1st Ed force rules online somewhere?

[Barrataria]

Based on a discussion of force rules in the "house rules" section, I wanted to look at the 1E force powers and rules... except I don't have the book and haven't been able to locate a decent description/transcription of it online anywhere. Does anyone happen to know of a site with a 1E force rules digest/discussion/transcription?
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[Ankhanu]

Pretty sure the rights are still owned by WEG or individuals associated with... as such, you shouldn't be able to find them floating around without some copyright violation goin on.
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[atgxtg]

In a nutshell the first edition Force rules are basically the same except that:

1) The Lightsaber Combat power does not exist. Instead Jedi attack with Lightsaber skill. and can parry with a lightsaber using their Sense skill, and add thier Control skill to their lightsaber damage. Ths is free and has no MAPs, and takes no time, but the Jedi's attack and defense will be much lower than with Lightsaber Combat, since Sense isn't adding to Lightsaber skill.

2) Characters cannot spend CP to improve die rolls. So it's harder to Jedi to make the difficulty rolls.

3) There was no wild die.

4) Damage is a bit less severe. In 1st Edition the damage increase with each multiple of the soak roll. That is a damage roll of 1xsoak, was Wound, 2xsoak an incapacitate, and 3xsoak a kill. So even though Jedi were rolling a lot of damage dice, kills were harder to come by.
For example, in 2E a 10D attack, has about a 50% chance of killing a Wookiee with a 5D STR. In 1E, you needed about 15D for that.

[Barrataria]

[Barrataria]

[vanir]

I'm stretching a long memory here, but we started playing when 1e was new so pretty sure I shouldn't be misremembering but I don't have a 1e core rulebook anymore and it was so long ago.
Originally there weren't force powers as such, just the skills control/sense/alter and the way a PC used the force was to describe how he was using control, or sense, or alter, or any combination to perform a task. Descriptions of powers were abstracted and not RAW like 2e. There was no distinction between injure/kill and telekinetic kill for example (at least as I remember, either that or very few "powers" were so defined), you were merely using telekinesis to kill and the difficulty is lower if you touch the victim. Generally if you were using the force at range on a person, sense skill is involved, if you're making a physical change to the target alter skill is involved, if you're doing things with your own body, control skill is involved. The player tried to work the three like a puzzle to achieve the desired effect, the GM would rule firstly if his conception of how to use the force will work, then whether the rolls are high enough to be successful. I can't remember if any force powers even had names at that stage or was just "using the force". If anything the only force powers were control, sense and alter.
Some basic guidelines like "using the force with a lightsabre" you simply added sense to lightsabre and control to damage for free. The only stipulation for "using the force in a certain way" was that you had to use the "power" at least once successfully before you could write down that "power" for future reference, but it was all very ad hoc and concentrated on viewing the Force as generic use of the three skills, not like spellcasting powers which require difficulties which imho is what 2e RAW represents, it's more like a D&D spellcasting system and loses some of the magic of SWU.

Later when the Rules Companion was published they bridged the gap to the 2e system of RAW force powers, although player creativity and abstraction was still promoted. Mostly the idea was to introduce new ways of using the control/sense/alter skills and inspiring new player invented powers, by examples such as the Force Defence power that lets you double Control dice when resisting force attacks.

So in theme and the way you GM the force it was very different. There's more immersion in 1e force use among experienced RPG players I think, whereas with 2e onwards it's much easier for RPG first timers to wrap their heads around and everything runs on RAW rather than circumstantial rulings ad hoc. Even learning force powers has a RAW process, where in 1e players could essentially make them up as they went along, so long as they could describe how they are using control/sense/alter to achieve the desired result, and make the GM assigned difficulties.

In any case what coming from 1e gaming through 2e evolution gave our group is a common understanding that RAW is only a loose guideline at best and logical discussion or GM ruling takes precedence, which is valuable to the gaming experience since we don't wind up in the same kind of metagaming arguments we tend to have playing D&D. Essentially if a player can give a plausible explanation beyond the scope or with more immersion than RAW, GM ruling will always be on side, say for example when RAW makes a logical fallacy as it often does in practise. Shooting yourself in the eye with a holdout blaster because you've got a 4D STR and think it might get a laugh for example, there's no RAW for the fact I am, as a GM going to probably triple its damage circumstantially for the way it's being used in the situation, which is pretty funny when you blow your own head off I think.

[Barrataria]

[atgxtg]

Sorry, Vanir's memory is playing mind tricks on him. There were indeed Force Powers in the original rules. They had pretty much the same rules and descriptions that the have now. There weren't that many though, maybe a dozen powers or so total, and Jedi didn't have to learn them like they do now. Instead, if you had the right Force skills, you could attempt any Force Power. But, you didn't really know what you could do. It was noted that there were lost powers out there.

Most of what makes up the 2E Force Powers and the learning powers rules came from the 1E Rules Upgrade.

A more universal type of effect would be nice. Something like make the roll and buy the quality of the effect with the roll. But you would need some sort of scale for the effects.

[vanir]

Yeah I couldn't remember if there were any actual descriptions of specific powers in the 1e core rulebook, it's over 20 years ago, at least until the Rules Companion came out which I know detailed a bunch of force powers (but served as a bridge to 2e and introduced scaling and combined actions and things like that too).

I do remember the net result was that in game, we wound up actually using the Force as PCs by describing what we wanted to do with control, sense and alter specifically to achieve the desired effect. It was all very ad hoc, because so few actual powers were concisely defined. It was a much more creative system for PCs than 2e, which is more by the book but tends to be less adaptive as you stick strictly within descriptions and tend to ignore any abstractly desired use of the Force unless there is a power listed to do it.

So in that sense it is a very different way of using the Force in game, I found. But we tried to translate that creativity and adaptability in using the Force over to 2e in our group, so whoever is GMing lets players be pretty creative with the listed powers to do things that aren't specifically mentioned, if you have a plausible explanation as a PC.

[atgxtg]

In a lot of ways, I find that I prefer 1E. Not in every way, but there are some things that I think 1E did better. It was much looser and easier to run. The Rules Companion, 2E, and 2R&E all made improvments, dfixed bugs, and make the game more structured, but they also made the game more complicated.

It was a lot easier to understand the rules required to play a Jedi in 1E, even if it was harder to do so.

[Jason Scanlon]

Here, in case you still need it:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwAMtaW_M33ZaWVMYWg0c1I0WE0/edit?usp=sharing

Let me know if there's any trouble with the link.
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Gigantic Mirth

[Barrataria]

Wow, thanks for the attention. I eventually found a copy of the old rulebook, but hopefully anyone else coming here looking for 1E force rules will be helped.
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"A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing"- George Lucas

[Jason Scanlon]

Good to hear! I'm damn glad I found mine, but if I run across another, I'll probably snag it for a backup copy. I truly think it's a fine book.

Somebody pointed me at a pdf maker and I got the itch. Now I'm looking at what I might produce.

Sorry I couldn't help sooner.
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Gigantic Mirth