Serious Clone Wars RP

[Ryai]

What if we did star wars? I would like to poll the community regarding its interest in a serious, gritty Star Wars roleplay.

With the Mandalorian out and Rogue One's success so far demonstrating that Star Wars doesn't have to be shit (no thanks to JJ Abrams) I thought there might be some interest in toying with a roleplay set in the immediate post-Emperor era.

For those unfamiliar with Star Wars' old expanded universe, the destruction of the second Death Star did not, of course, lead to the instant capitulation of the Empire. But there was no clear line of succession, so its many Moffs and Admirals quarreled over who got to be the head honcho next - leading to a shattered Empire. Many units surrendered and transferred to the New Republic but many more carried on in Imperial service, swearing fealty to their immediate superiors and so on. This led to many hundreds of minor factions which eventually arranged into thirteen major factions controlled by various warlords, which after several years were more or less united back under one single banner after a campaign by an Imperial admiral.


I would like to explore this time period with an occupation-type roleplay set on one of the thirteen warlords' worlds, in the midst of the Imperial Remnant reunification campaign and the New Republic's efforts to defeat the remaining Imperial forces. There are a lot of pros and cons to look at here.


Pros:

• Serious take on a popular semi-serious roleplay guarantees a steady throughput of random joiners.
• Let's face it, Star Wars is going to be popular.
• The Remnant-era setting lets us play with the grey area between the old lore and the new lore.
• The setting is familiar to players who don't like to read a lot (visually and mechanically similar to the OT) with lots of deeper lore to explore for players who do.
• Star Wars is a wide open setting with a lot of well defined material to work with - like a lot. There's a role for everyone and probably an associated wiki page for anything you could possibly want to do.
• Lots of Star Wars content is already done and ready to go.
• The occupation setting is mechanically similar to HL2RP, giving us the cops and robbers dynamic we like - but it doesn't exclude citizens from the reindeer games. In fact, most characters on this server can be non-affiliated, because there's still plenty for 'citizens' to do.
• Unlimited pool to draw from for events, which can be all-inclusive.
• SCI FI holy fu
• Own space ships.
• imperial army plsplsplsplspsl

Cons:

• It can be difficult to get people to take Star Wars seriously.
• Everyone wants to play a Jedi or a bounty hunter despite the wealth of other options available.
• The breadth of the setting can be daunting - with so many options it can be difficult to come up with a character.
• Visual representation for characters is difficult without PAC
• Fairly reliant on janky scripts for things like vehicles.
• Map choice leaves a lot to be desired, but that can be designed around.
• Available content is wildly inconsistent in terms of quality.
• Does not lend itself well to a random roleplay (would be better as a long term setting).
• The Imperial authority structure is not really that well understood by most people which leads to some goofy shit when it comes to portraying Stormtroopers etc. Might require too much explanation.

Overall I think the best way to do this would be sort of an old-school HL2 server structure: one main, city-based 'hub' server where the day to day operations occur, plus a flexible event server where events, often offworld, can be handled on a task by task basis.


Also: NO JEDI. NO LIGHTSABERS...


I don't want to mess with an Old Republic setting because I think it requires far too much explanation - it's a huge leap from the familiar Star Wars setting (most people with access to computers have seen A New Hope, not nearly as many have played KOTOR and Bastila is dumb and stupid and ugly and is dumb) - and while it's interesting and unique, I think it may be too disconnected from the content we have today to be easy for people to jump into it.

 

[slug]

Been discussed a fair bit already but you basically captured in your cons as to why I haven’t been super enthusiastic about the idea myself. Maps are almost exclusively suited to military roleplay and the few that don’t check that box are so few and far between, and a longform server can’t suffice under those conditions. There simply is not enough variety in maps to fit the narrow criteria for what can pass for the setting.

Because of that, I think the setting would to far better shortform/as an RR if at all, and would consequently allow for some of the more unique/rare characters like force sensitives due to the shorter, self-contained nature of the RR format.

 

[slug]

Also, something I think that might provide a hurdle and not so much an outright con, but this would be (to my knowledge) the first setting where people were all playing characters that weren’t from Earth/life as we know it.

We’ve only dipped our pinky toes into that pool via Vortigaunts and the Covenant in Halo, I wonder how that might affect accessibility in terms of a hypothetical longform SW, or if I’m merely exaggerating the effect that’d have on new player retention. I think there is some amount of weight that gets carried by Half-Life, Terminator, STALKER and zombie roleplay being able to draw characters from the real world at least before the setting’s Thing happens ie. Resonance Cascade/Judgement Day/zombie outbreak etc. Seasoned roleplayers don’t have any issue with this but new players might.

edit: Now that I think about it this would also make us heavily dependent on prop packs. Most all of our settings can be supplemented with HL/CSS content and not need much else aside from a few things here and there. We’d need a lot more than average, I think.

 

[Dancer]

Also, something I think that might provide a hurdle and not so much an outright con, but this would be (to my knowledge) the first setting where people were all playing characters that weren’t from Earth/life as we know it.

We’ve only dipped our pinky toes into that pool via Vortigaunts and the Covenant in Halo, I wonder how that might affect accessibility in terms of a hypothetical longform SW, or if I’m merely exaggerating the effect that’d have on new player retention. I think there is some amount of weight that gets carried by Half-Life, Terminator, STALKER and zombie roleplay being able to draw characters from the real world at least before the setting’s Thing happens ie. Resonance Cascade/Judgement Day/zombie outbreak etc. Seasoned roleplayers don’t have any issue with this but new players might.

I have my own hesitations regarding using Star Wars as a setting for a Gmod setting (much of you which listed in your initial post) but I think Star Wars is more accessible on this front largely because there is information for people to access, and the universe of Star Wars is large enough to handwave most variations.

Vortigaunts are difficult to portray partly because there really isn't much concrete information to go off of. While effective in shrouding them in mystery it leads to a kind of barrier where even writers either deflect or avoid the topic of Vortigaunt background to avoid wider contradictions. This is further important because they are inherently a quasi-hivemind, there's a lot less excuse as to why various Vortigaunts would have vastly different perspectives on a shared history. I don't have enough experience with Halo to speak of the Covenant.

Star Wars is kind of inherently goofy even within its own serious storytelling, and it works best when it's not entirely ignored. Skeleton Crew has an Alien named Tuut Orial that's a reference to (and played by) Alan Reznik's AlanTutorial. Overall I think, even with the limit in options for maps and etc, the biggest risk to a Star Wars project is scope. Star Wars is a big, weird setting, and maybe the limits of assets could even be used to restrict players from going too hog wild and keep things narrow enough that even a new player can easily grasp the moving parts.

Overall I think the best way to do this would be sort of an old-school HL2 server structure: one main, city-based 'hub' server where the day to day operations occur, plus a flexible event server where events, often offworld, can be handled on a task by task basis.

I personally think this would broadly be the best way to approach it.

 

[erkor]

personally im more drawn to post-clone wars roleplay nowadays honestly i feel like at its core The Clone Wars™ tend to encapsulate the frontlines war between the CIS and GAR which results in what amounts to future war terminator roleplay without any scavengers

the true lynchpin that my approval hinges on is whether i can play a glup shitto ass alien/a swanky droid

 

[Slentz]