Yora
Lieutenant
Posts: 51
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Post by Yora on Jul 7, 2018 5:15:02 GMT -6
When I spotted a new forum being started for Star Wars with a focus on the Expanded Universe material from the 90s, I knew immediately that I wanted in on that.
About a year ago I became consciously aware of how Star Wars now has become a very different beast from the Star Wars that drew me in originally and that still excites me and that all the material I really like after the movies leavesofkaendor.com/2017/09/21/my-star-wars-headcanon/ or simultaneously to the release of the prequel movies. Since then I made the descision to just flat out ignore almost everything that came later. While the catalyst for this was my complete lack of enthusiam for Disney Star Wars, I also decided to ignore all the EU material that bulds on the prequel movies as well. If I go that route, then why not go it all the way?
And as we can see here, I am not the only one with a strong preference for the pre-prequel Expanded Universe. And that this forum opens now does not strike me as pure coincidence. So this makes me curious. Have others come here as well because the recently released material has made them want to go back to the roots? Some? Or maybe most?
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Post by finarvyn on Jul 7, 2018 5:26:49 GMT -6
I became consciously aware of how Star Wars now has become a very different beast from the Star Wars that drew me in originally...
It's amazing how many times this has happened to me. A couple of examples: * The release of ESB really messed with what I thought Star Wars would become. I had this concept based on the original movie and Splinter of the Mind's Eye and Lucas changed things quite a bit from that. * After the Zahn trilogy, there was this glut of novels being written. Somewhere along the line I realized that there were more than I cared to read and that Star Wars lore had totally "gotten away" from me. * A friend of mine has two sons who love Star Wars. I was going to run a WEG Star Wars RPG campaign for them based on what I know, which is the era around movies IV-V-VI. They all wanted to play races from movies I-II-III and I went into a panic when I realized that they knew so much more than I did about that era, and I had zero idea how to create modifiers for those races and the WEG game didn't have any of that info. I'm sure there are more, but for this old guy it seems like I'm constantly having those "well, I guess Star Wars has changed again" moments.  |
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Post by Falconer on Jul 7, 2018 16:11:33 GMT -6
Why 90s Star Wars? And why now? For me the appeal is obvious. I like literature, and I like RPGs, and the 90s were basically the golden age for those for Star Wars—and all based on the OT, not the PT. I had slightly written off Star Wars after the Special Editions and the Prequels and the 3D-CG cartoons and all that stuff (scowling badass Yoda merchandise…). When you think EU you think dead Chewie and weird Yuuzhan Vong and basically nobody living happily ever after. In a way, TFA rekindled in me that sense that the OT could live on, though of course it too has that “dark alternate future” feeling about it. It was right after watching TFA that I started reading the Thrawn trilogy (okay, listening to the audiobook—which, by the way, only came out in unabridged format in this decade). I had read a few pages of Heir to the Empire in a bookshop. James Boney recommended them. Rafael mentioned something about TFA being generally congruous with the Bantam Era of novels. My interest was piqued. I wanted the continuing adventures of Luke Skywalker and the gang from the OT (including obscure favorites like Wedge and Ackbar), and I found it! I joined a general EU group, but it was so militantly anti-Disney and pro-Prequels, neither of which was exactly what I was looking for. So I made this place. Oh, the other thing is that I had been wanting for years to try a Star Wars RPG, but I kept getting too wrapped up in trying to come up with a just-right ruleset, and finally I figured I would just get the official one—the original, lite one with the crapton of module support—and modify the parts I didn’t like and otherwise just go with it. It had, I figured, equipment and spaceships and the Force all figured out, right? Yep! |
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Yora
Lieutenant
Posts: 51
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Post by Yora on Jul 7, 2018 16:28:53 GMT -6
The attribute and skill system of the d6 game is already a very nice approach as my preferences in rules go. But another thing that makes it really appeal to me is that the force powers it covers actually all very much line up with what I consider the Force should be doing. Which in hindsight is based on the things that the force does in the original movies and the early EU of the 90s.  There are such wonderful lines in the classic movies. And then what did we get later? More and more lightsaber combat, flying around, throwing Tie Fighters, and shoting lightning. When the Emperor tortured a defenseless Luke with lightning it was a great evil force. But then it became nothing but a magical machine gun. And at some point, every new introduced Jedi or Sith character was hyped to be the most powerful ever. Every single one of them. And powerful means being more of an awesome death machine. Less is so much more when it comes to mythic forces and I take a Joruuth C'baoth over a Darth Sidious and Kung Fu Yoda every time. |
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Post by Falconer on Jul 7, 2018 16:36:48 GMT -6
Yeah, no-one writes the Force as well as Zahn. Part of it is that he adheres to the WEG rules, so, it seems like it makes sense and he’s not just inventing gonzo superpowers at whim. But also it’s like he remembers the way Old Ben and Yoda are portrayed in SW and ESB. Calm, passive, calling on the Force minimally. Luke in Zahn’s books is basically one of the great fictional characters of all time, to me.
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Yora
Lieutenant
Posts: 51
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Post by Yora on Jul 8, 2018 2:15:54 GMT -6
Oh yeah, and I forgot an important one.
Lightsaber combat should be a means of last resort, and even in Return of the Jedi Luke uses it only when they are about to be thrown into the Sarlac and when a stormtrooper tries to run him over with a speederbike. And when he tries to strike at the Emperor and Vader, but that is explicitly shown as being the path to the Dark Side.
It's hard to reconcile the depiction of the clone wars with that, even if all the enemies happen to conveniently be droids. While one could argue that narratively the Jedi doomed themselves by losing their way, and that later Obi-Wan and Yoda remembered their lesson, the way lightsaber fights are put on the screen it's blatantly meant to be the most awesome thing ever to be cheered at.
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