rat. Now play!"

If I ever play this campaign, I think I'll spread it across six episodes. Three for Space Rat and three for My Life With Master - just like Star Wars.

Star Wars Agony

It's no secret that I like Star Wars. I've never played any of the RPGs, though, but I've played the WOTC minis game a few times and have several minis. But as I was thinking about what to do with all those minis this morning, I figured that I could use Agon rules to play a good Clone Wars campaign. Substitute the Jedi Council for the gods, the Jedi for the heroes, various Force powers for the weapons, and several other cosmetic changes and it'll work nicely.

Interestingly, I'd like to change the Oaths to Doctrines in some way. Oaths bind one character to another as a debt of obligation in Agon. The only obligation that a Jedi has is to the doctrine of the Jedi council. It'd be great to see a Jedi compelled to move this way or that in combat as a result of necessarily obedience to the Jedi code.

That's today's Star Wars mashup, at least. Enjoy!

StarWars.com | Hasbro Toy Fair Round-Up!

This looks like the new miniatures game for Star Wars. At least fans won't have to collect action figures and minis now. Is this "Action Figure Galactic Battleground Card Game" (AFGBCG) the Hasbro equivalent to Inquisitor?

ACTION FIGURE GALACTIC BATTLEGROUND CARD GAME

The new Galactic Battleground Card Game for the 3.75-inch figure line features a unique pack-in card, base, and die, and will be included with Clone Wars, Saga Legends, Battle Packs, and Figure and Vehicle Packs starting August 1.StarWars.com | Hasbro Toy Fair Round-Up!

The name reminds me of Battling Siezure Robots, or Super Gachapon Fighter Omega Infinity! but without the flair.

Star Wars Fashion

Subtle, but elegant. Some real-world, red carpet Star Wars fashion.

An AT-AT as a pet

If only I could get the circuitry of an Aibo in the body of a toy AT-AT.  Still, the photo stream is evocative.

No need for pets around here.

Don't Feel Your Fear - redux

I'm disappointed with my earlier effort at a Star Wars setting hack for Don't Rest Your Head, and this is my revision.

To start with, I want to use the DRYH system to represent the temptation for a Jedi to turn to the dark side of the force. Vader and Sidious often said that it was more powerful, and Yoda said that it's the easy path. Sounds like a temptation to me, and one which has a balance that creates tension for the story and the characters.

In the DRYH system, the function of Exhaustion and Madness is to tempt the players. More dice gives more power. Too many dice makes the character fall. The function of Discipline is to rein in the effects of Exhaustion and Madness and the function of Pain is to provide opposition to the character's actions. To convert this to a Jedi story, we need to understand what tempts a Jedi. We get our clues from The Jedi Code and from some advice that Yoda gave to Anakin.

The Jedi Code

There is no emotion; there is peace.

There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.

There is no passion; there is serenity.

There is no chaos; there is harmony.

There is no death; there is the force.

Yoda's Advice

"Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin. The fear of loss is the path to the Dark Side."

From these, I would nominate that the two temptations for the Jedi are Darkness and Passion. They fit into DRYH like this.

Change Exhaustion to Darkness and change a Crash to a Taint.

Remember that, "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." Max out on Fear and you get a taint of the Dark Side (a point of permanent Madness)

Change Madness to Passion and leave a Snap just the way it is.

Anakin's slaughter of the Raiders as vengeance for the torture of his mother is a great example here. An option with which I'm toying is to eliminate the Flight response altogether, and require only Fight responses.

Don't change Pain.

Pain is still pain.

The last thing to do is work backwards to character creation. Standard DRYH questions can be inappropriate to creating the kind of Jedi Temptation stories I have in mind. They develop as follows:

Character Questions

"What's been keeping you awake?" becomes "What did you give up to become a Jedi?"

"What just happened to you?" remains the same.

"What's on the surface?" should be "How do you fit into the Jedi Order?"

"What's beneath the surface?" remains the same.

"What's your path?" relates to progression in the Jedi order or knowledge of the Force, the only two destinations for a Jedi.

There you have it. I hope to run this setting hack sometime this year, either at Go Play Brisbane, or at Gencon Oz. Your comments are welcome, especially if you think I've misread something about DRYH or the Jedi.