How canon are the RPG stats?

Its a simple question really, How canon are the RPG stats?
I just wonder because I think of the stats are way off the mark,

 

This could get ugly...

 

Lol

 

Which stats? Because it's largely that the stats represent the official versions of those people in the gaming universe.

E_S

 

Stats are game mechanics, thus not canon.

 

It depends. The stats are often the only information we have on vehicles...

E_S

 

The thing which really gets my goat about the stats is that characters get credit for experience but never for natural ability.

 

They're game mechanics, so I take them with a grain of salt, but they are more reliable than say the game mechanics of JA.

 

Here's the breakdown:

The stats THEMSELVES are game mechanics but they represent the truth of the canon. For instance, a "Dark Side Point" is a game mechanic unto itself, but a character with "Dark Side Points" shows us canonically how evil they are comparatively.

The text descriptions of characters and Force powers are all canon; the stats, saving throws, etc. in those descriptions are game mechanics. For instance, the portion where it says "Use of this power for any reason grants the user a Dark Side Point" is a game mechanic, but the fact that any use of the power moves the character down the path of the Dark Side is canonically correct.

 

not a gamer, so feel free to reprimand me for the stupidity of these questions.

do the characters stats differ in each game/era that is represented by the game being played? i.e. will ANH Luke differ substantially from say, NJO Luke?

will the stats of the players be adjusted according to whom else may be included in that era's strongest characters or will NJO Luke be the same if you stuck him in say, ROTS time period or would his stats have to be adjusted?

who is the strongest, stat-wise, jedi/sith character that you've encountered in any of the games?

 

Yes, characters gain "experience" which allows them to advance, so ANH Luke would be pwned hard by NJO Luke (who would pwn just about everyone).

And the RPG itself doesn't make distinctions between eras, it's just a ruleset.

 

thanx. is there a set list of these stats somewhere? i cannot imagine that someone, SOMEWHERE, doesnt have an excel.worksheet done on it. i am just curious.

 

He is right.

 

He's not entirely accurate.

 

However, the INFORMATION in the RPG books are Canon.. and out of universe as well to boot. (IE free of bias and absolutely true, barring G-level Canon)

 

That's not entirely accurate either.

There are some sections of RPGs which are "in-universe" but not terribly much of the Revised WOTC stuff is that way.

 

is there an RPG within the RPG? if so, those RPG's stats and game mechanics would be canon...

i can just see the kids of the YJK sitting around during their off hours on a rainy Yavin day.. let's play some "Dungeons and Dianogas"
and R2 provides all the die rolls.

 

Well, the "official" stats are all really terrible. So I don't consider them canon.

 

I swear that this exists. Or me and my friends came up with the exact same thing during one of the sessions. But yeah...

 

Speaking of in-universe games... When I first heard about there being a card-playing minigame in KotOR, which would have a collectable aspect, I had really hoped for "Magic: Star Wars," with a whole bunch of cool card art. Alas, it was not to be.


Personally, I treat a lot of RPG stat stuff as canon (languages, skills, etc.) but only as a bare minimum. i.e. characters can do whatever their stats say they can do... and more. Though I will admit that sometimes stats are in error.

 

The Stats, in and of themeselves, are NOT canon for one specific reason....

The person who wrote the stats are game designers, not authors or anyone like that. The problem with RPG stats is that they are debatable. Take Yoda, for example, and his ability in Telekinesis.

In order for him to do what he did in the movies he'd have to have a Move Object score of at least....say.... +12 or so. That means that with good die rolls or spending force points he could accomplish the feats in the movies. But is Yoda using his full potential in the movies or is he not challanged to his full potential? That +12 could just as easily be argued to be +16 or +19 because of trying to gauge the upward limit of his ability.

Then you have things like stats being written when all Yoda ever did was walk around. Before Episodes II and III, all of Yoda's stats were geared toward a character that sits in the background, senses things through the force, and doesnt get involved. He didn't have Lightsaber Defense feats, or a decent Battlemind and Enhance Ability skill bonuses (I dont remember his old stats but lets just say for the sake of argument the last statements are true). Then BAM, the new movies come out and we find that Yoda is better than Mace Windu with a saber and his old ROG stats are shot to hell. The new designers come out with new stats to reflect this, so the old ones are revealed to be not canon.

Since the stats will only reflect what a designer THINKS a character is capable of, and the nature of RPG games limits the characters inside its game mechanics where authors and move-makers do no such thing, than we have to assume that RPG stats are not canon but guidlines that we can use when thinking about comparative character abilities if we so choose to do so.

Until George Lucas decides to learn the game mechanics of the system and dictate rules for creating characters from the movies/EU and approves such character write-ups as canon, I dont see how you can consider RPG stats to be so.

 

>>>Before Episodes II and III, all of Yoda's stats were geared toward a character that sits in the background, senses things through the force, and doesnt get involved.<<<

That's pretty much what all the authors and writers thought, too.

 

Yeah,

but that isnt the case.

Personally I think that we should have seen a big, long, Windu-Dooku fight in Episode II and have the Yoda fighting reserved for the last one. Imagine the surprise we'd all have had seeing Yoda flying from senate pod to senate pod, and dueling Palpatine better than Mace. I think they played the Yoda-card too soon.

Plus, I really wanted to see Mace unload on someone other than the choppy/ too-many-close-ups fight he had with Palpatine in Ep3.

 

Yoda's WEG stats are a lot easier to retcon in light of the prequels than d20 - just keep the stratospheric Control, Sense and Alter dice pools and add Enhance Attribute and Lightsaber Combat to his list of powers if they weren't already there. The former gives him the strength and dexterity he lacks when he's not boosting himself with the Force, the latter adds his (stratospheric, I remind you) Sense to his lightsaber skill and Control to its damage.

 

I think I have to weigh in and say that the stats aren't really canon, not in any useful or absolute way. The thing about RPGs based on licensed properties is that you can interpret source material in a lot of different ways--especially if the source material suddenly introduces an interesting and unforeseen new wrinkle (such as the Yoda situation already mentioned... you get the same kind of situation with Palpatine, too).

Trying to stat up characters for the RPG can be a fluid process. I mean, WotC had different stats for Darth Vader (circa ANH) in at least four different books--the original core rulebook, the Rebellion Era sourcebook, the Dark Side Sourcebook, and the Revised core rulebook--and each version of the stats was at least a little different from the others (I seem to recall that the Rebellion Era and Dark Side stats were pretty close, but not identical--though I speak under correction). And of course, after ROTS, Wizards posted Ep. III Anakin/Vader (pre-suit) stats on their website--which were entirely different, again, from any of the above stats.

All these differences reflect not only the evolution of the character in the source material (the ROTS stats, for instance, show Anakin/Vader to be even more of a lightsaber monster than any of the other stats, based on Anakin's dueling abilities as seen in the film) but also evolution of the RPG rules (the later versions of the Vader stats differ from those in the original core book mainly in that they incorporate new character classes, skills, and feats that hadn't been created at the time of the first book's printing).

So it doesn't make much sense trying to use the game stats as some kind of absolute point of canonical reference, at least not from where I'm sitting. At best, you can use them to sort of gauge characters' relative abilities... but to no more definite avail than simply, say, watching the films.