Darths & Droids

[CaiusWickersham]

They made mention of the Endor Holocaust debate in the comments of a strip, posting links to Saxton's original page and Sarli's rebuttal. I emailed them a link to Wayne's page detailing the rebuttal to Sarli for sake of completeness.
They also did a strip with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan (sorry, don't remember player names and Google is acting up) after Qui-Gon is left near dead by Maul and they are arguing that a game day has not passed so Qui-Gon cannot use his die-influencing power. That strip really bugged me for the following reasons:

• The Old Republic is a galaxy-spanning civilization that has endured for about 25,000 years. I would think in this time they would have worked out a time-keeping system that takes all the factors concerning planetary rotation and revolution, galactic rotation, et cetera, et cetera into account. I doubt such a civilization would last long without one (except maybe the Warhammer 40k Imperium and they have a good reason with the warp doing weird shit with time).
• Let's go through all the encounters the party had since Qui-Gon used the power on Tatooine: they had to sell the pod (let's be generous and assume a quick turnaround time, Anakin needed to say his good-byes and pack, Anakin and the Jedi had to get back to the ship (everyone else went back earlier to install the part and make sure it worked), the whole party then went to Coruscant, met with Palpatine, had their audiences with the Senate and Jedi Temple (let's be generous here too and assume both are happening at the same time), went back to Naboo, made their way to Otoh Gunga's entrance (let's be generous again and assume Jar Jar gives good directions), went to the sacred place (again, assuming good directions), went to Theed while the Gungans organized, made their way into the palace, and had the siultaneous action sequences. Given all this activity, how is it a reasonable person cannot figure that a day in the game has passed (maybe even more)? I tried to find travel times in hyperspace on the net so I can have concrete evidence there.

Any rebuttals and/or flames appreciated.

[Havok]

Taking this a little too seriously are we?
They are just digging on the GM for not specifying the amount of time that has passed. Also, even if unintended, it is a fairly accurate commentary on how people generally view Star Wars and the passage of times in the movies.

[Serafina]

New comic - and apparently, they are ditching and remaking the whole storyline (finding some stolen plans instead of protecting the senator - which would be kinda strange, because the Senator is an PC..). I like it.

[NecronLord]

The Old Republic is a galaxy-spanning civilization that has endured for about 25,000 years. I would think in this time they would have worked out a time-keeping system that takes all the factors concerning planetary rotation and revolution, galactic rotation, et cetera, et cetera into account. I doubt such a civilization would last long without one (except maybe the Warhammer 40k Imperium and they have a good reason with the warp doing weird shit with time).

For the record, the setting's chief creator detailed the Imperial Calendar way back when. The first digit is a reference to how direct your communication with Earth is. Every year is divided into 1000 units (Corresponding to around eight hours each) though this is not in common use, followed by the years of the millennium, followed by a dot, and then the millennium. My current date in this system* is roughly 00101009.M3 (third millennium). The 0 being because I'm physically on earth as I record the date. Local planets also have various dates, that are (in universe) converted to this system for official records, so that records (and the uncertainty involved) can be understood across the Imperium.

[Littlefoot]

The latest comics rock!

Just out of curiousity, how often do players act like R2D2 now? You know, feeling sore that their character apparently got hit bad in the last campaign?

Outside of a few simple games when I was a kid and a couple of Mechwarrior campaigns, where it was more hack & slash than anything, I spent more time looking in on D&D than I do playing group RPGs. Combat orientated RPGs means that your investment in them is different from roleplaying, its more about how this pilot/warrior fought its way through an enemy line and captured the enemy general and how he took out an enemy with one critical, or how he died by several unlucky twoes......... Still, no biggie. You moan the loss of your skilled char, you reroll and build up another.

Is it different for campaigns that have more character development?

Definetly a huge difference. One of my friends made a D20 game, a post apocolyptic Earth with random supernatural stuff. It was loose on the rules and very open. Being the first time most of us had played a pen and paper we of course started every session in a bar and tried to take on the world at lvl1. We cycled through about 2 characters apiece per sesion for a few weeks and it was fun. But when we made characters and realy thought them out and played like they were real we started to get some very good storylines going. After a few months of this we were all fairly attatched to our chars. Then our GM started a Horror Campaign, basically Lovecraft on acid. We lasted two sessions before my cousin seriously botched two rolls and ended up exploding. Another friend was eaten by a wall, his brother was posesed and shot himself in the head with a rocket launcher ( 6d20 to all six parts of the hit chart, for 36d20 of armor piercing damage ). I happened to be standing next to him with four molotov cocktails in my pack, so not only did I die but I was cooked for whatever had eaten the other guy. At the end of the session there was a bit of anger, a little sadness. But we decided to keep the character sheets. We still talk about those characters, seven years later.