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Roleplaying Game from West End Games |
Column by Reuben Beattie
Playing the Star Wars RPG used to be a lot easier.
Things were a great deal simpler when all the existing Star Wars "canon" could fit on a small shelf above one's bed. When the RPG premiered in the late part of 1987, West End Games was entering what amounted to being virgin territory, since they only had to deal with seven novels outside of the movies (ten, if you count the movie novelizations), and they could start populating the galaxy with their own creations. With a thousand thousand worlds to fill, that left quite a bit of space to roam about in.
Also, with these early games back in the misty beginnings, there wasn't any real worry about keeping continuity in line, as (again) there was so much space to work in. As long as the game characters didn't run into any of the main characters from the movies and do stupid things (like kill them off!), the RPG could believably remain a viable part of the Star Wars legend. It was strikingly similar to Kenner's marketing ploy in 1984, when they started selling toys that had never appeared in the movies. The idea was that such vehicles existed in the galaxy, but they existed just out of range of the camera. So were the initial Star Wars RPG stories. The players' characters operated somewhere just off-camera, with their actions fueling the plot of the movies from a slightly different angle. [Ed. Note: See related Collectibles Column elsewhere in this issue.]
Of late, however, things have become a great deal more complex. With all of the new novels and comics coming out, the galaxy and its history has become more strictly defined. In many ways, this is good; it provides a richer backdrop to run games in. But in other ways, it becomes much harder to keep one's game from stepping on the toes (and stories) of the established authors. When once the characters in the game could have been part of the reconquest of Coruscant, it has now been written that Rogue Squadron did most of that job. What if the characters had wanted to go back and search the depths of Jabba's Palace after the Battle of the Pit of Carkoon? Once, it would have been a great plot hook. Now, it's been pretty well mined. If the players have read the novels that deal with cover these stories, there isn't any surprise to be had in the exploration. Or worse, if the Gamemaster creates something whole-cloth from his imagination, there's a good chance that he'll get a book waved under his nose and be told that he's going against the established grain of the SW universe. And if a group has a Jedi Knight amongst them? It gets even harder...!
In the old games, the Jedi could have hidden out from the Jedi Purges, scrapped with one of the Empire's Jedi Hunters or Inquisitors, and eventually emerged after the Battle of Endor to help reestablish the Order of the Jedi Knights. But with the Jedi Academy that is being built upon with each successive novel, there's little room for the Jedi of the RPG to be a part of the established galaxy, as they might once have been.
TIME FOR POSSIBILITIES
What does this leave?
The quick and easy answer is to say: Well, this is just the game. It doesn't have anything to do with the galaxy as established by Lucas and all of the authors.
But really, this leaves a bit of a harsh tang in the palate, when the characters might once have been hailed by heroes, given medals by Leia, and generally been considered as a real part of the Star Wars galaxy, albeit off-camera. The players could sit back and think to themselves: Well, yeah, that's neat, but they hadn't heard of my character at that point, so...
There's no room for the heroes of a particular game anymore, being that everything has been so heartily established in the time of the Galactic War and the early New Republic. And who really wants to play a game where their characters can never feel as though they are truly measuring up?
There's been a great deal of talk on the Internet lately about staging alternative campaign ideas, likely stemming from the growing canon of books and so on. With so much of the galaxy understood and explored in what used to be the common time setting of the Star Wars galaxy, there's been a great deal of speculation into placing the games in different time periods of the history.
When the Tales of the Jedi comic books by Dark Horse were published, the gaming community started a frenzy of speculation into the dynamics of the era -- particularly into what it would be like to run a game where the Jedi weren't hunted and feared. In the normal RPG, Jedi are very few and far between, which balances the game nicely by only allowing a maximum of one in a particular group. But back 4000 years before the Galactic War, the Jedi Knights were at the peak of their power. And the types of games that could stem from this setting are innumerable. Particularly when one remembers that the galaxy was still in an expansion and exploration phase, still coming to grips with the technology that was so commonplace in the galaxy of the future. And here, since there is nothing to outright contradict it, the player characters could be defining forces in the galaxy once again. The Gamemaster could again create worlds whole-cloth, and the limits of creativity and imagination are the only defined edges to things.
As I'm writing this, I've just been informed that the new Tales of the Jedi Companion Sourcebook by West End has just hit the stores, including chapters on gear, races, templates, and powers -- as well as deeper discussions of the Sith and so on. I have the feeling that a new trend toward retro campaigns will emerge, just from the possibilities herein.
FORWARD THINKING
There is also the other possibility, that I've been mulling over with another Internet friend of mine -- The Future History of Star Wars.
With all the paper that has been devoted to chronicling the events following the Galactic War, there is no shortage of history in the decades right after the Battle of Endor. But what if you went 100 years after the Battle of Yavin? What would things be like then? What would be the conflict at that point...?
There might be a sort of Pax Republica in effect at this point, as the great conflicts between the New Republic and the remnants of the Empire would have finally been put down some decades previous. Perhaps the old Imperials would only have kept up the fight for 20 - 30 years after the Battle of Endor before they either finally were diminish from attrition or just decided to retire and live out their lives in seclusion. Peace would reign, the Republic would continue onwards...
This sets up a very nice future society, a la several of the more upbeat SF genres. Where Star Wars was set in an old society that had survived for time out of mind, this new society would have been only recently established. After all, the Emperor's New Order was merely a slight alteration to where the Old Republic had been sliding for centuries; this brave, new world would have had to have been rebuilt after the destruction of the war. And being an era of peace and understanding, things wouldn't have been tending towards the dingy, crime ridden setting that was established in ANH; especially when one stops to think that two of the largest criminal organizations were destroyed during the time of the Empire (Jabba's syndicate and Black Sun).
Into this sparklingly clean and new society, one has to merely introduce a single threat, and the race is on to preserve what has been fought for so hard. The characters are the heralds of a new era, and the setting has the ability to be both familiar and unknown at the same time. The technology wouldn't be far advanced from what the players are familiar with (just look at how little tech advanced in the 4000 years prior to ANH, for that example), and the events of the movies aren't so far in the past that they aren't relevant.
With both of these settings, the Gamemaster has free reign to create, as he sees fit, the world that the characters venture through. As neither one has had the amount of detailing that the Galactic War has had, there are endless possibilities that can be explored without worrying about stepping into the situations that have been chronicled elsewhere.
So, what does the Star Wars RPG require to keep it in line, especially when it's going this far astray? Well, that would require a rather in-depth discussion of allegories, heroism, philosophy, and other similar topics -- if I was in the mood for a very long article. But generally, it needs the right feel to things.
What the movies were able to put across was that ordinary people were able to make a difference against what was an otherwise unbeatable evil. A farm boy, a smuggler, an alien, a princess, and two droids were able to push back the tyranny of an entire government -- just acting on the basis of their own beliefs. This is what the RPG tries to put across as well; the feeling of heroism and succeeding against impossible odds. But when things have become so well documented, it takes a little more work.
The point of playing the RPG was never to be overshadowed by the characters in the trilogy. It was to create the lives of people that were every bit as great as Han and Luke but were just out of sight of the camera when the film was rolling.
And in these alternate timeline settings, the chance to be a hero returns.
(Reuben Beattie runs many a RPG campaign himself, and might play-act a response at his Email address 103631.1214@compuserve.com)
