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Prospective Star Wars
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What I ended up doing with my abortive game that I of course will never get around to properly running was just like, “welp, there’s an rebellion and an empire but none of the stuff went down like it did in the movies or eu material or canon. Oh also, none of those characters exist either, ya got an all new cast.”
This is course produces its own problems, but it allowed me to throw out all the stuff from the setting I didn’t like while still managing to keep it instantly recognizable. The plus side: I made an ensemble of fun NPCs.
Someday I’m really gonna have to roll out Per’dita the Hutt, Dowager Queen of the Maw somewhere because she’s just too fucking cool and way too much fun.
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@Jennkryst said in Prospective Star Wars:
Or is that still too immersive?
Well, the thing is - with the Ares scene system and web-based RP, a chunk of scenes (possibly a large chunk, depending on your players) are going to take place in what amounts to off-grid temprooms.
This (old reenacted) scene takes place on a beach on Caprica. If the characters got into a shuttle and flew back to the Battlestar, they’d just pose it. The scene window wouldn’t really change (other than maybe a “So-and-so has changed the location to Shuttlecraft” message if someone bothered to adjust the scene location). It’s a different mindset, with an emphasis on scenes, not rooms.
How would you incorporate coded spaceships into that experience? I don’t think you could, practically.
A gear list is easy enough to add, though you’d have to add screens to view/manage it on web too. The larger question is what you want the gear to DO. While you certainly could code up an in-depth combat system that leverages whatever stat modifiers “Gas Vent IV” conveys, it would be an immense amount of work, especially when you factor in the web portal. And then if you have a detailed gear system, you probably need a detailed economy system so folks have money for gear… which is more code, and more wrinkles.
I’m not saying it absolutely can’t be done. Just that Ares is probably not the best fit for a crunchy, immersive space game. You might have a better experience with Evennia or Rhost.
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Oh, I just realized this was in the forum feedback section. Maybe it could go to Helping Hands?
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@Roz THANKS. I’LL DO THAT.
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@Roz said in Prospective Star Wars:
Oh, I just realized this was in the forum feedback section. Maybe it could go to Helping Hands?
Uh… whoops. My bad, I thought I changed the group. Or maybe fat thumbs picked the wrong one.
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Another vote for the Old Republic here. I’m basically not at all interested in movie era Star Wars, but the OLD stuff is phenom. I ran a tabletop game for a while where my players were part of the group that rediscovered Tython, that was amazeballs, mostly because the era is so wide open it’s basically like playing D&D, you can’t really do it wrong.
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I was so obsessed with the mood and themes and feel of Andor I was very nearly convinced to start my own game up a while back in the “dawn of the Empire” era, and I think I would still kill for one, lol. But Old Republic is just as good to me.
Aaaaalso, if we’re talking a system that would be a fun and easy fit for Star Wars and Ares…FATE is right there already. Just sayin’.
Unfortunately it’s almost the exact opposite of what @Jennkryst is looking for in terms of crunch and simulation, and some people don’t like it, but it’s great imo.
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If it was me, I’d want a game set after the events of the sequel trilogy. Star Wars fans tend to treat the canon like an orthodox religion which must be violently defended against any heretical deviation. I hope a person can mitigate that by just saying “We’re setting this in a time period nothing is written about.”
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@GF There was a Star Wars game that I don’t remember the name of that basically fell apart once the triology events were done and it was SUCH a shame because to me that was the interesting part. The Empire is gone, did the Rebellion have a plan for keeping the economy up? Since there was a war going on did each planet have a plan for how to keep things going depending on the outcome? Do crime families come into power? Who fills the gaps? How do you continue every day life when payments systems break down, etc etc. Like it could’ve been really cool!
But it just died.
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the star wars games i’ve most enjoyed tended to be of the outpost/exploration variety, but i’m thinking that’s just because i prefer that sort of thing in general. (love new/less established planet discovery type of stuff in fading suns as well).
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I like both the Rise of the Empire time and the Old Republic – for very different reasons. RotE is rife with opportunities to punch space-Nazis or play people who decide they don’t want to be Space-Nazis and to play rebels (and Rebels) in an oppressive galaxy (and Force users don’t/shouldn’t dominate because they’re being hunted to extinction). TOE has tons of Force Users, more open-ended canon, and an actual full-out war going on large portions of the time.
And the posts from everyone (including me) talking about their favorite eras is exactly the problem with Star Wars games: everyone wants to play in a different era for different reasons, and some people have absolutely zero interest in playing in certain eras.
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
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@Roadspike said in Prospective Star Wars:
And the posts from everyone (including me) talking about their favorite eras is exactly the problem with Star Wars games: everyone wants to play in a different era for different reasons, and some people have absolutely zero interest in playing in certain eras.
I don’t really consider that a problem, though, any more than any other MU* has its audience. People always want to play on different games. In reality, gamerunners should build their setting with a large deference to what they’re passionate about, because that will give them the most inspiration for running things. And then players can self-select as needed.
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@GF said in Prospective Star Wars:
Star Wars fans tend to treat the canon like an orthodox religion which must be violently defended against any heretical deviation.
Yeah, it’s a major hurdle. I think there’s a lot of crossover with the kinds of players who like canon Supes games, where the core rule is that you can deviate a bit but at the end of the day nothing ever really changes the characters or world people are familiar with. You pretty much have to declare that this is an AU setting from the get-go, and that alone turns a lot of people off for some reason, I dunno.
@DrQuinn said in Prospective Star Wars:
There was a Star Wars game that I don’t remember the name of that basically fell apart once the triology events were done and it was SUCH a shame because to me that was the interesting part. The Empire is gone, did the Rebellion have a plan for keeping the economy up? Since there was a war going on did each planet have a plan for how to keep things going depending on the outcome? Do crime families come into power? Who fills the gaps? How do you continue every day life when payments systems break down, etc etc. Like it could’ve been really cool!
But it just died.Ugh, it is a shame! One of my favorite parts of Andor was that scene where Forrest Whittaker’s character starts ranting about all the different conflicting factions and cells involved in the Rebellion and imagining how they would have resolved all of that is exactly what set my mind racing. It’d be such a fun setting, but you’d need mature, invested, interesting players and that seems…well, hard to come by, lol.
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@Roz said in Prospective Star Wars:
In reality, gamerunners should build their setting with a large deference to what they’re passionate about, because that will give them the most inspiration for running things. And then players can self-select as needed.
In that vein, let me know if you decide to set your game in the post-Order 66 Jedi Purge era with PCs allowed to choose concepts as Inquisitors, Emperor’s Hands or Dark Jedi.
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I’d love an Andor-themed or post-RoTJ game.
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picking the setting you most like, as a gamerunner, can’t be emphasized enough.
in my experience, trying to cater to the majority of voices you see pre-creation often just…well, it doesn’t make those voices happy enough unless that too is your jam, it’s easier to get burnout from dealing with the inevitable whiners on pub or other ooc channels “oh I hate X, this is okay but i’d just be soooo much happier if it were Y instead,”. There’s lots of people who can perfectly enjoy a 2nd place setting for them. And a lot of people (like me) who don’t really give a shit, if the premise of the game (like the real one, not just that it’s star wars) grabs 'em.
I will totally enjoy any genre/time period of any game better if it’s in a far flung/outpost/redneck/potential discovery/colonial politics setting the most, even over my FAVORITE genre or system where it’s not. (and i’d happily play no matter what if there’s ooc nice people there).
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@Wizz said in Prospective Star Wars:
I was so obsessed with the mood and themes and feel of Andor I was very nearly convinced to start my own game up a while back in the “dawn of the Empire” era, and I think I would still kill for one, lol. But Old Republic is just as good to me.
I swear, picking a time period is one of the hardest parts. The movies span less than 70 years, and some of the time frames you can pick from there even managed to not get retroactively made dumb by events and implications from Rise of Skywalker.
(fight me)
… FATE …
I DID go all-in on the FATE kickstarter, and also have all the Dresden FATE rules (unless new things came out while I wasn’t looking). So it is good and neat.
But also I really like my weird rainbow dice from FFG, and it has those cool narrative rules.
crunch and simulation
I mean, it’s less crunchy than Dahan’s Skill System on AoA/Serenity MU, and probably less crunchy than Saga Edition?
UNTIL SOME MAD LAD GIVES ME SPACE TRUCKING, but even then, that’s just going to be for bored piloting and OOC fun; any combat or IC relevant things will go with dice rolls, so people who don’t use the simulator will be on the same page as people who do.
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Obvious solution to the Era issue that everyone else is also bringing up is ONE MU, DIFFERENT TIMELINES! Make a character for whichever one! But that means multiple alts and/or shutting off whole sections of the grid to people who will only want one character.
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I don’t think dividing your playerbase into eras is going to work out well. But if you wanted to run multiple eras you could try something like The Network that changes up the setting on a regular cadence.
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I have seen multiple simultaneous times games before (or vastly different planets too where people couldn’t travel easily). One time it was very very clear that was the runner’s jam and something he was super excited about, and it seemed to work (I mean it looked like it was a LOT of work, but it was clearly playtime for him and it was really kind of cute on an ooc level to see that honestly, and charming).
The other two I saw it was /clearly/ a matter of trying to make loudmouths happy or just inability to focus or say no. In one case, it wasn’t a total disaster because everything died off except for the area that the runners were into rather than the spinoffs they felt they needed to say yes to. (the loudmouths were never as in to actually running stuff or being proactive as they were complaining that they couldn’t have what they wanted, what a surprise). The other one people just left over time because the runners were stretching themselves so thin and having to sink so much energy trying to do all things for all folks including areas they just really didn’t have enthusiasm for that it made everything slow and bland, and people just were also spread too thin amongst sub-games and so it fell apart quickly (but not due to blow up, just people getting hooked in better elsewhere).
So i’m not saying it can’t work, just really take a moment to sit with what is exciting and fun to you first.
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Taking a second to think about it, having primary game with metaplot, but then maybe little sandboxes for people who want to shoot off into a different era… as long as it’s self-contained… sounds like an idea to eat your cake and have it too.
