The REAL Clone Wars?

[dph]

Does anyone know where I can find an official RPG or EU history of the Clone Wars- Not The Clone Wars as envisioned by the prequels, but any official canon from books, comics or the D6 RPG before anyone one had any crazy idea about midichlorins, batteldroids or gungans.

Thanks folks.

[CRMcNeill]

My understanding is that Lucas was quite specific that the Clone Wars were off limits to the various authors, artists and designers of the EU, so unless it was something homebrew, there won't be anything official. You can always make up your own...
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Drop Bear]

They where covered in very vague term happening between about 20 & 30 years before "A New Hope", Kenbi, Skywalker and Organa where among the leaders on the Republic side, the Clone Wars weakened the Republic to a point that it was reformed as the Empire some unknown amount of time after they ended.

and that's about it.

[schnarre]

...The Heir to the Empire trilogy talks about that to some extent, especially in lieu of Thrawn's use of clones to fill the ranks of his forces.

...I'm not much of a fan of the prequels either, though combat droids of various make are part of the EU & fairly abundant in WEG material.
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The man who thinks he knows everything is most annoying for those of us that do.

[Bren]

[atgxtg]

Another itle problem is that most of the offical pre-prequel Clone Wars stuff wasn:t written by Lucas. Just look at the novelization of the first Star Wars film.

[vanir]

Going from a long memory here, so bear with me.

The ESB release trading cards had descriptions written on the back containing the earliest Clone Wars reference on the back of Boba Fett's card.
It said that although it was unknown whether he was a Mandalorian, he wore a modified suit of armour that Mandalorian warriors had worn during the Clone War against the Republic some 20-30yrs earlier as someone else mentioned. It basically follows what's already written in here.

The consensus at the time I remember discussing with friends, the Mandalorian wars were effectively a distraction so that Palpatine could wrest control of the Republic. It's not unlike the general background plot of the prequels, just everything about how the rewrite/canon-change was done was infinitely more childish than dystopian and more fairy tale than mythological.

We liked the original plot hooks better, back in the day where they've been abandoned.

We theorised the term Clone War for the final Mandalorian battles was part of what ended the conflict (with a near-human militant empire at the fringes of known space) and possibly what originally produced Darth Vader (this being his regular name like Wedge Antilles, it was not a sith title just some guy's name before he was rewritten as Luke's father, Darth is just a Star Wars human first name like Mike).

I also think this is where Tim Zahn got the idea, he's about my age.

Towards the end of the Mandalorian wars they came up with a new way of fighting the Jedi Knights, front line combat wasn't working out very well for them.
They used technology, instead of trying to kill Jedi Knights they started capturing them, then cloned them, killed the host and sent the insane clone back into the Republic as dark Jedi.
That could be what happened to Darth, Kenobi's squire (nobody would've known about the clones at that time...except maybe Palps). Little did the Mandalorians realise that dark Jedi are no problem for Palpatine, only the Jedi which is exactly what he wanted.
Or it could be that Luke was a clone of Darth, which Obi Wan could not bring himself to infanticide, and Darth was evil all by himself. He might've been the person who started the Mandalorian conflict on Palpatine's behalf.

Margaret Weiss did a really good fan-fic (published as the bloodsword trilogy and dissimmilar enough to avoid copyright issues), where she covered the original betrayal of Obi Wan by Darth at the Alderaan Royal House during the Mandalorian Wars (Clone war).

Anyway the whole purpose of the Mandalorian wars to Palpatine was to thin Jedi numbers and give them an external enemy, in this way the prequels does follow the same strategic plan quite loosely. Most people thought the Clone Wars were won by the Republic but actually they were lost, but not to the Mandalorians, which as it turned out were tools of Palpatine or a perfect coincidence like Versailles for Hitler. The Republic actually lost the Mandalorian wars, but Palpatine rose as the new Emperor of the galaxy in the ashes. Wouldn't be surprised if in this canon Star Destroyers were a Mandalorian class of warship originally.


But look, the fact is we're generally aware Lucas made a conscious decision producing RotJ that the series was to become a childrens tale.
He was all done with the youth market after Star Wars. ESB was a reluctant reprisal. Everything after that was for the 8-12 market, with just enough waving lightsabres to keep their daddies interested but disappointed overall.


The whole thing is exactly like what he did with RotJ. I remember its prerelease title advertised on television under Revenge of the Jedi you know, I remember how it just quietly changed by the release date to Return of the Jedi.
I also remember very clearly GL explaining to a journalist why he made RotJ a soap opera and departed the scifi of earlier star wars. Really it was put exactly like that, everybody was very disappointed with RotJ except fo the Endor fleet battle, on the first weekend ESB was declared the best of the series and it has been ever since.

GL said that he was in two minds about Darth being Luke's father, he said when he wrote it for ESB it was initially intended to be taken either way by the audience: either Darth was really Luke's father and Ben had lied, or Darth was lying and merely trying to confuse Luke. Keep in mind at this stage Darth was just a regular human name, not a title even to GL.

Fandom got lots of things wrong. There is no such thing as a nerf herder. Leia said nerve-hurter, as in Han hurt her feelings. Just meant to sound like space social talk.

Wedge doesn't say lock S-foils in attack position, he says luck-as-falls attack positions, it means tally ho (enemy sighted), just meant to sound like space pilot talk.

Fans attributed the assumptions about these dialogue lines, LF had nothing to do with it but as GL said the whole Star Wars franchise really got away from itself in the hands of the surprisingly massive fanbase. The fans became law, the franchise like a small nation. You don't go against the People in any nation.

George Lucas said he was initially a little disappointed with how simplistically fans seemed to take his writing and then he finally went with it. He said when he wrote in about Darth/Luke in ESB he was in two minds, writing for himself it would be a lie a dark Jedi says during combat to confuse his opponent. This is classical duelling strategy. He also wanted to explore interjecting some soap opera themes, he had done it sparingly in ESB and wasn't sure if fans wanted him to take it further in RotJ or head back to classical mythology and scifi themes.

This was all in some television articles coinciding with RotJ release in Oz, I couldn't see the movie straight away so was glued to its every reference elsewhere.

He says everyone assumed Darth was telling the truth, and he kind of liked the dysfunction of Ben having lied. But he never consciously made this decision until production was actually underway.


Gives an idea how the canon is formed.