KOTOR Campaign Guide: Some new info

Bits and pieces from John's creative notes:

---

[color=blue][...] A great amount of thought went into how to balance the worlds of Tales of the Jedi, the KOTOR comics, and the two different video games. There was never any kind of a quota; it was something that came about organically as it related to the chapters we were in. For example, no Sith at all had appeared in the KOTOR comics when we were working; so the Sith chapter was going to be more heavily about the other eras. The Mandalorians are hip deep in the comics eras and nearly gone by the video games, so the Mandalorian chapter was going to be more about the different comics incarnations. I rooted for Tales of the Jedi often -- it being the most distant in terms of time of release, I didn't want to overlook anything. There had been a West End guide for the comics already, though, so we probably focused more on the major players from that time.[hr][/blockquote][/color]
My hero. At least you stood tall on behalf the TotJ comics, which could've very easily been marginalized in favor of the KotOR games and comics (not putting down either one, mind you [face_mischief]) due to the greater public familiarity with the games in particular over the older TotJ material. Glad to see the West End sourcebook getting its due, too -- lovelove[b]LOVE[/b] that book.


[blockquote][hr][color=blue]There was a case going in the other direction, too, as one of the late adds to the book was a gazetteer section on Bespin, detailing the fact that it had already been discovered in this era. I saw that part in the final product after I had already sent in the script for [link=http://www.farawaypress.com/comics/swknights/swkotor37.html]KOTOR #37[/link], implying that Bespin had just been discovered by telescope. This time, there was time to make the fix -- and so the planet in #37 is now Bespin-like, but not the same size. Whew![hr][/blockquote][/color]
Yeah, I'd read about this last-second switch somewhere else a couple months back, too -- might've been on the official boards. Anyhow, either way, glad to see this got nipped in the bud.


[blockquote][hr][color=blue]One of the more interesting discussions between the authors was what to call the individual eras. The names for The Restoration and the Dark Wars are both Rodney's, I think.[hr][/blockquote][/color]
Rodney's been a fount of crunchy, continuity-rounding microbits like these for a while, now. This book was chock full of them too, which makes me a happy panda.


[blockquote][hr][color=blue]In a lot of the early sections in the book and in the Jedi section, Sterling and Abel worked out a lot of the Covenant-related material into things that would allow a player to design Covenant characters. It was presumed that Krynda's Covenant might not be the only one, for the purposes of gamers wanting to run their own.[hr][/blockquote][/color]
So...is this little detail something you're planning on incorporating into the KotOR series anytime in the foreseeable future?? [face_thinking]


[blockquote][hr][color=blue]I talked with my old gaming friend Army Major Mike Singleton -- one of the guys who turned up at that Gen Con reunion -- in coming up with some of the ideas for the groundpounders. Unlike the Navy, I wanted the Army to seem much more patchwork and chaotic, highly decentralized. We're thinking Mexican-American War era, here; it's just a whole bunch of militias and other outfits loosely thrown together. (It gives the "Grand Army of the Republic" from the movies more emotional weight, I think.)[hr][/blockquote][/color]
Much of the U.S. Army's military strength during that conflict came from its cavalry units and flying artillery, though the bulk of the Mexican Army was actually in fairly bad shape at the time, too, from what I recall. And the possibility arises that the Army of the North might have made advancing so costly as to preclude anything like the Veracruz campaign. As was traditionally done afterwards, the U.S. would've bought whatever Mexican territory it deemed part of the "Manifest Destiny."

The other fascinat

 

Just a note that everybody on the project was really on the same page in that regard -- we all saw things in every era we wanted to touch on.

Well, as the book came out we still had the main Covenant (and we still kind of do). The thread is out there for gamers, though -- there must have been a lot of disenfranchised characters after #35 on various worlds, which suggests springboards aplenty for campaigns.

 

I don't like being a nitpicker.

I am intrigued... not least because, in my limited mind, there's no way to reconcile the two sources. I'm looking forward to this.

Of course, death matches being outlawed for ten years makes little sense when you consider that Taris was occupied by the Mandalorians. On the flipside, there was never any indication that they were occupied by the Mandalorians until that nugget of information cropped up randomly in... was it the NEC? My mind is a sieve.

I think the closest thing we got was Juhani talking about being rescued by Jedi (on Taris) who were "going off to" fight the Mandalorians - but that didn't imply occupation.

Anyway, yeah, these notes are awesome - really appreciate it, JJM.

 

Obviously the True Sith have secretly occupied Taris for ten years and banned deathmatches.
They also unleashed the True Flu.

Seriously, I wonder if any of this will come up in the Dueling related Kotor arc coming up soon.

Also, great notes, I really appreciate them!

 

The implication from her dialogue in the game was that the Jedi under Revan later "

to fight" the Mandos offworld, but also that the liberation still proceeded during what must have been the Second Battle of Taris, near the end of the war (she mentions being "awed" by Revan's h4r|)c0r3 pVVnage of the Mandos during the Tarisian reconquest).

Though I still don't quite know why the Mandos would've kept death-matches illicit during their occupation. Nor have I -- after all this time -- come up with a reasonable explanation for why the Sith, of all folks, would also continue this policy, since it would've served as a steam-valve for the masses, etc. ...That, and it's rumored that the Sith actually like killing, and junk. Then again, considering how easily it was to lift it for the Starkiller-duel in the game, maybe this ban wasn't as huge a deal as it seems in hindsight. ​

 

We have not seen all of the Mando period, but from what we've seen it certainly looks like there is no legal authority regarding these matters. As for the Sith, we thought the guide entry spoke to why it was illegalized again: to prevent the rise of any legends other than their own taking root on Taris, anyone who might represent the people in any way. (They must have screened Gladiator.)

The dueling arc will indeed address dueling in the time before -- more consonant with the status as of the "ten years" reference. The aim, in all of this, is to make everything simultaneously correct -- or as close as we can get.

 

The lengths you go to to tack together this minor stuff are truly inspiring, John. It's good to see such a consciousness for continuity -- and to see it incorporated in-story so well.