I'm afraid—or maybe it's not something that I'm afraid of—that my work travel next week followed by some personal travel followed by more work travel will cause me to drastically lose momentum in SWTOR. Not that that's bad, but I feel like my momentum is already flagging somewhat, and I'm getting kind of excited about reading some more D&D. One side effect—predictably—of re-reading a lot of older 3e era books is that I'm more charitable towards 3e now than I used to be. Although I've had an on again off again relationship with D&D specifically for many years, 3e is by far the edition that I'm the most familiar with, that I spent the most money and time on. It's not exactly my platonic ideal of D&D, because I'm not blind to both it's flaws and the things that it does that aren't what I want. But it's still a great system, and there's a lot of things that I like about it, and if I run it in a handwavy "theatre of the mind" fashion and either just avoid playing higher level, or officially adopt E6 or something, it's actually got a lot to like. I'm certain that I like it better than any other version of D&D, at least. The d20 family of games is more than just 3e D&D too, of course; I also adopted and have most of the products for d20 Modern and d20 versions of Star Wars, The Wheel of Time and even Call of Cthulhu. All published officially by Wizards of the Coast. I have plenty of divergent third party escapades using the system too, not least of which is of course Pathfinder 1e and Starfinder 1e.
While 5e fixed some problems with 3e, and feels like an iterative version of 3e (that tried to sweep 4e somewhat under the rug after quietly taking a few of its better ideas) it's not entirely clear to me that 5e really improved on 3e. In many ways, it did things that I don't like as much as it did things that I did. I'm still not super familiar with 5e, honestly, even after playing for better part of a year in a campaign of it. Because I don't need to be. It plays enough like 3e that I can mostly fudge it and not worry about trying to make it be different than 3e. Some of the details are different, but those are details that I mostly would have had to have looked up anyway, so I don't really notice it too much. But I'd rather start with a baseline of 3e instead of 5e and then fix it from there. The "fixes" that 5e offered mostly left my major problems intact, and instead "fixed" things that didn't bother me. I wish that I could, sometimes, run an E6 or at least lower level d20 game in fantasy and in space opera. I usually like fantasy a little better than space opera, but not necessarily D&D specific fantasy, and it's always close anyway. I've obviously loved space opera since at least 1977 and the original release of Star Wars. If I was aware of it before that, I'm not sure. I was five when that came out.
Here's a few screenshots of Wulf Hengest, my "vanguard" hunter from Wave III where I could for the first time create characters with mixed and matched mechanics vs story. Prior to this, all hunters had to use one of the two hunter classes; powertech or mercenary. As a vanguard, he's got similar mechanics to the powertech, but pretty different visuals for the execution of them, and of course he uses a blaster rifle rather than a pistol. I had the idea that Wulf would specifically be a bowcaster specialist. I do have one or two outfits that use a different weapon, but those are mostly just prototype builds to look a certain way, while his "real" outfits all have the bowcaster. This one in particular is his everyday tac suit. I have some AI generated versions of it too for visual interest, but sometimes those turn out OK and sometimes not. I dont' know what they did with his boots, and the bowcaster looks a little mangled if you look at it too closely.
Anyway, I'll be talking about gaming again soon, and I'll be talking both fantasy and space opera. I wonder what it would look like if I created 5x5 Fronts for Space Opera? I really should finish the ones I high-level outlined for Old Night first, but I do also want to have a couple of Capes & Rayguns 5x5 Fronts too in the future.
And here's my Disco Sith Lord, with whom I just finished the story and entered him into the "semi-retired" phase.
I'm surprised I got that image, actually. ChatGPT got weird and feminist/Puritan on me and refused to modify it because of feminist/Puritan encoding.
This is what it told me:
Yeah, I get why that feels frustrating 😅 — especially since a “bikini” by itself doesn’t sound wild on its face.
What trips the wire here isn’t just a bikini in the abstract, but the combination of factors in the scene: a character posed admiringly at someone’s feet, paired with a very minimal outfit that’s strongly associated with sexualized depictions. Put together, that crosses a line I’m not allowed to generate visually.
That said, we’re absolutely not stuck. There are a bunch of nearby options that usually work just fine and still hit the vibe you’re going for:
Easy alternatives that should be allowed
A Leia-inspired armored outfit (metal plates, boots, cape, but not a bikini)
A dancer or ceremonial outfit with metallic fabrics instead of exposed skin
A slave-Leia–adjacent aesthetic but reimagined as sci-fi armor (same silhouette energy, more coverage)
Make her standing or kneeling respectfully rather than clinging to his leg
Shift the focus to heroic / cinematic admiration instead of submissive framing
Then I said, nevermind; give me the version right there with the green Vette and give me a blue alternative. It changed her pose completely and made her fat.
Woke garbage in, woke garbage out. Maybe I should just be happy that I was able to get what I did out of it and cut my losses.
In spite of the fact that my daughter, son-in-law and grandson were visiting all of last week, and that my wife was going through a bit of a professional crisis (at least it felt like it to her) and needed to spend some time talking to me and watching some shows to take her mind of things that were stressing her out, I still managed to do some reading. And, as I mentioned earlier, I'd been listening to some classic John Williams music too as part of a retrospective. Mostly during my commutes and then when I go out to my car during lunch, but still, it's something. A few things happened.
First, although I posted earlier that I'd been pretty soured on both Star Wars and Indiana Jones by the actions of Disney and even George Lucas himself, I still found myself feeling nostalgic, especially while going through the Special Edition expanded soundtrack albums for Empire and Jedi. When my wife goes out of town in a month or two to help my other son with his coming twins and I'm stuck at home alone most evenings and weekends, I think it likely that I'll pull out my old laserdisc rips of the theatrical original versions of the original trilogy and watch it again, and maybe the original Indy trilogy too. In spite of my fickle moodiness about the two series, they were good movies, which is why I loved them for so long. I don't have to have a relationship with the movies, and they don't have to be perfect to still be enjoyable. I also don't have to like the creator to enjoy the creation.
I literally just finished the Special Edition soundtrack end titles for Jedi—as I'm writing the last few notes are playing in my earbuds (quieter day at work. Or at least fewer meetings.) Next up are some of the incidental songs, like the ewok village music, "Lapti Nek", the original version which was replaced (foolishly) in the Special Edition by "Jedi Rocks" and then the original "Yub Nub" version of the end titles. My own folder is better than the soundtracks that I bought years ago in some ways, because I prefer the original versions there. That's also why when I watch them, I'll watch my laser disc rips rather than my Special Edition discs, or stream it from Disney+ or whatever.
I may also end up watching "Andor" while my wife is gone. I've been trying to get her to watch it with me, but she has been kind of reluctant. I guess I'm not "completely" over Star Wars after all. Like I said, it's not an ex-girlfriend. It's a few movies from my childhood, as well as various additional titles and media projects, of wildly varying quality. I can appreciate those that are decent and roll my eyes and avoid those that aren't.
Secondly, by funny coincidence, one of the things I watched with my wife when she needed to distract herself from being stressed about work was The Big Bang Theory, and we saw the episode where Amy Farrah Fowler "ruins" Raiders of the Lost Ark for the guys by pointing out that Indiana Jones himself was completely incidental to the plot. Nothing he did made any effect on anything; the Nazis would literally have found the ark with or without him, they would have taken it to their island, they would have opened it, and they would have all died. Indy brought it back, just so it could get stuffed in a warehouse and forgotten. That's his only actual accomplishment in the movie, according to her. This isn't entirely true; Marian would probably have been killed by the Nazis, and arguably, Indiana Jones reconnecting with Marian was a more important plot point than finding the ark even. So it made a difference to her. There's even a line in the movie where this is acknowledged, but whether this was a nod by the screenwriter Kasdan that he recognized this or not is unclear; when Indy has the bazooka trained on the ark before the Nazis open it, he tells the Nazis that all he cares about is the girl.
Anyway, shortly I'll listen to a Wandering DMs podcast, then the Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones soundtracks. I don't have the same nostalgia for the prequel trilogy as younger Millennials do, so I don't expect anything to come of that other than my original intention; hear the John Williams soundtracks and appreciate them for their own sake in spite of the movies. Then another podcast, followed by Revenge of the Sith and The Force Awakens, etc. until I run out of Star Wars soundtracks to listen to. I've got plenty of other music, of course, after that, to keep the same basic pattern going.
Thirdly, on our side of the social spectrum, there's obviously been a lot of disappointment in more recent Star Wars offerings, and a desire to have a good swashbuckling space opera that recreates what was good about Star Wars while excising the stuff that sucks about it. This is especially relevant, because Star Wars was just a grab-bag of copied elements from a bunch of older space opera anyway; it's almost as if the setting was a hybrid of Dune and the Lensmen, and the plot was a hybrid of Where Eagles Dare in space with The Dam Busters Anyone can do essentially the same thing; take a bunch of old space opera elements and rather transparently put them all together and rip them off. I've even done so myself. For a while, I hoped that the Galaxy's Edge series would be the replacement Star Wars I was hoping for, but it's not. Cole and Anspach said that's what they were doing, but only one of the novels actually felt like Star Wars; the rest of it was overtly military science fiction, written for former military science fiction fans. Not bad, but not Star Wars, and not my cup of tea either. I also thought that maybe John C. Wright, who's well regarded in "our" sphere might be the guy. He's got a four-book space opera that claims to be exactly the kind of old fashioned Star Wars rip-off space opera that I'm looking for. My daughter bought me the first book in the series (off my Amazon wish list) a while ago (for Christmas I think) and just finished the first title, Space Pirates of Andromeda. Honestly, I didn't really love it, and based on my now a couple of different experiences with John C. Wright's work, I think he's a over-rated. He's a great prose stylist, I'll give him that, but that's one of the author skills that I care about the least. I didn't think his character or plot development was anything special at all, and his world-building kind of actively turned me off on occasion. Apparently the space-faring races of his space opera Andromeda galaxy are just animal people, and their species names are the scientific names of the animal families that they resemble; deer people are Cervidae, weasel people are Mustelidae, fox people are Vulpinae, etc.
He also shares, to some degree, with Lucas himself, a somewhat beta (delta?) approach to girls in his fiction. The somewhat bratty space princess teenager with the special magical powers that nobody else has has to save the hapless hero several times through her astral projection. That kind of turned me off too. In fact, in general, he didn't really get the old-fashioned vibe of capable men who just jump in there, roll up their sleeves and make things happen. There's considerably too much reliance and technology and magical powers (of someone else, no less) and considerably too little on his own competence, resilience and innovation. And I literally groaned and rolled my eyes when he referenced Asian-morph humans as the most attractive. Nerds with yellow fever are particularly cringe.
And his Christian references were too on-the-nose for my taste. I prefer Tolkien to Lewis, but Wright is writing the Narnia of space opera, not the Lord of the Rings of space opera. I feel like... eh. I do think that I'll get around to ordering the next three books of the series—eventually—but I'm not in any particular hurry to do so. Especially because, see below:
Fourth, I finally found a lot of the books that I'd been looking for in boxes in my garage, which I didn't have space to unpack after relocating (yet) so they were kind of "lost" in storage. That brings a bunch of stuff back to the reading list, including an omnibus of the Drizzt prequel series (I read the original Halfling Gem trilogy a year or two ago, and meant to read this shortly after, but then when I relocated, it's been lost in storage for just over a year), an omnibus of the first five Barsoom books, the original Timothy Zahn sequel trilogy of novels for Star Wars, and maybe some of the M.Y.T.H. and Thieves World books by Robert Asprin (et al.) I also have plenty on my novel list already; a trilogy of Arkham Horror novels, The Mad King, the James Silke Horned Helmet four-book series, Dracula, and another dive after several years into Lovecraft, etc. Before any of that, I want to finish the Riftwar Saga and read the last book there, A Darkness at Sethanon. Man, I've got so much to read. But that's novels. In terms of game books:
Fifth, I'm only a few pages away from finishing the original Eberron book. I actually just need to read the Forgotten Forge adventure included at the end, at which point I'll be done. I'll be picking up the next Eberron book, which is the first module, on pdf next, as well as the next Freeport book, which is "Black Sails" in physical gamebooks, so my "what I'm reading" is A Darkness at Sethanon, Black Sails Over Freeport and Shadows of the Last War by this afternoon. I don't want this Eberron (and other) trawl projects to start muscling out Freeport, but some of them were ideas that I had in mind for what to read for a long time before I started the Freeport Trawl anyway. The Freeport Trawl, for instance, is going to eventually feed my Curse of the Corsair Coast 5x5 Front, so of the bunch, it's the slighter higher priority. But I also don't want to lose momentum on my Eberron Remixed 2e project, which now has a page created on the Eberron Remixed site (although not yet any content on it) and reading the products that I haven't in many years is the best way to keep up my motivation to do that.
And to end, here's a ChatGPT image of ghostly pirates; a theme of Black Sails if I remember correctly. Although, again; I'm expecting Black Sails to be silly, it mostly takes place in weird pocket dimensions, and it probably isn't really very appropriate for Old Night use. I hope that after I get past this product, though, that most of the rest of what Freeport offers will be more appropriate for my use.
UPDATE: Finally, I picked up Black Sails to start reading it this evening, and right there in the very first paragraph, it makes mention of Tales of Freeport already being out when it came out, so my order is a little wrong. Sigh. It probably doesn't matter, but I'm going to pull that one ahead and read it first now. I was thrown off by a typo somewhere, because I thought it was released in 2005, which was... obviously not correct.
Well, I had mentioned that the lag seemed to be improved. I
still had a lot of it playing Taul Kajak on Voss yesterday. I did finish Voss,
including the bonus series. There were two major problems: 1) if playing Jedi
Knight, then you actually defeat Sel-Makor as part of your class story before
you face his minion in the faction story and have a lot of dialogue that doesn’t
make any sense anymore, and 2) the bonus series is super long and tedious. I
did it specifically because I hadn’t in a while and wanted to see it again, but
I doubt I’ll do it with any of my next wave of characters (I guess I’ll do one
Imperial character too, just to see how its different.) I also switched to my
second combat style to sneak past a bunch of tedious trash mobs, and it
completely screwed up my buttons when I switched back. Overall, my Voss experience
was pretty frustrating. Too bad, as I think that it’s a pretty planet, at
least, but that’s not sufficient to account for all of the other frustrating or
dumb things that Voss offers. It hasn’t been one of my favorite planets to
actually play. Of course, if I can get rid of the lag by getting a new graphics
card and/or motherboard, that’ll be a major improvement, at least.
I’ve been waffling a bit on whether or not I want to do the
faction story on Corellia with this character, or wait for the next one to come
around, but I’m thinking I’ll do it with Taul after all. For all subsequent
Republic characters, I’ll just completely drop all exploration, heroic, extraneous
flashpoints or faction story missions as soon as I hit max level. I mean, like
a hot potato. I’ll abandon the missions in my mission log and ignore all of
them from that point forward.
Unfortunately, I’ve never much liked the end game planets as
much as I wish that I did. Hoth is the last planet that I really like. Belsavis
and Voss and even Corellia have elements to them that are cool, but others that
are not. I kind of like planets like Ilum and Rishi or even Yavin IV that come
later more than I like these three. Part of my dislike of Voss is the “anthropology
lesson” that the writers want to subject you to. They are proud of their
setting development on Voss, and spend way too much time going over it with you
as opposed to just letting you go adventure out on the planet. You’re
constantly having to navigate the supposed tricky diplomatic situation
because of the Voss and their weird culture,
and the impact of the Mystics, etc. The writers indulged in that way too often
with many of the companions in the game, but Voss is where they really let it
hang out there for the whole planetary experience.
In any case, with Taul Kajak now ready to go to Corellia,
which is the last normal planet, I’ll almost certainly make that my priority,
and just do Corellia and have done with it. Then I can check one more character
off as “finished”, or moved into semi-retirement is perhaps more accurate, and
decide what to do next. I’d kind of like to finish the two Ilum flashpoints
with Hutran Thanatos, actually, and then have him do The Black Hole and Section
X, etc. And I’d like to grind reputation on Ruhnuk with Maark. And, I’ve got
Anstal Tane and Vant Galaide to move forward with, not to mention Mirabeau
Tane. Plenty to work on; I mostly just have to decide what of all of those
options I’m more in the mood for. And as I get Taul into semi-retirement, I’d
like to make some outfit videos with him and Hutran, my two green guys, at
which point I’ll feel like their semi-retirement is more legit. I somehow feel
like there’s something still to do with them, and I think that that’s really
it.
And then last night, I deferred some of my real life responsibilities to "veg". I listened to some music. I watched YouTube videos about the philosophy and text of the Dune books (the more I learn of them, the less I like them. I'm glad that I only read the first one, didn't even finish it, and instead just watched the sci-fi channel miniseries and now the new movies. They were better than the books, in most respects.) And, of course, I played around in SWTOR. I went to Corellia, although not with Taul Kajak; rather I took my old bounty hunter Graggory, my old agents Johhn and Hutran Thanatos, my old commando Philippion and my old gunslinger Luukke to the Spike and spent some time in the rakghoul tunnels. I had earlier reported that I might delete Philippion, but I'm now thinking that I probably won't; he's my only commando, and I won't be able to showcase any outfit videos or anything else using a cannon if I don't have any commandos. Since I don't really need or want a second commando, I might as well just keep him. Too bad he has a dumb name, but the same is true for Mat Thew, Maark Luukke and Johhn in most respects, and yet I'm not getting rid of any of them. Oh, well
I took some video in the rakghoul tunnels and on the surface of Corellia with another low cost outfit on Thanatos, but I haven't edited the video file or otherwise done anything with it, so here's some other screenshots taken earlier of the outfit that I had Graggory running around in. I'll get some rakghoul stuff later. Because there are two daily challenges that give you rakghoul cannisters, and you can do them pretty quickly, I did them both with all five of the characters mentioned, netting me ten new rakghoul cannisters. If I do that a couple more times this week, I'll be sitting pretty with regards to rakghoul cannisters. I'm a little short on bounty contracts, though—next time that event comes around, I'll need to grind a good twenty new contracts or so.
As noted, this Graggory outfit is very "smuggler-like" rather than hunter-like, but I tend to like my hunters to dress in normal gunfighter clothes quite often. Here he is showing off his stuff on Dantooine, Korriban, Balmorra and Nar Shaddaa respectively.
UPDATE: Actually, maybe I'll go back and do the Voss planetary and bonus series Imperial side with Hutran Thanatos, as well as Corellia planetary. And for Republic, I can do the Corellia stuff with Anstal. Because they belong to Operative and Scoundrel. I can sneak past the trash mobs easily. There's no point anymore in worrying about XP or bonus missions, etc (well, there won't be by the time Anstal is on those planets) so the whole thing will be faster and less tedious than with anyone else. And once I've said that I've done it again relatively recently, I won't feel obligated in any sense whatsoever to try it again for quite a long time.
This is part of what I mean by "semi-retirement." Hutran Thanatos finished the main story, he's max level—but there's still plenty that I can do with him, I find, so there's no reason to delete him, and plenty of reasons to still keep him around for certain things and do things with him. I'd actually like to play the next part of the expansions, probably up through Ziost at least with him too... but I feel no urgency to get that done.
UPDATE II: Good and bad news on the rakghoul tunnels. I didn't realize this before, but if you fast travel straight from the tunnels to your spaceship, it still shows your location as in the tunnels, which are treated as a separate world from the world that you're actually on. This means that if you exit your ship, you go straight to the tunnels too. Nice shortcut! Also, and I think this seems to have been changed, it seems almost impossible to draw aggro now in the tunnels unless you literally attack one of the monsters. You can literally walk through them and not draw aggro. This is very convenient too. The bad news: I forgot that you can only do the Jeelvic mission once per character per week. If my goal was to get 30 rakghoul cannisters, I'll now need to do it at least two more days than I thought, or with more characters than I thought. Or, I can settle and get less. We'll see how it goes. Taking five characters just to ride around and binocular the ceiling in a few places each isn't the most exciting thing, but it's pretty quick and harmless and gives me the currency I need. Sadly, all of the other missions just give reputation, and I'm all done with reputation.
I guess I could do the Heroic 4 and group up with somebody or other, maybe... Might be nice to try something different, and maybe I'll even get grouping credit for it on the social achievements.
A few personal quirks of how I play SWTOR. All of them mentioned before, but never gathered in one place until now:
1) I prefer the tech classes to the force classes. I like the stories better, mostly, I like the mechanics better, and I kind of like thinking about the space, the final frontier (yes I know) as a frontier with settlers, homesteaders, cowboys and injuns rather than space wizards, templars, and weird monks with weird cult beliefs. I probably have at least twice as many tech classes as I do force classes in terms of active characters.
2) I prefer the more independent classes; bounty hunter and smuggler, to the ones tied tightly to a faction, and in fact kind of resent (sometimes) doing the faction stories on each planet. I do them anyway, because you've gotta grind for XP, and that's a good way to do so (plus, it gives you a steady progression of the XP booster items) but I wonder sometimes if I wouldn't almost rather just grind heroics instead of the faction stories. It's not the faction stories are bad, but it is that they don't always fit every character, especially the more independent classes, plus because there's only two of them per planet, you get tired of seeing them over and over again sometimes.
3) I'm not alone in doing this, but I always kit out my new characters on starting. I ESC out of the opening cutscene, and then send the new character a bunch of money. Then he'll go to the mailbox, get the money, expand his inventory, open my collections, etc. and end up looking way cooler than the basic character for the opening cutscene. The trooper origin story is the only one that doesn't give you as much flexibility here as I'd like, but you can still do collections, at least.
4) On the other hand, what I do do that is unique, I think, is that I also run around, open up all of the planet map, kill a bunch of enemies, do first planet heroics, etc. until I get to 10th level before I even start. This allows me to go to fleet and access the legacy bank before starting too. It also allows me to have a headstart on leveling, so if I want to skip something or even just have an easier time, I can. This is getting a little out of hand with my latest batch, where every week when the weekly heroics on the starting planets reset, I try to do them again. Each time I go through this batch, it's likely to give me at least one level, so I'm getting to where I'm closer to 20th level before actually starting the story. These guys will not have to do the faction stories very long, which I suppose is a good thing.
5) The light side and dark side dichotomy in the game is ridiculous, and sometimes blatantly evil actions will give you light side points and blatantly good actions will give you dark side points. I tend to use my own more functional moral compass when making decisions for characters, so everyone ends up a bit "chaotic good" and gets a fair number of dark side points, although not nearly enough to overwhelm the light side points, even on the Imperial side. Where I also play most of my Imperial characters as pretty "chaotic good" too, because anything else is kind of more dumb and juvenile rather than mature roleplaying of bad guys.
6) Speaking of chaotic good, none of my characters handle being told what to do very well, and I tend to have a number of pretty cheeky responses, even to authority figures that I suppose I'm supposed to defer to. This is especially noticeable with the Jedi, the Sith, the Trooper and the Agent; the bounty hunter and smuggler are already supposed to be anti-authoritarian anyway. I'm not sure why I need to play it so many times with characters who look different, but who basically all make the same choices, but y'know. The game is actually pretty fun.
7) I really like the sniper mechanics, and while I equip sniper rifles on them, as normal, I use the outfitter to put a cosmetic blaster rifle visual over top of it. because I think the sniper rifles all look ridiculously unwieldy and absurd. I have several snipers, and each of them have 8-10 outfits. But I don't think I have more than one or two where you can actually visually see a sniper rifle among them. Honestly, plenty of the blaster rifles are really long already. Plus, the visual cue of a rifle being longer meaning that it's a sniper is kind of silly. The range of even the longest range weapon in the game is woefully short compared to even the shortest range real firearms, so effectively there aren't any snipers in this game. Taking an aimed shot at a guy a hundred feet or so away from you is not a sniper shot.
8) All of my lightsabers for main characters are black-core colored. I have lots of black-core colors; blue, purple, red, orange and green, though, and I use all of them, sometimes in different oufits on the same characters.
9) I don't really like to go with very "traditional" expected looks. My Jedi characters do not wear rough brown robes. My bounty hunters and troopers don't really wear sorta Mandalorian or sorta stormtrooper looking outfits, even though that's the default expectation. I tend to think of everyone of my tech classes as more like gunfighters in a western... except in space. Most of my characters will either wear something unusual, like Anstal Tane's 50s biker in space look, or they will look more like what people tend to expect smugglers to look like, because those are the closest to "normal" clothes that people would actually be wearing if running around doing this stuff that the characters do in game. I know that the concept is often mocked as "space Barbie" but I kind of enjoy using the elements in the game as if I were a professional concept artist or costume designer. That's part of what makes the game fun for me. I also tend to look at concepts and archetypes created via costuming as able to jump out of SWTOR into my own space opera setting (SOX, or Space Opera X.)
Johhn in a fringer disguise
If spies had BDUs, this would be Saxon Hettar in his. This is his Dromund Kaas outfit, but I'll also use it on Hutta when he's not in his Red Blade disguise.
Beorn Hengest, a bounty hunter who focuses on the sniper rifle approach (i.e., he's a sniper, but his rifles are all blaster rifles) in his savage Hutta outfit. He'll be slicker and more professional looking on Dromund Kaas.
I think its fair to say that "gunfighters in space", with
the secondary "secret agents in space" are my two favorite science fiction
tropes, which by strict Campbellian definitions aren’t even science fiction
anyway.Maybe the combined “secret
agents who are gunfighters in space” would be my ideal approach. This shows up
in particular in my choice of character classes that I’m playing in SWTOR. While
my “main” most advanced character is a Jedi Knight Guardian, created long
before 7.0 when there was some ability to split origin story and mechanics, he’s
a pretty typical Jedi Knight. The next most advanced character is a Sith
Warrior Marauder, also created long before 7.0. I’ve only not played Ziost
because I know that shortly after I do I’ll lose all of my story companions and
have to go on a lengthy process to get them back again; the biggest problem
with the Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne
expansions. (I can never remember which title belongs to which expansion, so I
may have the order of those backwards.) I believe that those expansions make
more sense with either the Jedi Knight or Sith Warrior origin story, however, and
fit less well with even the other two Jedi and Sith classes much less the other
four classes. None of my tech class characters have advanced so far; the
farthest, in fact, of them is still stuck in the Hutt Cartel expansion. I
simply don’t like the expansions as much, and the decision to abandon class
specific stories with class specific companion interactions being a major part
of the story was a mistake. None of the more recent story updates that are
meant to be generic enough that any character can fit in them are really very compelling.
Not to mention the ridiculous and indiscriminate flirt options that started to
poison the interactions, and the even more recent “all story updates are
actually about our favorite alien girlboss NPC for this cycle that you get to
follow around and tell her how awesome she is”. I’d rather play the base game
over and over again with new characters than spend too much time exploring the expansion
material, which is really kind of sad.
Two of the more advanced, in terms of story
progression, characters that I have are Jedi Sentinels playing the Jedi Knight
story, which were created prior to the 7.0 launch, but not too much
prior to it. I didn’t gain legendary player status (having finished all eight
original character stories) until we were in the 6.x Onslaught age (although
with characters who were created prior to that) and all of my subsequent
characters are either 6.x or 7.x in genesis. I actually went a little bit crazy
after 7.x launched thinking of concepts that mixed and matched origin stories
and mechanics, so I created, for example, a powertech smuggler and agent, a
mercenary smuggler, a sniper trooper and bounty hunter, a vanguard bounty
hunter, a gunslinger trooper, and more, all as part of a “craze” of character
creation after the launch of 7.x. This is why I’m in the place that I am with
loads of characters that need playing and which aren’t really all that far
advanced in level or story progression. I should have kept my cool, played the
characters that I had, and then created new ones later when I was ready to play
them instead of getting started with so many characters all at once and then
stalling on their progression. That said, what’s done is done, and I like all
of these characters, and think that once I can fly them around the galaxy
taking video and screenshots of them in various settings that I’ll be glad that
I created them. And if the story progression is relatively slow, that’s OK.
There doesn’t need to be any big hurry to get through these.
How am I feeling on the new mechanics? My first
playthrough of every class I picked one mechanical option, and for the second,
I picked the alternative that I hadn’t played. This has been somewhat lost in time
as some characters have come and gone in the meantime, especially after 7.x launched
and gave us much more options. But let me go through each class, talk about
which mechanics I played the first time, and what I think about the newer
mechanics that I’ve done since.
For
the Jedi Knight, I played the guardian with my first playthrough, and now
I’m at level 79 with a Sentinel (and another sentinel in the wings too.) I
enjoy both well enough, although I find the use of hand to hand combat
sometimes tedious, and I don’t love playing any of my jedi anymore.
For
the Sith Warrior, I did it in reverse; played the Marauder first, which is
almost identical to the Sentinel, and the Juggernaut second, which is
almost identical to the guardian. I think that for some classes, this mirrored
mechanics with different graphics doesn’t really feel the same as much as
you’d think that it does, but with the Jedi Gaurdian to Sith Juggernaut
and Jedi Sentinel to Sith Marauder comparison, they really feel and look
very much the same, with only a few minor graphical differences (like
force choke vs force hold, etc.)
This
isn’t quite as true for the Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Consular. I used the
Assassin/Shadow, which is the double-bladed lightsaber for both, and while
they are very similar, the lightning sorcerer and rock-throwing …. whatever
it’s called, I can’t even remember… is a little different. I didn’t find combat
very interesting with the double-bladed lightsaber type, and combined with
stories that I didn’t really love, my experience with those two characters
was bottom-tier—for this game, at least. I find combat with the lightning
sorcerer more interesting, but of course, it’s still not paired with great
stories. Both my current inquisitor and consular are sorcerers (well, a
sorcerer and sorceress.) In general, I have few of the Jedi and Sith
classes because I like the mechanics a little less, and I like the stories
and characters less, and George Lucas himself has overplayed the Jedi and
lightsaber fighting to the point where its now less interesting to me than
gunfighters in space, as mentioned above.
For
my original trooper, I played the commando with the big Jesse Ventura
minigun from Predator look. I played him straight, as a trooper, and found
the story was better than I expected. But the character and the trope was
about what I expected, which expectation was low. I liked the mechanics
well enough, but they felt very tied to the concept of an armored soldier,
and I haven’t had any reason to think about using them again on another
character. The alternative is the Vanguard, which is a visually much less
interesting take on the bounty hunter Powertech, except with a rifle. I do
have a vanguard, although I’m playing a bounty hunter for it, and using
the wookie bowcaster as a signature weapon on that character. I loved the Powertech,
and while the vanguard is supposedly mirrored, I find it much more dull in
actual play.
For
my original smuggler, I played a gunslinger, a class that I ended up
liking enough that I’ve created several other gunslingers since—although
they’re doing different class stories, an agent and a trooper
respectively. My next smuggler was a scoundrel, and while I like sneaking
around, avoiding tedious fights that I don’t want, and bashing people in
the head in a sneak attack, I actually think that mechanically this one is
kind of boring. The best rotation is to just keep pistol-whipping and
punching enemies up close, which is not only boring but kind of ridiculous
at some point. Punching big monsters, robots and sith lords in the face
with your fists is funny for a littlewhile, then it’s just silly. I did create a second scoundrel to
play as a trooper, but I haven’t really started with him yet.
For
my original agent, I played a sniper, and I liked him as much as I did my
gunslinger, and for the same reasons. I also have a sniper bounty hunter
and a sniper trooper, where I feel that the mechanics also work fairly
well. As you can see, my subsequent troopers are taking a different tack
than the first one;lighter
armored, more like secret agents than soldiers, which actually works pretty
well for the story and types of missions that we do in that class,
anda much more independent and
cheeky personality; more like James Bonds’ interactions with Judi Dench in
Casino Royale or Skyfall than the more overtly military approach that the
writers clearly assumed. And it works well, especially when using classes
like the scoundrel, gunslinger and sniper. In any case, my second agent
was an operative, and he’s my first character beyond the original eight
that I did that I finished. My scoundrel is direct damage, while my
operative was damage over time, so although mirrored, they felt quite
different, and I enjoyed combat more with my operative than I do with my
scoundrel, for whatever reason. For both, I appreciate the invisibility
setting that comes with the class a lot.
My
original bounty hunter was a Powertech, and I love both the powertech and
mercenary, and have several characters of each across all of the tech
origin stories. Those are probably my two favorite classes from a
mechanical perspective, and the bounty hunter is one of my favorite
stories too, representing the iconic spaghetti western gunslinger in space.
Sadly, the story is sometimes a little bit too straightforward and lacks
oomph, and I regret both that it’s too tied to the Imperial faction when
it clearly craves to be independent (same problem with the smuggler story,
by the way) and that it didn’t swing bigger and go for a home run, instead
settling for a competent base hit storyline that never really disappoints
in the details, just maybe a little bit in the big picture.
Anyway, Taul Kajak, my Mirialan Jedi Sentinel just finished
Belsavis, including the bonus series and the little mini-mission between
Belsavis and Voss, and is level 79. He’s going to go to the bench for a week or
so, probably. Anstal Tane just finished Alderaan, but I still need to do the
bonus series and the little mini missions that wrap up Act 1 of the story
before heading to the Republic side of Balmorra to start Act II. Although I
didn’t play him last night, he’s still in play this week, and I’d like to do
Balmorra with him before the weekend is over with, at least. And Vant Galaide,
a mercenary bounty hunter, just finished Balmorra (including the bonus series)
and is tearing up Nar Shaddaa as we speak. Of the three, he’s the one I’ve had
the most fun playing, which is probably
good, because I’d like to get him a little bit ahead of the rest of the pack,
and maybe even get him up to Tane’s place in the story, finished Act I entirely,
before I pick up someone else. Those three characters will probably occupy the
majority of my playing for the next week or two at least, and then I’ll see who
I want to pick up next.
Two of Vant Galaide's looks, both of which look good on Nar Shaddaa
One recurring theme of my hobbyist endeavor is space opera vs fantasy. In reality, I don’t want to pit them against each other, because I like them both a lot, but one has to be a favorite that gets the more of my attention than the other. My love for space opera tends to come in waves, while my love for fantasy is more along the lines of “steady background noise.” Sometimes space opera crests high enough to rise above the level of fantasy, but other times it troughs to a point lower than fantasy. I still love space opera, but when that happens, fantasy by default comes to the fore. In contrast, I don’t think my love of fantasy is very variable. I think it’s constant. But from a practical standpoint, that’s not very different than going back and forth between the two. I have two settings that I’m nominally still developing, although I don’t do much with either anymore on a regular basis; one is a fantasy setting that’s kind of like a grubbier, darker, almost horror-like sword & sorcery; Conan combined with the X-files, maybe you could call it if you’re OK with handwavey shorthand, the other is a kind of Star Wars-like frontier zone space opera. Considering that Star Wars as a setting is quite broad, I’d suggest that from a setting perspective, its more like the Mandalorian show than the mainline movies; more toned down, more frontier and fringer focused, more aligned with a lot of the same literature that Star Wars itself synthesized than with Star Wars itself as its become since the first movie was released in the 70s.
In many respects, the difference between the two genres is less marked than you would think, and more based on superficial cues rather than major structural ones. One side effect of Star Wars is that fantasy elements in science fiction have become more mainstream than ever, and the idea of literal space wizards and monsters being fought with swords by space-faring fantasy heroes is a mainstream idea. For both genres, I’d guess that I’m more interested in telling stories, or exploring situations if we’re in an RPG environment, that aren’t unique to either genre. Intrigue, skullduggery, frontier/wilderness exploration, and thriller/mystery with a darker supernatural twist would be common to both; although it would “look” a little different in a space-faring setting than in a fantasy setting. But looking different and being different are not the same. Like the iconic and much maligned (in the past; somewhat rehabilitated today) Bat Durston story, but as likely to be a space hardboiled or a space horror story or a Cold War space spy thriller as a space western. The point is that they are plots and characters that are not unique or original to science fiction, but the setting is a science fictional setting.
I’ve also talked before about how as a kid, I wasn’t very interested in Westerns. I thought that they were an old-fashioned story from my dad’s generation. But in reality, as I’ve come to discover, it was the setting, not the tropes of the genre itself, that I struggled with. I’ve since both come to appreciate the setting of the Old West, largely driven by my many wonderful hiking trips taken over the same territory in west Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana, and my appreciation of the tropes of the Western as a superlatively American story about the American character. The same is true about hardboiled stories, although they are more cynical, obviously, and the Cold War spy thriller is maybe not uniquely American given that its most iconic example is James Bond, who is a British character written by a British author, but it certainly captures the zeitgeist of Western civilization including America during much of the twentieth century. Although the Cold War is over, I think most have found that the themes are still relevant with only minor adjustment. Frankly, although I dislike subversion of genres, I think in this case it makes some sense to cast the Western globalists as the villains. It was already a theme in spy novels that spies questioned the morality of their actions, and had cynical doubts about the governments that they represented, so this is maybe less of a subversion and more of an expansion of an existing theme.
This begs the question; if I’m more interested in crime stories, hardboiled stories, Western stories, spy thriller stories, etc. why not just operate in those genres explicitly? What does adding a fantasy or space opera setting add to the experience? That’s a good question. I’m not sure that I know the answer to that, but I can noodle around with some of my own thoughts. First off; I like fantasy and science fiction settings for their own sake. I like making up the details rather than having to research them, I like the exotic nature of alien planets and fantastic settings. They’re fun, and as a fan of fantasy and science fiction, it’s a big part of why I think it’s fun. Exploring the exotic setting is a reward in its own right. Secondly, having that setting means that problems which couldn’t be an issue in a more realistic setting can be used when desired. If you’ve ever read Jeff Sutton’s First On the Moon, a Cold War spy thriller written in the late 50s involving astronauts trying to claim the Moon as sovereign territory for their respective empires pits an American astronaut vs a Soviet saboteur embedded within his crew. But the story involves astronauts in an extremely hostile environment, and technical problems involving the launch of the lander, the oxygen stores, etc. play an important part of the plot, which wouldn’t be the same if it were set in even the most hostile Earthly environment, like Antarctica or something (except possibly deep underwater.) Thirdly, the themes of those stories play a little different in different settings. Given that the actual cultural landscape has changed since Westerns were as popular as they once were, for instance, or hardboiled stories, there often has to be subtle updates to the themes too. Putting them in a different setting makes the themes stand out, and the nuance between a cowboy in space and a cowboy in 1870s or 1880s in the Territorial west is different. It’s a bit difficult to explore a theme about culture clash with all of the baggage that our culture has heaped on the actual Old West and the specific peoples who lived there, but if you wipe the slate clean and use stand-ins to explore those same themes, it’s significantly different. Granted, I don’t mean literal stand-ins, because I dislike allegory being too strong myself, although maybe not as much as Tolkien famously did, but I’m not interested in exploring the relationship between the American homesteaders and the Sioux or Comanche, I’m just interested in exploring some similar situations, and maybe seeing how it applies to colonist Third Worlders feeling entitled to take our First World countries from us. Or just exploring the theme more generally and seeing where it goes. And fourth, if there is any allegorical (or applicability) issue, as noted offhand just now, stripping the baggage of real history and what people believe about it due to propaganda or for whatever other reason, makes the theme more robust and applicable. It isn’t going to be very applicable if people can’t see past the real life players and their biases with regards to them.
Not that exploring cultural or political themes is really my intention with either fantasy or space opera. But you can’t help but introduce them, the same as your biases and beliefs, even if you don’t want to, so I don’t pretend to ignore them, I just don’t want to make them the major focus of anything I do. But they will certainly lurk in the background, because you can’t help but have them lurk in the background of any type of creative work.
Taul Kajak, shown above in his very original look, just finished Belsavis (including the bonus series) and hit level 79. He's about 20% or so of the way towards level 80, just guesstimating on the green XP bar, which given that I've still got two whole planets to finish before I get to the end of his normal story, is more than enough. Given that I haven't played the planetary or bonus series on Voss or Corellia in a long time, I'm actually thinking that I might do them with Taul.
But I'm also feeling a little burned out with him for the time being, so it's time for him to tag someone else in and take a break on the bench for a little while. Playing Jedi is a bit more tedious than most because you have to engage everyone in hand to hand rather than just sitting back and plinking your enemies to death by spamming the 1 key. Which isn't exactly fun either, but it least it's not difficult or tedious, so it's to be preferred sometimes.
On the other hand, if I wanted to finish him off, I could ignore the planetary stories entirely, just do the class stories, and be done fairly quickly, and still have no problem getting to level 80 before I'm done (and if for some reason, I'm not quite at 80, spamming the Coruscant Heroics would probably put me over the top.)
The history of the space opera is an interesting one. Arguably, space opera is the earliest and original format of science fiction other than some proto-science fiction adventures. (It’s arguable, because some critics distinguish between space opera and planetary romance. Which I actually think is fair, although it’s questionable to what degree you can really call planetary romance true science fiction at all, honestly. Edgar Rice Burroughs kind of created his own thing with the Barsoom books and others that bear little resemblance to much of the science fiction that followed.) E. E. “Doc” Smith is usually credited as the founder of space opera as it was known in the 30s and 40s when it was quite popular. In addition to Smith—who sadly, I have never read—some important authors in this space and time include Edmond Hamilton (often credited as a co-founder of the subgenre, along with Smith), Leigh Brackett and others, many of whom I have read.
Realistically, many of the “non space opera” science fiction of the 50s and 60s, like Tubbs’ Dumarest, Dickson’s Dorsai, Herbert’s Dune (don’t know why everything starts with D) or Niven’s Known Space or Piper’s Terro-Human Future, and many others that are later, like Alan Dean Foster’s Pip and Flinx from the 80s, etc. were heavily influenced by space opera, including the big sweeping scale, interstellar empires and space feudalism, etc. although the focus of the stories was perhaps less on the space opera-like setting and swashbuckling melodramatic plots. Joseph Campbell and his stable of authors like Isaac Asimov and others may have done sweeping interstellar empires, but they notoriously disliked space opera, and were part of a cabal of editors and writers who kept it down in science fiction literature during much of the 50s and 60s… although it lingered in other media for some time; the Buster Crabbe Republic serials of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were hugely popular (as were the source material that they were based on in decades past.) But it’s fair to say that space opera was at a nadir during much of the 60s and 70s until George Lucas and his friend and frequent collaborator/partner producer Gary Kurtz were chatting during or shortly after the filming they did together of American Graffiti about what to work on next, and they both agreed that the kind of fun, action and melodrama oriented space opera of the Flash Gordon Republic Serials was something that they both missed and would love to work on. Which of course, they did, a little bit later. Dino de Laurentis owned the rights to Flash Gordon and wouldn’t let them go, so Lucas set about synthesizing all of the science fiction, especially the old space opera stuff that he read, into a new setting that was little more than a fusion of a bunch of stock elements, with very little that was truly new or innovative, other than 1) its obvious and immediate intention for a new medium: feature films, and the changes that that would entail, 2) lots of psionic powers and mysticism was pretty normal in the genre by this point (see the Bene Gesserit of Dune, for instance) but combining them with Oriental mysticism in particular and Japanese samurai films in particular was a new idea. To be fair, the influence of the samurai picture was greatly reduced from Lucas’ early drafts, but greatly reduced does not equal completely excised, and some of it lingered in the conception of the Jedi. 3) Although neither Lucas himself (nor Kurtz) probably deserves credit for this, Star Wars was made what it was in the editing room, and its impact on pacing in the genre and even beyond in the entire world of film-making, is hard to underestimate. Hirsch, Chew and Lucas’ own wife Marcia certainly deserved the Oscar that they won for Best Editing more than most winners of that award ever do. But Star Wars as a space opera setting, not as a feature film with innovative feature film features, was really heavily based on the Lensmen series by Smith, with some stuff from Dune, some serial numbers filed off, and of course Lucas’ influences from beyond the science fiction genre, like the Western, the chivalric romance, Japanese samurai films, and World War II aircraft movies. The plot is in many ways an early set-up in the first twenty minutes or so that gives a generous nod to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, turns into an extended Where Eagles Dare homage, followed by a synthesis of the plots of two already similar movies; The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron. With plenty of details changed, of course, and significantly different characters and tone, but still, the plots are easily remarked on and it’s clear the Lucas liked all of those movies. He even used the WW2 aircraft movies as reference points when asking ILM to create the Death Star attack sequence; he wanted the dogfights to look the same, but in space.
But my point here is that Star Wars really isn’t very original, and little of what it did was ever meant to be original. Not that that’s a problem, but it’s worth pointing out. People sometimes think of it as original because nothing had been done in that medium before, and it made space opera mainstream, so people who had no exposure to the vast body of work that Lucas was digesting and regurgitating (basically) probably felt like it was new. Science fiction films prior to Star Wars were dark, often allegorical, cynical or weird (cf. Silent Running, Soylent Green, 2001, etc.) Then again, similar problems were infiltrating all of Hollywood and other entertainment media as well; heroic, idealistic Westerns had been replaced with cynical Revisionist anti-Westerns, vigilante crime stories like Dirty Harry were popular, etc. If the characterization of the Carter years and the lead-up to it was called an American malaise (and it was) it was reflected in our pop culture too. One thing that Lucas tapped into, whether consciously or unconsciously (I sometimes think the latter given that he described the Empire as the United States and the Rebellion as the Viet Cong at one point) was the desperate desire of the American people to feel confident and right again, and not be deluged with reflections of the problems that liberals caused in our country in our pop culture due to their dysfunctional self-hatred. I’m not always sure if pop culture leads culture or the other way around, but it’s no shocker that not long after Star Wars came out, Reagan was elected with a kind of America First type agenda and a firm belief that America was a great place full of great people, in spite of what the politicians and other radicals had done to it during the late 60s and 70s.
I’m personally a little less interested in the specific tone of the original space opera, but I’m even less interested in the cynical woke attacks on that tone and identity politics that were already started to creep into pop culture as early as the 60s and which really metastasized following the 2016 election and the complete flipping out of the most broken and dysfunctional aspects of America—which sadly, kind of steal the show in our country, since they infiltrate the corporate world, the governmental world, the academic world, and the various entertainment media. We’re bombarded non-stop with anti-American and anti-white agitprop and hate speech. So, space opera doesn’t have to just slavishly repeat the tone and tropes of the 30s and 40s, or even the 50s and 80s—but it also shouldn’t subvert them and turn them upside down. It’s possible to have a more organic rather than resentful and destructive evolution of the genre, and that’s what I’m looking for. Star Wars was originally an organic evolution of the tropes of the earlier Republic serials take on space opera, which was in turn an organic evolution of the works of Smith and Hamilton et al. but Disney Star Wars has been a conscious and mean-spirited rejection of what Star Wars was and an attempt to wear it as a skinsuit for hateful, resentful, covetous and envious woke ideologues. This is exactly the reason why—or at least one of the prominent reasons why (another being that it's just simpler to play in your own playground, even if you’re using someone else’s toys)—that my Star Wars Revised game setting, originally set 1,000 years after Return of the Jedi, evolved into Ad Astra and from there into Space Opera X. I want to explore different themes and different tones with different details than Star Wars has done, although in a setting that is superficially very similar to it in many respects. But it’s also just as superficially similar to other space opera settings, for the same reason and in the same way that Star Wars itself is superficially similar to them. Space Opera X is a synthesis of all of the pop culture influences that are in my mind, and Star Wars itself looms large there, but not monolithic or alone.
One of the curious things about Star Wars is that it literally embraced the critiques of critics of the past generation. The first issue of Galaxy, for example, mocked the idea of space opera by having a passage on the back cover that was simultaneously set on Mars and in the Old West, and showed that with the substitution of a few descriptive words; Martians for Apaches, rayguns for six shooters, etc. that the passage itself was identical. While the idea that science fiction could be so divorced from science that the plots, characters and scenarios could be transplanted from one genre to another without any change was mocked by the Campbellian crowd, in reality, there wasn’t ever anything wrong with that, and Star Wars has shamelessly adapted plots, characters and scenarios from all kinds of other genres, most especially Westerns, hardboiled or noir stories, Arthurian romance, samurai tales, spy thrillers, etc. And its done so reasonably well and reasonably successfully, to the point where later generations are probably both confused and even miffed at the suggestion that it shouldn’t have ever been done. The Mandalorian show was successful (for a time) by rather carefully and cautiously being a flat-out Western set in space, Boba Fett promised (and then failed to deliver) the idea of The Godfather or some other kind of crime story set in space (and was instead a really cheesy remake of Man Called Horse interspersed with a nonsensical and incoherent crime story with a main character that they shied away from making a criminal, for some reason), the Andor show promised to be a spy story set in space (although many, including myself, had tuned out by then. I may yet watch it, though. I’ve consistently heard relatively good things about it.)
So space opera just becomes shorthand, in its modern, evolved definition, for adventure stories that are set in space but don’t focus on the science so much except as a bit of color. In fact, most space opera that I’m familiar with specifically uses pseudo-science and absolute technobabble in place of science. In some cases, Star Wars included, they have flat out magic and space wizards replacing science, and they do it with a straight face. The Campbellian ethos is well and truly dead, and I, for one, don’t miss it. A good example of actually good elements representing this stuff even comes from the terrible Rise of Skywalker movie. Exegol, the Sith cult dark lord magic planet is actually a cool element. (I’d love to see it brought into the Old Republic. If Exegol is supposed to be this really old Sith world associated with the quest for immortality, it makes sense that Tenebrae slash Vitiate slash Valkorian would have been there at some point.
As a quick aside; I mentioned Space Opera X below. I have a lot of material here under the old name for that, Ad Astra. I have a wiki too. And my other blog, which I actually never really figured out how to make distinct from this one, so I didn't do much with it, has some additional material. In fact, most of the most up to date stuff is buried in blog posts there.
This is a terrible way to organize setting material. It took me a few minutes, looking in several places, before I could find the name that I renamed the Carrick Grand Marches to; I had almost started to wonder if I remembered that wrong and I made no change to the name at all! (I had. I just had to find it.)
Because playing SWTOR always makes me hanker for more Space Opera X, I want to make some blog updates, but I don't want to make them here on this blog. I want to add setting data sheets to the wiki. I want to update the wiki with the latest from the blog. But I like the format of blogging. My blogging is often terrible to read, terrible even for me to reread, but it serves as a useful stream of consciousness brainstorming activity, so I like making updates on the blog.
I think I'll keep using my other blog for that. Ironically, although it's called Dark Fantasy Gamer X, it's really evolved into the Space Opera X blog, for all intents and purposes, and Dark Fantasy X is come back home to this blog.
As another aside, I'm struck by how often I create similar looking outfits for different characters using similar elements. I have a lot of Mandalorian style helmets on the green Havoc Squad Officer breastplate, for instance, and lots of Infamous Bounty Hunter coats making up winter outfits, and I like the Winter Outlaw in general, even for outfits that are lighter than Hoth and Ilum, for instance. Those are just a couple of examples, but given that I like what I like, I find that on looking at my characters, I don't have as much variety of look as I would think. Maybe this isn't a bad thing, because I do like what I like and I don't want to end up with looks that I don't like, even if the alternative is looks that are repetitive. But I'm tinkering just a bit with some of these too, and where I find that I've overused certain elements, I'm changing them out in situations where they don't look quite as good as they do somewhere else where I'm also already using them.
This also has some tie to Space Opera X, because I sometimes use the outfit builder to create archetypal characters or character looks that I can use in Space Opera X, especially with the various gunfighters (I don't have anything that's quite the same as a lightsaber in Space Opera X, so I can't use the Jedi and Sith to get quite the right look.)
Here's, for example, a few pictures I took a while ago of Luukke on Ossus showing off the "prosperous free trader" look; one that I think could be representative of a small-time businessman who makes his living as a spacer transporting freight from places of supply to places of demand. Many such independent businessmen will barely eke by; making just enough to stay ahead of creditors, and to refuel and resupply their ships for their next run without actually ever getting ahead. This guy, on the other hand, has been a bit more savvy than most and done well for himself.
I decided to pull a few minor triggers in my SWTOR
landscape. First, I took Hutran Thanatos, who just finished all of the Ilum
story arc (with the exception of the two back to back flashpoints that really
finish the story arc), took him to the fleet, and started training him in
Biochem crafting. I spent a lot of time in the background while doing other
things trying to keep that crafting leveled up; I’m in the upper 400s for the
main skill and the two attendant gathering skills. As soon as I hit 600, of
course, I’ll have hit the original crafting level cap, and I’ll have to spend
credits to get him access to the next 100 levels and the “new” max of 700.
Because I don’t really do much with Biochem, I don’t have a bunch of cool
one-off schematics that I’m worried about him picking up, so once he’s done
that, the reason for keeping Galation, my current Biochem crafter, will be
gone.
As a curious aside, I think I’ve gone farther in the story
with Hutran Thanatos than I have with my original agent, Johhn, who’s still got
some Ilum missions to complete. Then again, I’m pretty sure Johhn did Section
X, the Black Hole and CZ-198. Technically, out of order, I suppose. Either way,
that’s a curious little fact.
I did this in part because I realized that I had way too
many bounty hunters. Part of the reason for this is my “abortive” attempt to
play the story with Graggory, my oldest actual character, meant that I thought
I needed to create a Graggory look-alike for the bounty hunter story, and
Galation was that character. (I actually had two characters on another account
from way back during the demo days when you had to have a subscription just to
play. I don’t even have that account anymore, so realistically Graggory is from
my “reboot” of SWTOR playing much more recently; like in 2019 or so.) But I
kept him because he was my Biochem crafter. If Hutran Thanatos becomes my
Biochem crafter, then the reason to keep Galation becomes nothing more than
nostalgia and holding on to something old that I don’t even need anymore. I’m
quite certain that this isn’t a compelling enough reason, so the second change
that I’ve triggered is that I’m preparing to retire Galation completely and
delete him. This will be a slightly longer winding down process than maybe it
needs to be, but I want to be thorough. I want to get Hutran Thanatos all the
way up to 700 on his crafting skills first, I want to find a home for the
legacy or unbound gear that Galation is holding on to (I know for sure that he’s
got stuff like ice scrabbler jerky; the only schematic that is unusual,
although I don’t know if I care to lure anymore pet tauntaun babies to any more
characters anymore at this point.) I’m
also pretty sure his cargo hold is full of armormech crafting sets that
Graggory made. Not sure why they ended up with Galation, but they did. Someone
else will have to hold on to them. Johhn, being my default “banker” is probably
the obvious choice, but we’ll see.
Another aside. When I first made my big wave of characters
of all of the classes, I didn’t have any idea what to name them. I decided to
go like Luke (Skywalker) and name my Jedi knight Mark. Although in order to
make the name work, I had to add some apostrophes and doubled letters, and he
ended up as M’aar’k or something like that. I tend to write it Maark for ease.
When I had Maark, not knowing what else to do, my mind was drawn to making a
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I still needed four more names, so I kept going
in the New Testament and made an Actsion, Corinthion, Phillippion and Galation.
I tend to hate all of these names now, but they’re not worth changing. Of
course, Corinthion, Actsion and now Galation will all be deleted too. My next
wave of characters had better names, using first/last name format and cool “Star
Warsy” generated name list names. I tend to like all of my new names, at least
so far. Phillippion is just my slicing gatherer, so I could do the same thing to him once I get another "new" character into the max level and finished with the main story category. Then my only real original badly named characters will by Mat Thew, Maark, Luukke and Johhn. Which aren't nearly as bad as Actsion, Corinthion, Phillippion and Galation were.
And finally as part of the winding down, I recorded and
edited some footage last night of Galation wandering around showing off all of
his outfits. His outfits are maybe a bit on the old-fashioned side; I used a
lot of world drop stuff, for instance, because I didn’t have a lot of cartel
market or reputation items yet when I created most of them. This is maybe a bit
of a last hurrah; he gets to show off his stuff before it all disappears
forever. Once I document the pieces used, I’ll edit some sound (music and maybe
me talking) and post it on youtube. It’ll be a nice tribute to Galation when he
goes away forever.
The third thing that was triggered was, that by deciding to
get rid of Galation, I can create a new character and still be in the same
place with regards to open character slots, so I went ahead and did it. I’m
actually down to one open slot, but once I delete Galation, I’ll be back to
two, which is plenty given how many characters I still need to play through before
worrying about possibly making even more. I wanted a rattataki and I wanted
another scoundrel with the damage over time spec instead of direct damage, so I
created him as such, but he’ll be playing the trooper origin story, since that’s
the one I have the least of. I not only created him, but played around with him
to get him to 10th level, took him to the fleet, and got him some
stuff out of my legacy bank. I’ve created about half a dozen outfits for him,
which I’ll show off, including one that looks almost exactly like an outfit of
someone else’s that I highlighted a few posts ago. I’ve said before that my
interpretation of the trooper is less like a regular soldier, and more like a
James Bond-like agent. He has a reporting structure, sure, but he doesn’t stand
around in uniform, participate in parades, salute his superiors or otherwise
act in a stereotypically military fashion. He’s combination special forces and
more the operations side of intelligence—an aggressive, action-oriented spy or
something like that. Again; more James Bond than anything else. That actually mostly
works with the story as written, it especially works with the three troopers
that I have ongoing, who are respectively a gunslinger, a scoundrel and a sniper
rather than a more direct combat soldier-like type of class. I also don’t
really believe in my troopers or my bounty hunters either one running around
all that often in heavy armor. They’re more like gunfighters from the Old West…
except in space.
I named this character Karr Tanus, which is a slightly
respelled version of a name from my Space Opera X setting again, and which
sounds very Barsoom-like, now that you mention it. Given that he’s a somewhat
exotic alien rather than a human, I like that he’s got a Barsoom sounding name
rather than a “Star Wars” sounding name like many of my human characters do. He’s
obviously still on Ord Mantell and hasn’t even done the first mission yet
(although as part of my leveling up, I did the Heroics—go figure.) But I didn’t
make planet-specific outfits for him, I’m intending rather, like I did with
Hutran Thanatos, on playing most of the run in my main outfit. Although I have
a few other alternatives, because of course, why not. And I can get some
variety when needed here and there.
SWTOR always brings me back to Space Opera X, and although I
haven’t done much except re-read a few of my posts on it, and think about what
needs to be done. The biggest unfinished yet crucial task to get it “ready” is
detailing the worlds of the Takach Kingdom, which has become less of a minor aside
and more likely to be a major “protagonist area” or at least protagonist home
base or friendly ally. There’s a few big differences between the Space Opera X
setting and Star Wars. To wit:
Star
Wars has a lot of aliens compared to Space Opera X. Of course, I have
some. But I really focus more on human ethnicities, many of which are
quite exotic, because they diversified long ago on different planets than
Earth, although genetically they are similar enough to be considered the
same species (one of the great mysteries of the setting.) So, I’ve got exotic
pale gray people, blue people, red people, and people with funky colored
eyes, etc. And of course, a lot of people who are simply the descendants
of Americans who went into space many, many generations ago. It’s mostly
humanocentric in the way that Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age is. The
aliens are mostly there for color and flavor; the setting is really
telling the story of recognizably American space cowboys, swashbuckling
adventurers, princesses, and whatnot.
First, the
travel limitations make travel less easy and instantaneous (relatively
speaking) in Space Opera X rather than Star Wars. There are comparisons
that Traveller (the game and setting) make to Colonial ships having to
cross the Atlantic Ocean in the 1500-1700s, which was a major undertaking
to do still, or to the Pony Express maybe. And my system works very much
like Traveller’s. You can’t talk via holocommunicator across the breadth
of the galaxy, nor can you travel via hyperspace from one end of the galaxy
to the next in a relatively short time. You can’t communicate long
distance at all except in person through bulk jump (hyperspace, basically)
travel, and then regular signals when within a single system. It takes
months to get from the edge of the Monarchy’s main space lanes to get to
their colonies in the Colonial Main, and that’s with many stops at many star
systems in between, which hopefully occur without incident. Communication
is as bad as travel; you can’t communicate across interstellar space at
all except by making bulk jumps and then sending a signal when you’re
close enough. Keep in mind that it takes NASA something like 18 hours to
send a signal to Voyager 2 on the far edge of the solar system, and then
it will take another 18 hours for Voyager to send a signal back.
Communication—and travel—in space is a big deal. I actually like what this
does to science fiction. Rather than handwaving away a solution like Star
Wars has done where you can make a phone call across hundreds of millions
of light years and it works just like a phone call to the neighborhood next
door, the limitations force an interesting frontier vibe on the Colonial
Main, the main area of my setting where stuff is happening, and that frontier
vibe is crucial to the flavor of
the setting. You have to be self-sufficient, because help is never close
by.
Secondly, Star
Wars had a very simple conflict system; the cartoonishly villainous Empire
vs the “regular folks” of the Rebellion, or the Republic in some areas. Sometimes
a few other players are woven in, like the Hutt Cartel, or other
gangsters, or even extragalactic invaders in the New Republic novels, or
the Alliance and Zakuul as two additional major players for part of the
Old Republic. Space Opera X is more
about relatively smaller communities, and even those communities refer
back to about half a dozen or so “major” groups, all of whom could be
allied or antagonistic towards each other. My Revanchist Republic is
actually the most overtly evil, being based mostly on modern day Clown
World SJWs and wokesters. Even my Sith Empire analog, the Seraeans, have
redeeming qualities, especially the Colonial ones who often are out in the
Colonial Main because they chafed under the Imperial order anyway. This is
more like a space-faring space opera Hyborian Age in some ways all over
again; multiple nations with differing characters, so I can have all kinds
of different stories and conflicts when I need them. Just like Howard may
have wanted to tell a story in Ancient Rome and then another one in
Ancient Egypt, and have it be somewhat coherent, I have multiple cultures
that represent a combination of a real, often historical, culture and a
modern ideal. But if you want to be able to tell any kind of story, you
need more than just two political poles. So, that’s what I’ve done.
Anyway, those changed assumptions, or differing assumptions,
mean that Space Opera X will necessarily feel a bit different than Star Wars,
and it will facilitate more the kinds of stories that I prefer to tell. Not
that it doesn’t still strongly resemble Star Wars, but to the extent that it
does, it more resembles Star Wars as it was in the 70s than it became even
after Empire Strikes Back. Much more Flash Gordon-like than it later became. Y’know
what would be extra cool? If I could have access to the digital assets of SWTOR
and make animated cut-scene like movies, but whole movies, or episodes of
shows, or whatever, using them. I’d have to make some modifications; Chiss that
have normal eyes, Rattataki with hair, etc. But how cool would that be?
UPDATE: Work's been very crazy today, but I do have another window open and I can take a few seconds here and there to start gathering and crafting missions. I passed the 600 level threshold with Hutran Thanatos, so I'm very close to not having anything left to hold on to Galation for. He'll be gone by the time the weekend is over.
