I’m with Alejandro. There’s also support for the idea of a Jedi being strong in The Force then it’s just a choice if he uses Light Side or Dark Side.
Maybe one skill, The Force, with two sets of factors depending if you’re using Light Side or Dark Side?
–Victor
P.S. All this talk of Light Side/Dark Side got me thinking of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=493ljyoox6o
Dear Beer,
I think I understand what you are talking about when you are saying post industrial and service industry oriented. Sure there are all sorts of people in service industry jobs and you don’t make stuff, you just go out an buy it. Most of us live in a post industrial society.
What I don’t understand is why you want to include it in a game. Are you proposing to play “call centre workers”, bankers or what ever their equivalents are at the capital of the Empire? I don’t think you are, so that I why I think I am not getting your point around adding varied skill sfor them.
Sure all these things exist, but there is no reason to detail them in a game unless that is what the game is going to revolve around. I dont think the players are going to want to be bankers. Lets say in the case of financiers, just have someone who has a very high resources skill and help from his banking clan mates.
Could you help me out here? I don’t think I get it.
I don’t understand the insistance on crafting skills. This is what we have in Mouse Guard. Pre-industrial arts & crafts, making stuff.
Modifying the Masons & Apiarists into Star Wars crafters isn’t any more exciting either.
If we’re going to foist non-Conflict skills onto the Younglings, then at least the skills should reflect a post-industrial society.
I’m saying we need Bankers, Dancers, Barmen… not Millers, Carpenters, and Brewers.
The big difference I see between the maker/doer skills and the service skills is that you can do things with them that impact the direction of play. I don’t see how this comes in with Bankers, Dancers and Barmen. In most cases the post industrial skills are quite specialised. They have very little application outside of their specific context.
I accept that the medieval guild structure with all of its craft skills are not the best fit for a Star Wars world. Wo worries. Let’s jump out of the frying pan and skip the fire.
Mouse Guard strikes me as having a lean economy of skills. I don’t reckon it is worth it including call centre workers just to completely cover what is on offer in a realistic depiction of society. The non conflict skills have to have some application on the thrust of play, otherwise they are just baggage. If the game is about “pulp action” then Bankers, Bartenders and Clerks are not that applicable either. Service workers are just people in the background who you buy stuff from. They are not what the players are.
If the game is centred upon people joining the Rebellion and struggling against the Empire, does it really matter what they did for a crust before they made it to the hidden rebel base? Particularly if the Rebellion does not have banking, bars or insurance salesmen? Or are you proposing that they go back into society as refridgerator repairmen undercover?
It would be a shame to burden a lean system with stuff that will not be used in play.
Mouse Guard characters aren’t strictly Apiarists or Stonemasons either, yet the skill list includes these things.
The list can’t just be swinging lightsabers, and shooting blasters. There isn’t 34 named skills in there, or however many are in the Mouse Guard list.
And what’s lean about Cook and Baker, Miller and Brewer? Yes, it isn’t the sprawling list of Burning Empires or Burning Wheel, but the Mouse Guard are more complex than Fighters & Hunters.
And Bankers, Ambassadors, Politicians, and Trade Federation executives are part of Star Wars too. Like it or not, the stated realm of the hack has been the Clone Wars, simply to make things simpler on my end.
If these service skills don’t suit, do we need to go to Samurai tradition instead? Poetry, calligraphy, Zen, archery, abusing the peasantry?
Sure, I take the point seriously about making it fun. Pulp action, I get it. We still need a framework as the baseline. The style comes out in play, and if someone wants to tilt the mood towards sci fi, I don’t think it’s our purpose to mandate that mood in this hack. Writing skills for Bankers doesn’t impact the central Conflicts of the game.
And are you trying to make a point with the “call centre workers” comment, or are you being dismissive? Admittedly, I am not a master of all things Star Wars, and I may be a partial idiot, but I am not a total idiot… And my Star Wars rpg stuff does go back to a reasonable amount of 1e WEG/d6 books.
In Star Wars there are farmers, and engineers and technician (people who made and fix things, who cook the dinner and sell jonk and hunt for living). But I don’t like bankers very much. xD
You are right that the medieval guild structure doe not work with starwars. Even though the guard are not makers, the making/doing skills fit in relly well with the small mice trying to survive in the cruel world theme. The skills do have a strong place in the setting.
I was not trying to be dismissive. I was trying to reduce the argument to an absurd level so that the point was unavoidable. I used the example of call centre worker because in most cases call centre workers do not actually “do” anything. Their jobs have been constructed to be only the provision of “service”. I used to run them for a living.
I am no master of Star Wars either. I have only seen the movies and read one of the Alan Dean Foster books when I was a teenager in the 80s. I think you are really on to something when you are fishing around for a skill set to add on. Samurai type skills or some other constellation of skills is great. As well as adding whatever skills from the societal background would impact on the conflicts in play. I think what you are doing by picking a period and focussing on it is the best thing to do. Can’t please everyone, no good in trying.
Is the Clone Wars analogous to the Roman Civil Wars (91-30 BC) that bridged the time between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire? A time when power was shifting from the Senate to being concentrated in the hands whoever could command the legions?
Etsu is right, there are farmers and people who “fix stuff”. There are a lot of scenes from the Mark Hamill movies where people are tinkering and fixing stuff. However these scenes were often taking place either in backwaters of the Empire or while the principle characters were on the run. So they could not just “nip into the shops and buy another one”. These circumstances could have influenced what choices were available. Maybe the Clone Wars were part of a degradation from buying new shiny stuff to making the best of what was still around.
Etsu, no te preocupes, nadie les gustan finacieros. Son sanguiñelos todos!
To reset the discussion, here’s where I’m at (in a Stewart Smalley sort of way) after due consideration of all input so far:
Skills unchanged:
[ol]
[li]Deceiver
[/li][li]Orator
[/li][li]Persuader
[/li][li]Archivist (think Jedi Temple archives, holocrons, etc)
[/li][li]Instructor
[/li][li]Laborer (spice mines of Kessel!)
[/li][/ol]
New/revised skills:
[ol]
[li]Artisan (high art of creation, non-utilitarian goods, help for social skills)
[/li][li]Banker (Haggler ^1000000000000, think: funding for a Star Destroyer or a Death Star, or generally being a rich person in appearances even if actual wealth is debt-related (see Donald Trump))
[/li][li]Battle Mystic (formerly Battle Meditation, from Weather Watcher)
[/li][li]Bounty Hunter (based on Hunter in Mouse Guard)
[/li][li]Bureaucrat (Administrator in MG)
[/li][li]Commander (Militarist in MG)
[/li][li]Droidmonger (from Whoremonger in BW 
& Insectrist in MG, but for Droids)
[/li][li]Duelist (Fighter in MG, but for Lightsabers. Jedi can be used as a Wise for this)
[/li][li]Engineer (fixing tech, shutting down all the garbage mashers on the detention level)
[/li][li]Fabricator (low art craft skill, making utilitarian goods to assist other tech-y skills)
[/li][li]Fringer (mostly Survivalist in MG)
[/li][li]Herder (bits of Loremouse, Insectrist, Hunter)
[/li][li]Jedi (the Force skill. Qui Gon says Darth Maul was trained in the Jedi arts in Ep.I, as I recall)
[/li][li]Medic (Healer in MG)
[/li][li]Pilot (bits of Fighter & Pathfinder in MG)
[/li][li]Saboteur (blowing up stuff unquietly, but also out of combat, unlike Soldiers)
[/li][li]Scavenger (Harvester in MG, for harvesting bits of useful tech from what others consider junk, with tech bits to be used in other skills)
[/li][li]Scoundrel (getting past stuff quietly)
[/li][li]Scout (? hate reusing the name. Combines Scout & Pathfinder, possibly also for outer space use)
[/li][li]Soldier (Fighter in MG, but not for Lightsabers)
[/li][li]Trader (Haggler in MG)
[/li][/ol]
So that’s 6 unchanged & 21 new/revised/renamed skills, for a total of 27 (not counting Wises). There are 34 skills in Mouse Guard (not counting Wises).
From prior incarnations, I dropped all Performance skills (intending those to be Wises for the big 3 social skills of Deceiver, Orator, and Persuader). I dropped Navigator (since star charts can work as Wises). I dropped Droidsmith in favor of Bounty Hunter & Droidmonger.
It’s a pain in the ass to write up all this stuff, but it’s coming along…
EDIT:
Regarding the inspirations for Lucas’ Clone Wars period. I think the shift from the Roman Republic to the Empire is one influence, as the militant approach of the Imperator-as-Emperors seemed to resonate with the people of the time.
There were some George W Bush tones in the whole Palpatine thing, as played out in Episodes I through III.
I guess my goal is none of those. And I don’t even like the new Clone Wars cartoons on the Cartoon Network here in the United States.
I picked the period because there are a lot of Jedi who kick ass. And the Clone War period is popular due to the cartoon.
Eventually, I would like to re-cast this whole thing and move it into the original trilogy (Episodes IV through VI, meaning: Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi). As I got my Star Wars RPG thing started with the old d6 game from WEG, I know the Rebellion era is a lot stronger period of storytelling for a lot of people.
Plus, I can do more starfighter stuff in that time period… but it also means less Jedi 