Also have to decide what level it starts at.

Clone Wars has to start at level 8 or higher. (A Padawan wouldn't be let out of the temple to command anything...)

You could do 1st level, just need to be more creative. If doing it in res media the Jedi General might have been killed or have to go do something more urgent leaving their Padawan with the clone troopers.

 I was thinking the same thing.. they are stuck behind enemy lines.. each player part of a different unit coddled together. Commanders and Jedi killed, etc. Their long range comm systems destroyed. They bring together some survivors of a platoon to form a squad and make an escape. During the retreat and confusion they end up a long way away from the main force. The Republic goes on full retreat and they are left behind and have to survive and escape.

  I would probably start it 3rd level, since clones aren't released from Kamino before they are better trained. A relatively new Jedi padawan could be one of the survivors, having lost his master in the battle.

  I don't like starting anything at 8th level. It doesn't give the characters a chance to develop properly from a novice to a veteran. That's one of the best times to play a character and earn the way to elite status with all the accolades of their accomplishments detailed and lived-out.

  So the question is who is interested in playing? I'm a bit surprised the merc group wasn't more appealing to people. But I guess the smuggler/merc campaigns are probably overdone.

I just hate Forceless games that are no jedi allowed. I just decline them.

But alright, I guess I can do the Padawan.

In all my years of perusing Star Wars games I would have to say that the merc/smuggler type games have not been overdone.  Smuggler games tend to be all roleplaying though.  That isn't everyone's cup of tea.  And mercenary games are... well... that's like most other games out there.  That isn't very "Star Warsy".  Now Jedi though, that is very "Star Warsy".  It just won't feel much like a Star Wars game without at least one person who can use the Force.

Preferably while standing one one's head with one hand with a green midgit on his feet. And moving rocks around :P

Definitely don't start at first level.  Although it's nice to see a character grow from being a snot-nosed brat who thinks he can be a hero to an actual hero, it takes a long time in PBP to get out of first level.  First level characters aren't capable of much.  And you have to pull your punches when doing a combat with them.  That doesn't feel dramatic enough.  The nice thing about Clone Wars Era though is they got opponents who're even wimpier than Stormtroopers.


Even Luke and Yoda got a Training Montage.

The thing about level 8, though, is that it's Jedi Knight. Because theoretically, the first thing a padawan could, and should do when communications to anywhere are re-established is contact the temple and put himself back in protective custody.

Starting without knighthood means, in most cases, the game will die before you ever get there.

  I never start with 1st level, even with table top. I actually would like to have a campaign like that, but it would have to be heavy role-play and there doesn't seem to be enough people that would enjoy that. I would venture most of those go do the free form role-play for writing stories.

  I enjoy the whole idea of coming up from a street urchin, where the run down undercity block is your whole world.. and then you move up to find other, better places.. and on and on as you progress and grow. But posting 2-3 times a week would be a 10 year (real time) story before you become a galactic hero.

This whole discussion has brought up an idea for a game I have had drifting around in my head for years (likely since the Clone Wars animated series began).  In a week my classes will be over, and in another week (hopefully) my jury duty will be over.  Then my summer begins, and I have a whole mess of time on my hands.  And then we shall see if it lasts past the summer.

I won't feel bad if it doesn't.  It's just a single scenario.  I haven't thought this thing out into other scenarios, unlike other game ideas I've had.  That would depend on if the characters want to stick together.  That's the beauty of it, and the curse.  It's an idea that puts together characters of many different backgrounds: regular spacers, Wookiees, Clones, smugglers, an urchin, and even a Jedi Padawan or two.

So, I'd like to open up a discussion on Min-Maxing.  This is, of course, a touchy subject so let's keep it civil.  Before claiming that min-maxing precludes roleplaying, look up the Stormwind Fallacy.

For me, Min-Maxing is about keeping players on a similar tier.  For those who aren't familiar with the Jargon, the Tiers of Characters are:




I got my first taste of minmaxing way back in the day when I first started and built a soulknife because it seemed so cool.  Then I discovered that the Druid's animal companion was far more useful than I was, never mind the rest of the druid's abilities.  My character was effectively useless and I was a joke at the game unable to contribute in any meaningful way.  That sucked a lot.  It wasn't fun for me as a player and it wasn't fun for the other players because I was deadweight they kept having to rescue.  It made the game less fun for all involved and that's the opposite of why I game.

I like Tier 3 and I try to keep my characters there.  I feel that a character should be able to do their specific job, better than anybody else in the party.  A character should also be able to contribute at other jobs, but not better than anybody else at the other character's specialty.  I'll pull out a lot of minmaxing if I need to play a Tier 4 or below, while playing a Tier 1 or 2 I'll deliberately hamper abilities to get my character down to Tier 3, for instance a cleric who cannot fight in melee.

Star Wars Saga doesn't have tiers for characters so much.  The flexible talent trees mean that it's more on the player and build than a specific class.  I find that Scoundrels and Jedi are effectively Tier 4 while Soldiers, Scouts, and Nobles are Tier 3.  Any character can hit tier 2 with the Force or being a Droid since those two options are effectively better for any concept that a non-force organic.

However Saga has major tier issues with equipment.  A character who tries to fight with a Lanvarok or Decksweeper is going to be useless standing next to a character who's fighting with a Blaster Cannon (and worse, had to pay a feat for the privilege of sucking with said lanvarok or decksweeper).  A player who picks a Stinger Starfighter can solo an entire wing of Krayt Gunships even though the Krayt costs twice as much.  If you bought Marine armor and the other player bought Seatrooper Armor, one of you is hosed and it's not the one who spent less money.  Thus my guides tend to steer players more towards useful equipment while also nudging them away from outright broken stuff like TIE Scouts and Neo Crusader armor.


So, enough about my opinions.  How do you feel about this as a player?  How about as a GM?

I'm not sure Jedi should be called Tier 4. They're Saga's wizards and such, and a quick look at Yoda and Sidious should remind you that linear warriors, quadratic wizards is totally in effect for the Jedi.

I was speaking of the class, rather than the concept.  The Jedi class is somewhat weak, since most force talents can be selected by any class.  It's basically a dip to grab a lightsaber and the block/deflect talent and usually not the first level because it's skills are so weak.  Luke did the right thing deciding to start out a Scout and then Multiclass to Jedi later.

In general I've actually found that the reverse of Quadratic Wizards is the case in Saga.  Due to Skill Focus: Use the Force being available at level 1, a Jedi can readily get a UTF check of somewhere around +13 to +15 at level 1, opposed by an opponent's save scores of perhaps 12-16 meaning they hit on anything but a natural 1.  On the other hand by level 20 the Jedi still will only have a UTF check of perhaps +30 while the defenses look to be in the low to mid 40s at that point, meaning far less effective force powers.

In general I feel that Skill Focus should be forbidden at less than level 5 for skills that are "opposed" by other skills or saves such as UTF, Deception, and Pilot.  It needs to still be allowed for other skills like Treat Injury since a low-level medic is hosed trying to do anything without the feat due to high static DCs.

I'd say most of your Tier 1 and Tier 2 classes (Jedi included) really depend upon the creativity of the player.  I've seen players who're dumb as posts build and play these kinds of characters.  And due to their lack of creativity and problem solving abilities, their characters fall down to a Tier 4.

In reply to GM Samurai Kato (msg # 64):

Eh, not really a part of tiers though, which are an "assume all else is equal" matter.  An uncreative player is less effective (depending on the GM, I've had some that hate any sign of lateral thinking and stomp on such ideas) but an uncreative player who makes a tactical blunder in a Thalassian Slave Transport takes some HP Damage and requires a mechanics check later, while the same player in a Dynamic Freighter gets the whole party killed and the campaign probably ends.

It's also far easier to be less effective than more.  The greatest tactical player in the world is going to have trouble making a commoner useful against a Balor while even a player in their first game ever will be able to contribute with a druid.

Lastly tactical skill and well-built characters tend to go hand in hand.  You can't figure out what the optimal choices are until you've actually played enough to know how to use them.  On the other hand numeric bonuses don't require player creativity, the "Big Six" items in DnD are so named because no matter the player, no matter the tactics, no matter the group, having those items is always a plus, there is no character who is worse off for having a cloak of resistance.

Or a Vest of Resistance, in case your Paladin is busy using a cloak to boost his Charisma. Nothing like +8 to all your saves, when your saves are already obscene cause Paladin.

There must be more to this anecdote.  I'd like to hear the whole story.  That sounds much more entertaining than the current topic.

Not that amazing but okay.  Followed a request off to a game on another board.  This rarely ends well, I've found, but Saga games are getting rare so I gave it a shot.

We were doing the common "Smuggler/pirates" theme.  We got a fixed number of credits (I think it was 150,000) for our ship.  I put forward my choice of choices, Thalassian Slave Transport.  Another player felt that such a large ship was unbecoming of a rag-tag team and wanted the Ebon Hawk.  A third player seemed to think we shouldn't have weapons or shields in order to bluff that we were peaceful traders which nobody else listened to, but the Ebon Hawk notion passed.  The other players took several horrible options including a combat thruster and SR 15 because apparently having defenses like unto cardboard appealed.

Go forward 1 week to first combat in space.  A wing of fighters attack, we're nigh-instantly sucked into a dogfight we can't get out of, and the Ebon Hawk gets creamed because a Dynamic Freighter has horrible stats.  I'm playing a mechanic trying to keep the ship together and we decide to surrender, at which point we're all executed for fighting back.  Guh.  Terrible GMing.

I suggest a mulligan with a ship of my choosing and the other players go with it after that experience.  We get the Thalassian Slave Transport and I work up a backstory about how we captured it and freed thousands of slaves.  We also twink our characters up quite a bit and I build a Pornomancer type.  Incredibly the other girl is still pushing her idea of no weapons or shields but nobody listens this time either.

Second time around the wing of fighters appear.  We have SR100 so their weapons hurt us the same way a BB-gun hurts a rhinoceros.  We cream the fighters and the Star Destroyer jumps in right on top of us.  There's a blistering Capship-to-Capship battles which is. . .actually kind of boring because both sides have trouble piercing each other's shields.  Fortunately on my advice the gunner took several Shield Hits and once he applied them, we get their shields down low enough to punch through with Turbolaser hits and soon their HP are depleting.

At this point I hail the Star Destroyer to demand they surrender to us.  As I've built a character around this I have a persuasion of something like +25 but the GM insists that I can't get an entire Star Destroyer to surrender and we'll have to board them and take out individual sections.  As there's four players and the Star Destroyer has a crew of several thousand we decide we don't like those odds and blow them up when the Captain won't surrender.  The GM ragequits and bans us all from the forum.

There's two important lessons I took from this.  One is not to go to tiny boards following links away from RPoL, that doesn't end well.  The second is that if you make an antagonistic player vs. GM game, don't be surprised when your players present as their characters Pun Pun, Pornomancer, and Chuck Norris.  Nobody has fun watching a total party kill a week into the game except trolls.

Yeah, that's the common trope that players like to go with.  They want to re-play KotOR with characters of their own creation.  Or they want to be like Han Solo only flying a really cool looking ship.  Most players don't look at a ship's stats and balance them against the stats of other ships.  That's your sort of thing to do, moonstonespider.



And it's the GM's job to look at ship stats and balance the opposition appropriately.  That GM was acting like a player, choosing ships based on how cool they look.  You're right, that's bad GMing.  But what I think is truly terrible is that your GM just killed you all on the spot.  Like he had no plan for what if you lose.  He should have thought of an excuse not to.  And the perfect excuse is right out there.  You were attacked by pirates, right?  Your GM should have read up on the history of pirates, both historic and modern.  Not all pirates are after bloodlust.  In fact, most pirates prefer to take hostages.  Often times the ransom you can get for a crew is worth more than the ship and cargo combined.  Make that ship a small one like the Ebon Hawk and that becomes more true.  And if no one pays the ransom, as often is the case with small time traders who cannot afford insurance, the pirates will sell the crew into slavery.  "It's a "win, win, win" as they say.  No one says that.  I say that."



A pornomancer?  I want to ask, but I doubt it's appropriate for this board.

Calling a mulligan was a bad choice for story progression.  Especially when the backstory you guys made up fits perfectly with what I think real pirates would have done with you.  You could have played the same characters, and roleplayed that whole prison break episode.  That was a real lost opportunity for some great storytelling.  I mean, most GMs would start you out at the prisonbreak.  But here, you were sold into slavery because of your own bad decisions.  Then you get to make good out of it by freeing yourselves, freeing other slaves, and getting a tough ship out of it.  "Ain't much to look at but it's got it where it counts."



This GM just doesn't learn, does he?  You have a different ship, and he throws the same encounter at you without again comparing ship stats.  And then when he loses without it ever being a challenge, he ups the ante.  Frankly, you won that fight out of good character construction and good die rolls.  But again that GM didn't know the way his antagonists should react.  The proud crew of an Imperial Star Destroyer would never surrender.  They'd try to escape or die fighting.  And if ever the bridge crew decided surrender to pirates was their best option (not in a million years considering the pirates will sell them into slavery.  Hello!  They're flying a Thalassian slave ship!!!  Any sane person would rather die from being stuck in the anus and shocked to death by a Bothan Stunner than be taken slave by Thalassians.)  Okay, so what if a Talent and a really good die roll convinces the captain to surrender the ship?  The moment he does the Imperial Intelligence Officer on the bridge will signal the thousands of Stormtroopers stationed aboard a Star Destroyer.  Stormtroopers will never surrender.  They will mutiny and take control of that ship.  You had no choice.  You had to blow up that ship.  The GM's idea of you boarding it was obviously suicide.

That GM definitely wanted to win.  It's a small man who cannot accept that he lost.  A small man cannot accept that he made mistakes.  It's a pathetic GM who ragequits.  Even more petty a man to ban you all from the forums.

The real win for a GM is when everyone has fun.  Or 60% of the players have fun.  You can't always win.  I think I was 12 years old when I learned that lesson.  That GM must have been 11 years old.  And like me when I was 11 years old, playing a lot of games by himself.



I take this as a valuable lesson: never be strayed away from rpol.  Rpol is heavily moderated.  If some GM turns into a total troll whose games are all GM vs. Player, winner take all and loser dies, he'd be reported multiple times to the rpol moderators who will take away his GMing priveledges.  And players who get punished simply for being creative and basically out-GMing the GM wouldn't get banned.

Weren't pirates, they were Imperials.

And I've honestly never understood why people want to player pre-made characters.  I don't want to be the second Princess Leia but rather the first Moonstone Spider.  Not my thing I suppose.  Different Strokes.

Actually Pornomancer is just an archetype, a character with so many social skills it amounts to flat-out mind control.  It got it's name in the Shadowrun fandom when 4E proved to be the least balanced edition ever.  Supposedly 4E reduced power levels but in reality it just hosed players without any optimization skills, while those that did produced builds like Pornomancer, a social adept who could throw 60 dice at social rolls in a game where the supposed best in the world were throwing 20.  This is at chargen, the equivalent of level 1 facing off against level 20 characters in skill contests.  4E was really bad at game balance and the reason I quit the Shadowrun franchise, my favored game up until that point.

It's been my experience that players very rarely are willing to surrender or retreat.  Partly because many games make it difficult to impossible (in DnD most monsters can outrun even the fastest PC, most monsters have speeds more than double the PCs), and many characters are so equipment-dependent that escape isn't going to happen in most prisons.
Part of the other issue, I think, is that the PCs are usually a self-contained group.  The traditional prison break requires allies outside the prison to help, often by staging the break and other times by smuggling in tools, but gaming groups rarely have powerful and capable allies like that and most GMs are hesitant to supply them for fear of being labelled GMPC users.

Certain types of adventures that work really well in movies and books do not work in games.  I can't count the number of times I've seen GMs call for stealth missions only for everything to fall apart in short order because somebody rolled a natural 1, or a player just didn't have stealth as a trained skill.

Agreed, gaming isn't about winning.  However  it has rules and players have jobs, not being able to do them makes the game less fun.  All the players thought dying in the Dynamic was a less fun that mopping the floor with a Star Destroyer the the Thalassian Slave Transport.


Agreed.  However I'll note that most of the players thought the second run-through rocked, aside from the GM quitting.  Getting to duke it out with a Star Destroying and beating it into scrap was awesome, partly because I don't think any of them had ever had a game where they actually fought one before.

You were the pirates?  That was a terrible start up for a game.  For one thing, I would stand up and demand more than 150k for a ship.  Pirates need much more money than that to build a good ship for piracy.  And then there's the problem of only having four characters.  That's not enough of a crew for pirates.  How're you going to keep an eye on the crew of the ship you capture, or move the cargo?  You'll need a lot more NPCs to do the grunt work.

Playing pre-made characters has a couple of advantages.  The main one is that it gets the game started really fast.  Nothing worse than going to start a new game with people you just met and then having to spend half the day just making your characters.  When it turns out you don't like the GM's style, or if the game turned out to be boring then you feel like you wasted hours on making those characters.  The other is (and this takes a lot of trust) is that the PCs you're handed have just the right skills to get you through the adventure the GM has planned.  It really would T me off when I went to game conventions, the GM hands us pre-made characters (as is the usual for convention games) and it turns out the adventure takes the PCs out of their element.  That is very bad planning.

For obvious reason I also prefer making my own characters.  I love coming up with characters.  Often times that's more fun than the game itself.  But the GM has to tell you what kind of game it's going to be.  If it's going to be a stealth game, then the players need to know that so they can build stealth characters.  I hate games when the characters are placed outside of their element.  I used to have a GM who loved standing players on deserted islands.  He wouldn't tell you what the adventure was going to be.  He'd lead you believe he had come up with something new and original.  So someone makes a Pornomancer Rogue, and CRASH!  You're on a deserted island.

Shadowrun... I used to like that game.  Mind you, the last time I played it was when 2nd Edition was the thing.  I liked 2nd Edition.  It was just fine.  I couldn't see why they needed to make a 3rd or 4th Edition.  The only idea I had why was they wanted to sell everyone a new set of books.  I feel ripped off when I have to buy a new set of books when the old ones were okay.  And I only bought 2nd Edition because Larry Elmore was at the game store signing books.  I'd run a 2nd Edition game, but who would play it?  I wonder if you can find those books in PDF.

By now all of you have seen the newest Star Wars trailer.  And by now you all have analyzed the hell out of it.  One of those unanswered questions that everyone has is, "Where is Luke?"  You would think that you should see him in a movie trailer.  It's not like he's a minor character in the Saga.

Today the thought occurred to me that perhaps we have seen Luke.  No, not inside an X-wing.  He is hidden, yes, but you see him.  He's the villain.  History is repeating itself.  As the road to the Dark Side was paved with good intentions with Anakin, so is it with Luke.  To quote Darth Vader, "Join me and together we shall rule the Galaxy as father and son.  Luke, it is your destiny."  Was the most powerful Jedi who ever lived wrong?  Darth Vader could see things well in advance of their occurance.  Perhaps his death was just a speed bump.  Yoda foresaw much the same thing when he witnesses Luke rush off to face Vader without completing his training.  Luke has always rushed headlong to face his challenges without any thought for the future.  He has always ignored advice to be patient.  In so many ways, he is exactly like his father.  My theory also answers that other question people have about what Leia is crying about.  She just learned that Luke has turned to the Dark Side and thereby betrayed everything they had fought for.

  It's an interesting idea for a story, but the filmmakers would never let the main character of the beloved first trilogy, who was willing to die instead of turning to the dark side and converted his father to the light, become the bad guy.

  My theory is that Luke went into self-imposed exile when it  was learned he was the son of Vader and most of civilization were fearful of the Jedi. They realized people with the Force were too powerful and regular people would always be at their mercy and they eventually banned Jedi and anyone with the Force.

  Because of their support of Luke, the people of the New Republic also turned against Han & Leia and they left as well.. fell on hard times and Han had to give up the Falcon (or they gave it away so they couldn't be found). Evil began to return in the form of the Knights of Ren and the First Order became another totalitarian regime and a new resistance began and they sought out the Heroes of the original rebellion to learn how to stop the new order. This would explain why Han said in the 2nd teaser "Chewie, we're back."

 I also have a theory that Kylo Ren isn't the real leader of the Knights of Ren. Snoke is the founder and Kylo has taken over.. Who Snoke really is would be interesting and I'm sure a big surprise. I've heard Collider Jedi Council theorize it might be Darth Plageuis, but this make no sense because in Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine says that he killed his master confirming what the Legends book of the same name said.. of course Palpatine could have been lying, but why would Plageuis let him rule and have no part of it if he was actually alive the whole time.

...I can't see Disney of all people turning Luke either. Disney is more likely to have him tucked away in a cabin with a wife and 3 kids.

Cynical but true.  With Disney it has nothing to do with what will or will not make good story.  Since Disney has taken over the Star Wars franchise, the stories have become modern day fairy tales for kids.  Disney will take any dark tale like the Grimm's Fairy Tales and make them all bright and happy.  Everything really bad that happens happens off-screen or in the prolog.