Roleplayer's Message Board

Okay well, Ren, despite having contraditced yourself on the whole lenghty post thing (haha! >.<), I'm not really sure where your concerns are coming from. Star Wars, as a storytelling universe, is pretty well defined. Yes, the actual source of the Force is not concrete, but that's exactly what George Lucas wanted. If the Force could be quantified, it could be reproduced scientifically. Then, like you said, everyone would be a Jedi or something close to it. I think overanalyzing something like the Force is like trying to disseminate religion. It just kills the magic - literally.

I can see your concern about having too many Jedi and thus removing much of the difficulty of any given mission, but Jedi are not all powerful. In video games they're stylized and exaggerated to foster more engaging gameplay. Force Unleashed takes the exaggeration overboard deliberately, and I'm not even sure it's canon, but it is a very fun game. Most of the battles in Star Wars involving Jedi are fairly reserved in terms of superhuman, Force-driven feats. In the thread, I would expect something more similar to the skill displayed byQui Gon and Obi-Wan on Naboo during the fight with Darth Maul. It was realistic swordplay with a bit of Force powered jumping and running.

As for a plot, I intened to pick up where it left off. It stopped at a pretty decent bookmark to introduce new characters, but if everyone would feel better restarting the thread, I have no qualms about that either, although my introduction post would likely be copied and pasted merely because I think it's some of my best work describing what Jedi - and their tenants - mean. The whole point of Valuri's Saga (perhaps a different title would be better suited for this style of storytelling) is to explore a non canon universe where the Jedi Purge was a partial failure. This allows all of the PCs complete creative freedom to create any adversaries, battles, heroes, and worlds we want. If we were to go canon, we would have to abide by all the novels and cannonical third party fluff that's out there. There are dozens of books that are written in the Fall of the Republic era that we get the luxury of ignoring. All we have to consider are the events from Phantom Menace to Revenge of the Sith.

I can come up with a different plot, though I think the one I have is more than sufficient, but it will run parallel to existing events in the established universe. Star Wars is simply too well written to try and make something totally original. And I don't think we need a Jedi Scientest "class" as it were. Please, just be content with the mysticism of the Force. Trying to explain it will likely ruin the mood. Even magic in Skysail come from a mystical sort of "force" that "resides in all things," as it were.

So, I will write up a post for Skysail here shortly and tomorrow, or if I have energy tonight, I'll threadnecro Valuri's Saga. If anyone wishes to post, I welcome all contributions. Don't worry about character sheets. if you feel compelled to post a bit about your character, then go ahead, but I won't require anything. Just remember, Star Wars is as much fantasy as it is sci-fi. I think that was Mr. Lucas' goal all along.

My own fears of joining a new thread lie with the cheapening of Skysail. Right now I strive to post more frequently but simply cannot find enough hours in the day. When I sit down to write I need quiet, space and a block of time - social, work and family obligations manage to fill much of that.

From my own experience I've always been unable to participate in multiple threads - one usually garnered all of my attention and the other felt like an afterthought. Each waxed and waned depending on the energy of the story. So in this case, I'll probably just stick to Skysail and hope it generates the appropriate interest to keep rolling along. I want to dive into a new thread, I just don't think it would be fair to ya'll to not allocate appropriate time and forethought to produce quality posts.

Sidenote: I enjoy the SW universe, but am not well versed in much outside the films (I'll also keep those comments to myself). I'm afraid with a fanfic any liberties will be met with reticence, which may cause frustrations for all parties involved.

I don't really understand how anyone could view another thread as taking anything away from our current one. It's usually a full day between posts for any given player. I just thought another thread to work on between posts would liven things up a bit. I don't expect anyone to drop everything and move to Star Wars, by any means. In fact, I encourage anyone that joins to ignore Star Wars in favor of Skysail if they find themselves choosing between the two. Honestly, I just want something else to write for when I'm waiting on Skysail. I fully expect long delays between posts in Star Wars, but if Skysail has a slum, it's better to have something to do to keep those parts of your brain active or else it will be harder to jumpstart the creative juices to form a post. We saw that during the middle of winter around christmas.

Anyway, I've decided to make a new thread with a different title, since having my character's name in the title tends to focus much on only his story rather than the group as a whole. This also allows Geco to change his character's name if he wants :P Unless he wants a Sephara in every universe. It will, however, still take off where the original thread ended. I'll write up a recap on the first post so we don't need to continually reference the old thread. I just don't see the point in copying and pasting most of the old thread over just to reach the same point.

@Arc - I can understand time restrictions and don't want you to overextend yourself, but if you're worried about Star Wars knowledge keeping you from posting well, then you should know that watching the movies alone should give you more than enough knowledge of events to post in this thread. As I said, only the events in Episode 1-3 will play any bearing on this thread. Everything before that is history, and everything after never happened. If you feel you need to do any research, I would only focus on locations and events we bring up IC. Just put it in wookipedia and read the first paragraph, but you can easily get along in the thread by having only seen the most recent movies, or even just 2 and 3.

Phoenix, I think most of us only have the films to take knowledge from. There are plenty of wikis out there that I did research with when I joined last time, and it was more than sufficient to augment that knowledge if you need to.

Shari: from your description I've become more hesitant. This may sound odd, but it seems like it will take a similar approach to Skysail, in a way, that players can create characters, races, worlds etc as they wish, but the difference is you still don't seem to have a direction for the story. Having however many people pulling in opposite directions just won't work (I think this is ultimately why Ark's Fast and Furious threads failed, there were always multiple plots and nothing really overriding, or the overriding plot was lost in the background). So if that's the case, I personally won't partake (no hard feelings I hope) because I'm just not convinced the format works, but wish you best of luck.

Besides it being the only thread available, I like to think Skysail has lasted because it is a good balance of freedom for the players, and someone (so far me) providing a unifying direction for us to go in.

Shari - Yep, it is. According to more than one source. Order 66 wasn't entirely successful (even if you look at 4-6, Vader is mentioned as hunting them down. i.e. Stormtroopers didn't kill all Jedi. He had to search for them). Also, the nameless character did exist after all, and, ironically, put the paddles on the chest of the rebellion. There's the level that they were able to accomplish on film (IE 70's and innovating special effects for the movies all those years ago on a shoestring budget), and what they can do today in videogames as opposed to movies (unleashed). In a movie, you have real objects (relative term now, I suppose), real people (relative now, too); but if you want a cg effect, it starts from scratch and has to affect those real objects. Games can show a wider variety of amazing results with a lower-grade repeatable effect with low randomization, thus portray a different aspect of what lucas intended.

Lucas, I believe I read on the subject of unleashed, said that he liked what it did with the force, as it showed what a force user who cared about nothing and no one else could accomplish. he had a goal and he wanted it done. He had no moral or ethical qualms. He didn't even need to be necessarily POWERFUL in the force, as Yoda even said "Size does not matter," thus it takes no imagination to equate that the limiting factor is one's imagination, determination, and confidence.

One difference though that is inconsistent with Lucas' vision is that of how the force is used. Traditionally Darkside powers are just that, dark side powers. One could not use force lightning in the context of a morally good deed and be considered a Jedi. He said there is no 'grey jedi' or 'raccoon jedi'. There are neutral abilities like push, jump, hold(different from grip, i feel), etc. But then things like what Vader demonstrated, compared to the passiveness of Jedi abilities - I think he said that a Jedi would never think of using it. Personally, i feel it is a stigma. Jedi and Sith are relative terms of sects or groups. Mercenaries are on their own. If one of them were a force user, he would use whatever part of the force suited the situation, separate from his general disposition as an ethical or unethical, moral or immoral man. Lucas might consider such a person as being on the Darkside. Basically, there IS NO FENCE to sit on.

Arch - I'm right there with you. I can do multiple threads, but I would do none of them justice.

Geco - ditto on Fast and Furious. FaF (mine) perhaps had to little freedom in some ways. Total freedom in the realm of the track of the main plot. As long as it didn't disturb the main plot too much, you were able to do exactly what you wanted. And it actually WORKED. The problem, though, was in Archmage leaving when he had a bulk of characters. As i remember it, we each had multiple characters in that one.

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Back to Shari - I haven't read the thread yet. Having said that i know I'm not going to join, just because I want Skysail to keep going unabated. The problem isn't that the thunder of one thread will be stolen over another, it is mental fixation. We're fixed on Skysail and making it succeed. All of us. It won't die until we all get really bored of it. If we keep it interesting, then characters will come and go, but the story could go on for some time. In the case of any other thread being suggested, our attention would be split. As it stands, we think about our characters during the day while we go about other business, at least i do. Not just the character, but other characters, their plots, the main plot, where I want my character to be and, more importantly, how to make the thread interesting and successful to anyone that would stumble across it, not just a player in it. That would be split between two threads, probably in half.

As you can tell, i'm passionate about starwars. As i've gotten older, though, i've seen that even Lucas' vision of it is under par. The original movies are my standard. It was innovative in how it took elements from others stories and myths, brought them into one, into the future, with a mystical presence and power, as you said: bordering fantasy in the future. episodes 1-3 killed that pretty well. They were awful movies. Terrible dialog, more focus on effects than on character aspects (because stories are character driven. with no character there is no movement to a plot), making people insanely powerful yet retardedly ineffective.

The books are not always bad. Timothy Zahn was the best i've read. Kevin J. Anderson screwed it up horribly. i don't even want to read the books he wrote of the Dune universe. I'm comfortable with just Dune. Problem is that they have an inaccurate viewpoint of the force and how it should be handled. They use it as a panacea and also as an 'ultimate villain'. Intelligent villains themselves become ineffective and non-memorable. The only one I remember, and with disdain at how flat the character was, was Kyp Duran. And that only because I always wanted to remember him of how NOT to create or write a character.

i'm not saying that I have a 100% correct view of the force, but I AM saying that Lucas doesn't have a 100% solid grasp himself.


Having said all that - I would encourage you to make a solid direction for the plot (i'm going to read it next, before skysail and probably post here again), and keep it on the backburner for the time that we (hopefully not, just for skysail's sake) start becoming disinterested in the idea.

It's not free form, Geco. We simply have creative freedom. Setting the story 10,000 years before A New Hope (the KotOR games) gives us very little substance to work with, meaning I would have to create every world from scratch, not to mention all the villans and heroes. Setting it a hundred years after Return of th Jedi has the same problem. I have to account for every event that happened in all the canon novels and games, and that is simply far too much information for the players to deal with, including myself. There is a plot. Last time around I ran into some RL issues right when the pace started to pick up, so it seemed like I had no foundation. On the counter-point, it's not so restricting that I can't allow some room for outside influence. That's why I had Yoda ask for suggestions. You had Sephara come up with going to Telos, and I thought that was doable with the plot, so I included it, just as you included Ren's tribe of fire eaters into Skysail. I didn't hand over the reigns to you. I even had the last IC post at that point.

If no one wants to take another thread under, then simply say no. Don't give a load of "I'm not sure." I'm not trying to take over the forums or anything. We've just been focused on Skysail for so long and it seems we just have little sprints of activity followed by a general lack of interest, motivation, creativity, or direction. If it's the Star Wars universe itself that's the problem, then I'll make an original fantasy. Else, just post if you're interested. There's no reason to try an analyze everything. If it works out then we have a richer community. If not, nothing was lost, and we still have Skysail to play with.

Sorry if any of this sounds abrasive, but I just don't see what the big deal is.

It's a good start, that thread you made. The way I see it, you need to write it getting to Telos V (is it populated? can't remember. Or are you on alderaan?) before someone can post or join the group.

I'll tell you what Shari - When i find myself unable to post in Skysail, because nothing else can be written (waiting on IC time to pass, for instance) I'll post in it, provided I CAN post in it, due to the same issue in skysail. We'll see where it goes. It might be just you and I for a while, so don't get disheartened.

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as for activity in skysail, certain people (points to self) are working too much (27 hours in the past 36 were work hours). Additionally, some (points to self again) are waiting for IC time to pass before posting something again that has relative sense to it.

LOL, I'm enjoying all parts of this equally.

Shari, that's cool, I'll trust you if you say you have a master plot in mind then, just from what you had said here, and my memory of the first, it didn't seem that was the case. As to some of your other points:
- I can't see how setting it before or after the movies is really that much more work. I started Skysail with nothing except a few broad brush strokes and colours and said, ok, paint a world. I had 1 city when it started, and now we have 1 very richly detailed continent, another semi-fleshed one, and many more. We could take off at a certain point after the movies and everyone would understand given a few basics. I don't think anyone would care about what the canon was after.
- Tying into above, what I meant by setting it between the movies was more an observation that when you know where the story ends, I think it's less fun. Of course, our story would be different, but in a larger sense you know where you need to end up. It becomes personal preference about how much you like exploring even when you know the end destination.
- It isn't a big deal, but I'm coming from a philosophical view at this point and just having fun discussing, although I won't write an essay like Ren ^_^

Ren, question. So are you saying Lucas kinda did a 180 with how he originally envisioned the force. I look at it and now I think it's just a symptom of our times. 30 years ago this were much more black and white. Stories had good vs evil, it was clear. Now we like grey. We like our heroes to also be villains and vice versa. Thus, the force was changed basically by marketers who send, "This will play better with today's crowd" and thus all force powers became availabe no matter alignment, when it really should be that there are certain abilities you cannot perform as a good or bad jedi. (I refrain from calling them Sith because from what I recall in KotOR the Sith was merely an identity, like a political affiliation, and didn't inherently mean you had force powers or used the dark side).

Our editor asked me this just after I started work: Do you think Star Wars is fantasy or science fiction? Until that point I had always considered Star Wars as sci fi, never had to think about it, and then suddenly I blew my own mind when I realized it was fantasy. Apparently an author is quoted as saying that , "Star Wars was the death of science fiction."

So what does all that babble mean...

Yeah I guess I'm basically with you Shari, join if you want, don't if you don't want to. I'm willing to give it a try and see how it goes. Will have to think of a new character name as I'll start getting confused if I have the same chars in 2 different threads ^_^

I recommend you change it too Geco ;)

and yes, I do beleive that Lucas gave in to his pocketbook.

If you look at starwars games, you'll see that happening.

Dark forces - no powers. Kyle katarn is a mercenary.

dark forces 2: Jedi Knight - you discover that Kyle actually comes from a line of force users and his father had a lightsaber (makes no sense, just a marketing tactic. use a successful title with an established character and make him a jedi. its starwars dammit. be a jedi. Luke is dead as a usable character. He's already a major power jedi, and we've already played to death his rise to power). You can go down one path or another. use only Dark or only Light powers (If you use both, you aren't good at either and you actually can't finish the game, because you're not powerful enough in any abilities. The only game I know of where you almost have to cheat to win on the dark side. You have to use the lightside's invulnerability ultimate technique (only if you use only lightside abilities can you get it, same for the ultimate darkside tech) to win.

Jedi Knight 2 - A little bit more freedom with it. you use a lightsaber, can saber toss, uber jump, use heal and all that with no penalties to your force usage. Obviously, it detracts from your ultimate potency, stretching across multiple force uses, but... yeah. not really much penalty.

KotR - You can be grey, you can be light, you can be dark. You get bonuses and penalties based on how evil or good you are out of the force aspect of it. Your feelings affect your force use. You can still learn light or dark at your whim. I basically get the heal technique and go darkside cause it's more fun than always using your lightsaber. Lightning and drain are so much better.

KotR2 - pretty much the same, continuing story.

Unleashed - jedi knights are using force lighting, grip, force drain, and other dark side techniques along with light side. Also your character. Jedi knights are also making force constructs of metal. Basically, they channel the force like electricity or blood through junk pieces and make force golems. Intelligent plants that are force sensitive (implications that the force causes intelligence as a biproduct) are a jedi knight's friend. Can't remember her name, but Shari mentioned her int he first post of her thread i think.

you can see over time, at least in the games, that force becomes more and more a part of it because that's what sells. Focus comes off of characters and more onto what they can do. That being said, i also mentioned it was funner to be dark side. Light side is all defense and passive. That isnt' fun. people want to kill kill kill! so. is everyone on the dark side in this world? My brother, oddly enough, plays light side because it hurts his feelings to indiscriminately kill the fake game people... whatever. maybe i'm just an evil callous bastard... which is very likely. :)

Either way, you can get more goodies as a darkside agent than a lightside one. Even then, you can play how you feel. if you feel grey, then you can use both sides to suit your situations. I did, and never had a problem finishing the game, no matter what it was (except the first jedi game, jedi knight 2 wasn't as hard, but still easier play split like that than one or the other for me). the reason is because the situation is mostly fighting.

in kotr, i hate the answers you give. I wanted as many darkside points as i could get so that i got bonuses to the aiblities i used the most. Unfortunately, i couldn't be nice to people and get the items if i did that. The options change to mean ones and you lose the good ones. I think making people do things by takling instead of oppressing them is funner, but I also want to use the abilities that make me fight better too. That was my only complaint. Lucas keeps the story force theory (good people use light, bad people dark), but not the story force practice.

In any game where I'm free to choose good or evil options, I am always good. I'm not sure why, but like your brother I can't bring myself to separate myself from the game. While it may be fake, I am making these choices, and I like being the hero rather than the villain. Also, I find that going the good path is almost always more difficult, and thus more rewarding. It's also usually an exercise in reaping future rewards rather than caving to the short-term desire. It's usually harder to make money, thus get better eq, the powers are usually less powerful, there's more you have to do - no shortcuts, and it makes for a more challenging game experience.

I'm starting to get annoyed by BioWares game mechanics as well. Some decisions affect your alignment while others don't, it seems so arbitrary. And I got so annoyed in Dragon Age because you'd have conversations and the people you had in the party with you reacted to your decisions, and only the ones in the party. I wanted a certain party for fighting bad guys, and that included an evil person, and she'd always get mad at me for doing good. Maybe it's more realistic that way, but I find it a huge piss off.

Shari - just to let you know, I'm still trying to decide if I'm gonna join the SW thread or not. All I know about the universe is from the movies, and I'm having difficulties to bring out a character at the moment... plus I'm a bit hesitant if I have the time or not... but having said that I'm still interested in joining... heh....
if you'll be content with slow paced posting I might try to come up with a char...

Dragon Age wasn't typical of the BioWare model in that reguard. The sequel will probably be refined a bit, but when it comes to games lie Mass Effect and KotOR, the decisions you make do actually play foreward. They're generally not significant enough to affect the main story, because let's face it, that would result in them having to program everything in triplicate: Good, Evil, and Neutral. The choices do make a huge difference in the way you interact with each character and solve each situation, though. Dragon Age has the smartest squad AI, though. Can't tell you how many times I've found myself fighting battles alone in Mass Effect because the squad tends to just themselves blown away by stronger enemies.

As far as my choice goes, I usually play as both good an evil in seperate games. It gives the game better replayability. I find the hardest way to play, though, is neutral. Dialogue options that would solve problems are locked out, and in a BioWare game, that usually means someone is going to die, and that doesn't exclude your squadmates.

@SoHee - Don't worry about post frequency. Like I said, I expect delays between posts. As for your character, just create one as you would for any fantasy thread, throw in a lightsaber and a bit of Force mojo and you've got a Jedi.

@Ren - At the moment, they're still on Alderaan preparing to leave for Telos IV, which is inhabited. It's a planet that houses a Jedi Academy, among other things, and was one of the planets that did not join the Galactic Empire willingly. In the thread I posted it as Telos V, so i need to go back and change that, but it is the same Telos from KotOR.

...I'll post soon. I promise...lol. ^_-

okie doke shari, I was on the right line of thought then. i thought that's where those female ... enkari? were. That sort of jedi temple in the ice or something like that.

Shari, will need at least until the weekend. I need to re-read the past thread to get my bearings.