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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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 Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 1:49 am Post subject: |
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| cheshire wrote: | | Granted, the Star Wars cannon has changed. (Don't even get my started on the fundamental irony of a cannon changing, as the roots of the word indicate an unchanging measuring standard.) Some people haven't changed to accept all aspects of it. You may go back to the original trilogy film evidence, but that evidence isn't particularly damning for two reasons. One being the previously mentioned ambiguity of the power used, and the second being the potential for his DSP earned there. (Of course, #2 relies on WEG anyway, so I'll admit that there is a big of question begging in that assertion.) |
Thank you for that well-thought post, cheshire. The ambiguity in this situation is indeed a difficult question. My personal feeling, based on what I've seen in the films and other media, is that a lot of the contradictions seen in the Force (and the rules used to define it) would be greatly lessened if WEG's Jedi dogma was less restrictive on what could and couldn't be done without earning a DSP.
That's one of the reasons (IMO) that my Willpower roll has worked out well for my group, in that it puts certain powers, "on the fence", as it were. The idea is not to allow the Jedi to make a Willpower roll and kill his target and not receive a DSP; it is to allow the Jedi to exercise extreme control over himself and his use of the Force to inflict a carefully metered dose of non-lethal damage, knocking the target unconscious rather than wounding or killing him. Failure of the Willpower roll = normal damage inflicted, plus a DSP. Some have called this an "ends justify the means" approach, but if the means are a carefully measured application of non-lethal force, and the end is an opponent stunned rather than killed (in keeping with the Jedi's belief in respect for all life), I fail to see why this is a bad thing?
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 2:07 am Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | We can't even say for certain that he didn't kill them, even with Yoda very specifically saying "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack." Contradictions in the films are a matter of record but the only reason this is even in question is because WEG made a blanket decision about what constituted use of the Dark Side and what didn't, in spite of film evidence. That decision has, in turn, overshadowed every discussion of the ethical limitations of using the Force, and is often taken as gospel, in spite of some definite contradictions. |
eing luke was wearing black, i can think that the writers felt he was going the way of his father..
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MacRauri
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Joined: 26 Nov 2011
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Location: Twin Cities MN
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 2:51 am Post subject: |
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| From a 1983 standpoint I'd have to agree with an earlier post that it is clear Luke is choking the gamorreans with the Force. And how do we as an audience feel about this? It's hard to imagine Obi-wan or Yoda doing the same thing. In fact we've only ever seen one other individual in the films use the Force is such a way. As Garhkal pointed out: Luke was wearing black. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 2:59 am Post subject: |
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Dress code as motivation for evil? IMO, this is going beyond grasping at straws.
I recall reading somewhere that the costume choice for Luke in ROTJ was made primarily because no one had any sort of idea what uniform a Jedi wore, so the decision was made to give him something subdued and nondescript, but unique from everyone else.
And if we are going strictly off color scheme, does that mean all the stormtroopers are good guys?
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
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Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 3:56 am Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: |
What my question ultimately boils down to is this; if we as a community are so willing to question other aspects of the RAW and revise it as we see fit, why is there also a general unwillingness to question inaccuracies in WEG's interpretation of the Force? |
Oh, well, yeah... I don't stop at questioning it; I just replace WEG's interpretation of the Force with my own!
I can see why some may not want to mess with it. Even in the movies, the Force is fairly mysterious, operating on principals we don't understand as well as more mundane things like jumping and blowing stuff up with big lasers. We question a lot of rules because we have firsthand experience that contradicts the RAW. We question others because we have solid data showing how it should be and we see that the RAW won't match up. We don't really have equations to describe the morality of telekinetic attacks the way we do falling damage or something like that, so it's natural to resist change for something that isn't obviously better.
(I have a large ego, so anything I came up with is obviously much much better and I don't have to resist the change!) 
| MacRauri wrote: | | From a 1983 standpoint I'd have to agree with an earlier post that it is clear Luke is choking the gamorreans with the Force. And how do we as an audience feel about this? It's hard to imagine Obi-wan or Yoda doing the same thing. In fact we've only ever seen one other individual in the films use the Force is such a way. As Garhkal pointed out: Luke was wearing black. |
We do see Obi Wan casually using mind trick on a drug dealer in a bar. I would rather have my airway closed than my free will subverted, so I can see him choking a gamorrean so that he didn't have to fight him with the lightsaber and just kill him. Also, though we don't see Jedi throwing stuff at Sith with TK, we do see them simply throwing Sith themselves. (And this is being very forgiving of Yoda here...)
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ZzaphodD
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:07 am Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | Matthias777 wrote: | | Maybe I'm in the minority, but how is Luke's Force Choke ambiguous? If you asked someone in 1983 what Luke was doing, whether it was a fan or someone involved in the film's production, does anyone here think that they'd say anything other than "choking the guards with the Force"? |
Exactly. If viewed in a vacuum (i.e. just the films and nothing else), there wouldn't be any question that it was OK for a Jedi to use Force Choke. We can't even say for certain that he didn't kill them, even with Yoda very specifically saying "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack." Contradictions in the films are a matter of record but the only reason this is even in question is because WEG made a blanket decision about what constituted use of the Dark Side and what didn't, in spite of film evidence. That decision has, in turn, overshadowed every discussion of the ethical limitations of using the Force, and is often taken as gospel, in spite of some definite contradictions. |
I think the Jedi are just racists, xenocists or whatever you should call it. 'Lightly' choking 'Walking pigs' just didnt show up on the Dark Side meter.
Joking aside, but I think theres some merit to the thought. Theres a high chance there was some 'well there just Gamorreans' thoughts when making the movies. Remember, afaik the 'Pigs' didnt even have a name back then.. (wasnt it WEG who named them in the RPG).
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cheshire
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 9:39 am Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | Dress code as motivation for evil? IMO, this is going beyond grasping at straws.
And if we are going strictly off color scheme, does that mean all the stormtroopers are good guys? |
It isn't grasping at straws, it's a matter of interpreting symbols which were abundant in the original trilogy. Black was the standard color for the Force-using villains of the OT. Part of the ROTJ's struggles was whether Luke was going to stay true to the light side or embrace the dark side.
The stormtrooper observation counterexample is flawed. Star Wars isn't a "good guys wear white" film. The symbolism wasn't that stark. There was some symbolism attached to dress, particularly as the Imperials were dressed in muted or neutral colors, and the officers' uniforms were reminiscent of Nazi Germany, but you can certainly run the wrong direction with symbolism.
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ZzaphodD
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 9:53 am Post subject: |
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| cheshire wrote: | | crmcneill wrote: | Dress code as motivation for evil? IMO, this is going beyond grasping at straws.
And if we are going strictly off color scheme, does that mean all the stormtroopers are good guys? |
It isn't grasping at straws, it's a matter of interpreting symbols which were abundant in the original trilogy. Black was the standard color for the Force-using villains of the OT. Part of the ROTJ's struggles was whether Luke was going to stay true to the light side or embrace the dark side.
The stormtrooper observation counterexample is flawed. Star Wars isn't a "good guys wear white" film. The symbolism wasn't that stark. There was some symbolism attached to dress, particularly as the Imperials were dressed in muted or neutral colors, and the officers' uniforms were reminiscent of Nazi Germany, but you can certainly run the wrong direction with symbolism. |
Also, the dehuminization of the storm trooper armour really do outweight any white vs dark symbolism. If stromtroopers had been wearing plain uniforms I bet they wouldnt be white...
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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| cheshire wrote: | It isn't grasping at straws, it's a matter of interpreting symbols which were abundant in the original trilogy. Black was the standard color for the Force-using villains of the OT. Part of the ROTJ's struggles was whether Luke was going to stay true to the light side or embrace the dark side.
The stormtrooper observation counterexample is flawed. Star Wars isn't a "good guys wear white" film. The symbolism wasn't that stark. There was some symbolism attached to dress, particularly as the Imperials were dressed in muted or neutral colors, and the officers' uniforms were reminiscent of Nazi Germany, but you can certainly run the wrong direction with symbolism. |
That was entirely my point. I threw out the stormtrooper observation because it was deliberately flawed and ridiculous, with the intention of highlighting just how flimsy it is to base a judgment of Luke's character in that moment strictly on how he dressed. Lucas stated that he drew from multiple sources for symbolism in Star Wars, including the John Ford spaghetti Westerns; the same films that had introduced the idea of the anti-hero wearing the black hat years earlier. If that had been our first sight of Luke, I would agree that they were deliberately going for moral ambiguity, portraying Luke as the anti-hero. At that time, however, Lucas had just spent millions of dollars and two feature length films convincing us that Luke was the good guy, so as a 9 y/o boy, the fact that Luke was wearing black didn't even register to me, apart from how cool I thought the outfit looked. It never even occurred to me to question Luke's emotional state based simply on how he was dressed.
Even now that I can recognize and accept the potential symbolism of what color he was dressed in, it still comes up short when I compare it to the evidence of his experiences in ESB. Specifically, he trained under the last and greatest Jedi Master, who had had twenty years of meditation time to distill the Jedi way down to its core truths, which he then, in turn, taught Luke. On top of that, he then had a very sobering encounter with the Dark Side and walked away with some tough lessons learned the hard way. In the end, I very much doubt that all that personal growth and hard lessons learned was overruled by the fact that he was wearing black.
In the end, I think the only thing we can agree on here is that there is no clear answer. I have long had issue with WEG's approach to certain aspects of Force use, and I have made adjustments where I felt they were appropriate in my campaign. I don't expect everyone to follow my POV, as the Force and its interpretation is easily one of the most murky, ill-defined aspects of Star Wars. But one thing I certainly won't do is accept the WEG line without question, especially when it contradicts the films (IMO).
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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And that is your choice to do so. BUT when coming on a forum asking for people's opinions on this, expect people to defend the RAW, as to them there IS a right and wrong for the force..
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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I never said there isn't a right or wrong to the Force. My point all along has been that the dividing line between right and wrong (as defined by WEG) is very likely in error.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Though since the sourcebook for ROTJ shows luke with a DSP or two, who's to say that he didn't get it from the choke. |
Doubtful. I find it hard to belie ve that Luke risked succumbing to the Dark Side just to impress the doormen. It just doesn't make much sense. He goes through all sorts of tribulations to avoid turning to the Dark Side, yet takes such a great and unnecessary risk here.
I think the hows any whys of what Luke did should be factored in more than the RAW does. By using the choke, Luke managed to avoid having to fight the Gammoreans, and probably kept the situation from escalating. Yet by the RAW he gets DSPs.
On the other hand, if Luke hand't used the choke, he probably would have had to fight the guards and might have actually killed or injured them. So maybe under these circumstances, the use was justified?
If he was going to use Injure/Kill, why not on the Rancor? |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 2:25 pm Post subject: |
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That's why a lot of people think he used Affect mind... no DSP there unlike if he Tk'ed..
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 3:18 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | That's why a lot of people think he used Affect mind... no DSP there unlike if he Tk'ed.. |
Which just ends up sounding like revisionist WEG apologetics. Like Matthias said a few posts back, no one watching the films in 1983 would've called that anything other than a Force Choke. Then WEG makes a blanket ruling that all Force Choking is evil, and we are suddenly required to come up with a new explanation as to what Luke did there if it wasn't actually Force Choking. A simpler (and more likely) explanation is that WEG screwed up, so to correct that error, a house rule is called for. <Insert your own House Rule here>.
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cheshire
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| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 3:38 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | | That's why a lot of people think he used Affect mind... no DSP there unlike if he Tk'ed.. |
Which just ends up sounding like revisionist WEG apologetics. Like Matthias said a few posts back, no one watching the films in 1983 would've called that anything other than a Force Choke. |
Then call me an anomaly. I was always uncertain of what he was doing there. Long before I'd even heard of WEG, I'd watched this film on VHS hundreds of times. I noticed that at least one Gamorean moved his hand near his neck, showing a similarity to what people do being chocked. Though Luke made a different hand motion than the trademark Vader chocking, and the rumbling sound effect was absent which was usually indicative of the choke.
I'm not sure what it said in the final script that the director had in hand, though I did look at a script online that says:
To call it revisionist apologetics is doing little more than poking fun of the idea that some question whether he's actually choking him or not. My wife became an adult fan of Star Wars, and her initial reaction was that he was using some sort of mind trick on the guards, or something to that effect. It was only after watching the film with my kids last night (who just saw the film for the first time, woohoo!) that she said, "Err... I dunno. Maybe [it is a choke]."
Just because something is clear in your mind, does not mean that the clarity is universal. | Quote: | Luke raises his hand and points at the puzzled guards, who immediately lower their spears and fall back. The young Jedi
lowers his hand and moves on down the hallway. |
On the other hand the novelization to ROTJ makes it pretty clear that the author had reason to believe that Luke was choking the guards, since it describes them as gasping and wheezing.
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