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TheDoctor
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 27 Dec 2007
Posts: 150
Location: San Francisco
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 Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2015 6:34 pm Post subject: Then and Now |
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Then and Now
The year is 1998. There is only one Star Wars RPG, its books and supplements are commonly available at Walden Books, Dalton's, Borders and of course Barnes and Noble. There are enough sourcebooks to make your head spin. WEG had established a decade legacy of Star Wars RPG material. The latest supplement is Alien Encounters and there are sure to be more, especially now that the prequels are finally on their way!
That's right, the prequels will finally be released, with Episode I just about finished. There are already tantalizing photos of a young Anakin and Obi-Wan, with that guy in Schindler's List as a Jedi.
The internet is amazing. You can find lots of things on Alta-Vista and Yahoo!. You can load pages with pictures in only thirty seconds if you have a fast enough modem. Outside of your hometown, you find that there are at least a dozen other people in the country who also play Star Wars! None of them live nearby though. But you have ICQ!
What do you remember from then, and how does it compare to now?
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"We attack under cover of daylight. Yes it's the last thing they'll be expecting, a daylight charge over the minefield." - Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC SSC |
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Bobmalooga
Commander
Joined: 13 Sep 2010
Posts: 367
Location: The south...
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| Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2015 7:57 pm Post subject: |
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The coolest part of all that time period was the sheer number of people who decided to put a website up on the net just to show people 'look what I did!' There were tons of sites, some of them were neat, some of them were...well they just were.
If you want a real look at what I am talking about or remember it...Check this out...
Here is the DLOS via the internet wayback machine, but check out the links and marvel at the stuff on those sites which can be looked at via the same wormhole of time and space.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010126140000/http://www.starwars-rpg.net/dlos/new.shtml
This was the same time period where my cousin Dude and I got thrown out of the local college for abusing their printer in the computer lab by printing out hundreds of pages of materials...They had people watching out for us...LOL.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10435
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 1:15 am Post subject: Re: Then and Now |
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| TheDoctor wrote: | The year is 1998. There is only one Star Wars RPG, its books and supplements are commonly available at Walden Books, Dalton's, Borders and of course Barnes and Noble. There are enough sourcebooks to make your head spin. WEG had established a decade legacy of Star Wars RPG material. The latest supplement is Alien Encounters and there are sure to be more, especially now that the prequels are finally on their way!
...What do you remember from then |
I found out about WEG's bankruptcy (and thus no WEG prequel books) from contacting WEG about not getting any SW Adventure Journal issues after #15 and my paid subscription being unfulfilled. They sent me a personal letter explaining the bankruptcy and that they were not allowed to refund me cash, but they also included a catalogue and offered to give me credit towards their entire inventory (and at substantially discounted prices). I was so upset about WEG going under that I never took advantage of offer. I still have the letter, catalogue and envelope they came in.
| TheDoctor wrote: | The year is 1998...
That's right, the prequels will finally be released, with Episode I just about finished. There are already tantalizing photos of a young Anakin and Obi-Wan, with that guy in Schindler's List as a Jedi. |
I got most of my information about the coming prequels from Star Wars Insider. I have a completely uninterrupted collection from the first issue of the magazine until today.
| TheDoctor wrote: | The internet is amazing. You can find lots of things on Alta-Vista and Yahoo!. You can load pages with pictures in only thirty seconds if you have a fast enough modem. Outside of your hometown, you find that there are at least a dozen other people in the country who also play Star Wars! None of them live nearby though. But you have ICQ!
What do you remember from then, and how does it compare to now? |
I didn't have internet access at home until 2002, and using it for Star Wars related things started slowly with SW.com and the official SW forum, The Force.net, SWRPGNetwork/HoloNet Forum and the official WEG forum. But I didn't become very active with SW online until the WEG Fan forum (which became the official successor to the WEG forum and is now known as D6 Online), and the Rancor Pit. The rest is history.
Sorry to digress from your SW online nostalgia. I just wasn't there in '98.
| Bobmalooga wrote: | | The coolest part of all that time period was the sheer number of people who decided to put a website up on the net just to show people 'look what I did!' There were tons of sites, some of them were neat, some of them were...well they just were. |
Being a late bloomer to the internet, I still put up a crappy Star Wars website (and a few crappy non-SW websites too) in 2002 and 2003. They were actually all still live on the net until a couple years ago when I finally took them down.
The downside to the Wayback Machine is that it is difficult to search for old websites without having the URL. I'm on my third computer after the first two crashed, and I do not always recover all my favorites when that happens.
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cheshire
Arbiter-General (Moderator)
Joined: 04 Jan 2004
Posts: 4853
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| Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 1:37 pm Post subject: |
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I was just about a year and a half away, maybe two years, from rolling up my first character for any RPG ever.
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Mikael Hasselstein
Line Captain
Joined: 20 Jul 2011
Posts: 810
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 5:23 am Post subject: |
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1998 was the year I did go online.
I had already been a SWD6 player. (I actually started in 199...2 or 3? A friend of mine had a set of books... in French. My French sucked. His French was good, but his attention to detail was not. The rules were as inconsistent as they were 1st edition.)
But, in 1998, I wasn't doing SWD6, though I tried. Between work (at a lumber yard) and school (undergrad), I really didn't have the time. I was a big Babylon 5 fanatic, though, as were all my friends. We tried the roleplaying game to middling success (owing to personality conflicts). I was the GM, and would get on a friend's computer to get information from The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5. It's still there, and just as ... advanced as it ever was!
Oh, and stuff was on VHS... except my Star Wars Soundtrack CD, which I would play as loud as I could in my little yellow 1980 Plymouth Arrow. Especially the Imperial March (of course).
Good times. |
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Zarm R'keeg
Commander
Joined: 14 Apr 2012
Posts: 481
Location: PA
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| Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 10:09 am Post subject: |
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A lot of cool Star Wars Insiders- often showcasing cool-looking things that ended up being only minor elements in the films. Darth Maul, Battle Droids, an the Trade Federation tank all looked awesome. One of the best trailers ever was out in theaters. The EU was secure and generally awesome.  (YMMV). Merchandizing was everywhere- Colonel Sanders, the Taco Bell dog, and a Pizza Hut delivery girl (in an attempt to suddenly invent an iconic mascot that read as desperate, even to a 13-year-old) fought the Trade Federation on Naboo in a series of awesome commercials.
And fan films. fan films, fan fiction, the fan audio community were all at their peak. Every week, someone was releasing a new Star Wars film, or audio drama. This was the height of fandom, with enthusiasm at a fevered pitch- before the Phantom Menace arrived to dampen that enthusiasm or divide the fandom between love and hate. All the fans were united in optimism and excitement... and creativity. (Which I doubt- but do hope- will be re-energized during this sequel trilogy; almost immediately upon the release of ROTS, all the fan films and fan audios died away; it seems that only anticipation of new films could fuel them, and I hope this new anticipation is enough to bring them back!)
I was immersed in Batnam novels and the original Essential Guides, and loved the smaller, more intimate universe that existed them, before any prequel-era insertions, NJO-onward tone change, or major branching out (other than the Tales of the Jedi series) to other time periods or stories. I was just getting into WEG, with the Introductory Adventure Set- which was available on the shelves in Toys'R'Us.
It was a good time- a simpler and more innocent time. Perhaps a golden age- in that there was an unbridled optimism, and no concept that Star Wars could ever disappoint or divide. Ewoks were the most controversial aspect of the franchize. But the creativity in the fan community was definitely the best of all.
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Hard core OT, all the way! |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10435
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 10:48 am Post subject: Re: 1997-98 |
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| Zarm R'keeg wrote: | | It was a good time- a simpler and more innocent time. Perhaps a golden age- in that there was an unbridled optimism, and no concept that Star Wars could ever disappoint or divide. Ewoks were the most controversial aspect of the franchize. But the creativity in the fan community was definitely the best of all. |
Huh? Unbridled optimism? No concept of franchise disappointment? That's very surprising! I wasn't online yet in 1998 so my interaction with the fan community at large was minimal at the time, but from all the vitriol and venom I later encountered when I did eventually get online, I would have thought that 1997 Special Editions, especially Greedo shooting, would have been an extremely controversial and divisive aspect of the fan community back in 1998. Was the community generally accepting of it at first, and then it wasn't until Jar Jar, kid Anakin, the dreaded M-word and all the other things fans blasted just got the ball rolling to the Special Editions and Greedo? ("And another thing... And another thing...") Was all the hatred of Lucas for making Greedo shoot a delayed reaction? This SW fan community baffles me ever more than I thought it did! Why would they accept it at first and then hate it later?
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Zarm R'keeg
Commander
Joined: 14 Apr 2012
Posts: 481
Location: PA
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| Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 12:04 pm Post subject: Re: 1997-98 |
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| Whill wrote: | | Huh? Unbridled optimism? No concept of franchise disappointment? That's very surprising! I wasn't online yet in 1998 so my interaction with the fan community at large was minimal at the time, but from all the vitriol and venom I later encountered when I did eventually get online, I would have thought that 1997 Special Editions, especially Greedo shooting, would have been an extremely controversial and divisive aspect of the fan community back in 1998. Was the community generally accepting of it at first, and then it wasn't until Jar Jar, kid Anakin, the dreaded M-word and all the other things fans blasted just got the ball rolling to the Special Editions and Greedo? ("And another thing... And another thing...") Was all the hatred of Lucas for making Greedo shoot a delayed reaction? This SW fan community baffles me ever more than I thought it did! Why would they accept it at first and then hate it later? |
You know... you're right! I was not online much, either, and generally watched Trek and Wars for their SFX at the time, so I was 100% onboard with all SE changes. (In much the same way that I tended to dismiss some of Trek's best episodes because they didn't have starship battles or phaser-fights in them). So, I only remember my enthusiasm and anticipation at the time- not the controversy that was probably flooding through fandom at the time.
(Certainly, my frustration with aspects of the SEs- and with TPM and AOTC, for that matter- was a delayed reaction. (Just like my appreciation for some of those Trek episodes was). In those cases, it was being carried away by the spectacle at first, then looking at it more objectively as I started to mature and gain an appreciation for storytelling, characterization, narrative structure, etc. I can't speak for the rest of the community...)
Well, I'll just stick with the creativity aspect, then. Optimism withdrawn.
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Bobmalooga
Commander
Joined: 13 Sep 2010
Posts: 367
Location: The south...
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| Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 12:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Zarm R'keeg wrote: | | ...and a Pizza Hut delivery girl (in an attempt to suddenly invent an iconic mascot that read as desperate, even to a 13-year-old) fought the Trade Federation on Naboo in a series of awesome commercials. |
You must be talking about this Pizza Delivery girl...
http://raptorsquad.net/MightyMuttSquad/muttfringe/gyrle.htm
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Zarm R'keeg
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Joined: 14 Apr 2012
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| Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2015 10:53 am Post subject: |
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...Words fail me. But yes.
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TheDoctor
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 27 Dec 2007
Posts: 150
Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 7:31 pm Post subject: Re: Then and Now |
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| Whill wrote: |
Sorry to digress from your SW online nostalgia. I just wasn't there in '98.
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Hahaha, no worries.
I think my basic point I was making was that for myself, I feel so spoiled today with all the online RPG (and non-RPG) content for Star Wars available on the internet today, compared with back then.
Conversely, with the prequels, the upcoming sequels and two CG series, there is more and more canon material outside of what WEG has a sourcebook for.
In my opinion, the D6 system as it relates to Force Powers and Lightsaber combat was perfect for Rebellion era Force users who really had sub-Knight level mastery. But I think scaling the D6 system to Mastery level Force use gets tricky- I imagine Anakin to have a Lightsaber skill of at least 10D, with Force Skills at 10D+ utilizing multiple Force powers at once...a lot of bookkeeping and dice rolling each epic turn.
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DougRed4
Rear Admiral
Joined: 18 Jan 2013
Posts: 2286
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2015 1:38 am Post subject: |
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In 1998 I was online, but probably just barely had my own computer. I was big into the Star Wars CCG, but was still years away from playing the RPG for the first time (even though I'd been huge into RPGs since 1981).
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Zarm R'keeg
Commander
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Posts: 481
Location: PA
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| Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2015 10:44 am Post subject: |
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Ah, the CCG! My sister and I fought so hard when we co-bought a Cloud City expansion and got that awesome dark-side Cloud City location...
Good memories, that game.
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