Star Wars Week: Gaming the Forceful way
I have a confession to make. I’ve had the Star Wars role playing books for years and have never touched them. That’s right, never cracked their digital spines. Yeah, yeah, I realize it’s very not cool for me to have digital copies of all my books, but hey I live in a small NY apartment and books are effing heavy to move, so shut up.
Anyway, tangent aside, when we decided to pay honor to one of the all time greatest film series (the first three at least) I started thinking about what angle I could talk about. This idea was sprung from the filthy loins of an idea for another post coming soon to a screen near you. I realized, “Wait a stinking minute…I have the Star Wars RPG books…I’ve never played…I’ve never READ them….what the heck?!?” So that got me to thinking about role-playing in general and how it applies to Star Wars, different genres of gaming, and me, your friendly local jujitsu practitioner. Okay that whole “jujitsu” thing has nothing to do with this…
I started my role-playing career with Dungeons and Dragons, the blue box. You’ve heard my path of gaming so I won’t bore you with it again, but I will point out an observation. Aside from a quick and failed attempt to incorporate a small amount of 
Mechwarrior RPG into a Battletech campaign I was playing, I’ve never gamed in a non-fantasy\medieval oriented setting. Now I have a crazy collection of RPG’s. TMNT, all the D&D’s except 4th, WoD, Vampire, WW, Little Fears, BESM, and the list continues…but for some reason I’ve never been drawn to much, non-fantasy oriented gaming. I love sci-fi shows and movies (hello Firefly, BSG, Aliens, and of course Star Wars – the first three), I’ve read a number of sci-fi books (Warhammer 40K, Aliens, etc), but I’ve never felt the desire to jump into sci-fi role-playing. Why is that?
Well let’s look at Star Wars since it is what this week is about. Honestly beyond the first three movies, I’m not a huge fan of the IP (intellectual property, not web address, in case you’re confused). I can only ever remember trying to read one of the novels. Clearly I wasn’t a fan of the later three films. None of the attempts at animated versions appealed to me. I guess I’m not a fanboy, sorry.
Another thing that hangs me up when thinking about role-playing is the same thing I struggle with for games like 
Deathwatch, if you’re a super hero (ala Jedi) where’s the challenge? Sure I know there are Tarrasques and the like to deal with, but I enjoy the gritty struggle of the character clawing there way to herodom, rather than just starting there. Now I know in the Star Wars RPG not every class is a Jedi, but still it’s my initial perception of a game that I’ve never played (Deathwatch included).
I’ve always loved fantasy (not necessarily high fantasy only), cyber punk, and steam punk stuff. So far futuristic stories tend to lose me. That’s one of the things I’m impressed with some of the Black Library 40K fluff that’s caught me, now maybe it helps I play the game as well, but some of the stories are really good, even the Space Marine ones. So I can’t say I’m completely devoid of any far future interest. But the Star Wars universe suffers the same challenge (and requires the same approach to be successful) that the 40K universe does. In storytelling, when you’re dealing with the scope of deep space and multiple galaxies, you have to balance the Macro and the Micro in your storytelling. Every world can’t be a unique snowflake, there’s simply too many to deal with. In general the worlds you encounter become far simpler and more homogenous than the one we live on because it’s necessary to have a scope of storytelling that’s manageable. That being said, the generalizations made in most sci-fi I find off putting, hence another reason the Star Wars RPG isn’t appealing.
Finally my last thought is that I don’t usually find myself drawn to participating in the IP surrounding an epic tale that has defined genres for we geeky\nerd types. Star Wars being among that list, The Lord of the Rings is another IP I don’t participate in gaming in. The world offers little appeal to me beyond the tales Tolkein penned for us. I’ve never played the GW skirmish game or the War of the Ring mini games, nor have I touched any RPG’s that take place there. Now on the flip side of that I am extremely interested in the Dragon Age RPG because I like the gritty feel of the world, but mostly because of the rumored simplicity of the game mechanisms and ease of converting it to another world. The Serenity\Firefly RPG is the same as Star Wars and LotR’s for me. It’s epic and grand, but what really is there to play there?
You know, come to think of it perhaps that’s the real problem I have with these IP’s. The stories that have been told have centered so strongly on a few individuals and their interpretation of the worlds, that I feel like there’s nothing to discover, or of interest to me as a PC. There you have it. That’s the answer. Now my dog wants me to take her out.
So please, tell me otherwise. Convert my way of thinking. Regal me with your Star Wars RPG, Deathwatch, Firefly, and more gaming tales so I can open up to a new world of gaming. The balls in your court.
Photo: Care of natalidee.com's hate week
