Monday, January 29, 2018
Monday, January 22, 2018
A Little Bit of Information
It's funny how sometimes some odd information is hard to find on the web. I have been drawing Star Wars ships lately, and in order to scale things properly, I needed to find out how large the one thing that is common on most Star Wars ships is - the docking ring. They are designed to mate up, so they need to be the same size! I searched under all kinds of names - docking ring, docking tube, ring dock - but could find nothing. Finally I looked at official Millenium Falcon plans. Knowing the actual length of the Falcon (35 meters), I measured the length of the ship and the diameter of the docking rings, and got a diameter of 3.5 meters. So, if you ever need to know, there it is! :D
Friday, January 19, 2018
A Precis of My Star Wars-ish Game's Political Situation
We are currently simultaneous with the end of The Last Jedi movie:
At the very least, Emperor Palatine's exploration of the Unknown Regions (UR) of the galaxy started as soon as he became Emperor, but it may have been started under the Republic. He established a network of UR study bases, where knowledge of the UR was pooled and applied, and specially constructed - and expensive - survey ships were sent out to map viable paths into the UR.
In the meantime, three other projects were started, the two Death Stars and Starkiller Base. Starkiller Base was bigger, more powerful, and the technology less understood, so it took considerably more time to perfect, and when the Emperor died, it was far from complete. It was finally finished by the First Order 30 some years after the Emperor died.
After the Battle of Jakku, a year after the Battle of Endor, the Empire was forced to sign a peace treaty that involved crushing reparations and strict disarmament restrictions, much like Germany after WWI. The Empire still exists as a rump state, with defined borders and no military, in the northwest portion of the galaxy as seen in the standard map.
Much of the military escaped over the next few years into the UR, via the Emperor's charted routes, where the New Republic could not go without charting their own routes. In the Unknown regious they found various world and system-wide governments, alien and slow-boat settled human, and began conquering them. They soon ran into Snoke's sphere of influence, and fell under his Force aided spell, forming the First Order.
Politically, after the peace treaty was signed, the New Republic was forced by internal politics - i.e. strong separatist sentiment which did not trust any strong centrist republic, like the Republic in the Clone Wars - to partially disarm, drawing down the Allieance war machine to much smaller levels. The Centrist worlds in the New Republic at first resisted the dominance of the Separatists, then began drifting away from the New Republic.
Initially, it was a net gain for the New Republic, but since the New Republic was NOT Centrist, they had to allow worlds to join or leave the Republic as they wished. These Centrist worlds either publicly or, more commonly secretly supported the First Order. But the First Order that could be seen, those few Centrist worlds that were publicly part of it, seemed tiny and weak, as no one knew about the far larger and more cohesive part inside the UR.
Leia Organa found out that the First Order was far larger and powerful than the New Republic thought, and tried to warn the Senate, but bribed - and traitorous - politicians blocked her, and information that she was the daughter of Darth Vader was released, discrediting her generally. She formed the Resistance with funding from a few governments in the New Republic who trusted and believed her, but it was always a scratch force, more as a picket than a true fighting fleet. The fighting fleet would be that of the New Republic, which despite its draw down, was capable of fighting the New Order toe to toe.
Then the Movies (VII & VIII) happened...
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
A Back Door
Saturday my Star Wars-ish The Next Generation game finally started! Got off to a good start, I think! They heard the sobering news of the Resistance. "Does this mean *we* are the only thing between the First Order and a second Empire?" asked on of the PCs - good question!
They have come across what may be a back door to the First Order, and now are wondering what can be done with it. :D
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