couldnt you like, design a campaign where at the end the heros and the main villains get seperated from the rest and the others have to deal with lots of waves of stormtroopers or something like that?

Oh, man, the Star Wars RPG…yeah, you could break that pretty easily.  I’ve DMed that setting a couple times, actually, as well as a couple other games based on movies/TV shows, and you’re right, you should NEVER include big characters from that setting…but, you CAN have quite a few in-jokes from other settings, like the time my players, playing a team of Jedi looking for Darth Plagis’s (How do you spell that?) Holocron needed a pilot, because noone had thought to buy it.  So the Jedi Council assigned them the pilot James Tiberius Kirk, who handed them all red Imperial Guard outfits so they could more easily infiltrate the sith base.  Five minutes later, one of my players goes wide-eyed and yanks his disguise off, yelling “Oh, no, I’m not gonna be a red-shirt!”.  I was a tad sad that it took him that long to figure it out, honestly.

I’ve never played, but…

Couldn’t you give the Big Bad Sith Lords like, blaster reflexes or something? Like they auto deflect blaster shots. Then have like the metaphorical king of all Bounty Hunters as the other big bad throughout the campaign, with an impressive entourage of Bounty Hunters. Or some kind of General or bad-ass cyborg villain. And have that be the final battle for the non Jedi. And find a way to separate them with a force field…

I mean, why would you have them face Stormtroopers?

I love the D6 Star Wars, but yeah, there is definitely the worry of being Jedi Heavy and of maxing it out early. When I DM that game, I always find myself continuously scaling up the challenges just to keep it a threat, even when the players were so strong that they could kill Vader blindfolded and with both hands tied behind their backs.  Maxing is really common if your keep using the same characters for long.

I once played a Star Wars RPG, I was a lowly Storm Trooper and I killed Luke Skywalker…

rather easy avoid re: shooting into the Jedi-Sithlord Melee

“the whirling sabres and constantly moving bodies make shooting into the melee too dangerous”  make the fuckers roll to hit wither the jedi or the sith

I’m looking at the character sheets from when I was running my Star Wars RPG campaign, and it appears that the characters weren’t completely invulnerable.  Of course, this could have been because they didn’t know the system and weren’t trying to min-max their characters.  In fact, the Wookie (the one who tried to punch down a durasteel door) came close to dying in the firefight against the smugglers.

I pretty much forced the no Jedi thing by setting the campaign in the Galactic Civil War.  I think it took place about one year after A New Hope ended.  The players were pretty much running a mercenary group.  There was the Rodian scoundrel, the human fringer (jack of all trades,) the Wookie soldier, the Trandoshan noble (Bossk, but less guns and armor,) and the Sullustan scoundrel.  Perhaps if I had done a better job, it could have run a lot longer and had a more satisfying conclusion.  Oh well.

I tried to run a game with the Star Wars Saga edition, you quickly learn you have to make all of your enemies stronger. I find the Storm Troopers suck in that edition and can’t hit shit. All in all thought I enjoy the system and it was a nice change from what we usually played.

Kinda funny since he brings up both West End’s Star Wars and Edan’s Buffy as RPG that have an inherent balance issue as a part of the setting, because I am actually right now playing in the first kinda game and running the other one and there is an issue where the Jedi and the Slayer are more powerful then the rest of the party, yet we have almost never had an issue with this problem and the group has been playing these game for YEARS! I guess its kinda dependent on players and GM, but I still find it kinda odd that EVERY reviewer I have read/heard talk about the games have warned  about this problem, but we never did. Any one else NOT have this problem or are we just the exception that proves the rule? I am curious.

(A bit of a ramble) The best Star Wars RPG is [url="http://www.johnzo.com/jedi-blackbird.pdf"]Jedi Blackbird[/url], which is a hack/expansion for [url="http://www.onesevendesign.com/ladyblackbird/"]Lady Blackbird[/url]. Yes, it is built around one-scenerio but all the pieces are on the web to expand it. So if you want a campaign, think of an idea, build characters, then prep the game to directly involve them. Why are Jedi Blackbird the best? Ot models the hero’s journey, space opera logic of Star Wars versus trying to make Star Wars fit into a traditional combat focused rpg (d6 and d20). Also the reward system is not based off beating challenges but playing to narrative beats (and not purely GM determined rewards), and thus the plot is driven by the character’s action and not a prepped adventure.The reason D6 and d20 require a heavy hand to make feel Star Wars is the rules don’t fit Star Wars. d20 is basically D&D in space, and frankly, the conventions of D&D don’t work too well. Long involved combats, the A-Team mentaility, being soley a team based around killing shit. Not the best fit for Star Wars. The D6 version has some odd rules quirks, and is more like a simple Shadowrun then Star Wars. Seriously, why does Star Wars need grenade scatter diagrams? Also…the GM advice in the D6 revision is terrible. It seriously suggest handing out scripts for your players to read, then shoehorning them into fights. Once again, a combat focused challange based rpg.I do admit, both verisions have really cool bits though, and if you play those games as their version of Star Wars (not anything like the movies). They are pretty damn fun,  just…not Star Warsy (aside from the paint job of course).Star Wars is about heroism, and plays to the conventions of cinema. It is about character conflicts, not about accurately judging how far you can throw shit with your mind. A good Star Wars system, should focus on the character drama not the tactical combat end of things. Character effectiveness should be a measure of how they fit into the story, and also…you won’t be playing a level 1 character, unless you choose to. Even then, you should still have the agency to effect the narrative as much as a Jedi Master can (a farmboy blows up the death star! not some lvl 18 badas fighter pilot). 

Be cool to see Noah video tape his board games some time when he plays with friends.

Wookies were that good at tanking? Doesn’t that explain why it took you over and hour and like 100 broken axes to kill that headless one in the sewers? Its head’s gone and even that didn’t kill it.

Star Wars RPG’s…

Its a familiar conundrum i have faced before, i own all 3 variants of the star wars RPG and have run all 3 of them.

I do agree with the assertion that all jedi or no jedi is the best way to run it though not for the reasons you have stated. Jedi have the inherant problem that they are in essence much more powerful in rules terms than non-Jedi. This is the main problem i found, Saga has this in spades, the balancing factor is as far as i understand it that jedi have 2 trained skills as opposed to other classes 4 or 8 of them, plus less HP. However the issue is that there is a feat that allow jedi to sub use the force for IIRC 4 other skills. (That said, Saga is much much better than d20 revised for this, d20 revised is full of utter pantshittery, that is just A Thing).

WEG’s D6 system is much easier to balance jedi with other party members, i never ran an extended campaign of this, but in the three or so one shots i ran i found that everyone was reasonably effective for most of the time, and it ran a lot smoother than saga in terms of power level within the party, though i sat in with the players for gen and had to say no to a lot of things and houserule it a bit.

The Saga game i ran, it was Old Republic, party was a senatorial guard delegation for a new senator, i adjudicated that to try and balance it out the force sensetive guy couldn’t be a jedi and hence had no saber, as they get an awful lot of very nice tricks with that. The force user was “The protagonist” so to speak, this is because he was by a large degree the most effective person in combat even without a saber, had by far the best social skillset of the party (because of the aforementioned use the force feat), so it naturally started to revolve around him, because whenever social came up he would step forth because he had the best chance of getting them through it, and whenever combat took place he was able to take it and dish it out as well as the primary party striker and tank put together, a well built force user will allways outperform a non force user at most tasks (not all, most).

This of course presents the issue, in an RPG as a GM you have to make every player feel like the protagonist from time to time, otherwise its just a bit rubbish for the player that doesn’t, this is tricky to do and im not convinced i handled it superbly well. I tried to do it by playing the game in a fashion that struck at anyone that is meant to RP by a code (this lead to a variant of “dont tell the paladin”), there was a lot of intrigue going on and a lot of illegality so to speak, and fairly central to the villains plot was a force dampening effect (Hackneyed plot device i know -_-). The problem with this is trying to do it without picking on the guy thats playing a force user, it had to be judiciously applied. I didn’t manage this as well as i could, in the effort to make it more centric about the others i victimised him a little, fortunately he was understanding about this.

This leads me to my point. You cant balance a party which has people that walk in different circles within the universe that they are in. Jedi work in a different way to the ordinary man. They are assigned different missions, and in all the EU material i have read (not a huge quantity), they work either alone or with one other jedi, they are very rarely assigned non-force backup. Its because of the power gap that this happens. This is the reason that mixed parties shouldnt really happen, if they dont work (assumption from the lack of it i have seen) in fictional writing where you have control of all variables, it cannot work when you have control of less.

In the campaign there were a couple of things of note to mention:

I ran the campaign finale as an assault from within of Coruscant, I had split the party by essentially giving them 2 tasks, defence of the planetary shields, and a seperate errand with the jedi council (i forget what). This ended with the shuttlecraft with the force user in crashing into the crossfire of the battlefield, and i like to think i gave everyone a chance to shine in that they got to have some fun with heavy support troops, and trying to get to their buddy before he got overwhelmed. This meant that there were 2 different ways for people to excel, the force user got to stand there, fighting, protecting the NPC that had crashed with him. The others got to be the commanders of the battle, calling in support and controlling the battle, while others fought on the ground among the troops. It was a battle where i tried to account for the fact that each type of PC fights in a different way. A straight up fight across a room wont work in a way that plays to everyone strengths, its just too difficult to balance the factors, to create a cinematic environment you .

The campaign illustrated a seperate point about GM’ing, allways name your villains before the players do, unless you want to end up with one named Darth Purple, and you are just unable to get them to change their mind -_-.

Tl;Dr (given its really fucking long) – Dont mix things that are on very seperate power levels. WEG’s D6 is the most balanced if you keep a hand on character creation, Saga > d20 Revised. Play to characters strengths. Name your Villains. Players will never cooperate.

Lando’s a hero… he blew up the 2nd Death Star.  Give credit where credit is due.

I feel like the problem might also be with the players as well. I mean, yea, if you dangle Darth Vader in front of a player they’ll be tempted to go after him. I feel like it might be easier to have some house rules that help keep everyone in line and in character. Like, fighting Darth Vader and killing him will cause a time paradox and ruin the game. Also, make it so if people aren’t being fair with 1-on-1 battles, just bring down the DM hand and have another enemy NPC come in to distract the people who aren’t being fair.

No one should really give you a hard time about your DMing when you were a kid. Game designing, whether for a board game scenario or a digital game, is something you learn and get better at over time. Kids who make bad game can eventually grow up and learn to make awesome games. It took me highschool and college to learn that and I STILL feel like there’s so much a can learn to make better games. And I’ve been a game tester at the ESRB so I know my shit when it comes to games.

I’ve only played a Star Wars rpg once, and it made me never want to again. More because of a utterly horrible DM than the game itself though. This is probably the only time that I’ve ever been in a situation where the DM and the players play ‘against’ each other, rather than ‘together’. 

I went into the game with cautious optimism (cautious because; “it’s Star Wars…” optimism because; “it’s Star Wars!”). I had before hand decided that I didn’t want to play a human or a jedi. Eventually I rolled up a gungan mechanic.

The idea was that the party was crew of a ship, except one player who owned it, that transported mostly passengers, and a limited amount of cargo. I became the ship mechanic, obviously, and another player played a former battle droid (it had malfunctioned in battle and accidnetally gained a sense of independence).

So we start playing. The DM has an old man book a trip with us and he gets on, as well as some other npcs we obviously do not need to give a shit about. All is well for a while, then the dm has the old man start telling stories. This would be all well and good if it was just a way to give us some needed exposition, but no. The SOLE PURPOSE of this was for the dm to show us, the players, how ‘AWESOME’ this old man is ‘AT EVERYTHING’. I should have noticed the warning light sooner.

Anyway. So eventually it becomes apparent to us that this old cook is “one of those jedis [we've] heard of” because he always had a bag with him and one time a “metallic cylinder shaped object” fell out. Subtle, not so much.

I don’t remember exactly how anymore but eventually my mechanic and the droid decides that this old guy is more trouble than he’s worth (jedi = wanted by the empire = empire blows up ship when they find out) so we start thinking of how to get rid of this guy. We all have weapons of some sort. I had a blaster and the droid… well… “battle droid” remember? So we get the other character, that isn’t the pc who owns the ship, to listen to our logic and she is with us on the idea to off the guy. 

The owner of the ship was out of the question to get along with this, which could have been because of ingame reasons such as “not killing our customers”, but the real reason was that out of game she, the player, was making googly-eyes with the dm.

So we enact our plan and actually manage to overpower the guy. I take the opportunity to blast his brains out, after which the dm promptly tells me my characters knees buckle as he throws up to which I simply answer “Uhm, no. This is pre-meditaded murder!” Completely ignoring rule 0 (this jackass of a dm hadn’t earned the right to rule 0. In any case, HE was telling ME how MY character was feeling (that’s one thing I’ve taken to heart as adm. You do NOT try and decide how a players character acts). Now the warning lights and horns were blasting full force and I knew this guy was a terrible dm.

So after getting rid of the old guy we at some point had to engage the hyperdrive (or whatever the heck it’s called ingame, I don’t care) which worked like this; You had to make a check to see if you hit your mark, and how well. If you crit fail or have a malfunction you roll on a random table to see where the heck you turn up. So we engage the hyperdrive and have a malfunction. We ask openly “who wants to roll the random table?” to which the dm responds “Doesn’t matter, I know where you’ll turn up.” At this point I can see the railroad tracks under our spaceship. Way to kill the suspense and importance of the event. If he’d rolled a die just for show and then told us where we landed, he would have had the control he wantedm without pissing us off (more, that is).

So, where did we end up? Curscant of course! None of us wanted to be there, but there we were. At this point the droid player and I had made up a contingency plan. For obvious reasons the (imperial) droid couldn’t walk around on the planet without being destroyed or reprogrammed, and if either of those happened we were screwed anyway, and we knew that they would search our ship. We were utterly and completely boned. So in light of this, I had my character whip up a device that would overload the ships’ engines, making it explode, and gave that to the droid. “Just in case”. Of course, the owner of the ship knew nothing, though the player did iirc.

So we go and eat waht would be our last meal. Knowing this my character placed everything on the owners tab. As we sit there the ship is searched. Inevitably they find the droid and he activates the device. The ship blows up as we’re eating. Needless to say the owner lost her appetite.

I hightail it. Not much point to that though since I can’t escape at all. Didn’t stop me from trying though. My character eventually died when he fell down from a beam he was using to get across a gap between buildings. Another character was caught and arrested, and shot in the interrogation room. The player was not given any option at all there. I don’t remember what happened to the ships owner, but as with so many other things about this complete wreck of a campaign, I don’t care if I forget about it.

So, that’s my only experience with a Star Wars rpg. I did not get a taste for more.

The part about not having established characters in an established setting is one some people learn the hard way. I sure did. One of the games I used to run was MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing), and I used one of the Ringwraiths to try to scare off the players. They decided to fight it instead. 

One character died, another was poisoned by a Morgul knife, and the last was a rogue who was had a lucky shot managed to kill the frickin’ Ringwraith. So what happens next? The rogue loots the remains of the Ringwraith and, of course, finds a ring. The player knows what the ring is (one of the Rings of Power), he gets excited. Then he almost instantly says that his character puts the ring on. As for the rest, let’s just say that he failed his roll to resist the ring’s evil influence. Yeah, I was a bad GM.

Sorry, but I’m a proud “plug the Sith bastard in the back” club member. And did. 

I played the ONLY non Jedi in the party (new Jedi order again), a Soldier with the Sniper prestige class (from Babylon 5, but it was ruled suitable for the setting) with knowledge of the planet that the Order hired to aid the Counselor and Guardians, and I happily offed the Sith lord. 

The GM was skilled, however, and remedied what you suggested later in the campaign though, when the Jedi did have to deal with several vengeful followers while I got into a rather excellent Metal Gear-esque sniper duel with another powerful NPC happening parallel. Empty? Hell no! It was one of the best battles in any RPG I played. 

Incidently, you’re 100% right about the Buffy RPG. Nicely made game, but you really have to work to overcome the sidekick problem. 

Anyone I know said the Westend Games Star Wars was better then WOTC version.  They’re books looked cooler too.  Iron Liz HATES the new Star Wars game.

I’d take this experience Spoony to just learn next time.  No Jedi’s or all Jedi’s.

Never put well known characters in your RPG. That is a good rule.

In the D20 Wheel of Time game, the adventure book written for the system actually has a scene where the players can happen upon Rand Al Thor unconscious on the side of a battlefield. We had a thief (Wanderer, I think the class is called there) in the group that did a non-lethal coupe de grace and robbed him damn near naked. Stole the Tangrael on him and everything.

To be fair, this guy had never read the books and had no idea who he was looking at – just playing to his character and to him Rand was a schmuck who was stupid enough to fall asleep in a highly visible area. Still, just a minor glimpse into how even an innocent introduction of a big bad (or big good in this case) can have game/canon shattering consequences.

These days Wookies just get massive Strength and Constitution mods at the expense of penalties to just about everything else.

Wow, this was another great story!  And, the funny thing is by todays standards of the Star Wars mythos alot of those promblems could’ve been fixed.  If ya’ll were playing now with the info from the prequals, the Clone Wars cartoon, and the Force Unleashed video games you could’ve just said the 2 Siths blocked the fire attacks with a Force-field!  Hell, you could’ve said Vader just stood there and blocked all thier attacks and wouldn’t let them land.
I still like how you did it back then without any of this newer info!
A naked Wooki!  The only thing I can think of is that episode of ATHF!
“Chewy!? You’ve been naked this whole time!?  Why?”
(Inaudible growl)
“You’re one sick puppy!”

I’ve never played this RPG ould there be crossover style characters like Wooki/Jedi or Fett/Jedi!?
?

I liked Star Wars d6 and really miss my Dark Jedi, who had a single d6 for force choke, aka telekinetic kill as a starting character. It made sense in my head that he’d give up being better in some weaker skill to suck at a really good skill early. He’d call on the power of the Dark Side pretty much every encounter as well.
Hubris was his downfall, however. He didn’t die, but the last session of the game I was able to play in, before the GM moved out of state, he was laid up in a med bay after nearly dying while leading a failed assault on a Republic base. He probably shouldn’t have slaughtered that indig village and pissed off the other Jedi on the team in the process.

I agree with everything ScreamingDoom said.  Spoony, I disagree with everything you said in this video.  I don’t know where to begin.  I guess I will just say that I have played an RPG set in the Star Wars universe involving major characters and storylines and we did screw up the canon storyline of the films and the game, and for that matter, the plot of the film, was all the better for it.  It was fucking awesome.  I totally jacked up the ending of Revenge Of The Sith and gave Anakin Skywalker the oppurtunity to be something other than a complete pussy. 

Spoony as much as I love hearing about how your players ran rough shot over you with squirt guns and how your a horrible person for feeding someone toilet pizza, when’s your next review man?  This is kindof all your doing now.  I normally really like your work but this kindof feels like a cop out.  Your just sitting around reminiscing about dumb gaming sessions you’ve had and you haven’t put out a proper review in about a month.  I’m starting to feel like I am the guy at the counter at the game store that you are boring to death with your tales of sessions gone wrong. 

What about X-2?  What about Ultima?  I’m dying here man!  I’ve got to know how it all ends!  But maybe your not in the mood to do that.  Well fine.  Do another riff of an FMV game.  A movie review.  A game review.  A video where you do nothing but cry while Benzaie provocatively dances for you!  I don’t care!  Anything but this man.  Your better than this man. 

I’m not trying to be rude to you, but I know you can do better than this.  Seriously bro, you are very talented and very funny and you are a nice person.  But this is just being lazy.  Your not giving us your A game right now.  If you wanted to, you could kill me, kill me sir! with laughter and you wouldn’t have to try very hard to do it.  You are capable of so much more than bitching on a couch, Noah.  Please do something different next time.  I’m starting to feel like I’m wasting my time everytime I click on a video.

Again I’m not trying to be dick.  Just let it be known that you have at least 1 fan who will never bullshit you.

And I’m also not saying never do this type of show again.  This was an interesting “experiment” so to speak.  I really liked the Vegan Steve story, but the other ones I can take or leave.  If I can say one thing I liked about this series is that it is fun to reminisce about old table top game sessions and discussing it does get people exited about gaming.  I was probably the most disappointed by of all things the toilet pizza story for simple fact that I was kindof hoping you would talk more about an actually gaming session.  I was hoping you were going to tell us another story about an actual game you played because it does make me want to play again and reminisce about my own past games.  And judging by the decent amount of positive feed back and personal stories from theses videos I think it is safe to say that others feel the same way.

But please next video put out something else, something different.  But if you must do another Counter Monkey immediately after this one, tell me a story about a gaming session.  Play by play.  Paint me a picture.  Again I really liked the Vegan Steve story the best and you are a very good story teller.  Next Counter Monkey you do, take me on a journey. 

I´ve got huge nostalgic feelings for the West End Star Wars, but it is really broken. The Body characteristic is way too powerful, and if you´ve got low body you will never heal. You could litterally die from a papercut where you fail your healingrolls, go unconcious and finally pass away.

I´ve actually choosen to play my campain with many guest stars from the movies. After many adventures I´ve decided to let the actions of the players have actual impact on the plot. Movie villains can die, and the story can go on anyway. However, a character like Darth Vader will never go down from some roleplayers. He´s got such ridiculous attributes with the force, and used right that makes him invincible. Major roles also have lots of force points and dark force points, so if players should get too cocky they´d be wiped out like nothing. But a simple demonstration of the opponents might should scare them off.

A non force user like Bobe Fett is likely to get killed if players gang up on him, so if you wanna let him live he´d better have an escape plan :)

You guys should have a mandelorian class where they are essentually built for fighting foes even as powerful as jedi or sith. With this you could have a super soldier with guns who can turn the tide of a campaign or a war with assassinations, muscle for hire, jedi/sith slaying, ect.

I’ll always be robin, dick and tim are way cooler than Bruce.  Jason and damien, meh, not so much.

The BtVS RPG has two character types, one for Scoobies and one for Slayer-types.  The GM advice section gives multiple group models (single Slayer-type, everybody is a Slayer-type, or everybody is a Scooby).  Scoobies get more action points (or whatever the system calls them) but Slayer-types are better all around.

It’s not a bad system, but it is a bit complicated in places.As for Star Wars, I think your enjoyment of SAGA edition really hinges on what you think of D&D 4e.  

If you ever play a RPG agian film it cause ive personally never played one so i want to see what they look like.

I run an awesome star wars campaign, but the revised edition needs massive amounts of house rules to make work (pulled from Firefly for campain ship stuff, Dresden Files for application of force points (from its Fate Point system, as well as 5-level concurrent leveling ‘Origin’ Classes with abilities pulled from the new, also broken edition based on their character backstory, and a realistic wound table system from another one that allows for loss of limbs and more realistic penelties when taking wound damage).

I also found that everyone wants to be a Jedi, but that the Jedi are basically incapable of accomplishing anything. I’ve run 4 long term campaigns in the system now, and every time its the full on Jedi characters that basically run around sucking while the ‘regular’ characters or multiclassed force adepts are blowing things away. I think it has to do with the disconnect between what people think Jedi ought to be able to do, and what they can do in the game (especially since Force Unleashed came out). 3d4 damage on force strike vs 6 attacks at 3d8 each from the Scoundrel firing two heavy blasters doesn’t really compare.

I ran the same event with two parties actually – 1 with 3 Jedi and a Scoundrel pilot, the other with 5 Force Sensitive normal classed players and one Jedi. Very different. When the Jedi wasn’t able to make it one day and the party had 75 Mandalorian troops rounding up refugees, the ship’s engineer snuck into an empty refugee ship, took out its fuel cell (in my campaign, basically a 40 gallon propane tank), attacked a crude explosive to it and another character used move object to chase the mandalorians around. It was like something out of Benny Hill. In the Jedi campaign, the characters ignited their sabers all cinematic-like and got their fool-heads shot in.

A topic close to my own heart! Saga Edition is (was) freaking amazing. It’s becoming harder to get ahold of now, since it’s out of print and all, but this is THE system to run Star Wars in if you’re looking for a tactical but cinematic experience. (Those less interested in tactics would probably be happier in Savage Worlds or Fate.)
The Jedi wind up pretty well balanced because they’re forced to spend so many character resources to get good at Force use — the same resources they have to spend to get good at lightsaber combat. They can generally be better than anyone else at a particular task, but are narrower than other characters. A Jedi focused on melee tanking (for example) leaves plenty of room for Han Solo to blaze away with his blaster but ALSO be good at flying the Falcon.
One caveat, though, is that Force users WILL be overpowered if the GM fails to enforce dark side points. The threat of falling to the Dark Side is very much a mechanical limiting factor on Jedi characters.

Maybe Wookies are related to those headless guys in Ultima?  :D

Remember the end of Suburban Knights. When Spoony’s group arrives at the end of the series to fight, NC’s group just kinda, what, stands to the side and cheers.  

This reminds me of Highlander where 1v1 fights are mandatory as side character’s guns are useless and the unbreakable rules say that only 1v1 is allowed.

This also reminds me of Halo 3. There is a part where a Brute Chieftan (strongest enemy in the game) shows ups and shakes his fist (challenging you) at you before running away. When you find him again he is crouching in a circle surrounded by cheering Brutes. What you are supposed to do is fight him 1v1 arena style. But what I always did was go invisible and one shot the Brute Chieftan. Or arrive and instantly start shooting the cheering Brutes because that is what I always do. Oops.
 
This is (should be) one of the most cinematic fights in video games. A powerful enemy calling you out and waiting for you to arrive for a big battle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kJLu4VYFSc&feature=player_detailpage#t=95s

Funny this lesson should have also been applied to Star Wars Galaxies the first Star Wars MMO. The exact same problems ended up happening there. Almost everyone wants to be the Jedi. Or if they are not they want to kill them. In player versus player fights when Jedi were somewhat uncommon everyone would quit shooting at whatever it was they were an aim at the Jedi/Sith instead lol. And it wasn’t even a good idea since they had huge chance to deflect blaster shots back then but people shot at them anyway.

Now TOR is coming an taking the opposite approach with everyone is Jedi. It will probably be the other problem with everything being a big confusing Lightsaber moshpit battle like he said.

Love West End Games’ Star Wars D6 RPG!  My favorite RPG of all time.

“Lightsaber syndrome” is a legitimate problem and disconnect that many players have.  The lightsaber is the most awesome weapon ever but players (as opposed to Jedi) have a tendancy to look at their sabers as the solution to just about every problem…because using them is awesome.  The prequel films are to blame for promoting this mentality as well.  Classically, a Jedi considered use of their saber a last resort.  The saber was only drawn if the Jedi was prepared to take a life.  The Jedi were permitted to kill in self-defense, sure, but any taking of life was shameful in the eyes of a Jedi.

I liked Star Wars D6 because developing Force Powers was a long and arduous process and because the Dark Side was serious business.  It did what the Dark Side was supposed to do: tempt you with the promise of power and then wait for you to fall into its clutches.

Simple solution to the stormtrooper problem… when the smugglers miss the sith treat it as if they rolled a one. Call it the strategic penalty for ignoring a bunch of guys in bright white targets shooting at them. Add in the blaster fire of the stormtroopers getting into the Jedi/Sith battle and yeah.

“Jedi are the main characters”

Only if you let them be. That seemed to be the crux of your problem. Perception. The movies and many of the games have them as main characters but seeing them as the main characters and everyone else as sidekicks is a matter of perspective. You are looking at them as the movers and shakers when, really, you could be looking at them as the Bene Gesserit from Dune: powerful and neat, yeah, but that doesn’t mean the story has to be all about them.

Consider running a game where the Force is in the background and the story is something less mystical and more practical – a group of heroes just trying to pay off the morgtage on their space ship, a smuggler group trying to make a run and getting more than they bargained for, a group of people in a grand city planet who always hang at the bar and are all going through their midlife crisis decide to pool their money and go on a wild adventure in a ship they buy ala Wild Hogs, etc. If they fight Sith make, make the Sith bounty hunters or basic mooks – in your eyes let the light sabre be nothing more than a laser sword or an exotic melee weapon.

Also, simply say that a major character, such as Darth Vader, is powerful enough to destroy all of them without much effort. To be honest, if they know much about the series, there is some truth in it; he was the most powerful Jedi and Sith of all time.

Why not degrees of Force sensitivity determined by experience? Like how SWG was before the disastrous patch. And add weapons and tactics that could be used against Force Sensitives. Like cortosis armor and swords, firing tactics that get past a Jedi’s guard, and cortosis-laced fiber-optic cables that could be used to entangle and electrocute Jedi. And special achievements for those being able to defeat Jedi as a non-Jedi.

Just have a Sith who wears blaster-proof armor. Darth Vader has it; and it allowed him to survive a thermal detonator up close. And have Shadowtroopers to distract the other morons with blasters. They can pop in and out to do guerilla tactics to distract the gunners. And if the gunners kill stormtroopers, they can help against the Sith. But if they lose to the Shadowtroopers, the troopers focus on the Jedi, and kill him. If the Sith wins and the troopers are killed, Then they can all have blaster vs lightsaber against one Sith. Or have the Jedi fight off the Shadowtroopers.

I love SW D6 – I’ve house rule’d it considerably, mind, but I do love it, it makes for good bones.

If I were you, I’d have the stormtroopers cut the other guys down :D
Really, though, it’s pretty acceptable if things get set up right.

Funny store: by the letter of the law in saga edition of the star wars RPG, you can depopulate a planet with a tie fighter.

How?

By the rules, every person on something involved in a collision takes the same collision damage a ship does.  This means, when a TIE crashes, it does damage to everyone on the planet.

Enough damage to kill NPC’s.  Literally two x-wings crash into the second death star, emperor dies.

So yeah.

These stories are fun. Keep it up! It would be nice if you talked about your favourite fantasy books at some point. I’m always looking forward to hearing about good novels and writers.

Another great video in this great series!

You know what I’d do if I was a Jedi in a movie?

I’d thrust. I wouldn’t bother swinging, I’d just thrust.

Hell, I wouldn’t bother moving. I’d just use the force to force-thrust-throw my lightsaber straight through my opponent’s chest and auto-win most fights where their fighting choreography are straight up horrid for actual combat.

I’d win every fight easy, quickly and in two seconds flat… But that wouldn’t do much good movie, but it’d be smart.

I had my best rpg experience with the Star Wars saga system during the Legacy era. We had several characters who were Jedi and they had their own stories but the major arcs of the game were large scale battles that were determined by by our actions.

Example: We had a droid who started working towards the freedom of droids, so we helped him found a “Free Droid Alliance” and we had a Jedi who was working toward founding a new Jedi order. So whenever the climax came for each arch we as the players would let the person who started it have their moment in the sun. So that way everyone got their battles but nobody was left out.

I’m watching all of these while working on my Magic decks, I love you Spoons.

Whoops, double post. D:

I actually want to try Starwars RP’s now.

I’d want to play as Robin…

Saga Edition, if you can find a copy of it (they discontinued the line), is an excellent version of the system. They balanced skills and did their best to make sure that the Jedi does not overshadow the other classes. It’s worth trying to find.

hehehe flaming wookie. As they wanted to fire on the sith while he was fighting the jedi could you not say they would hit the jedi too making them think twice. i agree tho having a main character from the films def makes things tricky, i think if the storm troopers we’re involved more maybe putting civilians in dangers or giving some fun reason why they would be better targets it would help.

It’s funny that you mention the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG because I’ve played it before and had a ball with it. The way our DM handled the whole “one Slayer, everyone else is a nobody” issue was to just set the campaign only tangentially related to the series. We were average joes who got drawn into a supernatural conflict (we had to defeat five “champions” or the world would end) by a powerful fey. The setting was Buffy, but the campaign itself had almost nothing to do with Slayers in general.

The system itself is pretty good and the DM was great about letting us develop our characters. He let us suggest supernatural abilities or organizations for our characters to have/be a part of and he’d implement them in-game. My character ended up being able to freeze things with my mind- I dubbed it “cryokinesis”- but it never felt broken or unbalanced. In fact, it started out kinda weak and got stronger as time went on.

Like you said, it really depends on the DM running the game. In my case, we had an awesome DM who was really good at improvising and thinking creatively.

I’m a fan of star wars saga. I have run several successful campaigns with the system and enjoy GMing it. My games aren’t usually Jedi heavy, mostly because I find that without the other classes the jedi end up hitting walls that all the force powers in the world can’t get them around. That’s the good thing about Saga, every character has something they can do. They can take out a Jedi or sith lord just the same as a force user can if they’re put together right, and likewise Jedi in the group can find themselves out classed by big friggin cats.
The only problem I ever had with my game was the same problem that GMs have with any rpg, when you have players who walk into traps, destroy information that would help them on their quests without bothering to read it or manage to confirm critical on the main bad guy, repeatedly. 
Star wars saga has that wonderful variety that can make a character so insanely different from another of the same class, but all in all it’s super fun. Honestly dood, if you’re looking to see what just playing in a saga came is like, we love new players.

Why not just split the party up? They did that in the movies (sort of.) Or have two big bads: the sith lords and a giant city-destroying robot monster weapon. Or if the group gets hung up on shooting at the sith lord, a weapon they have to disarm will destroy a planet, or someone will be killed, or something. The jedi will get their lightsaber duel and the rest of the group will get to save something that they wouldn’t have had they focused instead on the sith. 

I don’t really like the D20 version, although as you mentioned, the West End one certainly has its flaws.

Then again, I tend to  run homebrew systems when I have a chance, so when I had a campaign in mind (no jedi, but I was going to let one person be force sensitive with no training just to see how well he can balance dark/light side without training. I’m not that dickish as a GM, it was his idea. He wanted a challenge.) I was just going to see if I could modify my system to work for it.

After tonight I think I could probably pull it off too. The GM for my usual game tonight was out sick and I managed to whip up a variant of the system to run something in the Stargate universe in less than an hour, and have people build characters in 30 minutes or so.

“All Jedi or No Jedi”? you fool! ONLY a Sith speaks in absolutes! (said the Jedi absolutely…)

And what about good/evil part of StarWars setting? How about evil guys who plots to make good jedai doing bad things to join evil side?
Like there is hostages, that will die, if players don’t help them and go after bad guy. Like players step-by-step doing worst, when they trying make better. And when they realise full picture they see that they are deep in shit.
I think that fits the setting and pretty cinematic.

captain hammer shirt ftw :)

Yes, people love Saga Edition (the weird shaped book). It’s probably the best version of the 4th edition D&D rules out there.

I have always though a group of no Jedi could be really awesome. Accept there is always someone that wants to play a Jedi no matter what so it never happens. Once I was in a SW game with no Jedi accept for one force sensitive. That ended quickly when Vader boarded our ship cause he could feel the force sensitive on board. Now everyone else in the crew were spicers and smugglers so when Vader asks “Where is he?” we all turn in unison and pointed him out. Vader left us in peace(minus the force sensitive) and we went on our merry way. It took the dude playing the Force sensitive a few minuets to realize that we weren’t planing on a rescue mission. So he rolled up a new smuggler character and we had all sorts of fun causing havoc in the universe. Running spice, rigging illegal boxing matches, and tricking Imperial patrols. It was great

A way you might be able to get around the ass hole smuglers taking pot shots at the sith lords lol… sentence i thought id never say…. I might have them travel with an NPC… like an older wiser jedi like Obi Wan, only hes like put down his saber for the younger guys to like take charge because hes old cant move around as well… have him traveling with the “non Jedi” and when they start shooting at the sith have him sort of talk to them and say oh this fight must be fought by just this person or these people and if that dosnt work jedi mind trick em…. not sure if you can do that in the RPG never played it but when I do I’ll be doing that to see if my theory works

tako means octopus in japanese… i think that is the reason behing the name.

I played SWTRPG back in the 90s and there was no Jedi in it. Much better that way. Jedi “powers” seem to have gotten silly the more prevalent they became in the mythology. Without any Jedi it’s more gritty and real…you know, kinda like Star Wars.