Grand Master Report
It's report time.
The other day, someone commented in teamspeak that for a club based on the Dark Side of the Force, there's not a whole lot of people playing genuinely evil characters.
Now, this isn't the first time any of us has heard this.
If we look across the club, we have a few real monsters. Oberst is our own version of Hannibal Lecter, intelligent and sadistic. We had Sarin, who murdered his own family on the path to power.
About a year or so ago, I went to the guys in Plagueis with a new concept, a new modus operandi for their unit, to try to distinguish themselves and define themselves as something different in the Brotherhood. To serve as a counterpoint, Plagueis could be the traditional 'Evil' house to balance against the lighties in House Odan-Urr. The original discussions went pretty far down the rabbit hole. Slavery, pillaging, raiding and torture were all regular elements. Now, some of that got thrown by the wayside, but some still remains.
There are a lot of people who don't want to play the bad guy. Black hat evil is just not their thing. And to be honest, the term 'Dark Jedi' doesn't necessarily mean full-on puppy-kicking evil. It means that they have walked away from the strictness of the traditional jedi. I say traditional because in Luke's Order, jedi get married and so forth. But even that doesn't make a lot of sense. Remarkably few of our characters were actually trained as Jedi, so they have nothing to really walk away from.
So is it just that people don't want to be darkity dark evil bad?
Or is evil a bit different than that? There's no shortage of papers and books on the concept, and we can spend all day trying to sort out what true evil is. I mean, there's some things that we all can recognize are wrong, like murder, rape... but that'd generally not how most of us write our characters.
I think that by and large, we run our characters by the 'evil is a point of view' method. Halc is a nice guy, but to Mike Halcyon, he's evil. Korras is great friend, but if you move against him or his own, you'll think he was evil. Raken is quiet and effective, but he will choke-rape you if you step between him and his goals.
We may talk about how we're not evil, but the worst evils usually think the same. I don't think that Mao thought he was evil for doing what he did. I doubt that Hussein or even Bin Laden thought of his acts as evil. They believed that their acts were justified in the face of evil.
The past few months, we have been steamrolling across a series of planets and 'liberating ' them from the One Sith, claiming them under the banner of our Brotherhood. I am sure that the enemy thinks we're the devil. But that's fine. We're not doing it for them, we're doing it for us, for our people, not theirs.
I think that is inherently where the disconnect comes. We do what we do for our loved ones, for our friends, for our philosophy, and that can't possibly be evil, right?
Animals could certainly think that humans are evil. We hunt them, eat their young, imprison them for our zoos. And any time that they strike back, we respond with overwhelming force. Is the hunter evil for doing what he can to feed his family? Are we evil for making the conscious decision that our lives are worth more than the lives of others?
Now, Vegans have made another decision, of course, but most of us respond with a resounding no.
I think we all play bad guys. We just don't all play moral-less sadists. There is a difference.
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We have the independence games coming very soon here. James is running this for us at a high level, but what you can expect is a lot of competitions to pay in, and some pretty awesome awards for those of us who do the most damage and place in the most of them. Watch for James to make announcements coming relatively soon.
After that, we'll be going back on the warpath. The crusade will return come May, for the final month of Phase One, which is graded solely by participation. Importantly, good participation in May will have a pretty big bonus for the Crusade events in June, so please keep that in mind.
It's been murmured around that phase two will be more skill-based, and that is absolutely correct. Participation will mean a lot and units with healthy participation will have a decided advantage in getting their share of rewards.
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A few months ago, it was announced that J.J. Abrams will be directing the new Star Wars films. So far, they've said that Han,Luke and Leia will be involved in some way, shape or form.
It's also rumored that the new films will be in the same general timeframe that we operate in fictionally. The question that was posed to me was 'Should we freeze time and wait for the films?' I asked this back in January, but the responses got buried in a flood of resposnes for another issue. Since it is important, I wanted to bring it back up and get your feedback.
There's pluses and minuses on both sides of that. What do you think? Should we use the 'crusade' to hold time back a bit and wait for the films to catch up to us? Or should we just keep going and make people retcon based on canon?
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Ask the GM time!
Mirus asks: The Old Republic has become a large part of the Brotherhood to the point that there are even Wiki templates for TOR characters. Are there currently any plans to expand TOR into the fictional aspect of the DJB or implement those templates in any way?
There are a few things that will come up in the coming phases of the Crusade that will allow certain Tor era characters to operate in the DB timeline. Not many, but a few. We don't want to get too carried away, but it'll be possible. On top of that, we will be exploring old ruins from the TOR years as we get deeper and deeper into the Sith Empire space. There will be a lot of cool bridging between TOR and our timeframe. It won't be complete assimilation, because frankly, we were a club long before the TOR game came out, and gods willing, we'll be around after they shutter. But we will be integrating it to some degree.
Malik asks: how does the whole winning a planet in the crusade work? what are the benefits of winning since to my understanding the winning clouse doesn't own the planet, the DB does.
When the DB goes to war and wins, we all win. Here's how I'm breaking it down: Whichever Unit wins the planet get's the Lion's share and first pick of assets that the DC will install on that planet. Other units who manage to break (in first phase, the ratio of 1.0) in participation will also get a shot at getting some, too, since they did work hard.
So why aren't we doing 'giveaway planets'?
Well, originally, I wanted to give them away in trade for the homegrown planets and systems that the DB has built over the last years. It's an easy move from the past few years pushing toward going with only canon stuff. However, the feedback i received was almost unanimously against giving up the old systems, and I can understand why. We have all put a lot of love and energy into building those things up. So yeah, we'll be doing up some pretty sexy asset portfolios for the victors to take a look at and decide upon. Ultimately, these assets could be wagered in future feuds, if we want to, and that could lend an additional bit of awesomeness to feuds.
Mirus and both score DCs for hitting up questions for AskTheGM. If you want to score one of the easiest DCs ever, simply wait for me to change my nick to 'AskTheGM' and hit me up, or email me.
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And that is all for this time. Let me know if I can help with anything. I can be found on IRC, occassionally in teamspeak and TOR. Also, just about every friday night, we do G+hangouts with whoever wants to show up.
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First!
I think holding off on moving forward in timeframe is the more wise idea. I base this opinion off of some speculation as to how onerous and annoying a task it would be to retcon the entirety of a couple of years would be. I don't know that anyone would want to have to go over potentially mounds of good work.
Just my take anyways.
Ooh, boy. If we hold off on progressing timeline-wise, 36 or 37 ABY will be the longest year evaaaar.
I'm not quite sure what to think of it. Honestly, no matter what we decide to do timeline-wise, we may have to do quite a bit of retconning, anyway. 36 ABY, 40 ABY, or 50 ABY, what we write may still have to be retconned. Hell, a question of how much we stick to canon is another discussion altogether. But really, there's no easy way to avoid such a situation. Personally, I'd like to see the timeline continually progress, but that's just my own preference, and it may not be beneficial for the rest of the group.
So...I'ma let the experts give their two cents.
I think if we focus on events within our boarders and create the individuals or entities we use fictionally that originate outside of the Brotherhood, time can move forward and not clash with these movies. I think living in the same year for several IRL years will be bad for fiction and our organization. How do you explain having 12 Quaestor's within 12 months? lol That does mean staying away from some of the more important Sith Planets though, like Korriban, Dromund Kaas and Ziost.
Also the d'Tana Crime Family has always been evil-ish. I think the problem is that evil is totally subjective. If you watch the Sons of Anarchy you really get a sense of how evil people love their spouses and their children and live their life. Then the next day they murder a cop to protect the Club. Palpatine probably had family and I bet he hugged them. Darth Maul has awkward emotional moments with his brother. The problem with "evil" and this group is because we don't just portray the dramatic moments, but we're Dark Jedi when the cameras would have stopped rolling, too.
Concerning the timeline...I'm on the side of continuing to move forward. When the new movies come out we'll deal with things then, just like the rest of the actual EU will have to do. We have no idea what will happen so there's not too much sense in worrying about it. The 1-1 timeline works fine for us and keeps us moving organically.
As for the "evil" thing...yeah, we're Dark Jedi Brotherhood and not the Evil Brotherhood :P Some of us can be raging lunatics and others can be subtle. Look at the Mafia...they are not "good", but they generally love their own and will care for their own family. However, some will go off the handle and do crazy things. Most of them will unleash hell if you mess with their own. In SW the Jedi have lines they cannot cross. We don't have any hard rules guiding our behavior and we can do what we want when we want to.
Etah raises a good point regarding stopping time until the movies are out with houw you'd explain numerous leadership changes in the same fictional year which would be a very real issue if we don't move forward at all for the next two years or however long there is until the movie comes out.
The movie's meant to come out in 2015, right? Yeah, that's two years being in the same fictional year. While there are organizations that do a 2-1 timeline, Malik and Halc make good points, and it goes back to my argument that no matter what decision we make, we'll still have to adjust. But I'd rather adjust knowing that we are moving forward in our own lore.
Also, another thing to bring up: If this Star Wars movie does well, won't that mean more movies will, subsequently, be produced? We can't possibly expect to freeze our timeline every time a new movie comes out. Hell, we'd be perpetually inert time-wise because every movie would offer a new addition to the lore. We can't just stop and wait for Abrams to take care of fiction for us - after all, books and comics also continually come out, and the universe consequently gets altered in the same way. The bottom line is, we have to take this in stride without compromising the excellent fiction we write. The 1-1 timeline is solid, and I say we stick to it.
Oop, and credit to Etah, though. My bad, dude. You has been mentioned.
Not sure if this is a hoax or even if its remotely honest, but it deals with the closing of "some" of the SW items....give it a read: http://clubjade.net/?p=48647
BLARGF OFH RAGE RAAR!! :P
OK now that that's out of the way, onto the questions at hand: Our evil-ness and the timeline.
First, as far as our moral compass goes, I always thought of Dark Jedi as "evil" with respect to the canon SW view of the universe, through Jedi's eyes. We're very similar to the Sith, without actually following the Sith theology and rule book. Or t better explain it, all Dark Siders are Dark Jedi, but they all have their own flavour of "Evil"; the Krath, the Sith, the Brotherhood of Darkness, the One Sith, the Brotherhood of the Sith, etc. They're all Dark Jedi, they all fall on the "evil" side, but each of their evils is different.
As how where the DB fits into that...I'd put us on the dark grey-to-evil side of the spectrum. Hell, we're Dark Jedi, and by SW canon Dark Jedi are the opposite of the peaceful, fun-loving, cozy, warm and fluffy regular Jedi, which are "good." Some of us are more "dark grey" while others are purely "evil." I think whatever progress/development/direction the DC takes us in, they should keep that in mind.
Second, our timeline...I think that the Crusade is a nice little way for us to "pause" time and see where Disney and Abrams take Star Wars next year, while we keep ourselves busy and entertained. Yeah, we could just go on ahead and retcon...but why do so if we don't have to? The Crusade is a perfect excuse for us to take a little step off the train and just do our own thing without worries about the timeline.
tldr: Timeline modification makes for messy story telling, complicated character histories, and is just kind of bleh. Not a huge fan. The DB itself is going to need to take a long hard look at what happens in the movies, and decide whether we blow up our storyline (because they change the EU so much), or we just go "boom, alternate universe, this is where we live now". Pausing our timeline isn't going to affect that debate one little bit when the time comes, so I don't feel it necessary.
Dark/Light, Good/Evil. Isn't that all part of the fun in developing your own characters? Choosing how evil or light you are? Choosing what lines you will and will not break? My char has always basically been of the sense where he lets passion drive him, more than a pure Jedi would. He's not inherently evil, but he also doesn't become a pussy and not finish an enemy off because they've surrendered.
More than that, if you think about it, it'd make sense that we as the DB don't really go full out sadistic asshole evil. We still form a society. We have to follow certain codes of conduct in order to be effective etc etc etc. Plus we're not allowed to just murder other peoples characters because we don't have the right, so we're forced to coexist in a fashion.
ps: I'll be honest, I forgot that I had originally intended that to be a bullet post. It was not tl:dr at all :P
I just assumed that was your particular brand of "evil." Very cagey of you.
I also don't really see the light v. dark dichotomy in Star Wars as good verses evil. I've always seen the the Jedi as passionless to the point of callousness and the Dark Jedi as passionate to the point of overwhelming rage. It seems like that for the Jedi, duty comes before compassion and for the Dark Jedi, passion overrides reason. I would actually really like to see Star Wars do stories with Dark Jedi protagonists and Light Jedi antagonists.
Regarding the timeline, its not like we interact at all with the New Republic government in any way, or openly fight the Jedi. We're more a shadow organization that avoids galactic authority. Canon stuff is more a background thing, like if soap opera characters talk about President Obama or which football team won the Superbowl.
As to evil, in SW the Jedi are selfless and controlled, while Sith are selfish and passionate. That's kind of skewed version of good and evil. If you are looking at real world evil, the Nazis are generally considered the worst, but they had youth groups with nature outings, built the autobahns, and there wasn't a lot of rape and pillaging for its own sake. And when Hitler ordered Paris destroyed in 1944, the German commandant dragged his feet until the Allies took the city. Except for the Holocaust, I think the DB commits evil quite well.