Gaming: Savaging Star Wars, Part II - Eras and Basic Philosophies

Before I get into a detailed discussion of eras and philosophies of play, because I do not actually have a target audience for this blog, I am going to discuss calendars in Star Wars.  It is common in the Star Wars fandom to use the Battle of Yavin as a reference point - either BBY, or Before the Battle of Yavin, or ABY, After Battle of Yavin; thus, Revan flourished about 3950 BBY, and the Battle of Hoth was about 3 ABY.  Dates used throughout will be BBY and ABY, even in eras where "the Battle of Yavin" means a completely different event if it is known at all.  I should also point out that none of what follows is particularly revolutionary or exciting, but putting it down on "paper" allows me to codify some of my thoughts for my own reference later.

Star Wars presents a unique problem, at least in my experience, in gaming - there are four to five distinct eras of play, where technology should reasonably be radically different, which are reasonable choices for play.  The eras themselves may overlap some, such as a game that runs, Pendragon-like, from the Republic through the Empire to the New Republic, and in those cases, it's likely that there will be some fine tuning required to reflect things like the evolution of the X-Wing from the Z-95 (tail of the High Republic) to the ARC-170 (Clone Wars) to the T-65 (Rebellion) to its final form, Poe Dameron's T-70 (Resistance).  In this, I include both material now considered Legends and the new sequel-era material; in most cases, material from Legends can be inserted into the sequel era with minimal explanation, and in fact the best of the Disney-era fiction has done exactly this.

The following are, broadly speaking, eras that there's some support for:

1. Dawn of the Jedi (~25000 BBY)

2. Tales of the Jedi/KOTOR/SWTOR (~5000 BBY to ~3500BBY)

3. The High Republic (~1000 BBY to ~50 BBY)

4. The Clone Wars (~50 BBY to ~15 BBY)

5. Rebellion and Empire (~15 BBY to ~5 ABY)

6. The New Republic/Shared (~5 ABY to ~10 ABY)

7. The New Republic/Legends (~10 ABY to ~100 ABY, Legends material only)

8. Legacy/Legends (~100+ ABY, Legends material only)

9. The Resistance (~10 ABY+, sequel trilogy material only)

 So - using the Pendragon analogy from earlier, it is entirely possible that a family legacy will run from about 50 BBY, during the twilight of the Old Republic, through the Clone Wars and the Rebellion, and into the New Republic era, potentially using the same character in exceptional cases.  During that period, we see technology shift rapidly in the movies from the shiny Art Deco world of The Phantom Menace through the lived-in look of A New Hope into the Space Western look of The Mandalorian. During that period, to use a known example, an X-Wing goes from being a "concept car" prototype, through a series of "pre-X" fighters like the Z-95 and the ARC-170, to a production fighter, to the point where New Republic law enforcement is using them.  How do you reflect that in statistics?

The Lucasfilm approach was (and to a great extent is) technological stagnation only modified by the Rule of Cool - otherwise why are there X-Wing equivalents in the Clone Wars, and an X-Wing is still the workhorse of the Resistance a generation after Yavin? This actually fits a setting with 25,000 years of history fairly well, especially given such bizarre facts as lightsabers being powered from a belt battery only 5,000 years ago.  Technological stagnation interspersed with great leaps forward, or great leaps backward, is a viable setting mechanic.

WEG's solution was stat creep.  As new Legends material came out, the new splatbooks would show that by the time of the Jedi Academy Trilogy, the newest production X-Wing, as the most notable vehicle of the setting and a jack-of-all-trades space superiority fighter, was better at every single mission than dedicated specialist craft for those missions that only went into production a year or two prior in-universe.  Barring something like the shift from muzzle to breech-loading rifles, or the implementation of jets, this suffers from realism issues, but it is simple enough to go "A is like a, but plus-up."

WOTC and, to a lesser extent FFG, preferred to go "don't worry about it."  The stat blocks for each era were basically independent, which resulted in things like the ARC-170 being a better beast than its successor, the X-Wing, in every category except requiring a copilot - despite being on the same screen and having the same broad performance as the Y-Wing that the X-Wing was meant to replace.

 FFG had an advantage in this regard in that they focused very tightly on the Rebellion period, so going "don't worry about it" was pretty easy for them.  The other eras didn't matter because they didn't exist.  Unfortunately, I've run games in pretty much every one of those eras listed above, so that hasn't always been an option for me.

My proposed solution to this is twofold.  First, to focus on one era of play for conversion - in this case, the TOTJ/KOTOR/SWTOR era, partly because there's no chance of stat overlap, and partly for reasons I will discuss under philosophies (short version is it lends itself to complex themes).  Second, rather than follow the philosophy of game that I grew up with, where every little thing requires unique stats, to rely on what I think of as "functional" stats - does it do the thing I want it to do, statistically? Because I've been talking about the X-Wing, does it behave like an X-Wing should mechanically, with lasers and torpedoes and the ability to blow up a TIE fighter? At that point, I can adjust based on comparison - a fresh new T-70 is probably going to get a +1 to piloting and gunnery rolls over an old T-65B in the Resistance era, and I can improvise stats for the Z-95 or even the ARC-170 by applying the same incremental bonus or malus.  Because in Savage Worlds a +1 is a noticeable modifier, +2 is a substantial one, and anything further is like a multi-generational gap in capabilities that only the most legendary characters should overcome (say, in the plot of Iron Eagle 3 or the climax of Independence Day), this is a broadly practical solution.

Having discussed all of this, it is time for a complete shift of gears, to discuss the philosophical problems of Star Wars.  In this sense, I do not mean "problems" as in "all of the characters in A New Hope are white people, the one woman doesn't get to do anything, and Chewbacca didn't get a medal."  I mean that Star Wars, as a setting, is not morally subtle.  This is intentional - it's an update of '30s serials of rip-roaring adventure, which were not known for subtlety, depth of plot, or any of those things that make for long-term collaborative storytelling, which is how I view role-playing games.  There are exceptions; Rogue Squadron is notable for its characters being not only grayscale, but relatable, and part of the reason that Thrawn was so well-loved was that while he's unquestionably a villain, he was a villain that the audience respected - like Oliver Cromwell, he was a "brave, bad man."

That black and white moral contrast works very well in the Rebellion era, or even the Resistance era, and the entire reason that Palpatine is a compelling villain is because he's like Shakespeare's Richard III - we all know he is the villain, but... well, I'll let Shakespeare tell:

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,

And descant on mine own deformity:

And therefore,—since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain,

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,

To set my brother Clarence and the king

In deadly hate: the one against the other.

Adjusting the language, those words could be James Luceno's for Palpatine in Plagueis or Tarkin, the books which give us the most of Young Palpatine, and they pretty much sum up how Palpatine becomes Chancellor and then Emperor.

"Another manipulative villain played by a guy named Ian, you say?"

The problem is that black-and-white heroism is great for a one-off adventure, a two-hour movie, or a book, but it is difficult to sustain interest in it long-term.  There is a reason that Luke Skywalker gets derided (unfairly in my opinion) as a boring character - he's just good, and that good can sometimes be pretty damn bland.  One of the few things that the sequel movies did right, in my opinion, was showing what happened when Luke's faith broke.

How, then, do you introduce moral complexity to Star Wars? The best efforts, for my money, have all been by video games, though surprisingly my least-favorite Star Wars author of all time, Kevin J. Anderson, did it quite well in the Tales of the Jedi comics.  If there is one thing that Anderson does well - and I suppose there has to be one - it's temptation and motive decay.  Just as I did with the X-Wing earlier, I'll use Revan as my go-to because Knights of the Old Republic shows this moral complexity in multiple places, with good people, or at least designated heroes, doing bad things for good reasons.  There's an entire NPC arc with Jolee Bindo dedicated to the idea that not everything is as simple as you're told growing up - and a bad Limp Bizkit joke.

For those not familiar, Revan was a promising young Jedi about the same time that Tales wrapped up, and the Mandalorians, who we last saw in Tales, have invaded the Republic once more.  The Republic has been at peace for a generation and the Senate cut military expenditures, so there is no coordinated defense effort.  The Jedi Order has chosen not to intervene because their wisest leaders see no good possible outcome in either direction.  As a young, charismatic Jedi, Revan becomes leader of the Jedi equivalent of the Lafayette Escadrille or the Flying Tigers, operating without the official sanction of the Order but their implicit support.  Over the course of a decade or so of constant warfare, Revan hardens and turns to whatever is needed to defeat the invader and, predictably, winds up gazing into the abyss.  It culminates in him detonating a superweapon, destroying a solar system, and turning evil, as one might expect.  In the Republic, the reaction is stunned disbelief - how could a hero of the Republic come back as a conquering dictator? The result is the so-called Jedi Civil War, at the climax of which, in desperation, the Jedi Order attacks Revan directly, abducts him, and brainwashes him (note - I call Revan "him" because canonically at this point Revan is male, not out of game preference).

Yes, the Jedi Order brainwashes Revan.  The big twist of KOTOR is that you, the player character, are the hero Revan, and the villain Darth Revan.  To reiterate - the designated heroes of the franchise, the Jedi, "guardians of peace and order in the Republic" as Obi-Wan called them, wiped Revan's mind just so they could use him as a guinea pig and figure out whether it was nature or nurture.  No ethics board in existence would condone that experiment.  Nevertheless, as an effort to see why one of their best and brightest went horribly wrong, and as an effort to stop Revan without killing him, it makes a certain moral sense.

So - we have a "hero" who tried to wipe out a culture and destroyed a star system in deep backstory before he turned into the villain, and we have a "good guy" organization resorting to brainwashing and mind wipes.  Subsequent products showed that Revan's behavior was not edgy for the sake of edginess, or consequence-free, and that he was a deeply psychologically damaged individual partly because of his actions, but that he also never quit trying to make good on them, even if his good was itself horribly flawed.

This has already run considerably longer than planned, but it shows that moral complexity can be done in Star Wars.  I think one of the keys to having a level of moral complexity is, for lack of a better description, a Hegelian dialectic.  The reason that moral complexity is possible in Star Wars: The Old Republic (not KOTOR, its spiritual successor) is because the Republic and the Sith Empire are more or less equal in strength, and can therefore be held up as mirrors to each other in ways that the Rebellion and the Empire, or even the Separatists and the Republic, couldn't.  They were too busy going at each other's throats to stop and look at each other long enough to realize some uncomfortable truths, and the existence of uncomfortable truths is a key requirement of moral complexity.

Next up: Species of Star Wars, The Sith Empire, and Khruschev's Secret Speech!