I was thinking of running a Star Wars game with a load of young Jedi wandering the galaxy before I got DitV, and upon receiving the game I was struck by what a good match it is... at least, I think so.

Jedi aren't supposted to judge, but they are there to help, and they are supposed to fight dark siders when they show up and generally support the justice that is declared by society. I don't think the mechanics really require that the characters judge, only that they take action and deal with the results. And the escalation mechanic is just the sort of conflict I would want to run - we talk, then we use the force, then we start throwing stuff around, then it's lightning bolts and lightsabers...

But I was wondering what thoughts people who have actually run the game would have on the subject, hence the post.

Clinton's Fourth Axiom of Game Design: Any good game can, with some effort, be used to play Jedi.

Dogs in the Vineyard is a strangely good match for a young Jedi Knights campaign. The focus on guns translates awesomely to lightsabers, and actually provides something no Star Wars game ever has: the ability to describe your different and interesting lightsaber. (In the new movies, the coolest part to me was the purple lightsaber. I don't know why, but custom, cool-looking applications of your supernatural persona rock it.)

The town-building advice is screaming out Star Wars. Shit, it's Yoda's "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to the Dark Side" speech translated into Old West Christian imagery. Building a town (or "colony"): decide what is making people fear. Fear has the repercussion of prejudice. Step 2, find out what's making people angry. Anger has the repercussion of injustice. Step 3, find out what's making people hate. Hate has the percussion of murder. Step 4 - man, it's the flipping Dark Side, complete with dead and gone evil Jedi demon-spirits, because, well, why not?

Damn straight. There was an earlier thread about Wuxia (we'll call it Dragons in the Peach Orchard) where this came up.

There's an inherent morality to Star Wars that isn't present in DitV, and I think you probably have to consider the impact of introducing one to the environment.

- Do Jedi all have their own relationship with the Force, leading them to different - perhaps morally challenging - solutions? (Me, I hope so, but that's not reeeaally how it works in the movies.)

- What happens when a Jedi decides to choke or shoot lightning bolts at someone? I suspect they get an "I'm playing with the Dark Side - 3d4" trait when the fallout hits the fan. Like choked a couple of Gammorean Guards once he started wearing black, for instance.

- Evil is defined in DitV as going against the will of the King. In Star Wars, the Dark Side is defined as actions that lead to suffering. A Dog has no problem causing suffering if it cleanses the town.

I'm sure there's lots more to this and I think that, if you think it out beforehand, it could work really well. Play the game straight once or twice and I think the solutions will come to mind easily.

Whenever someone has talked about alternate settings for DitV, I have quietly posted that it would rock for Jedi.

Thanks for the Yoda quote, I had forgotten that.

I might just have the Dark Side be a regular skill that you can add to like any other... and just raise the fallout dice as soon as the dark side comes out.

Because it seems like the only thing worse than a 2D4 dark side rating, which causes fallout, is a 2D10 darkside rating, which makes you want to use it to solve your problems.

Damn, it is a nice fit, isn't it? Even the Initiation scenes work, maybe as flashbacks to Jedi temple training.

The big difference I can see is that there's really no depth to which a Dog can't go, as long as he's walking with the King of Life. Burn a town to the ground, leaving only orphans? Sure, if there's a good enough reason.

There's no Humanity or Dark Side mechanic to work from, although I agree that Fallout seems the logical place to put it.

If someone would care to write up a list of suggested traits and Fallout for SW, I wouldn't take it amiss. I like the setting, but I don't know it all that well.

I think it could work, and work well, especially if you took a slightly heterodox view of the Jedi. As it stands the issues of morality are all to true, and could lead to a very different feel than Dogs base presents.

However, I don’t think that you have to take Jedi at face value. Despite what the Jedi masters say, Jedi in the movies routinely use their powers in questionable ways. Obi Wan controls minds, chops arms, manipulates fears, and so on. Luke chokes folks, blows up stations containing millions of folks (most of whom are assumed to be evil but any number of whom could have been custodians and prisoners), kills random guards, and so on. And in the prequels they took a cowards way out by making the evil army all droids – but had they been humans do we think that the jedi would have hacked their way through them with any less ferocity? (Given the head chopping off in Episode 2, I’m personally inclined to doubt it.)

So what is it, really, that separates a good jedi from a bad one? I’m going to suggest, for the convenience factor alone, that it is the twin forces of intention and control. A jedi who has the intention of helping others and does so from a position of self control is, essentially, working for the good force. A jedi who has bad intentions and no control of their lusts is working for the dark side. A jedi who does other than that is questionable.

Thus Obi Wan’s arm chopping, Luke’s station blowing up, and all the decapitations in part 2 were all okay – because they were done with the intention of saving lives and done from a position of control. Luke’s attack on the Emperor, while done with good intentions, was done without his control (he was bowing to the Emperor’s request) and thus opened a dark side window. Anakin’s slaughtering of the village that killed his mother was bad, not because he killed a lot of folks, but because he was out of control and murderous when he did it. And of course Vader’s choking of the general in A New Hope was all bad because he did it with evil intentions (fear and power) and, despite his calm façade, did it because he couldn’t control his temper.

Now the good thing for Banthas in the Vineyard about looking at Jedi like this is that there is only one person that can say if a Jedi did something out of control or with wicked intentions – their player. Your jedi could slaughter a whole town and say that it had to be done, and if the player holds that it was done with good intentions and self control, then it’s true.

So the time when players pick up Dark Side fallout is when they chose to, in order to demonstrate that their character did something questionable. The Dark Side thus becomes something that the player, as well as the character, chooses. And when they get those 2d10 in Dark Side, the choice becomes ever the more tempting.

So, dig: escalation goes like this: talking, fighting, the Light Side, Light Sabers, the Dark Side.

That means that, if you've got Dark Side powers, you want to rush to them, escalating all the way to the top, choking people and throwing lightning bolts. You, the player, get to decide what a Light and what's a Dark power, for reasons stated in the last post. Maybe you can even take Dark side powers as negative fallout: you were beaten by a Sith with her mind control powers and now you hate them, so you take "I can use the Dark Side to force others to see what they do not wish to: 1d4". The key here is that you force someone, depriving them of the ability to choose. This isn't the gentle guidance of the weak-minded, this is putting a tablespoon of LSD into their punch.

I think Brand has it right. And the movies even support this view, if you care about such things.

The Jedi code is all about the emotional state of the Jedi. A Jedi is at peace. He does not act out of hatred, anger, fear, or aggression. The code doesn't say "do no harm" or even "be nice." A Jedi can basically do anything as long as they maintain their inner peace. When the inner peace is disturbed, and the Force is flowin', the Dark Side creeps in.

Like Brand said, the players are the ones who decide if the Jedi have inner peace or not. So it maps perfectly to the shifting morality play at the heart of Dogs.

I keep feeling that I'd wnat the town progression to go.

Someone FEARS something, Fear leads to ANGER, Anger leads to HATE and HATE leads to SUFFERING.

quoting yoda of course. I can't quite figure it yet, but if I can use it I will.

best,

Trevis

I've been thinking about this topic muchly too. I know my players would really dig it if we played a few games of Banthas. So, here are some thoughts I've had on the subject.

Escalation
The only change I'd make would be to replace 'Gun Fighting' with 'Blasters or Lightsabers'. So, the levels would be Talking/Physical/Fighting/Blasters or Lightsabers. I'd also have Blasters & Lightsabers both dealing d10 Fallout.

Heirichy of Something-Is-Wrongness
1. Fear
2. Anger
3. Hate
4. Suffering
5. The Dark Side

What's missing here are the 'manifestations' that each level takes on. That is, Pride manifests Injustice, Sin manifests Demonic Attacks, False Doctrine manifests Corrupt Worship, and a False Priesthood manifests Sorcery. So, what would the manifestations of Fear, Anger, Hate, Suffering, and The Dark Side be? Dunno. Still kinda rolling that bit about in my noggin.

Oooh.. in reviewing the whole thread again, I see that Clinton already had some ideas about that.

Clinton wrote: Fear has the repercussion of prejudice. Step 2, find out what's making people angry. Anger has the repercussion of injustice. Step 3, find out what's making people hate. Hate has the percussion of murder. Step 4 - man, it's the flipping Dark Side, complete with dead and gone evil Jedi demon-spirits, because, well, why not?

Technocrat13 wrote: Jedi Powers and Fallout
I see the Jedi's super-powers as parallel to the Rituals of the Dogs. A short list of available Jedi powers should be made, and a corresponding Fallout dice should be attached to it. A few ideas come to mind:
Jedi Mind Trick d4
Crazy Athletic Feats d6
Force Lightning d8

Solamasa wrote: I definitely can see these games taking place mostly on the Outer Rim, where law and justice are in short supply!

This thread is so good it hurts. Ouch!

That is all. :)

Let me take a stab at the "what's wrong with a community" hierarchy for BitV.

1a) Someone in the populace begins to fear.
1b) Fear, unchecked, manifests as prejudice, either by or toward the fearful individual.

2a) Prejudice creates opportunities for anger, either from being the object of prejudice or from the prejudiced having a false sense of entitlement.
2b) Anger manifests as injustice, committed by the angry or in outrage against someone else's display of anger.

3a) Injustice creates opportunitites for hatred, prompted by the unjust acts of others or by one's own unjust acts against others.
3b) Hatred manifests as acts of violence, perpetrated against objects of one's hate, or in retaliation against other violence. At this level, people may be seduced to the dark side by Dark Jedi already in existence.

4a) Violence, of course, leads to suffering.
4b) Suffering creates opportunities for the Dark Side, tempting one either by the power to cause more suffering or power to make the suffering stop. At this level, Dark Jedi may come into being on their own.

5) The dark side then vies for Dark Dominion, which basically means the Dark Jedi are in control of the community.

Dark Jedi may call upon the "how bad things are revealed to be" dice at any time, and get a 4d relationship with the Dark Side for free. Others seduced by the Dark Side must pay for the relationship to the Dark Side normally. Light-side Jedi may also call upon the "how bad" dice - at any time - with consequences that are up to the player. Rember that the easy path is always there.

Keep in mind that the Dark Side doesn't necessarily want many Dark Jedi to exist; it just wants them, and through them, it, to have the power. For example, in the original trilogy, there were only two Dark Jedi in evidence, and they were in charge of the Empire, and that was jake with the Dark Side. Suffering and dying are also secondary; the Dark Side is out for power.

Also, becoming a Dark Jedi is a purely personal act, even if others are seeing to your temptation. Unlike in Dogs, Dark Jedi cults don't exist; the closest anyone comes is a Dark Order, such as the Sith.

Regards,
Charles

Real nice, Charles. Good stuff.

I'm not sure about 1b right now. The prejudice bit... I'm just not sure how one could impliment it. See now, it seems to me that one of the important things about the manifestations (the 'b's) is that they're there for the players to see what's going on. A player can see injustice, violence, the Dark Side (assuming that Jedi can 'sense' such things), and can certainly see Dark Dominion. How would one see prejudice? I'm inclined to believe that there may be a better manifestation for Fear that we haven't hit upon yet.

One more thing:

Charles wrote: Unlike in Dogs, Dark Jedi cults don't exist; the closest anyone comes is a Dark Order, such as the Sith.

Sorry for the time lag. Life happens.

First, I would amend 4b) to mean accepting help from the Dark Side, either through accepting a Dark Jedi's help or through becoming a Dark Jedi oneself. If Dark Jedi are scarce, the same ones can turn up over and over again (could it be ... Darth Siiiidious?). Merely to be seduced by the Dark Side doesn't require acceptance of anything, only Hatred in one's heart. 5) I would amend by saying that, even when a Dark Jedi is in control of a community, that a fresh power grab requires a fresh crisis. A New Hope, for example, tells the story of an Imperial power grab (disbanding the Senate and relying on the Death Star) going sour in a big way.

Now, on to the issues.

Think of prejudice as behavior, not motivation. In fact, you cannot be said to have prejudged anyone until you say or do something. So, prejudice is as evident as anything else someone might do or say. Words and deeds may in fact be hidden, but they are nonetheless there for player characters to discover.

As for motivations for prejudice, what can make someone jump the gun in judging someone else faster than being afraid?

My comment on (the lack of) Dark Jedi cults is not from extensive book reading, but from interpretation of the movies, though I haven't heard or read anything about such cults. I may have sounded more certain than I was. In any case, the idea that a Dark Jedi is not empowered by a cult seems like a good creative constraint to me, and fits the way Jedi actually fall, as cinematically portrayed. Luke Skywalker's temptation had nothing whatsoever to do with being empowered by a cult, or even receiving the Dark Side's favor for spreading a heresy. It was intensely personal, starting with that tree on Dagobah.

As for the scarcity of Dark Jedi, they don't have to be scarce. They can be abundant, scarce, whatever the Dark Side needs. Even if they are scarce, well, the movies only show four of them (Darth Sidious aka Palpatine, Darth Maul, Count Dooku and Darth Vader) and the stories are all about coming to grips with them. Why should BitV be any less exciting? All I say is that the Dark Side is indifferent to whether the Dark Jedi are many or few. It wants to rule, through however many Dark Jedi it takes.

Regards,
Charles