GURPS: Star Wars (Legends)

I ran Star Wars - Legends.

None of this new stuff was real to me, and it was all derivative, made-for-streaming "content." We played exclusively in the now-branded Legends era, a place where new creators dip in to steal ideas for the nostalgia, while never respecting the stories or original writers of the time. In a way, it feels like D&D, where the new crop of creators can't be bothered with canon or continuity, letting any writer they hire off the street "do what they want" since they feel "it speaks to the new audience."

That is death for a franchise.

The new audience isn't interested in what you have to sell.

How they used to do this is get the older audience excited, and the new audience would latch on to see what the buzz was about, and from that point forward, new stories that could speak to a younger audience could be created. Simply "rewriting the whole thing" but "for a new audience" never works. Lucas knew you could never tell the same story twice, which is why none of the original movies were ever beat-for-beat recreations of each other.

Yet, here we are, with beat-for-beat recreations built by investor money to farm nostalgia.

We played Star Wars roleplaying during the 1990s, when it was fun; the novels and comics were the only source of "new" Star Wars, and writers were free to run with new ideas and shape the franchise's future. I hate to use the word "franchise" here, since it cheapens the creative effort by making it sound like a fast-food chain.

Which is where we are.

Star Wars is Arbys or Taco Bell.

What I remember is a good Star Wars, where the galaxy serves as a setting for sharing universal stories. These days, the setting feels more like a lead weight than a benefit. I can get better science fiction stories out of Cepheus Engine these days. The aliens here are more mysterious, the space empires more vile, the rebels more heroic, the battles more personal and real, and the whole universe doesn't feel like a "put on" or something fake crafted for audience engagement.

Star Wars is where D&D 5E is these days: a medium curated to deliver a certain, preset, on-rails, audience-pleasing "experience" that only delivers mindless action, flashy CGI powers, fake monsters and robot fights, and more flash than substance. Cepheus Engine feels real, like the player's starship could get blown up by space pirates, and the campaign ends then and there. With Star Wars, I am back in D&D 5E land, with heroes that can never die, and adventures that feel like they're on rails with the ending predetermined.

I am free to tell the stories I want to tell in my GURPS: Cepheus Engine game.

In Star Wars, I feel beholden to outside forces, to tell only stories that creators and a wider audience would approve of hearing. It is a strange feeling, like I couldn't tell a story where "the Empire rises," "they hunt down the Rebels," and "crush them all" in an "Evil Star Wars" campaign of a resurgent Empire. It isn't a story that would go over well with many, but as a literary vehicle and tragedy in the genre of Greek parables about how dreams can be corrupted and die, it is a solid moral tale of hope turning into despair and ruin, yet again.

Maybe the galaxy realizes "things were better under the Empire" and the influence of Hutts and space pirates in this new, open, and lawless frontier where the Rebels sit on the dying embers of the Death Star's destruction is not enough to sustain people's hopes and dreams, and that running a galactic government free of corruption and grift is a harder task than hopes andgood feelings shall ever sustain. The glow of good feelings fades when it is time to run the tax machine, space police, and military, and to get a million planets to agree on policy, as the criminals rob everyone blind and make their own deals with worlds and consortia.

Eventually, the planets will get sick of the constant theft, corruption, and grift, and they will cry for the Empire to return and for security to be restored across the galaxy. I honestly believe that Star Wars stories using the tired old WW2 metaphors should be banned; they have been done to death, and we are ready for new stories where things are not so simple. Forcing creators to think outside that "lazy narrative box" would be a good thing for the stories they tell there.

This is not to diminish the evil and power of the WW2 metaphors, but they are far too easy for creators to fall back on, the science fiction equivalent of an English teacher putting a red X on the phrase "many people say..." They are overused narratives, crutches that frame things in a tired, overdone, and overused framework. I want writers to move beyond the easy answer for evil and write things that generally disturb and terrify them within this storytelling setting.

In my GURPS: Cepheus game, I can do that. Refugees fleeing a war that a planetary governor turns back since accepting them would strain his planet's resources so hard that his entire government would collapse. In Star Wars? I don't think we ever had a story about refugees fleeing a war or a dying, domed city. Even though "war" is in the title, we never get anything beyond "space WW2 evil R bad."

In a storytelling sense, where meaningful stories can be told, Star Wars is dead.

But it wasn't in my 1990s game. We had amazing stories, just like that one, where the Empire sometimes played a neutral role or even came in to save the day, however reluctantly. They were looking for the same space pirates, too, when a sector fleet hyperspaced in and started blasting the space pirates the players were fighting. The players were the ones who tipped the Empire off, and then that situation played out. The Empire was "helping" in a sense, and the players fled the battle, the pirates too distracted to give chase.

And the Empire could win over territory in my game, and they did, as planets lost faith in the Rebels to hold together a galactic government. The agents of the Empire would walk in, diplomats, causing chaos behind the scenes, and then being the ones to help fix it all. The Rebels hated them, but the fight was real, and neither side was magically guaranteed victory just because "they R good."

Our Star Wars game in the 1990s was one of the best Star Wars games I ever ran, and my players were addicted to this universe since it felt real to them. Like a great OSR game, when it becomes a "dungeon simulation environment," and the world does not care if you live or die, your survival depends on your actions and a little luck, my Star Wars universe had that same OSR mentality.

You make your future and fortune here.

You are not guaranteed power and success, and your character can (and will) die, unlike D&D 5E's curated hero-path experience. Like modern fantasy gaming with too much focus on heroes and the heroic path, I want to forget these fake, MMO-like curations and return to a simulated world where nothing cares if my character lives or dies, and my success is my own to make.

This is the difference between a visual novel with one true path and a game like Minecraft, where you make your own stories from what you are given. I play one and forget, and the other I keep returning to so I can create more.

The universe doesn't care whether one side is seen as good and the other as evil. Those who put in the hard work will get the fruits of their labor. The universe is inherently neutral and a deadly, chaotic, and harsh environment for civilization to live in. Planets are not predetermined to see "rebels R good" and "empire R evil" - they will default to self-interest and survival in a universe burning in war and conflict. Nor will all Imperials act like mustache-twirling villains; some are in there to survive and protect their homes. Some have legitimate, genuine reasons to keep serving. Some areas of the Empire will be "less evil" and will almost seem like good guys, depending on leadership. They will constantly fight the "evil side" of the Empire and seek a middle path in conflict resolution.

It is heresy to even say that, since the ideologues are sharks in the water.

But I am a writer. And writers hold the truth as a core tenet and a reason to live.

If it is true, then it is true, and I am not changing my words to please others.

And there will be a wicked side of the Empire that seeks to corrupt its soul, Sith cults that seek to turn the war into a blood sacrifice. Same with the Rebels, the Hutts will promise resources and free access as long as they ignore their crimes and sins. Do you sell your soul for victory and let the innocent suffer, for the Hutts to sell slaves and drugs, and for corruption to run rampant? Or would you, knowing, lose the fight to a new planet coming to your side since you know it would stain your soul to make that deal?

Again, I can't tell these stories in Star Wars anymore.

I could use GURPS to run a gritty, morally gray Star Wars game, and that would be a great throwback to my 1990s experiences, delivered with punch and style. The holy grail of any generic RPG is to "play Star Wars" with it, and GURPS does it perfectly. Just because one side of the other wears the uniform does not mean they can be trusted; we need to know the person under the clothes first. Where their heart is will determine good or evil. The rebel commander who makes deals with the Hutts and the Imperial Administrator who refuses to let the Sith cults enter his sector and wishes to keep the preservation of civilization as their goal are both strong character archetypes.

And the conflicts these character types create are far better than the stories we get today.

They make me question the jingoistic side-isms that plague Star Wars these days and force people to think of others as people, not as cartoon characters.

I want the true, old-school simulator universe.

I want players to question motivations, not look at clothing.

I want the notion of good and evil to be in what lies in someone's heart. The players need to work a little harder to know what that is. For some of today's games and writers, that is too long a bridge to cross.

I do not want a world where we determine hearts by the labels we attach to either side.

The universe is not that easy a place.

Nor are its conflicts.