I’ve been developing a basic Star Wars hack for a while, and i think i mostly finished it. Its for personal use, but I thought people might want to use it for their own games or maybe contribute somehow. I have to say, I am not going to make big changes, I kinda like the way things are right now. Few notes:
-I know that I could use different stocks for species and droids (ect), but I don’t think there is enough droid material to justify whole new stock. So I made a setting just for droids.
-I had to change/add some Fight! things. I didn’t touch the other duel subsystems but maybe some day?
-Species are not well fleshed out. I am thinking about letting my players (or you) give me feedback on it before doing more with them.
-With high-tech, most lifepaths can lead to one and other. I didn’t really check all leads. Currently subsettings are more of a category than classic bwg subsettings (Actually, maybe classic bwg subsettings were like this too but with less leads).
-Force, Corruption, Lightsaber stuff are all house-ruled based on my my SW head-canon. I used SW wiki a lot but i had to make some changes to expanded universe (now called Legends, they are non-canon anyway).
-There is probably grammar mistakes. A lot of them. English isn’t my native language.
-Some traits and skills are missing.
Some code-side notes:
-I took the basic code (js files) and template (css files) from http://janklabs.com/bwlp/ and I contacted him to see if he is okay with it but he didn’t send me a response so… I’m hosting this until he tells me to stop or continue. Art of bodge is strong with me.
-There was a sw map that i made with google maps api with this, but i’m not sure if github wants to host 90 mb of png files? So I removed it from github version.
-I’m new to github, so yeah.
-Ah also! I didn’t really check if website looks good on other resolutions. Sorry. Let me know if everything breaks on lower/higher resolutions.
Most of the force user lifepaths give extra mental pool stat point, so the idea is to keep the force balanced with your mental stats. Also not every character has a force attribute.
But if a player wants, he can create a min mental/max force character, but i don’t see that as a problem. I think a character can be dumb but strong with the force?
If you want to do a Star Wars hack I would look first at the burning sands hack (Dune clone). Not just because “hey science fantasy!” But because George Lucas was influenced heavily by dune in ways that the average fan may not be aware of beyond resemblances of Luke to Paul and may help with some things you say you are unsure about how to incorporate (like droids).
The first thing to realize is that Dune is organic where Star Wars is electric. What do I mean by this: in the early 70s when dune was at the height of its popularity there was a real question as to the role of computers would be and to the role of organic chemistry. Dune went the the path of computer processing power would reside in the exemplary and modified minds of chemically altered people. The droids of star wars are effectively robot mentats ("but master solo, the odds…“never tell me the odds!” Ultimately, computer and computer engineering burst into the public consciousness while organic chemistry kind of languished until the late 90s until scientists unlocked the DNA (with the help of all these new powerful computers). The effect was that the more electronic Star Wars captured the zeitgeist better than Dune, despite Dunes incredible popularity in the 70s.
The crysknives, organic weapons fashioned from the teeth of sand worms are replaced by electric light sabers. In Dune, space ships resemble animals, but in Star Wars ships are represented by geometrical and algebraic forms (triangles, a’s b’s and x’s and y’s)
Lucas also subverts the religion aspect. In dune religion really is a false flag operation by the empire, in Star Wars it takes over some of the powers given to mentats and spice addicted Paul (Lucas’ “midiclorians”)
Anyway, my advice is to look at how burning sands incorporated and delt with things and then see how those things can be altered from the geigeresque body horror of Dune, to the more anaseptic high fantasy of wizards and Cowboys in space.
I believe you are quite right with your post and i am familiar with Jihad. I actually used some of the things that are there, but I never thought about droids-mentats thing. You are quite right. The problem is how do droids in a better way than current way. They are machines, after all. And what do do depends on what they are modified to do. I actually had a more detailed part-by-part build system for droids but i didn’t feel like going that in-depth would benefit anything.
Also “Dune is organic where Star Wars is electric” is really true. Although I am not sure how to capture that atmosphere of Star Wars beyond giving what Star Wars already have. I home my current way is on the right track.
I update the site almost daily, currently I think I finished with background coding. I will work on adding more era-specific lifepaths, work on species and droids. I would really appreciate feedback on these areas because i am not really have a more clear idea for droids. Species are good for now (I think) and Era-Specific Lifepaths are just a time-sink, not really that hard. I also would like any feedback on lifepath improvement or balancing (as in “this lifepath rps doesn’t make any sense”).
Thanks for post, it really got me thinking on how could I do more especially with Droids.
Something else that isn’t widely acknowledged is, and I’m stretching a bit here, is how psionics in the original D&D game borrow a lot from dune. Specifically the power of precognition–this is the same power used in Star Wars when Jedi kind of “look ahead” to see what may come to pass (thinking of Luke and yoda on Degoba). The way it is presented by Gygax is almost exactly what Paul uses to gauge the outcome of his first duel in dune which I think was a likely influence on Lucas/Kasdan.
The reason I say this is because a lot of your force powers are the, forgive me, cartoon/prequel type (all the acrobatics and Chinese martial art type stuff, which to be honest I’m not a fan of). If you took a peak at some of the old “elderitch wizardry” psionic powers from the 1977 D&D booklet might give you some ideas on how to incorporate the more mystical and thoughtful Jedi powers.
Or Another way to hack it from burning wheel would be to look at astrology or other quasi magical skills which, when used as skills, help highlight the idea that at these powers don’t always work but don’t necessarily strain the user like magic does.
Corruption: looks cool. Have you thought about hacking Orc hate for the dark side instead of corruption?
I see where this is coming from and I actually agree. The problem with this is when some mechanic gets too vague, it gets exponentially harder to implement. BUT! I’ve considered using other types of magic that is available in BW (art magic f.e.), and your idea on astrology might really work. I don’t really want to remove the current system, but I just might add an additional system to use for more vague sense of force like original trilogy. Actually when you think about it, the basic categories of force (control, sense and alter) it is basically this. I don’t know how this work in all cases though. Because, for example, how would Force Lightning work with this much undefined system?
I also firmly believe that current system can be also used as this. I added “Force Jump” but after your last post I was thinking of removing it and adding “Art of Movement” force power with similar rules to Astrology to be used as a FoRK.
This kind of system needs a lot of work and it must be planned more carefully than the current system. I open to all ideas.
Corruption is one of the oldest sub-system I’ve written. It’s been like 7 months since I’ve touched it. IIRC, I used Spite, Greed and Hatred rules as a baseline. I wanted it to be a hate spiral that always leads downwards until the person sees what is happening and tries to contain it with meditation (aka controlling her/his emotions and impulses). I need to make an Ob table for it soon though. I keep forgetting this. Also I’m not sure if shades really work well with it. Maybe I should make corruption a shade-less attribute. I’m not really sure.