Isn't the Star Wars RPG too morally simplistic?

That doesn't deny utilitarianism, though.

It's 6:30 am, I haven't slept, and I'm wracking my brain for the name of some slob who wrote a piece critiquing utilitarianism because it "can't account for integrity." Bernard Williams, I believe.

Anyway, he's saying that you can't have integrity (which he defines as adhering to life projects, ie, raising a good family) if you're utilitarian, because you'd be forced to drop that if an opportunity for "greater utility" came up (say, you'd have to move immediately to Indonesia to rebuild after the tsunami). What Williams doesn't understand is that integrity maximizes utility! This isn't rule utilitarianism (I think the distinction between act and rule utilitarianism is utterly idiotic).

Anyway, it is clearly a matter of integrity (ESPECIALLY in a Jedi) to maintain good moral character. Killing in anger is submitting to your darker insticts (or the Dark Side), and thus is detrimental to your moral character, and thus ultimately detrimental to the principle of utility, dig?

This is similiar to Kant's argument as to why you shouldn't take puppies and kittens down to your basement and torture them: he had no intrinsic problem with that, as puppies and kittens aren't sentient beings and Kant didn't care about them. However, to do this would be detrimental to your overall moral character.

Do you get what I mean?

 

yeah, I think I get what you mean. The morality is partly utilitaristic, since it's the ends that count, but also a form of "virtue ethics" since the reasons for your actions and your moral character are equally important.

 

IMHO.. as a GM of both d20 and WEG version of star wars.. direct use of the force for attack has always generated a dark side point. However, the gaining of a dark side point does not mean you are neccesarily evil.. it is a spectrum of a chance that a character will turn to evil. The force offers a jedi an entire toolbox of ways to deal with a situation.. those who decide to use it directly for agressive means have made a decision to give into agression. When this happens enough, without a jedi clearing their slate of such violence it will cause them to turn to the darkside.

In rare instances the use of the force in such way is forgiveable. I.e. you save a life by force pushing someone from harms way etc. Basically I think if you would ahve earned a force point for a heroic action a t the same time you would earn a dark side point the two equal one another out.


The lure of the darkside is always present for jedi.. and I think movie jedi have even performed acts that have gotten therm darkside points.


e.g. Luke's force choke= dsp... unless he used affect mind, which i don't think that he did. Remember by the end of RoJ he was on the verge of turning.

e.g. use of the force for offensive purpose even incapacitation means dsp- such as vader buffeting luke in esb

e.g. throwing things with telekinisis = dsp

Force-push on droids apparently does not count... but even that IMO is a cop-out.

I even believe that Yoda's use of force-push in eIII earned him a darkside point. Hey the dark side was "clouding everything"... and Yoda could not win so he just pulled out all the stops.

However, earning one dark side does not a sith lord make. In fact dsp are a lot less risky in the d20 system.. in WEG version one dsp could lead to turning to the darkside.. by random roll.

 

<<yeah, I think I get what you mean. The morality is partly utilitaristic, since it's the ends that count, but also a form of "virtue ethics" since the reasons for your actions and your moral character are equally important.>>

You could look at it that way, but its still wholly utilitarian because having virtues maximizes utility.

<<However, earning one dark side does not a sith lord make. In fact dsp are a lot less risky in the d20 system.. in WEG version one dsp could lead to turning to the darkside.. by random roll.>>

Yeah, I'd think about houseruling down the effect of DSP. Again, I do think it should be more ends-based (using Force Push to knock a Dark Jedi into a wall nonfatally when he's twenty feet away from you and charging a small child, for instance, should NOT garner a DSP).

I don't know if d20 SW DSPs need to be toned down, because I don't play it because it's so terrible that reference to its existenceshould be banned from all human knowledge and thought for all time except for the one day when it is spoken of, when a person reaches the age of 21, in a private ceremony, and then only so that they learn to remember for all their lives: NEVER AGAIN, NEVER AGAIN.

I'm overusing that bit today.

 

Obi-wan said that the Force is in and of every living thing. If that's the case, then using the Force to harm someone is like convincing the Force to hurt itself. That is definitely evil, and deserves a DSP for whatever it is, if it directly harms another living being.

 

I think if you take the "using the force to hurt itself" justification to it's logical conclusion, then all acts of violence are evil, because the force is in all things. So if you take your fist, which is part of the force, and smash it into a theifs face (which is also part of the force) while he tries to get away with an old lady's purse, then you deserve a dark side point for using the force against itself.

I don't agree that the Star Wars universe is morally simplistic. I just think that the Jedi as seen in the prequels have become morally simplistic, and thats why we get the impression that the star wars universe itself is morally simplistic. This was the Jedi's major failure and one of the reasons for their down fall. They had stopped seeking the force for their guidance and instead clung to the Jedi Code. But the code was never meant to give all the answers. It was intentionally ambiguous, demanding that the Jedi look at every moral or ethical situation with a fresh eye and to listen to the Force for their guidance. The order had lost touch with the guiding impulse of the Force, and so they never realized until it was far too late that they were taking order's from the Dark lord of the Sith. I dont think a Star Wars campaign should be run with the dark side point rules given by WotC. I dont think good and evil should be catergorized as 'these force powers vs those force powers'. I think the GM should be active in deciding what behavior constitutes the dark side, and what doesn't.

 

Its not that you use the force to hurt itself (aka punching someone), but that you convince the force to hurt itself. If someone punched you, thats not evil. If someone with complete control over you told you to stab yourself in the chest repeatedly, and you had to do it, that is.

 

What I was trying to say was that if you follow through with Obi-Wan's philosophy, the force is in everything, and guides everything. The force isn't just the energy that a Jedi controls, but it's also the energy that drives all life. So, from a certain point of view, using your physical strength to injure someone (an act you can only perform through the Force, because it is the Force that creates life and gives life it's energy) is, in a philosophical sense, no different form "manipulating the force" to get the same effect. So the way I imagine it, either all violence with or without the manipulation of the Force is necessarily evil, or we're missing something. I think what we're missing is that the only authority in the Star Wars universe that can dictate right or wrong is the Force itself. Therefore, seeking the guidance of the Force is the necessary element for a Jedi to follow the path of the light-side, not blindly following a set of rules. This is just the way I choose to look at it. To me, it flys in the face of logic to say something like force strike on a living being give the character a dark side point, NO MATTER WHAT.

 

1: Lucas isn't using the rule books for the prequels. In point of fact, Lucas has flagrantly ignored the RPG books, as well as the books written for EU in the quest for his "vision".

Using the force to directly harm another being is evil. Force Grip, TK Injure/kill, Force Lightning are all hostile and aggressive abuse of the Force.

Using mind tricks and hypnosis to make people (say... Guards) sleep or not interfere is a more difficult but probablly better way to deal with them.

Luke was racking up DSP in RotJ.
Vader was using the Force to batter and bruise Luke, physically and emotionally in ESB. Those would be DSP as well.

If you don't want to deal with B&W Force, play Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, and other fringe, non force-users. Then you can pretty much do whatever you want.

 

As I understand it, the RPG is supposed to be reflecting the Univere Lucas illustrates in his films, not the other way around.

 

True.
But many, many books were written, with Lucas-approved material and based on Lucas-approved material, and he completely ignored all of those books when he made the prequels.
So, now you have a split in cannon: the pre-Prequel EU, and the Prequels&post-Prequel EU.

So, now what do you do?

 

The EU's sole existence as the official continuity is based on one rule - that if G-level canon contradicts it or if it contradicts G-level, the EU "bends" to fit it. As Sue of LFL once said, doing that is one of their jobs. In the beginning none of the EU was considered canon by LFL. The EU was later made part of canon with this rule. The higher sources overrides the lower source. GL doesn't have to bend for the sake of the EU, it's the other way around, and supposed to be so.