So, I’m back to hyperfixating on Star Wars because Light of the Jedi, the first novel in the new High Republic stuff, just got released and I accidentally looked at a picture of a lightsaber. This triggered a chain reaction that led to me binging all of the Mandalorian in a single weekend, watching the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special (which is a masterpiece) despite it being January, and reading page after page on Wookieepedia about ‘Ponda Baba’ or ‘Tip-Yip’ or ‘Glup Shitto’ or whatever.
Star Wars is easy to hyperfixate on, because there’s always more.
Anyway, as I usually do when I’m into something, I began planning a tabletop RPG campaign. The plan is to use the Star Wars hack for D&D 5th Edition you can find online, because while I do agree that you can’t just use D&D as an all-purpose ruleset for any game… I know 5e really well. It’s like that Top Gear meme.
Sami indicated she’d be willing to play and wants to make a Mandalorian, which is of course extremely cool. I asked Mari too, but she said she was used to the Star Wars RPGs made using the 3rd Edition SRD system, with their thousands and thousands of steps to making a character. If she didn’t have the option to make a force-sensitive half-droid half-jawa half-sarlaac with stormtrooper training, what was the point. I’ll put you down as a ‘maybe’, Mari.
The next step was to think about when to set it. If you’re not up on Star Wars, there’s as many different eras as Ariel has legs:
- Pre-Republic, before there were even Humans. I don’t think this is canon anymore?
- The Old Republic, about a thousand years before any of the movies, with loads of Jedi and Sith gallivanting about the place
- The High Republic, about 800-200 years before any of the movies, after the Sith have experienced severe budget cuts
- The Fall of the Jedi, when all those clones were there
- The Reign of the Empire, when the Empire reigned
- The Age of Rebellion, when the Empire reigned but people did something about it
- The New Republic, after Palpatine got dunked into a big space well
- and The Rise of the First Order, when the First Order rose.
I’m leaning more towards either the Old Republic, so I can include as many lightsabers as possible, or after the Rise (and fall) of the First Order, so I can do whatever I want without worrying about canon overlap.
After that, you need a plot, or at least some kind of conflict. Star Wars likes to have concrete villains to work against, though that can feel a bit arbitrary – like, Palpatine is the villain because he’s evil. What does he want? Power. Why does he want it? He’s evil.
I’d prefer to work in some more nuanced motivations. I’ve got this concept for the antagonist that’s rooted in a particular frustration I have with Star Wars, namely; just how inflexible the morality of the universe is.
It’s absolutely black and white, with its frustrating good vs. evil fairytale viewpoint. I know Star Wars is practically a fairytale, but…
I don’t remember which game it was, but there was a mission in one of the Star Wars where you’re playing as a trainee in the Jedi temple on, uh, Bodega or some other planet. You hear rumours of two other trainees that are in love, and they want to run away together. You’re given two choices: help them, or report them to Jedi Miss Trunchbull.
I, of course, helped them escape. Two students desperate to be together, in spite of a culture that said that wasn’t allowed? It spoke to my queer little heart. And the game gave me dark side points for it!
Yoda’s ghost floated from my computer. ‘Mm, bad person you are,’ he said. ‘A Jedi must not know love.’
‘What about Ki-Adi-Mundi and his four wives?’ I asked.
‘Talk about him, we do not,’ he said, before being eaten by my cat.
The Jedi order are a bunch of hypocrites. The whole ‘attachment leads to jealousy-> greed-> fear-> anger-> hate-> Dark Side’ business is a load of crap. Fear doesn’t necessarily lead to anger! I’m frightened every day and I’m not mad about it, I’m just tired and depressed.
But that’s because I don’t live in the Star Wars universe, see. My life isn’t dictated by fairytale morality. In-Universe, if you’re afraid, it always leads to anger, because the Force itself… uh, enforces that.
In the Mandalorian, there’s a scene where the Baby Yoda misinterprets an arm-wrestle as a threat to his Dad, and force chokes the other participant a bit (she’s fine). According to the rules, this puts the little frog closer to the Dark Side – a literal baby! – and means he’s more likely to do evil stuff again.
Because both sides of the Force have a will of their own, and the more in touch you are with the power, the more exposed you are to that will. The Jedi suppress their emotions, the Sith are ruled by them.
Normally, this would be the point the article would argue for the case of Grey Jedi, a force-wielder that finds balance and embraces neutrality. But Mari pointed out to me, as we watched Attack of those Clones, that the Jedi order are already neutral, in that cowardly ‘staying out of it’ fashion.
There’s even a quote from Count Dooku on the subject, though aimed specifically at Yoda:
The Jedi Order’s problem is Yoda. No being can wield that kind of power for centuries without becoming complacent at best or corrupt at worst. He has no idea that it’s overtaken him; he no longer sees all the little cumulative evils that the Republic tolerates and fosters, from slavery to endless wars, and he never asks, ‘Why are we not acting to stop this?’ Live alongside corruption for too long, and you no longer notice the stench. The Jedi cannot help the slaves of Tatooine, but they can help the slavemasters.
From Karen Traviss’ Clone Wars novelization
And he’s right! Karen Traviss is out for BLOOD!
So, back to the RPG. What if our antagonist felt the same way about the Force? They saw its influence, pushing people to either remain aloof from making a real difference or actively make things worse, and thought ‘this is evil’.
What if their goal was to destroy the Force itself, on humanitarian grounds?
Or maybe that wouldn’t work for the villain, because they’d obviously be CORRECT and anyone opposing them would be in the wrong.
Roll History 