Star Wars Hack. Nature (Evil).

Mouse Guard Hacks and Expansions
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Meet the Jedi. They are weak humanoids who divide into small groups, striving to overcome their flaws, desperate to be pure enough to protect the innocent and helpless from massive invasions, powerful Sith, ruthless animals, natural disasters, wicked merchants, and cruel governments.

The Jedi, striving to overcome their natural tendencies toward DECEPTION, ANGER, AMBITION, and PRIDE, fight for others according to the lofty ideologies of their order. What happens when Jedi become to idealistic, though? What happens when they give in to their human desires?

This is a story of weak, fragile souls gifted with amazing powers. But as they become heroes, their talents could very well be their undoing.

Nature (Evil)

0: Sagelike - you have become one with the Jedi Creed, you are the incarnation of Peace and Service. Even the Jedi Council, to your pure standards, is corrupt. You can’t convince yourself that killing leads to Peace, you can’t follow the orders of those who are not enlightened. At the end of the session/season you leave the Jedi Order, or seclude yourself in libraries and empty hallways, refusing to do any missions.

7: Fallen - you have given in to your human desires, you have forsaken the Jedi ideals and acted on your emotions and personal goals. The Jedi don’t understand you, they are chains binding you to a fake system of justice trying to brainwash its members into being pawns of the Force. As soon as you reach Nature 7, your party realizes your fall, and must confront you immediately. You are now their enemy. They surround you and attempt to execute you, a la Mace Windu and co vs Darth Sidious. [Hint, this has potential for epic roleplaying]

The Nature (Evil) descriptors are DECEPTION, ANGER, and some others that I am less sure about. Options are: GREED, AMBITION, PRIDE, etc. Anyone have better ideas?

Hey everyone. I’m new here. I bought Mouse Guard recently, and have played twice. Once with my Mom, just me (GM and character) and her (character). She hates games. She had fun. Mouse Guard creates miracles. The second time was with a standard party of four doing a preset mission.

Anyway, I read through this section for hacks on the forum, and after a while of bad ideas for other settings, came up with this potential one for Star Wars. Tell me what you think.

~ Viaro

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I really like the idea of the Jedi essential Nature as being evil. I wonder about the Sagelike quality though. From a narrative perspective, the idea of lowering your nature is a result of taxation due to superhuman(mouse) effort to act outside of your defined interest. That being said, the idea of Sagelike could work if the nature was Good, and they were ascending, but from a taxation perspective i would view a 0 as maybe more detached and aloof than being Peace and Service incarnate.

just thoughts, though.

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Very good point, MrKrasotkin. Having the nature system mirror MG’s as closely as possible is the goal, so it would be better to mirror the taxation nature of nature.

Hmm, so a Jedi can use his evil nature to do something strong, and then it is taxed and he is temporarily more good…

Somehow that doesn’t make sense. Maybe using JADED as the 0, and EVIL as the 7 would work better. Does it resolve the above?

Could someone describe how nature works as neutrally as possible, I can’t seem to translate it from Mouse Guard well.

Thanks.

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In terms of vanilla MG, Nature is how “mouselike” your character is. Basically the higher the Nature value, the closer a mouse is to an archetypal mouse, i.e. how likely they are to behave like a mouse as defined by the Nature (Foraging, Escaping, etc.)

I think the issue with the idea of Nature (Evil) is that while it is interesting and thought provoking, it’s in fact the opposite of what a Jedi should be. And while it’s dynamic if one is struggling against their essential Nature, I’m not sure that it works with the mechanics of MG. Consider this example: the Emperor is tempting Luke to strike down his father, Darth Vader. Luke, so to speak, “taps” his Nature to do something heroic, namely to succeed in a Will test to resist the allure of the Dark Side. He is successful, and because it is outside of his defined Nature, his Nature is taxed (essentially reduced) by 1 point, thus making him less Evil. But here’s where the problem comes in terms of mechanics: had Luke failed the Will test, his Nature would have been reduced by the margin of failure, which would actually have made him even LESS Evil.

To me it seems that the problem comes in tying the moral component to Nature. I think it would help to define a Jedi Nature in terms of what they’re likely to be good at and also likely to do, rather than specific values or qualities. In MG, a mouse nature doesn’t include Cowardly (a value), but rather Escaping (an action or response).

All that being said, I really like the idea of Nature (Evil), so it might be worth exploring a more radical mechanical shift to support the idea of morality or values.

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I see. Thank you for your clear explanation.

So…either I choose something different for nature, or uproot the whole system.

Hmm.

What if, when a Jedi taps their Nature (Evil), it is raised instead of taxed. They will become more and more powerful, until they fall. It should be harder to reduce nature, so that an almost permanent risk comes with this power.

The different results from success and failure could be removed, I think. But what about whether the task was something within the evil nature, or outside of it? Maybe both could just raise nature by one. Maybe one of them could raise it by two, the other by one.

Thoughts?

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How about Nature (Passionate)? The thing about the Dark Side isn’t that it’s necessarily evil, but that it’s driven by human passions. At Nature 0, a Jedi is dispassionate and disconnected from those around him, concerned only with the big picture. At Nature 7, she’s given in completely to Fear, Anger and Hate.

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I think that you could go with something like Peaceful or One With The Force for their Nature. That way they have this desire that they’re yearning for that their duties very often conflict with, such as fighting or becoming embroiled in mundane affairs. That way taxing their Nature, while allowing for incredible and heroic feats, separates them from their nature and hopes, eventually to the point of total severance from his Peaceful nature, resulting in a fall to the Dark Side.

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Hmm, both Peaceful and Passionate sound good. What would be the descriptors of each? I can’t seem to think through it at the moment, so could you each give an example of how they work with the rules about tax?

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I would consider Passionate as more indicated by the level of one’s Nature, rather than the Nature itself. For example, in Realm Guard, the Dunedain Nature is Family, Grief, Tradition. The higher their Nature value, the more “passionate” they are regarding these things, so to speak.

In terms of Peace, consider Anakin murdering all of the Tusken Raiders (I hate the prequels, but I can’t really think of an example of Jedi really losing their shit with drastic consequences in the old films). Anyway, Anakin finds his mom has been brutally killed by the Raiders. The discovery is devastating for him, and were it being run by a GM, Anakin might be subjected to something like an Ob 4 Will test to stomach what he’s seen (bearing in mind that according to the rulebook, Ob 4 is supposed to be considered “practically impossible” for a single character to achieve). Anakin is conflicted, as he values his training and the wisdom of Obi-Wan, and “digs deep” (tapping his Nature) to overcome this (which would be considered, to me, inside of his Peaceful nature). He fails the test and his Nature value is reduced, thus moving him further away from his desired Peaceful nature. Thus in addition to having the Angry (or Homicidal, as the case may be) condition applied to his character, he has also more permanently moved away from his Nature and towards the Dark Side.

Another somewhat more interesting example could have occurred earlier in Anakin’s career when he was facing off with Asajj Ventress, a Sith Assassin. Ventress is a powerful foe, and Anakin needs to tap his Nature in order to fuel his heroic effort to defeat her. Now, beign that Ventress is Sith and is also actively trying to kill Anakin, this is a completely justifiable and necessary act. However, the subtle perversions of the Dark Side filter in by the fact that the very act of killing another life form is antithetical to a Jedi’s ultimate goal of Oneness with the Force and a Jedi’s professed Peaceful nature. So Anakin taps his Nature and manages to defeat Ventress. But the exertion itself takes its toll on Anakin who, despite having successfully tapped his Nature, has had his Nature reduced by 1, representing his duties beginning to conflict with his values, and one step closer to his inevitable fall.

It should also be mentioned that with the Nature mechanics, there is an effective Nature and a maximum Nature, which, in Anakin’s case, could be represented by something like 4/4 to begin with. After the fight with Ventress, it would be 3/4, etc. Once a character’s effective Nature is reduced to 0, a trait representing this is assigned to the character via table chatter, and the character’s maximum Nature is then reduced. So assuming that the incident with the Raiders reduced Anakin’s effective Nature to 0, he could have become Disturbed as a trait and then his maximum Nature would have been reduced to 3. I point this out as Jedi do a lot of fighting, and I don’t want to create the impression that with this system all of the Jedi would be on a slow spiral to Darkness. Obviously it’s easy to fall prey to the Dark Side, but a Jedi like Yoda, for example, may have a Nature of 6. Because of this, he is disinclined to fight, but if he has to fight (and is successful) He could theoretically get into 20+ fights in which he taps his Nature before bottoming out and succumbing to the Dark Side. In the mean time, of course, Yoda would have opportunities to restore or even raise his Nature. One could imagine that instead of having a Winter session, every year the Jedi have sabbaticals or something in which they spend a lot of time in meditation and training, probably specifically to fight off the corrupting influence of the Dark Side that they bear simply by interacting with the world.

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That makes a lot of sense. Would it be Nature (Passionate), or something else? Would the descriptors change from the ones I suggested?

I like this idea a lot, and I think it is an almost seamless transition from Mouse Guard. Thank you both for your input.

Are there any other aspects of nature that you have ideas for? If not, we could discuss other aspects of the system.

As to weapons: every PC is a Jedi, and so should have a lightsaber. The color would be analogous to cloak color. Potentially it could be a Short, Normal, or Double lightsaber. It is rare for Jed to use other weapons, so I’m not sure if it is a good idea to include things like blasters and rifles and grenades and such. What do you think?

As to mounts: tauntauns, speeders, rancors, podracers, x-wings; basically any kinds of exotic animals, all forms of land and space and water vehicles; space battles can be made with this - yep, you could battle the death star. That’s nifty.

As to size: Well… “Size matters not, … Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?”. Jedi are and should able to kill things many times their size. Ideas?

As to rank: The basic ranks are Initiate, Padawan, Knight, Master. Padawan most closely mirrors Tenderpaw, so Initiate is out. So we only have three ranks then. Maybe the specialization of a Jed Knight could follow, as a Jedi Guardian, Jedi Consular, or Jedi Sentinel. That’s four. After Master, maybe there could be a rank for retired Members of the Council. So Padawan, Knight, G/C/S, Master, Council Member. Thoughts?

As to skills: I think I will just copy the lists of skills from the different sections of character creation and translate them to Star Wars - to retain the system for character creation - rather than having one long list of skills.

What other aspects would be different?

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If you’re going with something like I described for Jedi Nature, you’d go something like Nature (Jedi) which would be Peaceful, One with the Force, Service, and Tradition.

As far as weapons go, you’ll want to stat up a range of weapons, just in case. In KoTOR II there were specific tactics that allowed you to have a Jedi gunslinger, which was very cool. Additionally, the weapon benefits apply to NPCs, too. Something like Lightsaber could have abilities like:

Deflect: Defense versus Attack with blaster weapons gets +1D. (i think attack/defense is a versus test)
Damaging: +1s to successful Attack.

or something, I dunno. It’s probably worth checking out the regular weapons as a basis for other balanced weapons.

The size issue is an interesting problem, especially for a Jedi. It’s worth pointing out that in Realm Guard, physical size is not the only factor when considering the Scale of Might. One also takes into account a creature’s magical propensity, meaning that smaller creatures are capable of killing much “larger” ones depending on the creatures in question. For example, Balrogs are large, but aren’t much bigger than a troll. However, a Balrog is SEVERAL steps higher on the Scale of Might owing to its magical nature. I think it would be a similar situation in your game. I think that realistically, though, a Jedi would be a couple of steps higher than a typical person, but that might have balance concerns.