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shootingwomprats
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 Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 9:27 am Post subject: Wraith Squadron Sourcebook |
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Daniel here.
We all know of the Rogue Squadron book that was being developed when WEG folded.
With Aaron Allston's passing recently, I think we should come together and write up a Wraith Squadron sourcebook in his honor. Good idea?
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cheshire
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| Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:20 pm Post subject: |
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I've not read the book. Is it like a special ops/x-wing pilot group?
If so, it sounds like an intriguing idea.
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Ral_Brelt
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| Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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| The Wraiths were a unofficial/official squad of multi talented persons. Each was a fighter pilot of some skill, and had other areas of expertise. These areas were demolition, hacking, impersonation, close quarts combat, sniper. They were self funded as the NR couldn't be associated with their activities for public reasons. They became self funded by piracy of imps and other pirates for a long reach goal, and acted under an assumed pirate name. They still flew wraith missions as well in NR badged fighters (Xs and an A). They often coordinated with ground spec ops teams and ran quite a few solo incursions where they were their own infil and exfil team. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 4:04 pm Post subject: |
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THe big difference between them and most other groups is that the wraiths were Primarily the insurgents, with a secondary focus of space combat, where as most others were fighter pilots first, insurgents second.
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Whill
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| Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 4:02 pm Post subject: |
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Of course Wraith Squadron makes the chronologically subsequent Heir to the Empire seem strange when the now street savvy Wedge Antilles was portrayed as being about clueless when playing the role of decoy backup man to Solo on Mos Eisley. Yet another retcon.
I haven't finished the trilogy but I did read the first Wraith Squadron novel after reading the original X-Wing (Rogue Squadron) tetralogy. I enjoyed those 5 novels, and I think the Wraith Squadron concept is the only military campaign I'd ever be interested in running. It adds a whole other dimension to the standard spec ops campaign because everyone on the team is also a capable starfighter pilot. It probably would require giving all of the starting PCs more skill dice to build adequate characters.
It would be a greater undertaking, but I think Wraith Squadron should be a section in a Rogue Squadron sourcebook. But even a Wraith Squadron sourcebook would be cool. Not to disrespect the memory of Aaron Allston, but as far as I know we still haven't even finished the galaxy guide for Revenge of the Sith (which came out in 2005), so I'm skeptical of any other fan sourcebooks getting completed anytime soon.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 12:59 am Post subject: |
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Actually the wraith squadron novels take place before Heir to the empire. So his 'street smarts' shown in Heir could have been learned during his days in the wraiths.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 2:05 am Post subject: |
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| Ral_Brelt wrote: | | The Wraiths were a unofficial/official squad of multi talented persons. Each was a fighter pilot of some skill, and had other areas of expertise. These areas were demolition, hacking, impersonation, close quarts combat, sniper. They were self funded as the NR couldn't be associated with their activities for public reasons. They became self funded by piracy of imps and other pirates for a long reach goal, and acted under an assumed pirate name. They still flew wraith missions as well in NR badged fighters (Xs and an A). They often coordinated with ground spec ops teams and ran quite a few solo incursions where they were their own infil and exfil team. |
No, the Wraiths were an official squad, drawn from the existing pool of New Republic Starfighter pilots, but recruited from the "screw-ups": pilots who were in danger of washing out of starfighter command for various reasons. The various prospective pilots included a kleptomaniac, an overly stressed Talz freighter jockey, a Quarren with serious racism issues, and so on and so forth. Ultimately, only ten pilots were selected, and they were still a mess of repressed issues and borderline insanity. All ten were selected not just because of their piloting skills, but because each brought some other skill to the table which would allow the Wraiths to act as either a commando unit or an X-Wing squadron as needed. Before their training was even over, they had already developed a reputation for pranks and innovative, unorthodox and highly effective tactics. Their subsequent "self-funded" operations were part of an approved New Republic special operation, in which the Wraiths masqueraded as a pirate group to infiltrate Warlord Zsinj's operations. The self funding was only approved because Wedge Antilles was in command of the unit, as self-funded operations had an unfortunate tendency to go off the reservation and become full-blown criminal enterprises.
They began as a purely X-Wing unit, but combat losses and the slow rate of replacement (combined with the Wraith's natural talent for stealing enemy starships) led to them flying a mixed unit of X-Wings and TIE Interceptors during the Zsinj campaign (the only time they flew with A-Wings was when they trained and fought alongside Polearm Squadron). There was little need for them to coordinate with ground spec ops teams, as they were, themselves, a spec ops team that also flew starfighters.
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Last edited by CRMcNeill on Sun Mar 02, 2014 2:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 2:07 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Actually the wraith squadron novels take place before Heir to the empire. So his 'street smarts' shown in Heir could have been learned during his days in the wraiths. |
He was being sarcastic. In the Thrawn Trilogy, Wedge appears to have forgotten any street smarts and undercover ability he might have picked up during his days with the Wraiths...
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 2:25 am Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | Of course Wraith Squadron makes the chronologically subsequent Heir to the Empire seem strange when the now street savvy Wedge Antilles was portrayed as being about clueless when playing the role of decoy backup man to Solo on Mos Eisley. Yet another retcon. |
Unless...
What if Wedge was being deliberately obvious to attract attention away from the real backup man? Still Streetsmart, just in a different way...
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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
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Whill
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | Of course Wraith Squadron makes the chronologically subsequent Heir to the Empire seem strange when the now street savvy Wedge Antilles was portrayed as being about clueless when playing the role of decoy backup man to Solo on Mos Eisley. Yet another retcon. |
| garhkal wrote: | | Actually the wraith squadron novels take place before Heir to the empire. So his 'street smarts' shown in Heir could have been learned during his days in the wraiths. |
| crmcneill wrote: | | He was being sarcastic. In the Thrawn Trilogy, Wedge appears to have forgotten any street smarts and undercover ability he might have picked up during his days with the Wraiths... |
I am aware of what order the novels take place in, and that was my point. I wasn't being sarcastic. In Wraith Squadron, Wedge leads a covert operative team. In the Thrawn Trilogy, which takes place after that, Wedge seems to have a lack of street smarts. So Wraith Squadron, which was released after the Thrawn Trilogy, retcons that aspect of the Wedge's character that did not exist back when the Thrawn Trilogy was first published.
| crmcneill wrote: | | What if Wedge was being deliberately obvious to attract attention away from the real backup man? Still Streetsmart, just in a different way... |
I can't find the book right now, but Solo is meeting an underworld contact in a cantina with Wedge sitting in another booth looking at them and looking the part of an intended backup man. At the end of the meeting, the contact tells Solo something like 'And get a better backup man.' In reality, Wedge was the fake backup man meant to lead attention away from the real backup man, Lt. Page from the Katarn Commandos. Solo tells Wedge something along the lines of Wedge being an obvious backup man. Wedge innocently replies something like, 'That was the point, wasn't it?'
Wedge was being deliberately obvious to attract attention away from the real backup man, but his Opie Cunningham reply to Solo makes it sound like he has no street smarts, which is how I think Zahn was portraying him at the time. It wasn't until the later-published Wraith Squadron that Wedge was portrayed as having and/or learning street smarts, and since that takes place before the Thrawn Trilogy, that creates a discontinuity. 'Golly Shazam, Han. I sat where you told me to.'
This was just meant to be a side comment. Retconning the Thrawn Trilogy has become par for the course. It was later established that the Clone Wars did not occur 35 years BBY, Clone Masters were not the enemies of the Republic, the clones in the Clone Wars were not quickly-grown insane clones, and Wedge was not a clueless goober with no street smarts.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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My bad. It seems a relatively seamless retcon, especially compared to some of the other ham-handed do-overs found in the EU. After all, Wedge's only line in that scene works regardless of whether he is clueless or streetwise.
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cheshire
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 5:58 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | My bad. It seems a relatively seamless retcon, especially compared to some of the other ham-handed do-overs found in the EU. After all, Wedge's only line in that scene works regardless of whether he is clueless or streetwise. |
Though there was another encounter in The Last Command where Wedge talks to another member of Karde's group in a side alley. It was reinforced there that he had no street smarts. I'll look up the reference later. I've listened to the book recently using Audible, so I don't have an approximate page number or anything.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 6:54 pm Post subject: |
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In that case, he may have picked up some street smarts, but not enough to fool an experienced group of smugglers like Karrde's. It seems like even during the X-Wing novel series he usually let the more street-smart oriented characters take the lead. Even during the Coruscant infiltration, Alliance Intel did the planning, and even then, they disguised him as a fighter pilot.
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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
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cheshire
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 7:09 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | In that case, he may have picked up some street smarts, but not enough to fool an experienced group of smugglers like Karrde's. It seems like even during the X-Wing novel series he usually let the more street-smart oriented characters take the lead. Even during the Coruscant infiltration, Alliance Intel did the planning, and even then, they disguised him as a fighter pilot. |
Hmm... you have a plausible theory there. Ergo, I reject it and replace it with one of my own.
Too many G forces caused a minor stroke in the area that houses street smarts.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 7:32 pm Post subject: |
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| cheshire wrote: | | crmcneill wrote: | | In that case, he may have picked up some street smarts, but not enough to fool an experienced group of smugglers like Karrde's. It seems like even during the X-Wing novel series he usually let the more street-smart oriented characters take the lead. Even during the Coruscant infiltration, Alliance Intel did the planning, and even then, they disguised him as a fighter pilot. |
Hmm... you have a plausible theory there. Ergo, I reject it and replace it with one of my own.
Too many G forces caused a minor stroke in the area that houses street smarts. |
That's completely ridiculous. Have you considered a career with the Lucasfilm continuity department?
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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
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