... Canon

Canon. The big C-Word. Worshipped by Star Wars fans all over the place. And the most used argument by roleplayers in forum discussions. And, like cannons, often seems to be mainly used to destroy someone’s concept, character or idea while defending one’s own.

But what exactly is canon? Well, according to the most accepted definition, there’s G-canon (The movies, screenplay and radio shows, and to a slightly lesser extent, the novelisations of the movies) and then there’s the rest of the published stuff that sports the Star Wars Logo as approved by Lucasarts, also called canon, but not as canon as Georg Lucas’ personal work.

How does canon work in roleplay? Well, theoretically, canon is the base of the background all roleplayers in SWG share, a common ground and a way to separate Star Wars from Star Trek or Conan. In practice, its most important role is to support out of character arguments, as in „this is not canon, and therefore wrong!“ The reasons for that are numerous.

The first reason is simple, yet overlooked by many of the canon fanatics: There is simply too much „canon“. If we would just be sticking to the movies, the thing might be manageable, but alas – few are the players and star wars fans who have the maturity and wisdom to stick to the movies when dealing with canon. Most fixate on the Expanded Universe as the paradise for Star Wars roleplaying. And the expanded universe is huge. Really huge. Hundreds of novels, comic books, games and game source books, multiple tv series and countless stuff fanboys wish were canon so hard they are trying to pass it off as canon. So, the whole EU canon is too vast to know in its entirety, defeating the very idea to use it as a common ground for roleplayers in Star Wars Galaxies. Odds are, the average Star Wars Galaxies roleplayer will not even know that she just ruined a fanatic’s immersion by playing a green-eyed Corellian, since everyone who ever read the appendix notes to the 1985-era novel „From Corellia with love“ should know that no Corellian has green eyes. Not that this will stop the fanatics from expecting everyone to know exactly what they know (and heaven help anyone who claims to know differently...), and blame SOE for not following canon.

The second reason why expanded universe canon does not work as the foundation for the roleplaying in SWG is that much of the canon is either silly, stupid, outright trash, or contradicts each other. The Carebears... err, Ewoks TV series? Combat droids jousting clone troopers with lances? The Emperor coming back from the dead twice? Clichees such as „the new alien/imperial menace to the galaxy from outer space, dealt in a single novel by a handful of rebels and then forgotten“? All examples of stuff many roleplayers want to forget, and even hardcore canon fanatics try to pretend never happened. Not that this will prevent the canon fanatics from claiming canon has to be followed in game though – hypocrisy has always been a strong trait of true believers.

And the third reason for the lack of canon in star wars roleplaying is that star wars canon does not make for a good massive multiplayer roleplaying game. Star Wars, and many fanatics conveniently forget or neglect this, was first and foremost made as a movie, not as a game universe, or even a logical, consistent universe. Its canon reflects this. If something looked cool, it got into the movie – without much care, if any, for the conclusions and extrapolations some fanatics would draw from a single scene. And novels are even worse. „Cool super power to deal with clichee menace“ here, „original cool idea for a novel“ there, mixed in with „and the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance in this novel too, since I need this to add suspense“ plots. That may work for a single-player game, where the player can play the central hero character, but trying to change this into something adaptable for a massive multiplayer roleplaying game is all but impossible. Of course, that does not stop people from trying anyway, with predictable results. Even SOE tried that approach, with the NGE, and failed, because the „single hero saves the galaxy“ theme does not work in MMOGs.

On top of that, even among the EU, not every canon is equal in the eyes of the fanatics. Computer and Video Games, even though wide spread and well known among players, and therefore probably one of the most common ground outside the movies, are rated less than the most obscure novels (unless a fanatic is a fan of something from a video game, in which case it’ll be elevated to G-Canon in his ramblings). Roleplaying sourcebooks, even though made for roleplaying games, are given less weight by fanboys than some deus ex machina gimmick used in a trashy novel – probably exactly because the game mechanics from the sourcebooks are balanced, and not as lopsided as the novel stuff, since we all know how fond fanboys are of stuff like „X is the most uber ever, you cannot beat it!!!“.
And, even more strangely, the game itself, which IS a common ground, is ignored completely. I can’t fathom why so many canon fanatics ignore Star Wars Galaxies in favor of novels and other games that are of far worse quality and internal consistency, but it may be a mixture of an inability to handle game mechanics well enough to „pwn“ others in game, unwillingness to adapt to another universe than the fanatic’s personal, tailor-made „canon“ fandreamland cobbled together from bits and pieces and omissions all over the EU, and plain SOE hate.

In an interesting twist, many fanboys even hate or ignore true George Lucas canon – not stuff „approved by GL“ that he probably never saw or read, but actual, hand-written movie canon, including entire movies. While it is always refreshing to see when people start to think for themselves instead of blindly following the great leader, it raises a question too: Why would they claim to follow something they hate part of the core of, and try to force it on others though?

Because „it’s/it’s not canon“ sounds nicer than „I hate to lose“ „I don’t want to roleplay with you because I don’t like you“, „you are having badwrongfun, you deviant!“ or „I don’t like your idea because it comes from you!“. „It’s canon“ sounds more noble than „I want to play exactly like that, and you should too because I say so!“. Of course, the whole posturing is about as honest as a politician.

That said, it would be easy to have a common ground in Star Wars Galaxies. Take the movies as a base, and then go by the game world. Even immersion would be better too - since there would be less clashes between RP backgrounds of all kinds and with game reality. Of course, right now the fanboys are crying out in terror about how stupid SWG is, how un-canon, and how much of a pain it is to play in the game – as opposed to watch Carebear... I mean Ewoks, I assume. Then comes the mechanics bashing, usually filled with inaccuracies and bias, the usual jedi hate and exceptions for friends. Followed by the fervent belief that all would be right if only we’d follow canon – or what the specific true believer has formed into canon.

But, if seen from an unbiased point of view, SWG is actually a very flexible world. It has a place for nightsisters that escaped from Dathomir, Mandalorians from the marvel comics, daring rebel heroes doing the right thing against impossible odds as well as organised rebel forces actually winning a battle, good cops and corrupt cops and inept cops, all in the same organisation, sneaky pirates, evil criminals, hybrid species and clones and genetic research subjects that escaped, cyborgs, force users of all kind, and all the great scenes and fights we know and love from the movies.
It would even have a place for canon fanatics, or, to be more precise, fanboys who picked their own version what they consider absolute canon – if only they’d not expect everyone to follow their vision, and had a smidgen of flexibility instead of the usual „this would not be possible according to canon“ fire and brimstone they sling at anything that they dislike in the slightest way.

Not that many of the average roleplayers actually want to play with such fanboys, especially those fanboys who ignore canon whenever a friend or crony may be concerned, yet bring it up at every other occasion.

... Law Enforcement

Law enforcement roleplay in Star Wars Galaxies on the Starsider server has one constant: Whoever, whatever PA tries it sooner or later gives up. At first sight, this seems strange, since whenever a new law enforcement PA gets founded every player with a criminal character jumps up and down with glee, and recites the old mantra of „Great! Without law enforcement there can be no crime, since there is no risk! Welcome, welcome, welcome!“ So, one would assume, if not familiar with the server or how ritual sacrifices were fawned over in past cultures prior to the actual act, that law enforcement was a rewarding role, and filled with joyful experiences.

Of course, that’s not the case. For several reasons.

First, there are tons of criminal characters. And most of them are just waiting for some fresh meat in cop uniform so they can test their latest criminal scheme - especially after the resident stormtrooper PAs got smart and stopped bothering with crimes that are not related to the rebellion, therefore saving themselves a boatload of trouble, and being able to focus on actual military roleplay instead of speeding swoops. That means that at first, any new law enforcement PA is swamped with roleplay options and proposals. After months of going cold turkey, a fresh dose of „cop presence“ stirs just about everyone who roleplays a criminal into action.
And it starts out great. The novelty of seeing cops walking around, writing parking tickets, maybe even making an arrest after a barfight or spice consumption is usually enough for most criminals to let themselves get ordered around a bit, and behave – wouldn’t want to scare the new playmates away, after all, and one needs those cops to feel like a true criminal mastermind for dodging their attempts to bring one to justice. And any roleplay scene that goes sour is soon replaced with a new encounter/plot with new people.
However, sooner or later, the sheer number of criminal characters starts to take their toll – especially if it comes to fights. When more than every second citizen a cop encounters is a criminal, things start to look strange. When just about every victim of a crime is a criminal (who usually will get his/her own revenge if the cops don’t track and kill the perp in 1.5 hours, and may have shot at the cops a week ago), the urge to serve and protect starts to lessen. When one starts to expect odds of three or more criminals to one cop in every fight, one starts to grow weary. When a cop feels not like the protector of a community of law-abiding citizens, defending them against criminals, but the bogeyman/whipping boy of a society composed almost entirely of criminals of all sorts or their faithful fans and friends, immersion starts to suffer.

Which brings us to the second reason law enforcement ends up going bad: Compared to criminals, cops operate with very limited options and a lot of restrictions. Cops need evidence to make an arrest/sentence people. They have regulations to follow, often restrictions for gear, and have to obey the law while upholding it. Criminals on the other hand have not many restrictions, but a lot of options. They do not need to have evidence, but can act on suspicion alone – or on a whim. They can usually plan where, when and who to strike, having the initiative. They can use any weapon or armor they want if they mask their faces or at least write that into their bio. They can bribe, threaten and blackmail people, such as a law enforcement officer’s superiour. They can even use the law enforcement officers themselves, siccing them on rival criminals with some leaked information or evidence, or just the right spin on an incident.
Not to mention that criminals, unlike cops, also can simply take a break and do no crime for a while, working on perfecting their PvP suit for example. A law enforcement character though is usually swamped with work – reports of crimes, small to large grievances from criminals and law-abiding characters alike. If they do take a break, people will berate them for not being there when needed – like we complain about cops being there when we speed, but not when someone breaks into our car. (Of course, in SWG, the complaints often sound more like „You arrested my character last week just because she was carrying enough ordance into the local high-class restaurant to blow up Alderaan twice, now arrest that criminal that leered at my leotard-and-composite-fashion statement! The three officers that my characters sent to the bacta tanks during the aforementioned arrest should be out by now, and back on duty too, so no excuses!“)
So, being a cop 24/7 ends up being work, not fun, especially if one has extensive in character rules and regulations to follow, and reports to write about every crime every roleplayer wants one to investigate while 90% of the other players simply have to type „/duel“ or „/emote mugs the target“.

But what happens if a law enforcement character actually manages to do everything right, dot all the is and cross all the ts, and gets the evidence for an arrest and trial? We get to see the third reason law enforcement roleplayers tend to burn out: They simply can’t win. With the rare exception of NPC-Alts or permadead characters, criminals, even killers, will return. The hitman one busted one’s back to arrest will be frolicking around with the rest of the criminal population one week later, with a more or less believable ic explanation ranging from having served their sentence fully (after all, if SWG-pregnancies can go from conception to birth in two days, and kids from toddler to teenager in a few days more, a week is enough to serve a life sentence) to getting a deal with the Empire – if they don’t just wreck the trial, or break the accused out of jail.
Not that this is a bad thing, actually, since spending time in prison IC is only fun in the rarest cases, and we play this game for fun – at least the smarter ones among us do. But it has the consequence that the law enforcement officer ends up meeting every crook he or she busted back on the streets the very next day – something that is not good for morale.
Wait wait, you say: Actions have consequences, so criminals should suffer more! They should not return to the very streets they were arrested in!
Yeah, sure. As pointed out, a large part of the characters of the average roleplay town are criminals. Drive them out, and you end up with a ghost town. And no one wants that. So, law enforcement really cannot win against crime, not without defeating themselves.

Which is actually a good thing, for criminals rarely can allow themselves to lose. I pointed out in another entry why roleplayers generally have to win, so this is no news, but it too can influence the law enforcement game experience negatively. If we’re dealing with players who are big into ic consequences that last, like permadeath or perma-exile, then we’re faced with out of character motivations that differ a lot between cops and criminals. If the cop loses and doesn’t get an arrest or sentence for a criminal, nothing changes for the player, things continue as usual. If the cop wins – one less criminal, which means one less citizen in the town.
If the consequences-criminal loses and gets arrested, tried and sentenced, we’re talking permadeath or perma-exile, given the average crime committed by the average criminal in SWG. If the criminal wins and avoids justice, well, nothing changes, things go on. That’s a rather big incentive for the criminal’s player to do his/her best to avoid a loss – and given the amount of options criminals have (from bribes and violence to out-there stuff like mindwipes of witnesses), odds are they will win if trying seriously.
And to quote a forum post: If one side loses all the time, it’s no fun. And if something is no fun, people tend to stop doing it.

Now, let’s assume some player of a law enforcement character suffers through all the stuff mentioned above, yet does not give up. What happens then, other than getting a job offer for a less stressful task, like mediating peace in the middle east? We often see law enforcement characters start to get corrupt. The temptation to fight fire with fire grows with each defeat at the hands of criminals. Why should one stick to all those pesky regulations when it would be so easy to teach those criminals a lesson by bending the law just a little?
And so corruption steps in, little by little. Some officers may simply look away when two criminals or gangs fight each other. Others may actively instigate such conflicts by various means. Some may even work with criminals to defeat „the bigger evil“, becoming little more than tools of the local gang. Others yet might break the law, fake evidence, or torture confessions out of accuseds. Or start to enforce the law selectively, giving criminals who supported them in the past more leeway than others. Or simply pay bounty hunters and hitmen for acting out vigilante justice. And sooner or later, we’re not talking about law enforcement anymore, but enforcers of a gang in uniform. And that means, they get treated, ic and ooc, as just another gang.

But let’s assume, hypothetically, that a player weathers all of this, and keeps the character on the right side of the law. Doesn’t associate with criminals, doesn’t make deals, remains impartial, and protects their reputation by not sharing drinks or body fluids with the local mafia. Does that save them?
If the prozac bills don’t make them unable to pay for SWG’s subscription, out of character stuff usually does them in anyway. The emote/duel disputes alone can drive players away. Canon fanatics and fanboys arguing about why this or that NPC organisation should reign supreme „since it states so right in the EU!!!!“, usually followed with „your character therefore would not do this!“ mop up the survivors from the emote/duel wars.
„Just /addignore them“ you say? Well... contrary to most other character concepts, addignoring characters does not work that well for law enforcement. If after the latest „my Sith-Mandalorian-Black Hutt-hybrid syndicate should be untouchable by ouny cops like you“ ooc flame war said organisation gets addignored, people not familiar with the incident and reaction might perceive this as corrupt cops turning a blind eye.
This problem is compounded when players try to solve ooc issues with ic means. It is really tempting to simply recruit/hire/deptutize criminals so that no matter what a particular crime PA one is facing off against demands to settle the outcome of a fight - emotes, duels, sheer numbers, canon-quotes about manpower – one can match them and beat them. However, in the long run, it only leads to more trouble, since people react to seeing cops and criminals fight side by side. And having to explain after each battle „please, do not consider this too ic, the criminals on this side were just helping us out for ooc reasons“ gets tiring too.

So, what exactly can one do to avoid all this trouble when playing law enforcement characters?

Honestly, I don’t know for sure. Players could play more law-abiding citizens, or at least characters that are not hard-boiled criminals with a rap sheet longer than the casualty list of the Death Star. Characters that shun criminals, and provide the cops with a society to protect, where criminals are outsiders. However, that’s illusiory. People want to interact with criminals, for various reasons, and people want to play criminals more than joe averages, if only for the freedom it offers.

Law enforcement could avoid some pitfalls, stick to player cities and the rules there, augment their forces with storyteller tools, or stick to specific crimes (playing a sort of FBI), picking and choosing their ic antagonists and avoiding getting rushed/dragged into every crime scene as well as avoiding close association with various crime gangs. And, of course, not to try too much at once.

Criminals could use alts for plots, to allow permadead criminals, or use alts in law enforcement PAs. Alternatively, or in addition to this, criminals could try to depend less on law enforcement for their roleplay. One can roleplay a criminal in places like Lok or Tatooine, with corrupt cops (if any), and get the risk of failure not by competing with the four law enforcement officers still active on the server, but by matching wits and forces with the dozens of other crime gangs. Criminals could behave when interacting with cops, and – novel idea! – try to avoid committing crimes in the jurisdiction of said four cops.

And maybe once we do not feel anymore like we need law enforcement so desperately, law enforcement, freed of the pressures and demands from all players of criminal characters, can actually become a lasting part of the Starsider roleplay scenes, not just a prop for crime plots.

Maybe it’ll even be fun for all involved.

... Winning.

Winning a fight. One of the most important things for the majority of roleplayers.

What? It’s not about winning, it’s about having fun? Who said that? Most roleplayers? Oh, right. And you believe that? Could I interest you in some farmland in the Everglades? No? Dang.

But at least let me dispell this myth that roleplayers do not care if they win or lose a fight. They do care, usually more than most pvpers. For several reasons.

First, roleplayers have egos that rival any pvper’s. They also tend to exagerate. So, if they win a fight in character, odds are, they will draw it out. Where in a pvp fight, people get dbed, clone, and return in a minute or two, (or respawn at the space station), in a roleplay fight, the winner usually does some fun stuff to the loser – no, not teabagging, please! Roleplayers are mature! They don’t do such stuff!

Instead they do stuff like cutting their name, symbol or room number into the enemy’s back. Or cut off a limb or two. Or set them afire. Or blind them. Or scar them. Or do any other disgusting thing you can think of, since it’s in character, and their character is usually a badass nasty criminal with a cruel side.

Of course, that alone would hurt someone’s ego plenty, but then, we’re roleplaying here, so that sort of stuff is supposed to have consequences – if someone cuts their name into your back, you are supposed to write it into your bio. Needless to say, such are the things that make winning very important for many roleplayers.

Speaking of consequences, the holy grail for many, those too add a great incentive to win a fight – for if you lose, you might have to leave the planet, the galaxy, permadeath, or – even worse! - admit your character is weaker than the other.

Finally, in character background itself „forces“ many players to win every fight – after all, if you are badass mando jedi emperor’s hand sith lord master chef, you’re not supposed to lose a duel with some gutterpunk spicehead. That does not really look nice in your bio. If you are Han’s big brother, force-sensitive god’s gift to all things piloting, then losing out to some dinky TIE pilot in your uber freighter (modded to look like a mon calamari cruiser) simply can’t happen, since it would break character. If you’re the most evil and powerful crime syndicate, controlling entire planets and stormtrooper legions as well as the rebel alliance’s finest, getting wiped by a bunch of pirates is unacceptable.

See? It’s not just the player’s ego that forces them to win, it’s roleplay continuity itself. The gutterpunk that just knocked your sithlord out, and the TIE pilot that shot down your supership are just bad roleplayers if they don’t lose to your uber-power.

But but but... one cannot win everytime! Right! So, what do roleplayers do when they lose?

Easy, they whine. First, anyone who beat a roleplayer that plays an uberwarrior is obviously not a roleplayer but a pvper. So the roleplayer did not really lose, you see? For, the pvper spent all the time pvping, and got all that nice gear, which he should not have anyway, seeing as he did not write the background for it!. On the other hand, the roleplayer’s super uber ultra powered laser and lightsaber resistant armor (vulnerable to a spoon made from mud from a secret place on Tralus – after all, every good character has a weakness!) taken from the EU simply cannot be equalled in game. So, the fight was unfair to begin with!
Same for space – even when we’re talking two identical ships, identical parts, it’s still not fair and not in character, for, you see, if you actually spend time flying, and fighting in your ship then you are not roleplaying! It’s just logical that such evil people who actually spend time in space in character should lose to the dedicated roleplayers who write stories how they spend time in space and outrun ISDs, in between running a criminal empire and pursuing the ways of the force. Really!

What’s that? Unfair? Yes, I said so, it’s completely unfair that anyone who flies a lot and spends a lot of time on his or her ship should dare to beat someone who does not but roleplays a pilot much better, running a criminal Empire on the ground and pursuing the ways of the force in his spare time, and... huh? You mean it’s unfair that some roleplayer actually expect that people lose to them just because they say so? The nerve! Would you really have someone with the finest background, who wrote in his history and diary that he ist he best pilot, lose to some fresh faced TIE pilot just because the TIE Pilot actually flies better and the self-styled ace never learned the difference between a starter ship and a heavy starter ship? That TIE Pilot did not even write „best pilot ever“ in his bio, so how can he be better???!

But anyway, to avoid losing – and as was demonstrated, losing would be breaking character for our uber character, so to save roleplay immersion we need to win – there are several ways.

What? Learning how to play? Heathen! Go away! Crawl under a rock and die! No roleplayer ever has to learn anything but to write! Piloting, fighting, planning – all is optional, all is less than the one true sign of a great roleplayer, writing!

The first way to win all the time is simple: Never fight. Tell people who want to attack your character for insulting them and killing their pet nuna that their character would not dare attack a powerful sithjedimandalorian with half the galaxy at his back, and ignore them. Bonus points if you can get them labelled as ooc grievers and banned from your hang out.

The second way to always win is to refuse duels, and emote. Make sure you are smart enough to not simply avoid all hits and attacks – even if your character should actually avoid all attacks, since that’s what his bio states – but take hits and wounds, emote out how your character suffers – simply never get really beaten, always keep „barely“ fighting until the enemy finally realises it can’t beat you, or your friends arrive, and you can use the common sense tactic to win.

The common sense tactic is the third way to always win. Persuade the enemy that due to numbers, skills, force sensitivity, raw power or experience they simply have to lose or they’d be powergaming.

If this does not work – say, if your character is alone, and the stormtroopers refuse to acknowledge that your sithlord would simply think them dead – guilt them into losing. Make them understand that a loss would be a small thing for them, but a big thing, a game quitter, a catastrophe for you! Show them the amount of history your character has, and make them understand that you’d have to permadeath if you lose. If they still refuse they are no roleplayers, for no real roleplayer would ever force someone into permadeath! Besides, if they are roleplayers, they’d not care about winning!

If all does not work, break the scene up, walk away, and remain unbeaten.

If you actually, by some mistake, get into a fight and end up beaten, blame lag, jedi, George Bush, game mechanics, the other for exploiting, SOE, Star Wars, whatever works, as long as you can claim that „if it had been a real star warsy fight, my character would have won“.

For that’s what counts for a great lot of roleplayers – winning.

... Forums

Forums. Refuge for roleplayers stuck at work, shining pillar of hope for roleplayers lost in the dark of the question whether a DL-44 weighs 1.3 or 1.4 kg. Battleground for epic conflicts between the fearless warriors of all things duel and the fanatic zealots of the holy emote. Generating enough heat from flames that, if it could be harnessed, it might almost make up for the amount of work hours lost on them by less than diligent office workers. In short, part of the core of our roleplay experience - in many cases even coming before the game itself.

That said, I am always surprised by the differences between roleplaying forums. On one side, we have SWG/Starsider roleplaying forums – often full of flames, smoldering hatred, and burning crusades (no, not of the WoW style, of the „anyone who does not play like I do is having bad wrong fun and should quit!!!“ variety). On the other hand, we have forums like EN World, about, hm... 10 to 100 times as big (at least) as the usual SWG server roleplay forums (while I am writing this, SSG has 9 people online, EN World has 1300 people online), and having about, uh... 1% of the flames and hostility.

Why is that? If I knew for sure, I’d probably be able to solve the middle east conflict as well, and get the nobel prize, if I could bottle the secret and sell it to parents of teenagers and disfunctional families I’d be a billionaire. But I can at least try to guess the reasons why a forum with so many more people has much less drama than say Starsider’s roleplaying forums.

First, the similarities. Both SWG and EN World deal with roleplaying. Both have a mixture of nostalgics and new players, SWG just has fewer editions to be nostalgic about – they got Pre-CU, which grows bigger and better every year seen through the rose-colored glasses of the veterans (who conveniently forget the flames and drama on the forums back then, and all the complaining). The CU (less fans, but less drama), and the current game version, the NGE (also known as „Biggest blunder of SOE“ in some circles, and „pretty decent“ in other circles, but mostly known as „the thing that makes me roleplay, since there’s nothing else to do“ – according to roleplay forums, that is. Someone forgot to tell the players in game that they have nothing to do, so the poor ignorant players are stuck doing nothing, and can’t even complain since they do not know they have nothing to do. Any good samaritan should talk to them, and fill them in what they are doing wrong, having fun and all, so they too can join the league of dispossessed pre-cu fans).
That sounds pretty complex, all in all, but EN World has SWG beat by a wide margin. Where people that started to play SWG 4 years ago are considered veterans (and therefore often think they have the „right“ to look down upon NGE „Noobs“), EN World dealing with a game that is over 30 years old, has grognards that started playing in the 1970s, when the first edition came out (and still play it!). 1e is actually a misnomer, there’s OD&D, red box, some may even count chainmail. Then there’s AD&D 1E, AD&D 2E, Skills & Power 2E, and then there’s 3E, 3.5E, and the recently announced 4E. Add d20, various other system based upon d20, among them the Star Wars d20 and the Star Wars Saga Edition (Hey! It has Star Wars too!), and off-shots of those and you end up with more game systems than SWG has had patches. And just about every system mentioned has fervent adherants who consider it the one true way of D&D/Roleplaying.

So, any SWG roleplayer with a smidgen of forum experience has already taken cover in a nuclear shelter, expecting EN World to explode with flames that rival a supernova daily, able to burn posters to ashes through flatscreens and fiberoptic cables - yet it doesn’t.

Why is that? Are EN World posters more mature? Can’t be! Everyone on SWG knows that SWG roleplayers are the most mature roleplayers of all!

Do EN World posters have less of an ego? Not at all, as anyone listening to the tales of character death and DM stupidity can attest to, the ego of some posters is just as big as anyone else’s. In some cases, like industry professionals, it may even be justified.

Aha! As many of our gods of roleplay can affirm, it must bet hat the posters of EN World are simply more lovable, and won’t be as nasty as disagreeing with a poster, or asking for references for cited rules, since everyone knows, discussions are flames, and disagreements will ruin roleplay!
Uh... sorry to say, but people disagree a lot on EN World. They also discuss a lot. They even use the dreaded „Quote“ function to not just quote whole posts (and spam pictures!), but to quote point after point of a post, with tailored refutes or questions in between. Yet it rarely if ever degenerates into flames. Why is that so?

Maybe EN world, dealing mostly with pen and paper roleplaying, is less anonymous, and all the thousands of posters know and respect each other, unlike on SWG, where the internet makes them scoff common courtesy? Again, wrong. Most of the posters may not have seen each other even once, ,much less played together. Compared to SWG, where many players encounter each other in game and therefore may be more courteous, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

But hold! you say. That must be it – in SWG, posters usually know each other, therefore they are more prone to flame each other! That might be true, even i fit completely ruins the whole „we need to mingle and get to know each other oocly so we can play together“ idea many players cite as the reason for spamming their in-jokes all over the forums.

But is it true? Upon closer examination, it may play a part. When browsing EN World, one hardly if ever encounters the oh so funny „look at what stupid spam I found“ posts, the „original“ inside jokes, the emote spam chain quotes or the lovable „thread hijacking to keep it funny and flame free“ antics of vigilante wanna-be mods. The whole EN World forum feels less cliquish too. That may be the size alone, but I doubt it. It’s simply the absence of inside jokes and „special exceptions“ and „meant as a joke“ posts that require people to spend half a week just reading posts until they know who is serious when talking to whom and who is not.

I do think, after reflecting upon it, that it comes down to two reasons.

First, EN World, contrary to almost every SWG forum I saw, is first and foremost seen as a forum to exchange and discuss ideas and information about roleplaying, not a stage to draw attention to oneself, or hang out and spam each other. They also draw a sharp line between opinions and people.

Second, EN World has a team of moderators who actually moderate. They don’t cut anyone slack. They don’t let people act as vigilante moderators, they don’t let others define what goes and what goes not. They don’t evade decisions, they go and draw the line between personal attacks and rebuttals of opinions.
They are dedicated to preserve the forums as a place to exchange ideas, discuss opinions, and to get advice and help for roleplaying.

Together, EN World comes off as a place where new players feel much more accepted than any SWG Forum I ever saw, and where the signal to noise ratio is much much better as well.

Is it as handy to hang out, joke, and generally chat with your buddies and best friends? Of course not. But, it seems EN World posters usually do that at the gaming table, not in forums meant to help roleplay.

Of course, since SWG players lack that table, we’re stuck with having to turn our central rp forums into spam hubs that rival Mos Eisley Starport on dev vacation days – I mean, it’s not as if we could joke with our guildies on our private forums, in chat rooms, or in special threads in a special forum, we have to spam all over the place, right? I mean, that would be intolerable! An outrage! Free Speech violated! We do have to let everyone read how cool and chummy we are, the better to show them they are not part of our clique!

And we could not complain about those very forums going down the pits due to flames and spam. But it’s not our fault, no sir! It’s uh... the fault of those who don’t laugh at our jokes, who don’t ask for permission to discuss stuff, who actually come to a forum to discuss roleplay, not read about panda spam. Don’t those outsiders know that just because we joke and spam that it does not mean they are allowed to „break the rules“ and post stuff we do not agree with?

Who let them on the forums anyway? What? Us, cliquish? Who said that? We are friendly, mature and welcoming, helpful, paragons of humanity! Anyone who disagrees is a troublemaker! Ban that heathen!

... Jedi

Yes, I said Jedi. The single most controversial thing in Star Wars Galaxies. Idolized by fanboys as gods and blamed by players for every bad thing that ever happened to the game, including hurricanes in the mexican gulf and the loss of the noobie melon.

The veteran players saw the game without jedi, with the first jedi, then lived through the hologrind, when dedicated role- and powergamers who wanted the power err... roleplaying challenge of a jedi were rapidly going through such in-character professions as chef, musician, image designer, architect and droid engineer (hey! Anakin was a droid engineer! It’s in character!) in order to unlock jedi, in the process wrecking the game for entertainers and crafters alike. It’s not surprising that this created a lot of resentment towards every jedi.

Then we saw the village come, and suck away most of the players who wanted to play a jedi but didn’t want to hologrind, or had joined too late for that, or wanted their original character to be a jedi. Once they unlocked, they were sucked even further away to actually grind up their jedi skills – alone, since any PC or NPC seeing a saber got a jedi on the bounty hunter terminals. The CU, and the respecs it allowed sped up unlocking, since many jedi found out that one could trade in cheap lower tier skill boxes for expensive higher tier boxes every 12 hours. So, after about 2 years, jedi were, to quote a signature from the SOE boards, “as common as Starbucks Cafes, and about as cool”.

And then came the NGE, and jedi were suddenly a class like every other class (with the difference of having a history of grievances and troubles, and the unique “feature” of having one half of the players hating the other half in the Elder/Respec wars.)

It’s not as if the NGE was not the logical progression of the jedi profession in game – anyone with half a brain could have seen that jedi, who started out as “gods” – a game designer was cited as a jedi master being able to take on 20 other professions – but kept in check by permadeath grew more and more “normal” with each patch, first losing permadeath and power, then losing visibility and more power (“1.5 the power of a non-jedi character!”) as more and more players unlocked jedi.

So, one would have thought that once jedi was just another profession to pick in the game, the whole “only powergamers play jedi” “roleplayers should be the only one to play jedi, they know how to” and “jedi shouldn’t even be in game, they unbalance it” would die out.

Should, but did not, for see – roleplayers covetted jedi for a big part, and resented them at the same time. For many, the ideal jedi system was simple: They would be the only jedi on the server, maybe allowing a friend to be their padawan. Anything else would ruin canon and immersion.

So, naturally, having everyone, even the unwashed masses who did not study canon at the holy G’s feet, being able to put on a robe and use a saber was impossible to endure for those roleplayers. It was kind of hard for those who defined their characters as unique special snowflakes by the simple virtue of being force sensitives to cope with the fact that everyone else was force sensitive too.

However, permadeath was gone, even the skill loss through bounty hunting was gone, so how could one make sure those evil jedi did not ruin the immersion of all the other, canon-bible following roleplayers with their hybrid bothan/wookiee mandalorian characters wearing saber proof armor donated by Boba Fett and being genetically enhanced as well as sporting cybernetic parts that made them a six-billion-credit man?

Peer pressure, that was the answer. Also known as mobbing. Jedi would not be allowed to play like everyone else with a potentionally deadly secret (meaning, flaunt it whenever they choose to), they would have to effectively vanish so as not to hurt the immersion (and fragile ego) of those players who wanted to keep the illusion that they themselves were the only jedi in game worth interating with. Almost everyone was allowed to go crazy with canon (usually called “original concept” and “roleplayed well”), but jedi? No, sir! Kill’em all, sir! Don’t care how good they roleplay!

Where criminals could “quietly” discuss their latest heist, kidnapping or planned murder, where smugglers could openly boast of a run through Kessel, where characters wanted for an assassination attempt on the Queen of Naboo could remain safe by wearing a fake mustache, where people could wear rebel armor “with the insignia filed off” and no one bat an eye, wearing a robe became something to trigger hostility on a scale to rival the jedi forums themselves, and flashing a saber turned hardcore rebels and gutterpunk criminals into upstanding citizens willing to enforce order 66 with emoted headshots.

Of course, it was just an in character reaction – after all, no good roleplayer would ever act on ooc motives, no sir! It was just good roleplaying to plot against the Empire in the corner wearing “I hate Palp” T-Shirts, yet consider the couple in the other corner discussing the force untolerable.

OOC Consent, the holy grail for every player town unwilling to be facing invaders, and for every criminal unwilling to go to jail, was either ignored or explained away as “jedi players have to face their ic consequences”, despite dozens of examples of how much worse stuff than being FS was revealed, acted out, and then glossed over so people could still hang out in the main cantina. Jedi players had no right to require consent.

And why? To protect canon and the immersion of people – often people playing with so many mods and “unique original concepts” that they would have made George himself ask the next bystander if he happened upon the Firefly or Farscape universe. To keep people from realising that they were about as unique as a drop of water in an ocean.

And, of course, to keep jedi special, and powerful. For, as long as one made sure every other jedi was mobbed into hiding, one could demand greater (emote) powers in compensation for being hunted. Of course, getting more powers for playing like you wanted to play – feeling special and hunted, hiding yet known to every friend, and protected by ooc consent yourself, since no one ever could find out you were a FS or reveal it – looks a bit unfair to outsiders, but who cares about them?

Because, as we all know by now, there’s only one true way to play a jedi for everyone but a select few, and that’s not to play a jedi. At least that is what they want us to think.