The Origins of the Jedi: an Old Old Republic PbP

[vanir]

I am seeking interest in a new PbP Star Wars game with a bend of Aliens/Promethus kind of flavour mixed in with early Tales of the Jedi/Golden Age of the Sith. Here is an introduction to and description of the game environment:

[Jedi Skyler]

I've got some interest in this; perhaps an Ashla...

[Guardian_A]

Sounds interesting, . . . .


. . . . some questions before I commit.

So, the skill sets should be primitive? Pretty much avoiding anything that isnt currently possible with Earth technology? (With the exception of Pulse Wave, and Vibroblade technology.)

What kind of rules would we be using for starting characters? Are there skills that you would like to see the characters take? And are there any skills that you plan to restrict? Are there any additional skills that you will be making available (Possibly in the Aviation or Nautical departments?) I'm guessing that any starship related skills will be off limits with the exception of Astrogation, Communications, Sensors and Archaic Starship Piloting at the start of the game? And no Blasters, Lightsabers, Repulsorlifts, Swoops, or related repair skills? What about skills like Hover Vehicles and Walkers?

You want all of the players to be force users? And what kind(s) of restrictions will there be on force powers?

I'm under the impression (Because of the objectives listed at the end of your post) that the characters will be some form of diplomats or negotiators? And that they may take part in the founding of the Jedi Order?

Thats all I can think of at the moment.

[Quetzacotl]

I'm intrigued

If there are enough people, I'd definitely like to play one of the Ashla.

Not knowing about what can be there is really interesting and, in my opinion, much more fun then knowing everything about the enemies, because this might lead to meta-plotting (e.g. "hm, he has these stats, shouldn't fight with them"), even when trying to avoid that.


Are the PCs supposed to directly be the reason that the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic of Systems come into existence or are we "just" involved in the events that lead to these two very important events in SW History?

[vanir]

Some expanded tech description:

The kind of atmosphere I had in mind as the initial player experience is kind of like being on the starship Promethus (exploration vessel) or Nostromo (industrial craft), great examples of a sleeper-ship for our purposes, the vessel in Pandorum is a great example of a colonial sleeper-ship. The movies Aliens, Predator and AVP is a good example of the weapons tech era in theme and flavour at least.

If we take a snapshot of a typical human colonial world like Alderaan in this period:

The major cities have repulsorlifts and groundcars using both clean energy and occasionally combustion engines. The more wealthy roam around in sleek airspeeders and repulsorcraft, public transportation uses clean energy, some private working class citizens still use combustion powered groundcars but heavy emissions regulations restrict their performance (engine capacities above about 2.5 litres are banned so there aren't many hotrodders and diesel trucks around). This makes clean energy vehicles including repulsorlifts preferred by government (and better performing) but they understand not everybody can afford these so "oil burners" aren't completely banned yet.

Swoops essentially began life as conventional speederbikes with booster engines fitted to provide a speed thrust. These are fairly new, the thrust boosters in this era are often chemical engines jury rigged to the basic repulsorcraft, they pollute, are dangerous, noisy and generally outlawed by the authorities. But they exist and you can take this skill no problem, to actually purchase one you need to find a custom outlaw mechanic and pay him to build it, they're not sold in shops. The fastest are rumoured to have broken the sound barrier at knee high altitude, only a spanking new military craft is likely to catch one but fatalities among operators are high (mishap penalties as jury rigged craft). It is only in the later era that swoops are mass produced by repulsor manufacturers with modern ion boosters and nice safe construction. But they aren't as fast later as they once could get and that's saying something. Swoops are insane and hilariously fun, with a questionable survival rate.

The general look and feel of the cities is a bit like "the 5th Element", "Minority Report" and "Demolition Man." Futuristic, but old tech can still be found hidden away in the garages of eccentrics and backyard hacks. Suburban areas feel more classical, city streets more futuristic, there is a duality present which doesn't really clash.

Say you hired a mercinary on the planet, he'd probably have advanced, powerful firearms and an alloy combat knife. He might have a 10mm assault rifle that does 5D physical damage with a 1D autofire bonus (add to either accuracy or damage). A government agent would probably have a pulsewave blaster and vibroblade. Both will probably turn up in a repulsorcraft but there's a reasonable chance the Merc turns up in an AWD APC groundcar powered by a turbodiesel oil burner with a jet engine thrust booster and concealed weaponry. Hovercraft are fairly common, both in combustion and clean energy forms. Sail power is also very popular in recreational vehicles, some water borne but others are just repulsorskiff floaters that use sails for forward motion, sailcraft skill rolls determine how much speed you can get out of a wind and sailskiff races are a public holiday event. In the Alderaanian canyons some get up to 160km/h or so.

Planetary security forces have a troop force, air wing, space corps and navy. The air wing uses conventional airspeeders and the space corps short range starfighters with a flight endurance measured in hours. Troop force will typically use fast hovercraft assault vehicles, repulsor command craft and APC groundcars. Walkers as we think of them don't really exist but there are exoskeletons used as personal assault vehicles, these are speeder scale and use Powersuit Operation skill.

Railguns and warhead launchers/missiles are typical vehicle armament with pulsewave blasters also mounted to starfighters. Some expensive custom craft may have early laser cannon fitted, they have less range than classical SWU versions and poor beam coherence in atmosphere (best used only in space), but have good damage in starfighter scale. Fire control computers and other avionics are recognisable SWU so most starfighter weaponry (even missiles) tends to use Starship Gunnery skill. Most airspeeder weaponry tends to use either Missile Weapons (for concussion missiles and warhead launchers) or Archaic Weapons skill (for gatling type cannon firearms). Among smaller colonies airspeeders are much more common than starfighters and invasion forces usually make use of airspeeder-carriers which are released from their cruisers and make planetfall with the troop transports.

Starfighters use Starfighter piloting skill, but other spacecraft (transports and cruisers) all use Archaic Starship piloting skill. There isn't a huge difference structurally and in avionics between a colony ship and a military cruiser, mostly internal layout and weapons/armour fit, they're even similarly sized. An interplanetary vessel (sleeper ship but uses sublights only) might be about 90m, a star cruiser (sleeper ship with dimension drive) might be 250m. A battleship is a star cruiser fitted for war, a colony ship one fitted for passengers. These capital ships use banks of laser cannon not much more powerful than classical era starfighter blasters, there are no turbolasers so range is poor. Battleships essentially lumber alongside and pound each other into burning hulks at close range with repetitive fire. Vapourising a large ship happens very rarely and most naval battles are won by boarding actions due to the limitations of weapons technology.

Particle shields are essentially movable armour plates (angles to incoming fire is adjustable) designed to deflect ultravelocity warheads like those fired from railguns, so Starship Shields and Capital Ship Shields skills are used but energy/ray shielding is rare and ridiculously expensive. Particle shields are listed separately from hull codes so comparative hull strength is less than classical era vessels, but comparable when combined with successful particle shield deflection. Thus there are two shield codes, one for particle shields and one for energy shields, used separately with the same skill.

One thing I am undecided about is making pulsewave blasters use blaster skill in common with regular blasters (how different could they really be to fire?), and by the same token railguns using firearms skill (both being recoil associated and otherwise projectile weapons). I really don't see why pulsewave blasters should have a separate skill, and I find railguns as a separate skill to be simply uneconomical (although the same could be argued for Bowcaster skill). I do think they should have separate technical repair skills however, pulsewave blaster repair would be different technology and use different parts and tools to blaster repair.

Okay now comes the wild factor.

Aliens. They're just so...alien. You may find a Devaronian with a regular everyday blaster pistol, no different from the classical era weapons but it is considered exotic alien technology and priceless among humans in this Age, a bit like selling a lightsabre in the market on Tatooine. Rare but exist and later will help further technological development in the galaxy at large through reverse-engineering. In the meantime it makes alien civilisations dangerous and powerful in relatively small numbers, but their technologies are jealously guarded. Alien groups with higher technological standards tend to limit their contact with humans for obvious reasons and any alien contact should never be underestimated for other obvious reasons. The regularly encountered alien species are at the same tech level as the human worlds, it's the ones people don't really know about until much later which maybe more advanced, but adventurers in this era may occasionally encounter them. And die screaming.

Mandalorians. These began as the Taung near-humans from Notron which waged a war against the twelve human tribes and many were exiled in generation ships to colonise the distant world of Mandalore, where they've mined a local exotic mineral (mandalorian iron) they now use in starship and armour construction making them a powerful force in the galaxy despite limited numbers. These guys are tough as nails and very dangerous, and recruit from other groups (usually human criminals) to fill out their numbers. Thus we have the various clans.

To put both these groups into perspective, review again the current tech level restrictions. Energy weapons, where available have half the range and double the power requirements of a comparable blaster weapon in the later era. The best modern armours have negligible protection against energy weapons and heavy encumberment proportionate with physical protection. Take a classical era NPC in regular Stormtrooper armour with a standard blaster rifle back to this era and he's like a walking tank with a godgun. That's kind of what the aforementioned groups can sometimes represent, and the streetwise rumours in city cantinas aren't lost on the concept, aliens and mandalorians are infamous and frightening. Mention either on a recruitment drive and you're likely to wind up standing around alone. Face either in battle and the most likely result is a painful death to the sound of laughter.

Lost colonies. Distant colonisation exercises like the Tion Cluster and the DeepCore have been cut off from their homeworlds for centuries or in some cases millennia, and become microcosms, with their own political and technological development completely independent of the galaxy at large. The deepcore colony of Koros Major essentially introduced the dimension drive and carbonite freezing to the rest of the galaxy when explorative scouts returned to the homeworld of Notron millennia after the last generation ships had left for the world.

Nobody has heard from the Tionese expedition since they left Notron, millennia earlier but those generation ships were travelling from the Core to the very edge of the observable galaxy tens of thousands of light-years away. Even at relativistic speeds with the benefit of length contraction they probably still haven't even arrived yet and may have mutated into humanoid salamanders along the way.

In any case given these wild factors, most of the regular skills available in the SWU are among the galaxy at large. Whether your particular PC has gained training in them is a matter of character background which should suit their starting role.

More about PCs next post, this was all about tech overview.

[vanir]

This is a very rough time in the galaxy. It's like going to the moon and finding dragons so..what then? Most galactic explorers and envoys are diplomats and negotiators sure, they diplomatically shoot first and ask questions later and negotiate how many rounds to put into that scary looking alien thing. It is a dangerous galaxy, seriously.

Something like 97% of all alien encounters end with the galactic explorer on the dinner table. First Contact with an alien civilisation usually winds up in a gunfight because you didn't deficate as a form of greeting. The best possible result is as often as not contracting some exotic plague that wipes out your entire starship crew.

Establishing the Galactic Republic might involve something like starting a war with the Corellians, or paying them half your home system's GDP as a bribe to join and it all comes down to one little courier and whether the King of Corellia or whatever thought he was making fun of his moustache.
Forming the Jedi enclave may involve combating an evil star dragon with a 15D Force Storm that kind of likes the Force shrouded system to you need to use for the temple.
Handling an alien threat is most definitely going to involve boots on the ground combat just to gain an audience and then you may have to marry a "princess" who has three sexes and says something like she wants to turn you out in the bedroom.

Diplomatic roles maybe handled conversationally in the halls of government, but their subject matter is in fact always a description of what grunts are doing with their arms and legs in the real world. A Jedi Diplomat doesn't speak in the Senate, he kills an alien invader and some politician speaks about it in the Senate. These are the kind of roles the PC party will have. They do, others talk. But they do it with authority and sanctioned as representatives of a greater body. Somebody has a problem with the ambassadors doing something, go talk to the politicians that sent them until your ears bleed. In this sense the PC party are "diplomatic envoys". If they did exactly the same thing independently they'd be called mercenaries or psychopaths. But their opponents are not always evil and this is key, sometimes they simply do not recognise their authority. Here is where a code of ethics as individual PCs can help, the battle of Dark Side Points versus Force Points and character temptation will be a theme here as it is in SWU. Does one following a criminal order become a criminal? Where is the line? How do I recognise evil? How do I teach people with greater authority that they had the situation misconceived? Am I wrong in what I do or more wrong if I don't do it? Did I remember to turn the stove off before I left this morning? Why does it hurt when I pee?

The PCs will not be politicians in other words, they will be what the politicians are talking about. In fact a lot of the time the very politicians who send them on these missions have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy where the only thing that matters is how the report looks on paper and whether it was successful.



One thing for the PC environment to consider is interstellar travel times. Whilst the PCs won't experience time in their carbonite chambers the shortest journeys will be weeks or months and distant ones years of relative gametime for the rest of the galaxy...unless using Corellian or Devaronian technology. Corellia itself has become a major galactic power simply because it can undercut anybody else's travel times with its hyperspace cannon.

This tends to mean an adventuring party, crew and passengers aboard a given ship will become a very close unit somewhat seperable from the rest of the galaxy. Your homeworld might look completely different between interstellar journeys, and galactic affairs will continue to evolve of their own accord during travel. Forethought and strategy will always be important factors for any planetary or corporate representatives and even independent adventurers and colonists.

A mission to investigate what has become of the Tionese expedition will be conducted within the Party's lifetime via suspended animation, but a few generations of galactic time may have passed by the time you return to the homeworld to report on what you've found. Your homeworld might've been wiped out by some natural disaster. The conditions of your report might no longer apply by the time you deliver it. Talking apes may have taken over and refer to you incessantly as "bright eyes".

An interesting factor this introduces is a rate of gametime which can span long periods of galactic history within the PC Party's lifetime. Events decades or centuries apart will pass by in relative months as the PCs experience time if travelling between the stars. Also interesting, historical figures the PCs may encounter may seem to live for centuries beyond their natural years due to frequent interstellar travel, because they've been in carbonite hibernation too.



At this stage the PC party will probably be provisionally led by Ashla and depart Koros Major, seeking to return to the original homeworld of Notron and then onto the galaxy at large from there. Thus they will effectively have use of their own starship which is actually owned and registered to the Koros planetary government.

But Ashla do not come from Koros Major. They are from another DeepCore colony on Tython and are departing the world in exodus, having developed a Force using tradition and feeling the tug of a greater calling to the galaxy at large. With limited technology it took them centuries to get to nearby Koros which had by this time invented the dimension drive. This makes Koros Major a natural staging point for returning to the galactic disc, it would take many more centuries using Tythonian starships.

At Koros the government has recognised the opportunity and seen some hint of what exactly the Ashla are capable of. In the hope of maintaining a permanent Ashla presence upon Koros Major the government awards provisional citizenship for visiting Ashla and readily employs them as scouts, explorers, advisors and missionaries. The local ruling council virtually worships them. Amongst the Korosian populace they've become widely reputed mystics, healers, mediums and diplomats. Got a weird disease? Call an Ashla. Suspect your husband is cheating? Call an Ashla. Want to catch a murderer? Call an Ashla.

The Korosians or anybody for that matter, other than the Ashla have no idea about the Bogans. Which is how they like it for the moment. An entire continent upon Tython was ravaged and decimated by no more than a handful of Bogans and the last thing the Ashla want is the rest of the galaxy to understand this potential flipside to their power. What the Ashla foresee is an age of peace and justice in a galaxy of diverse citizenship and equality for alien and human alike.

It is one, possible future.

[Quetzacotl]

Wow, not thats incredibly detailed.

But, just one question.

Did I get this right that "the government" is using the Ashla often for "dirty Jobs" like "going to a planet and if the aliens there are not nice to us, kill them" and the like, while the Ashla are inherently "good guys" who don't really want to harm people (unless necessary) and thus standing often in conflict with their orders which will probably lead to the creation of the "Jedi Order", so that the Ashla are indepentend and can choose to do things their way?

[vanir]

Politicians tend to use "the military" (or any analoguous threat or force) as a tool to suit their individual agendas, yes indeed.

But trying to order the Ashla around is like trying to bully the biggest kid on the block. You're talking about people who can toss starships around a hangar with their mind. Smart politicians will try to use them for mutual benefit, if the Ashla are benevolent and the politician is benevolent then they should find similar goals and similar points of view about public safety and welfare.

But there is one major difference. Bad politicians try to act like good politicians to get elected and stay in office, but secretly do and cause bad things once they have the authority of office.
Theoretically this cannot happen with Ashla because theirs is not a job description, it is a personal philosophy without which they believe their powers would wane.

Ashla are bound to be honourable, politicians are not. Even when both say exactly the same things, the Ashla is far more likely to be telling the truth.
But the way the law works the politician is the one with the authority. When Ashla act on behalf of a government it is with authority granted by politicians, who might be lying about their interests and the situation.

But Ashla are bound to a philosophy as mentioned which is a lot like being religious. It is a higher authority in their eyes than the will of individual politicians even if the law says otherwise. An Ashla would sooner be a criminal according to one politician than commit murder at his command.

And how exactly do you tell a feller who might single handedly wipe out your entire security force that he's under arrest?
Ashla are bound by their Code, never a commander. Not even another Ashla's will has higher authority than their Code.






Note that further discussion is generally moved to the "Origins of the Jedi" PbP area of the forum.

[Jedi Skyler]

Plus, he did say the local government kinda worships the Ashla; they're in awe of the tremendous power the Ashla command, and want these powerful beings to work on the government's behalf.

To that end, even the slimy politicians are likely to think twice before trying to deceive an Ashla; they would be afraid of the consequences once the Ashla found out about it.

[Jedi Skyler]

Also...it sounds like you're intending our characters to start out a bit more advanced than beginning-level characters. Is that the case? Also, are you going to provide an edited list of Force powers that are going to be available for the Ashla characters to learn, or is the entire list going to be available?

[Frandal]

I am interested!

[vanir]

Anybody else interested please make your way over to the PbP forum marked "Origins of the Jedi".

New PCs are still welcome at this stage. Come on over and browse through the threads for rules, equipment and important information about the setting.

Any questions and don't hesitate to ask. This thread I may not check in on too often because I'm snowed under with a lot of writing and monitoring the PbP game threads. So post over there if interested.