Since this blog thing has become the thing the cool kids do I might as well do one for myself.
Rather than posting threads for all these things I can post entries here.
So my first topic of conversation concerns the Force.
In the Legends/EU canon and even in the prequel/original trilogy there was always something of a gulf in what the Force could or could not do. Generally (but not always) games, comics and cartoons would emphasise the power of the Force, as that worked best with that medium. Meanwhile in most cases novels and literary material would play down the powers of the Force.
However, it’s not quite that simple. The choice very often broke down to the individual author’s decisions on the matter.
An example I’ve noted recently, but which strikes a chord, is the comparison of the two novels ‘Revan’ and ‘Fatal Alliance’.
In Revan you have two characters who many (including myself) consider to be some of the worst excesses of Mary Sue-ism. In the games Exile and Revan are in you can literally fight through dozens of enemies without breaking a sweat, and overthrow your enemies including the final bosses with great ease. And yet, in the novel, these two struggle to defeat ordinary trained soldiers…they do it, but not with the snap of their fingers.
Fast forward 300 years to Fatal Alliance where Jedi Padawans and Sith Apprentices perform exceptional feats of combat, movement and control which the Force Masters of the past would envy.
A lot of this comes down to the authors. Sean Williams is a good writer, but he firmly sits in the ‘Powerful’ camp, whilst Drew Karpyshyn sits in the ‘Moderate’ camp. Karpyshyn, a writer of Mass Effect (and KOTOR, but again, genre), clearly has a different idea about how to envisage these things.
The comparison goes beyond this to beyond. The early novels such as the Thrawn trilogy and duology emphasise less powerful abilities in the Jedi, even though Luke is one of the strongest Jedi to ever emerge. Similarly the Original Trilogy also defined a more indirect power for Jedi. We see no ‘powers’ beyond a few in all the movies, many of them quite personal and basic.
Switch to the prequels and their novels and some of the later post-ROTJ stories, and we see a greater emphasis on the role of the Force opposed to other weapons such as the lightsabre.
So how does this apply to SWRP? Well, the dichotomy can be easily seen reading the RPs here. On the one hand we have the video game approach where Force users are insanely powerful sorcerers who can move mountains literally, can do incredible things. On the other we have a lesser group which maintains a lower key usage. However, like a cold war, once one Jedi Master or Sith Lord starts throwing star destroyers and summoning Force storms everyone has to catch up or be left behind.
This leaves non-Force users in an unenviable situation because arguably they simply don’t have the opportunity to win battles against Force users. In this sense at least the Craftshop’s rating of NFUs into trainee-adept-elite made some sense, as the balance is severely skewed, and it seems unlikely that a fully NFU faction could actually last on SWRP.
Is that a problem? Should the general level of Force use simmer down a little, or is it fine as is? As always, there’s no answer to this, and no simple solution. However, it does do well to remind people that even the most powerful Jedi knights and masters were killed by Order 66.
Rather than posting threads for all these things I can post entries here.
So my first topic of conversation concerns the Force.
In the Legends/EU canon and even in the prequel/original trilogy there was always something of a gulf in what the Force could or could not do. Generally (but not always) games, comics and cartoons would emphasise the power of the Force, as that worked best with that medium. Meanwhile in most cases novels and literary material would play down the powers of the Force.
However, it’s not quite that simple. The choice very often broke down to the individual author’s decisions on the matter.
An example I’ve noted recently, but which strikes a chord, is the comparison of the two novels ‘Revan’ and ‘Fatal Alliance’.
In Revan you have two characters who many (including myself) consider to be some of the worst excesses of Mary Sue-ism. In the games Exile and Revan are in you can literally fight through dozens of enemies without breaking a sweat, and overthrow your enemies including the final bosses with great ease. And yet, in the novel, these two struggle to defeat ordinary trained soldiers…they do it, but not with the snap of their fingers.
Fast forward 300 years to Fatal Alliance where Jedi Padawans and Sith Apprentices perform exceptional feats of combat, movement and control which the Force Masters of the past would envy.
A lot of this comes down to the authors. Sean Williams is a good writer, but he firmly sits in the ‘Powerful’ camp, whilst Drew Karpyshyn sits in the ‘Moderate’ camp. Karpyshyn, a writer of Mass Effect (and KOTOR, but again, genre), clearly has a different idea about how to envisage these things.
The comparison goes beyond this to beyond. The early novels such as the Thrawn trilogy and duology emphasise less powerful abilities in the Jedi, even though Luke is one of the strongest Jedi to ever emerge. Similarly the Original Trilogy also defined a more indirect power for Jedi. We see no ‘powers’ beyond a few in all the movies, many of them quite personal and basic.
Switch to the prequels and their novels and some of the later post-ROTJ stories, and we see a greater emphasis on the role of the Force opposed to other weapons such as the lightsabre.
So how does this apply to SWRP? Well, the dichotomy can be easily seen reading the RPs here. On the one hand we have the video game approach where Force users are insanely powerful sorcerers who can move mountains literally, can do incredible things. On the other we have a lesser group which maintains a lower key usage. However, like a cold war, once one Jedi Master or Sith Lord starts throwing star destroyers and summoning Force storms everyone has to catch up or be left behind.
This leaves non-Force users in an unenviable situation because arguably they simply don’t have the opportunity to win battles against Force users. In this sense at least the Craftshop’s rating of NFUs into trainee-adept-elite made some sense, as the balance is severely skewed, and it seems unlikely that a fully NFU faction could actually last on SWRP.
Is that a problem? Should the general level of Force use simmer down a little, or is it fine as is? As always, there’s no answer to this, and no simple solution. However, it does do well to remind people that even the most powerful Jedi knights and masters were killed by Order 66.
