OK, so while overtime is being offered at work my d6 Star Wars game is on hiatus. So while thinking about directions to take the game once it restarts, I began musing about Star Wars as a genre since we are now in a post - Rogue One world. I've got a few veterans in the game and I was thinking about going very dark with the atrocities that the Empire is willing to commit. So how dark is too dark?

Just to give an idea of what I am thinking.....

The Empire would want to make examples of high population worlds in order to maintain peace through fear (the Tarkin Doctrine), because if a high population world with some interstellar political clout gets uppity and then is pounded by the Empire - what chance does any other world have to stand against the Empire? So I created a world which defied the Empire and showed the results.  

Once the world's military had been neutralized and the orbital bombardment completed, the Empire began to systematically strip the world of all of its remaining resources. Imperial Leviathans were brought in to create more vehicles and equipment for the Imperial war machine from the detritus of the world's smashed technology, specialized processing ships would denude that world's biosphere of all its organic matter and create food with that raw material, the oceans of the world would be drained and contents strained for minerals and organics while the remaining distilled water is shipped off-world, and the population is used as slaves to keep these operations running.

World population members that resist are fed to the food processor while some non-producers are sold off as slaves. World population members who fit the Empire's preferred genetic profile are sent to be used as stormtrooper or soldier trainees, troop entertainment and/or as involuntary mothers for the Empire.

This last part is where I am wondering if it is too dark. I was thinking about the Joy Division of Nazi Germany since that is one of the more hideous things I think that human beings can do to other human beings. Naturally, the Empire would love that.

(The usual hang-ups I have about in character rape remain in effect, I won't have that at my game table. However, the aftermath of rape and subjugation would be shown in NPCs.)

Well, the "fed to the food processor" thing is pretty nasty, but I think that in general the darker you make the Empire the more the characters will feel urgency in trying to resist the Empire. :-)

Make sure the subjugated population isn't made up of Gungans.

Then the PCs would have to join the Empire to help, and that might get you in a morally ambiguous situation!

"Wait, why are fighting the Empire again?"

I don't think the industrial strip mining of the planet makes sense in starwars.  I just don't think the setting is that industrial scientific.  

But by all means turn the planet into a storm trooper factory.  Kill and Soylent green all the old people, make everyone between 12 and 25 churn out babies, once they hit 20-25 a storm trooping they will go.

With out old people, they will have no culture and will be easy to brain wash.  And if both sexes are both farmed for new stock and shipped off to the wars when they are old enough to have thoughts you can be evil with out being sexist.  Which is important to me, and maybe to you judging by your post.

Personally I'd say ALL of that is too dark, but I haven't seen the prequels or spinoffs and have no interest in seeing them based on all I've heard, read, and seen about them.

But as someone said above, killing Gungans is a moral duty.

Most of that doesn't really fit with the empire as presented, especially since the inhabitants are presumably human. It also goes against WEG's GMing advice for d6 Star Wars to "keep your villains on a refined plane." A few of these might work in isolation, but there's no sign the empire mass enslaves humans, breeds(!) humans, or runs slave brothels for the Imperial Army.  Certainly they might strip-mine a resource-rich rebel world though.

I wouldn't have the Imperials engage in sex slavery. Save that for Jabba.

Quote from: jeff37923;960000World population members that resist are fed to the food processor

While I know that real life often defies our imagination on how terrible people can be to one another, this part trips my "So evil it's comical" switch. I'd probably have a hard time taking the campaign seriously after that.

QuoteThis last part is where I am wondering if it is too dark. I was thinking about the Joy Division of Nazi Germany since that is one of the more hideous things I think that human beings can do to other human beings. Naturally, the Empire would love that.

Speaking as someone who enjoys Star Wars for the heroic, Flash Gordon style of space adventure, I don't mind some darkness. I think Rogue One was about as dark as I'd like a Star Wars tone to get.

In my current SW game, set about 10 years BBY, large scale fighting hasn't broken out yet. As part of the disinformation/pacification campaign against reluctant worlds, the ruling families were attacked by "terrorist" rebels or fragments of the fallen Republic, the adults killed, and the children "taken hostage" and shipped off-world. The Empire stepped in (in a very low key but official way) to help administrate these planets while the brave Imperial Army searched far and wide to track down the missing children.

The kids were actually taken to several remote worlds for indoctrination and screening for force sensitivity. The plan was, once their minds had been put right, to return them to rule their ancestral worlds in a more Pro-Imperial manner. They were of course treated to the grand spectacle of being "rescued" by the Empire prior to their educational seclusion, for their safety until they could return home.

The PCs, of course, had other plans.

So, that's kinda dark I think, but not over-the-top dark as some had mentioned.

Hmm. Depends. I despise 4th wall genre emulation with the white hot fury of a thousand thousand suns, but...while the Empire is kinda/sorta Space Nazis, they are pulp serial Nazis, not real Nazis.

I think the Empire is more into overt, crushing shows of overwhelming strength to sow fear, rather than an extended campaign of punishment.  I mean...Death Star.

They certainly are not above strip mining a planet to bare rock and genociding a populace...of aliens.

As far as going Full.Atrocity on humans, I doubt that would be a Policy from on high, unless it somehow was some form of extreme Sith experiment, trying to increase the Dark Side Force level of an entire populace through Hate, which is more likely in the Sith Empire era maybe, not Galactic Empire.

For humans, I'd think more of a soul-crushing 1984 type society, where the populace would see the benefit of compliance and the punishment of rebellion.  Brainwashed Imperial Youth Cadres informing on grandparents, etc.  Now, could a Governor decide to run his own Unit 731, and Soylent Green be a secret way to feed the people because he's actually mismanaging the planet, tweaking the industrial output to meet the Emperor's quotas while the planet slowly dies? Sure.  Any bureaucracy can have stuff ignored or hidden if the trains run on time.

Hell, might be an interesting Imperial Intelligence campaign if the shit gets so Dark, the Emperor or Vader sense something and send the PCs to figure out just what the hell is going on over there.

Brothels, well, you got soldiers, you got brothels, no matter how disciplined.  You land a company of Terminators on the ground, there will be Black Market in toasters.  But again the Empire seems more like forced breeding programs and indoctrination to field a strong Stormtrooper recruit population then slave brothels.

Now Twileks, everybody buys and sells Twileks, even Twileks.

Quote from: CRKrueger;960060Hmm. Depends. I despise 4th wall genre emulation with the white hot fury of a thousand thousand suns, but...while the Empire is kinda/sorta Space Nazis, they are pulp serial Nazis, not real Nazis.

Yeah, I was going to say - the Empire are 1950s tv/movie Nazis-with-British-accents. They are nowhere near as bad as real Nazis, and I don't think they should be treated that way.

At a certain point if you have to stretch the material that far from the source perhaps you should ask why you're using it at all? Just out of habit? Why not use a generic sf system like Traveller to create that world in.

As usual, Wookiepedia is your friend.

The Empire does do this. That link? It's in the current canon, and it was a matter of Imperial policy. They did this to cow and subjugate a world that backed the Separatists; they will do it again to others that backed the losers, and will do it to any other defiant world.

Hell, Lucasfilm sanctioned an entire novel about the linked event (which is where the article gets its info from). Go nuts, and make the Empire truly evil- but don't forget the nigh-total information control it wields, such that what gets out does make an impact.

The Empire better than the Nazis, well depends on how you define it I guess.  The Empire had zero issues with wiping out a planet with billions of people.  The scale of that atrocity is almost too big to grasp and writing it off as a valid or legitimate military target or acceptable collateral damage is an atrocity in and of itself.

Quote from: Voros;960080At a certain point if you have to stretch the material that far from the source perhaps you should ask why you're using it at all? Just out of habit? Why not use a generic sf system like Traveller to create that world in.

These are good questions and the honest answer is a bit long.

I love Traveller, even more than Star Wars, but since most of the player base in the area are heavily influenced by Pathfinder/D&D organized play, I have trouble getting players together for non-Pathfinder/D&D games. Star Wars is a gateway that can attract players who look at the genre and think that it is closer to fantasy than Traveller. So running Star Wars is my wide net to collect a cadre of players who I could recruit from for a Traveller campaign.

My Star Wars group finds the game to be easier to understand and smoother to play. The group has been around for over two years now, but is open table, so players can come and go. Several of them overlap to my Traveller group, but some players are more tempermentally suited to Star Wars than Traveller.

I hope that makes sense.

Quote from: CRKrueger;960089The Empire better than the Nazis, well depends on how you define it I guess.  The Empire had zero issues with wiping out a planet with billions of people.  The scale of that atrocity is almost too big to grasp and writing it off as a valid or legitimate military target or acceptable collateral damage is an atrocity in and of itself.

See, this brings up the "why" I chose the route of stripping a world of all its resources instead of just destroying it. One of the impressions I get of the Empire is that it is a ruthlessly efficient bureaucratic and military machine. Destroying a planet demonstrates raw power, while systematically reducing a world's population and resources to serve the Empire's industrial and military might demonstrates chilling practicality.