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cheshire
Arbiter-General (Moderator)
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 Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 1:00 am Post subject: |
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| Grimace wrote: | | Everyone has their own opinions. Some like to do whatever George Lucas says, or come up with ways to explain some of the inconsistancies from ol' GL, and that's their choice to do so. |
I'm just repeating, not advocating. 
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Pel
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Joined: 10 May 2006
Posts: 983
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 1:29 am Post subject: |
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| Urban Spaceman wrote: | | My biggest argument for saying that they are not clones is that they have different voices to Jango. Haven't seen the Blu-ray versions, but on DVD, they changed Boba's voice match Jango, but not the Stormtooper voices. |
Egad, don't give Lucas reason to change the movies yet again! 
I never played them as exclusively clones since the GAR troops had a limited lifespan. Granted a few might still be around, but they're rare. Our Stormtroopers always had varying skill levels and lots of backup.
As far as the ever-triumphant hero trope, remember that even the vaunted Heroes of Yavin spent most of the movies running away from the boys in white. The game rules reflect this very eloquently as it doesn't take long for those combined fire bonuses to become lethal.
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mdlake
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Joined: 21 May 2009
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Location: Montclair, NJ
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 8:58 am Post subject: |
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My current campaign concept, which may never actually see the light of day, posits the PCsas stormtroopers returning home after the battle of Endor, so I don't want them to be clones. The campaign also adopts the attrition-and-expansion theory to fill stormtrooper ranks with elite but non-cloned soldiers: the clone banks just can't keep up with demand.
| cheshire wrote: | | [Lucas] says that the Jango clone ranks have been thinned by other cloned people. Less worthy candidates have been given the honor of being cloned for political reasons, and thus those that are cloned stormtroopers aren't as good on the battlefield. |
Typical half-baked rationalization from Lucas. I have a hard time seeing Palpatine compromising his elite personal army to inflate some toady's ego when he doesn't have to. Oh, he might say he's doing it, but so what? They're faceless minions.
"Yeah, yeah, sure. See those hundred masked guys over there? Yeah, those are you. Now get out of my office." |
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Yasriia
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Bren
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Joined: 19 Aug 2010
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Grimace wrote: | | Wow. I must be all alone in my belief that the Stormtroopers were not clones when I watched them when the movies were originally released in theaters. |
Apparently not.
But referring to the Stormtroopers by serial number in A New Hope ("TK-421, why aren't you at your post? TK-421, do you copy?" or THX-1138 in the novelization version) made it seem like we were to infer either that the Empire dehumanizes its elite soldiers (which seems a bit of an odd thing to do for elite troops especially when the officers clearly have names) or that the stormtroopers are not normal humans. |
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Mick A
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Joined: 30 Nov 2011
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Location: Devon UK
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 5:39 pm Post subject: |
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Thats a very good point Bren...
Mick
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Pel
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Joined: 10 May 2006
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Location: Texas
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 8:01 pm Post subject: |
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Now that you mention it, the only other characters with alphanumeric designations instead of names are droids and clones. I think you're on to something, but I still prefer to make them individuals in my own campaign.
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vanir
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Joined: 11 May 2011
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| Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 12:25 am Post subject: |
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Nicely put Grimace.
WEG material states stormtroopers in the rebellion era are recruited from the citizenry of Core Worlds.
This makes sense in the same way as hitlerjügend/Waffen-SS took until about about 43 to start making any real impact as an independent military.
Clone troopers make sense as an immediate force. That was GL's purpose for them. If taken at face value they don't have to be any more than that.
The goals of COMPNOR are to dominate the minds of free citizens, not live in a lonely world of clones and droids.
So it makes sense that after 20yrs of COMPNOR policy among the Core Worlds, using Nazi Germany as a measure, you've at least three generations of loyal, COMPNOR loving Core Worlder recruits, whom make up the vast majority of the Stormtrooper legions.
For example, SAGroup, then CompForce Assault, during basic training those suited for the Stormtrooper legions and are redirect to those training worlds.
There you go, mostly Core Worlders or otherwise strict Imperial worlds. Just the combined populations of those worlds alone would outnumber the Clones hundreds or thousands to one in twenty years. Five major Waffen-SS armoured Corps, really Army strength each, were made from those HJ hitler youth recruitments of the thirties. That's just in a population of 25 million or so. |
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Fallon Kell
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| Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 1:12 am Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Grimace wrote: | | Wow. I must be all alone in my belief that the Stormtroopers were not clones when I watched them when the movies were originally released in theaters. |
Apparently not.
But referring to the Stormtroopers by serial number in A New Hope ("TK-421, why aren't you at your post? TK-421, do you copy?" or THX-1138 in the novelization version) made it seem like we were to infer either that the Empire dehumanizes its elite soldiers (which seems a bit of an odd thing to do for elite troops especially when the officers clearly have names) or that the stormtroopers are not normal humans. |
I can see a reason, though, for referring to armor-enclosed soldiers by serial number. It makes them seem fearsome and mechanical, like platoons of Robocops or terminators... Killing machines.
I would suppose that would be enough of a reason in and of itself for the Empire to dehumanize it's elite troops.
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Grimace
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| Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, the callsigns are simply that...callsigns. You can't say "Hey, Ro Kastar, why aren't you at your post?" They all take those uniforms to be the faceless power of the Empire. Every one looks the same. You create more of a one-is-all sort of mentality by not only taking away individual look, but also taking away individual names.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they're not human. If you want it to mean that, you're free to do so in your game, but it's just as easy to say that it's due to their indoctrination and training. "YOU ARE NO LONGER AN INDIVIDUAL! YOU ARE NOW ONE OF MANY, ONE OF THE EMPEROR'S NAMELESS, FACELESS SHOCK TROOPS. YOU ARE NOW AN IMPERIAL STORMTROOPER!"
"You, you're TK-001." Steps to next one. "You're TK-002!" "YOU WILL REMEMBER THIS CALLSIGN. YOU ARE THIS CALLSIGN! DO YOU GET ME?"
"Sir, yessir!!"
"WHAT'S YOUR NAMES?"
"We are Imperial Stormtroopers, sir!"
"You! What's your name?" Man standing in typical stormtrooper armor snaps to attention. "TK-001, sir!"
You have to have some sort of indoctrination and identity erasure to get guys to do what Stormtroopers do. Imagine being told that you're going to storm a ship, loaded with armed troops that are ready for you. And not only are you going to storm it, but you're going to TAKE it. There is no failure, you will take it. And not only that, but you will do it without question, and nothing anyone can say or do to you will make you change your mind or your allegiance to the Emperor. It's harder to hold things over a person when you don't know their name, you don't know their family, you don't know anything but a callsign which is just letters and numbers.
So it's not out of the realm of possibility, at all, that the TK designation is just a callsign applied to make the stormtroopers more of the nameless, faceless shock troops of the Empire. |
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vanir
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| Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 11:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | "YOU ARE NO LONGER AN INDIVIDUAL! YOU ARE NOW ONE OF MANY, ONE OF THE EMPEROR'S NAMELESS, FACELESS SHOCK TROOPS. YOU ARE NOW AN IMPERIAL STORMTROOPER!"
"You, you're TK-001." Steps to next one. "You're TK-002!" "YOU WILL REMEMBER THIS CALLSIGN. YOU ARE THIS CALLSIGN! DO YOU GET ME?"
"Sir, yessir!!"
"WHAT'S YOUR NAMES?"
"We are Imperial Stormtroopers, sir!" |
I'm starting to get the correlation of Hitler being an NCO now. |
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ZzaphodD
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Joined: 28 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 8:39 am Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | Grimace wrote: | | Wow. I must be all alone in my belief that the Stormtroopers were not clones when I watched them when the movies were originally released in theaters. |
Apparently not.
But referring to the Stormtroopers by serial number in A New Hope ("TK-421, why aren't you at your post? TK-421, do you copy?" or THX-1138 in the novelization version) made it seem like we were to infer either that the Empire dehumanizes its elite soldiers (which seems a bit of an odd thing to do for elite troops especially when the officers clearly have names) or that the stormtroopers are not normal humans. |
I can see a reason, though, for referring to armor-enclosed soldiers by serial number. It makes them seem fearsome and mechanical, like platoons of Robocops or terminators... Killing machines.
I would suppose that would be enough of a reason in and of itself for the Empire to dehumanize it's elite troops. |
Especially if you also consider when the original movies were made...
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Pel
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| Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 10:04 am Post subject: |
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"Stormtroopers shoot straight and don't care about casualties."
- Rebel SpecForce maxim
Takes some pretty heavy lifelong indoctrination to create the Empire's elite shock troops. If I had to guess, these guys are probably modeled on the old Waffen SS from Nazi Germany.
Unthinking? No. Uncaring and unfeeling? Probably. Merciless? Most definitely.
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Henrik.Balslev
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Joined: 22 Apr 2006
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Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 10:18 am Post subject: |
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| Pel wrote: | | Takes some pretty heavy lifelong indoctrination to create the Empire's elite shock troops. |
Which is why the COMPYouth exists - its not unreasonable that the best COMPForce members become Imperial Stormtroopers
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cheshire
Arbiter-General (Moderator)
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| Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 10:49 am Post subject: |
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| Grimace wrote: | | Yeah, the callsigns are simply that...callsigns. You can't say "Hey, Ro Kastar, why aren't you at your post?" They all take those uniforms to be the faceless power of the Empire. Every one looks the same. You create more of a one-is-all sort of mentality by not only taking away individual look, but also taking away individual names. |
Heck, I'm part of an organization that gives us numbers for member identification, and when we meet another member, there's a lot of pride attached to our number. When you find out that you're talking to another National Speleological Society member, you generally say, "Oh really? I'm NSS 45712!" They'll reply with their number. There is a strong sense of communal identity attached with a call sign.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind. |
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