I’m the first to admit that my knowledge of the Star Wars Universe, both basic and expanded is limited. Seeing all the movies (each 3-30 times) and browsing Wookiepedia (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) should have given me a pretty thorough grasp on all I have to know make my way in the Galaxy far, far away, right?

Wrong.

The movies are just a tip of the iceberg, with countless books, comics and games creating new material all the time. The events described in these media span almost the entire length of time and space of the galaxy and beyond, but of course they are not published in chronological order. Sequels and prequels abound, and famous characters and places appear in many publications.  Combining all this almost invariably leads to inconsistencies, logic gaps and background stories which do not seem to fit together. Sooner or later you come to the point when you think: this can’t be right. Either this or that can be true, but not both. And you would be sooo wrong.

As you probably know, there is one fundamental rule in Star Wars, and it is: GL is God. What George says, and only what he says is Canon, the things that really happened. Everything in the movies is Canon, even when events in E1-3 seem to contradict events of E4-6. Vader did not know C3-P0 or R2-D2, yet he built the one and worked with the other for years. Obi-Wan did not know that Leia was Luke’s sister, yet he was there when the twins were born, and gave her to her foster parents. Yet that is what is Canon, what is true. And that’s just the movies! The books are much worse, inventing doomsday devices left and right, creating massively powerful alien races and ancient civilizations, time travel and all those things the existence of which by rights should massively influence everything else in the universe but oddly enough doesn’t. If you want to know how bad canonical material can be, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAAo5ePpv9U

I hope that at this point you agree that sometimes ignorance is bliss. There is so much stupid and silly stuff in the SW universe that often you are better off not knowing what is official. Chances are, you can come up with much better ideas in your sleep.

To understand why this is no accident, it is helpful to view all Star Wars publications as independent stories: Story is King in Star Wars, and it is much easier to tell a good-self-contained yarn on the backdrop of the Star Wars Universe then to try and integrate everything into one coherent over-reaching story arc. Games are not unaffected by this, as, for example, the KOTOR II storyline is more than problematic on its own, and even more in the context of SWTOR. This has lead to the famous so-called choices you have in a Star Wars Game: Jaden in Jedi Academy can chose to fall to the Dark Side; so can Kyle Katarn, Revan and the Exile; Galen Marek can kill Darth Vader and take his place.

Only you can’t, at least not officially. As far as I know, there not a single Star Wars game with a Dark or Light-sided ending that did not canonically require you to take the Light-sided path, even though the other paths seems more logical to everyone.

So what to do if you come across a piece of Canon that you think is, to say it delicately, rubbish? Just accept it?

That’s hard if you are a logical person: two contradictory things can’t be both true, unless you assume that Quantum effects reach much larger scales in the SW then in our world. I also have a hard time to understand SW logic most of the time: in an Empire of hundreds of thousands of worlds, how can anyone think that a single world-destroying space station would be able to keep control?

Should you ignore it?

You can safely ignore it if you intend to keep your exposure to Star Wars nerds to a minimum. The fact that you read this indicates that it is too late for that. The next thing is to group with like-minded individuals who agree with your interpretation. In this ‘safe’ environment you can establish a micro-canon, rejecting inconsistent or bad Canon, and accepting non-Canon which you like. Or create your own stories.

Every roleplayer does just that, creating a world for their characters without asking GL for permission or sanction. They never presume that what happens in their character’s stories should affect anything else in the SW universe. It’s their story, and anyone’s they which to share it with.

Beskar is such a micro-Canon environment, a place where we try to superimpose our own narration on top of the SWTOR story arcs, creating a world within a world. While it will be good to integrate as much as we know about TOR into our world, we do not have to take it all: for example, the first mention of Mandalorians in the Threat of Peace comics showed them as suicidal bone-heads who would fight a much larger ship with no chance of winning just to prove how ‘Mandalorian’ they are. We more or less unanimously rejected the ‘Lesser Mandalore’ even before BW replaced him in story. I think we should continue to pick & mix what we got from SW media in general and SWTOR in particular to create a world of Star Wars we feel comfortable playing in.

The trend in MMOs, of late, is to offer various exclusives with pre-orders of the game, sometimes even varying from store to store. We’ve all seen it happening.

I have no doubt that Bioware, which already has a handle on downloadable content (DLC), and other ways to make additional content that people will pay extra money for, or pre-order for, will have some ideas in this area for when TOR launches. As such, I offer the following:

PLEASE, for the love of Star Wars, make the exclusives useful.

So many times these pre-order exclusives are weapons, or vehicles, or similar, that are good for a certain level range. I remember in Star Trek Online, I had what was supposed to be some kind of kick-arse rifle as one of my freebies, yet I looted something much better not too far into the game.

So when I say, “make the exclusives useful”, I mean, make them something that a player could use from level one to the level cap. That could be anything from a unique hairstyle to a unique title and so on. That is real value; being able to use and appreciate the freebie at all levels. There is little to no value in exclusive items that get superseded within a few levels of gameplay.

Let any exclusives mean something across the entire game.

Far be it for me to tell anyone how to operate, but it seems there are tons of people jumping on the TOR bandwagon in recent months and what’s the first thing they do? OK, you’re right, it’s probably ignoring 20,000 posts on the subject at the official forum and asking how to get into beta.

But what’s the second thing they do?

That’s right — they decide to form a guild!

Now, seriously, if this is you… stop for a moment. Take a look at the tons and tons and tons and tons of guilds already out there in the official TOR community. There’s a guild for this, and a guild for that. A guild for people from ‘insert country name here’, a guild for ‘insert SWG server name here’ and probably one for people who play naked standing on their head if you really look hard enough.

So do you really think, as you decide to set up a guild, that you have something new and different to this mix? If so, go for it. Make a guild. Look for members. Try your hardest. But if you don’t have something new, consider the value in finding other people who were thinking of starting a guild and banding together in one, decent guild, rather than 10 guilds with two or three members each.

The value in having a guild of even 10-20 members, rather than a guild of two or three members which is constantly fighting other small guilds for each and every recruit is so obvious I really don’t need to go on about it… do I? That said, there are people who will ignore this and think they know better and that ‘some guy’ on the Internet couldn’t possibly provide good advice, and that’s fine — you can ultimately do what you want and it doesn’t matter to me in any way, shape or form.

Enjoy yourselves out there!

I. Roleplaying: Development

Where or when did roleplay develop? Some might tell you it all began with “Dungeons & Dragons” or some other similar traditional RPG. However, long before that, people roleplayed as children. Surely, you’ve heard of children “playing house” or perhaps playing a game of “Cops & Robbers” or “Cowboys & Indians”. Long before we knew what roleplay was, we were doing it.

We’ve also developed some roleplaying skill through video games, starting way back in the day with games like Super Mario Brothers. We weren’t *actually* a plump Italian plumber, who went to the Mushroom Kingdom to save the Princess. We merely portrayed him through our game choices. Jump up or go down the pipe? Get the Flower Power or keep on trucking for more coins? They were basic decisions, but still the very beginnings of roleplay.

As video games developed, they began producing roleplay titles like “Hillsfar” and “Curse of the Azure Bonds”, these followed the early ruleset of Dungeons & Dragons. You got to create a character, name them, then play in the world as that character.

Now, in the new millenia, there are dozens upon dozens of RPG titles for you to delve into, in a variety of different worlds. Yet, regardless of a video game being a RPG or not, whatever game you choose, you’re still roleplaying, believe it or not. When you play Grand Theft Auto, you’re playing the role of a car thief. You wouldn’t *actually* go out and steal a car, would you? It’s just a role you take on for the sake of the game, so you can immerse yourself in that game world.

Roleplay, at its heart, is really no different. And if you think about it long enough, you’ll discover more ways you roleplay every day than you ever thought possible. If you take that perspective, it really becomes less of a foreign concept.

Read more

Beskar, as many people reading this will know, has an over 18 policy for membership. There are many good reasons why we put this in place, but the main one is that it was the desire of our membership, pure and simple, when we put it to a guild-wide vote. As our FAQ says:

Is there a minimum age to join Beskar?

Yes there is. Based on a decision made by the entire guild, members should be 18 years of age, or older. And before you say it, we’ve already heard every variation of, “But I know 15 year olds with more maturity than some 30 year olds!” and we really don’t doubt you about that — such people exist. However, a blanket decision must be made in this area, and has been made. Please respect it.

Yet out there, in the wider MMO community, people under 18 want to cry and complain about such rules. One guy even tried this line on me via a thread on the TOR forums recently:

90% of the adults on MMO’s are much less mature than the average teenager from the many MMO’s I’ve been in…

You could have seriously knocked me over with a feather when I read that, I was so dumbstruck. And I don’t know what made me more dumbstruck — the fact that this kid had invented such a ridiculous “statistic” or the fact he actually believed it, and thought other people would believe it.

It’s pretty much something only an under 18 would say… but I digress.

He then went on to tell me that if I couldn’t control immature teenagers in a guild, I shouldn’t be a guild leader. Yep, some people on the TOR forums sure know how to type things without engaging their brains, sometimes. I told him that immature teenagers are easy to deal with — I’d simply throw them out of the guild, just the same as I’d throw anyone out of Beskar for being immature.

But all of this got me thinking, and I want to offer the following:

If you’re 14 or 15 or 16 or whatever, and you’re sitting there at home and feeling pretty bummed that guilds like this one don’t want you because of your age, rather than crying and complaining about it like the guy on the TOR forums, why not see it as an opportunity and a challenge to make your own guild? The tools to make guilds are easy to find and, in a lot of cases, free. Why not build something of your own, and gather people of your age — who are going to make better conversation with you anyway, I guarantee, than a group of 30-50 year olds — and build something of your own?

That’s my challenge to the under 18s out there who want to be in a cool guild.