Spok, WA SWRPG: For those who did not make the meeting

Okay, so here is what we have right now.

We will be meeting each week between Thursday through Saturday at 6pm in the bottom of the Crosby Center at Gonzaga. We will run sessions until about 9pm. You are not required to be there. If you can't make it, let me know as soon as possible, as the number of people absent will effect the game planning.

You will each need to make a character, however, due to lack of a book to pass around, which is being remedied soon, I'll take care of the mechanics. If each of you can please PM me with the following info, I will have characters made for you at the beginning of the next meeting.

Character Info -
Name:
Race: (no gungans. or ewoks.)
Gender: (if applicable)
Skills your character excells at: (these don't have to be specific if you'd like, just a general idea of what you want to do, i.e. a dancing kungfu droid repairman. We already have a pilot for the ship, but no one signed up for a mechanic yet. I'd like to keep it limited to one pilot.)

You will need to print off a character sheet and bring dice (if you have them) and a pencil and paper. Oh, and snacks. We should have about 9 people.

This is what I have for the campaign setting so far:

(this takes place just after Episode IV, and the battle of Yavin)

Due to the loss of the Death Star, several key powers are beginning to emerge, no longer as fearful of the Empire. One such power is a very ambitious Hutt, who has begun to pay handsomely for people volunteering to help him with his political endevours. Your group is one of many that has formed to join the Hutt, seeking wealth and influence. The Hutt has kindly gifted you with a spare ship and will soon be including you in the work load of his growing empire. Your adventure starts here...

Also, here is teh RPG Primer I made for those who haven't played a Tabletop RPG, or who don't know what roleplaying is.

What is a role-playing game?
A role-playing game (RPG; often roleplaying game) is a game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters, which are the central characters of a story, or campaign. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their own ideas of how that character should behave, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, players have the freedom to improvise; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the game.
Most role-playing games are conducted like radio drama: only the spoken component is acted. One player, the game master (GM), creates a setting in which the other players play the role of a single character. The GM describes the game world and its inhabitants; the other players describe the intended actions of their characters, and the GM describes the outcomes. Due to the open complexity of certain rules and environments, it is often common to use miniatures, or scaled down representations of characters and objects.
The most commonly-used term in role-playing games is character; characters can be player characters (PCs) or non-player characters (NPCs). A group of player characters is generally known as a party. A rich vocabulary exists to describe characters and their representations:
? Attributes describe a natural, in-born characteristics shared by all characters, such as physical strength or wisdom
? Skills describe learned capabilities, such as spoken languages, horse riding or computer hacking.
? Feats and Talents describe abilities which make a character special, or allow them to do things that normal people could not, like drawing a gun quickly or seeing well in the dark.
These are often referred to as statistics and are recorded on a character sheet. The process of describing a character in this fashion is called character creation. In some games characters' statistics are assigned randomly, while others use character points to ensure game balance. In addition, many games allow further variation of characters using advantag

 

yeeeaahhh.... The more that gets posted, the less interested I am unfortunately

So, what if we already have developed characters (from other mediums) who work for a Hutt, but already have a ship and a crew? This doesn't seem to fit into the "setting" as it were.

The time frame sounds good, but the setting of being a crew on a ship borrowed from a hutt seems a bit forced... since my character always flies his own ship, with his own crew.

 

You'll probably want to create a new character then.

 

I think my point was that I'm not interested if I can't play the character I want... it would mean nothing for me (I'm a one character kinda guy).

 

Well if you're not interested, we aren't forcing you to join this campaign. I'm not offended by it, just keep an eye out for the campaign you want to join. I know Chris said he'd GM as well, I'm sure he'll keep you in the loop.

 

Y not just make an "alternate reality" character of the one you mentioned? But besides it being his ship, with his own crew...hes one of us

 

There's nothing wrong with having a favorite character, but this campaign is supposed to be a fresh start since we have several newbies. I <3 newbies. I was one. I AM one at a lot of things, so it makes sense to me that we'd all start off on the same page.

And like Sean said, alternative reality ftw. I personally like thinking up new characters for new campaigns. Why not adapt your guy? We can't all be Han Solo all the time. =P

 

Well, he's not an existing character from an RPG, in the PnP sense, just a character I've been developing in my mind and other games for over 5 years now. I could maybe use a younger version of this character, but I'm not sure at all how I could work it into his backstory, and it's kind of a cannon character anyway, I don't think I'd want to sully the strength of the character by having two different continuities for him.

Now, if he was a character that this crew met later on, or someone the Hutt hired to help this crew, or keep an eye on them, I could go for that.

 

Also, this is just part of my personality, I'm a strictly one-character-per-universe kind of guy. When I play MMO's I rarely roll an alt.. I'd just rather spend time making one super awesome, well-developed character than a bunch of lesser characters that I really don't care about.

 

Please dont take this the wrong way

This is by no means an attack

How can a character you have imagined be cannon? isnt that an oxymoron?

You should play...you know you want to...

 

I think there should be a quick clarification here. I'll try to keep it short and to the point.

RPGs don't have to be cannon. The players actions and choices directly effect the outcome of the game, and since this is a fluid storyline, anything can happen. Citing cannon sources in an RPG is helpful at times, hindering at others. The GM determines the characters choices available, and the consequences thereof. If the players feel they should continue on their mission to drop off cargo instead of answering a distress call, then Han and Chewie die a slow, cold death as their life support runs out. At that point, some of what's considered cannon gets tossed out the window. That's just how RPGs work.

This is an excellent time to create a new persona. We will be taking the characters all the way from level 1 to level 20, and possibly beyond, so your character will grow based on the events of the game, and his/her interaction within the universe. I often find that trying to mesh a predesigned persona into an RPG can be extremely frustrating for the player and the group. Your character either is forced to changed along the way, causing your persona to change, or you stick to the persona and stop having fun, or the group stops having fun.

Just my observations and tips from a GM/player to another player.

 

I'll clarify what I mean by "cannon". My character exists in the cannon star wars universe, he doesn't do anything that would alter the SW history, or could be construed as such. I don't create characters or roleplay, to interact with "famous" star wars characters, that's dumb, if I want that I'll watch the movies. IMHO, that has no place in an RPG, and it's just as lame when they do it in SWG or any other SW game. If those interactions are planned, it's probably not worth me being involved, because that would be incredibly immersion breaking. Keep in mind that I'd be spending a lot of gas money each week to do this, so I need incentive.

(I honestly want to learn how to play a PnP RPG, but this doesn't sound like much fun for me yet)

Have fun killing Han and Chewie

 

I dont think Corvalis honestly meant having Famous characters in the game...I could be wrong (Sorry Cor, I dont mean to speak for you)

 

Well, whether he meant it or not, that's just one of my pet-peeves...
I'm probably just way to picky

 

ALERT! WALL OF WORDS! ALERT! ATTENTION SPAN, WILL ROBINSON!

EU Continuity Nitpicker Answer: The Galaxies MMO is in the same box as the Living Force and Dawn Of Defiance campaigns: The PLOT EVENTS created by the cumulative mission outcomes are c-canon, but the (gamer-created) characters who carried them out are not.

Armchair GM Answer: What John's built for Jarus is what I?d call ?r-canon?. RPG-specific canon made by a player that can be move from one game to another. For example, I ran a Trek game in the same ?reality? as two other GMs, each GM establishing their own bits of the post-movie history and which Expanded Universe events and factions did and did not exist. Characters from one got pulled in to others for cameos, the fallout from a mutiny in the first campaign followed two characters who ended up commanding their own teams. ETC.

But if people are expecting me to swoop in three or four months hense and give THE Jarus Sarn another hurrah um... well... The two major ideas I have swimming in my head wouldn?t help. One campaign seed I have would start when Jarus was a teen (pre- Force Unleashed), the other takes place in an Alternate Timeline I?ve worked up.

(Not to mention that I may not be the next GM, there are three hats in the ring so far)

I've run and played in games that were customized to make one specific character 'playable' and it doesnt work well half the time. It railroads the other players into a minefeild of Dont Tread Here Or You'll Screw Up The Other Guy issues. And the player who was accomodated will inevitably find that he/she will have to do something that rubs against his/her already straigned suspension of disbeleif.

"So I want to run a Stargate game, everyone else wants tp play a Stargate game, but you've never seen the show?... Sure, I'll let you use an old idea you've never gotten to play with... OK, play a Predator. What could possibly go wrong?"

And I for one don?t mind the occasional cameo by a Canon character (in my game, Joe ended up embarrassing Anakin in front of a training room full of Padawans in a battle of wits, another character grew up in the same Twi'Lek social clique as Ayla Secura and got to use her as an information source).

But if the campaign is set in in THE Star Wars timeline/galaxy/continuity (which Corvalis said we aren?t), the PCs by default have ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE to screw up the CC?s (Canon Characters?) destinies. Fate will always conspire to keep the party from killing Han and Chewie, wiping R2s memory, or saving Ayla Secura from the Clonetroopers.

 

My comment was just a generalization to point out that RPGs don't have to keep with the storyline that people consider cannon. I do like the storyline to have cameos from some of the cannon characters, that's good added flavor to any campaign, but no, I probably wouldn't kill off Han and Chewie unless I was doing an alternate storyline campaign, which I'm not, because we have newbies.

 

Wow.
I've only known of two other subjects before today that could get John riled up.
I guess it's three, now.

I hope you don't mind, John, but here's my two-cents worth:
I've had a favorite Character that I created in 1985 known commonly as Prowler. (he wasn't particularly sneaky, it was just his name)

He originally existed in Dungeons & Dragons, then Star Frontiers, Cyberpunk, ShadowRun, and in various WhiteWolf games where he existed as both Vampire and Werewolf (separate campaigns, not at the same time)

My point is, in every incarnation, I made him how I wanted him to be. I would usually focus his attributes towards appearance, speed, and agility. Anything left would go towards intelligence and strength, which I considderred to be secondary.

No matter what he was, he always had the same personality and attitude.
And he has died on more than a few occassions. It's always like losing a friend.

Make Jarus Sarn the way you want him to be. His circumstances in this campaign might be less than ideal, but that could actually be a "character building" experience for him.

(sorry about the bad pun)

 

I understand what you're getting at Alfredo, and to a degree, I do that in most games I play. When it boils down to it, (Stan will tell you) all of the characters I create, are essentially me (or who I'd like to be ) in a particular universe... maybe I'm just PMS-ing or something. It's probably all the stress in preparing for RadCon... this will also pass.

 

Yes, well, if you just clean out your mailbox regularly, you won't have to worry about PMs buildup.
Have fun at RadCon. I wish I could go.

 

Point for Alfredo

 

Thanks for keeping the newbies in mind

In all honesty, I like the idea of a GM because it is like a moderator who ensures the game continues on in a fair manner. I've done roleplays via e-mail and while there is a GM of sorts, people still have fairly liberal reign of how they play their characters.
I find the GM concept refreshing, even though it has been around since the dawn of RPGs. This shows how much I know...

 

HEY! for one thing I really resent the NO GUNGANS. I have personally played several in SW RPG and they work out just fine. Just because Jar Jar was an idiot and horrifically clumsy and personally responsible for the rise of the Emperor due to his ratification of the Grand Army doesnt mean the rest of the race should be condemned for it.

 

Personally, I feel that gungans are a disease in the Star Wars Universe. I also feel that if the Empire had targeted Naboo instead of Alderaan for the first test of the Death Star, the Rebels would have surrendered, and many undecided systems would have joined the Empire. First because the majority of the species in the universe would be eternally grateful to be rid of the gungans, and second, because they would see the Empire could use their weapon for good. Just my opinion though.

The reason for no Ewoks and no Gungans is actually for the newbies sake. Those two species have a tendancy of bringing out the mischievious side of players, and I really don't want the newbies exposed to that until they are comfortable with the rules and styles of role-play in the group.

 

Naboo is too remote to make an effective demonstration.

 

Alfredo, promise to behave and maybe Cor will allow you to go on a Ewok hunt

I agree.