A post by Simlasa in another post got me thinking.

Quote from: Simlasa;806127As a Player I hate getting stuck in a rut of all the other Players following some expected path... like the Star Wars campaign where no one would seem to think of anything to do with the setting except join the Rebels and fight the Empire.

Has anyone ever ran an Empire campaign where the characters were part of the Empire, instead of the Rebels or what not?

Quote from: Ronin;807002A post by Simlasa in another post got me thinking.

Has anyone ever ran an Empire campaign where the characters were part of the Empire, instead of the Rebels or what not?

Didn't one of the Star Wars RPGs have a supplement aimed at just that sort of thing? Maybe I only imagined I saw it.

After the Anakin set of movies one group I was in briefly said "Screw this! The Jedi are as bad as the Sith!" and struck off on their own.

Long before that the a group was in we were all mercs and traders. Unaligned.

There was an Imperial Sourcebook for WEG Star Wars (the only one that matters!). Wouldn't say it was geared for PCs to play Imperials but it would certainly come in handy if one wanted to do that. I don't really see the appeal any more than I'd want to play a Nazi when I could be part of the resistance, but I'm sure you could run quite a campaign as Imperials.

Quote from: Omega;807005After the Anakin set of movies one group I was in briefly said "Screw this! The Jedi are as bad as the Sith!" and struck off on their own.

Long before that the a group was in we were all mercs and traders. Unaligned.

Now I'm going to have to look up what the heck a Sith is. I don't remember that term in any of the original movies: I assume it's from the "prequels" I haven't seen.

Quote from: Matt;807008I don't really see the appeal any more than I'd want to play a Nazi when I could be part of the resistance, but I'm sure you could run quite a campaign as Imperials.

Apparently a lot of people like playing as the Space Marines in 40K... and other than Chaos I don't know of any 'official' rebel groups (though I'm sure they exist in the vast bowels of 40K fiction).

Quote from: Simlasa;807010Apparently a lot of people like playing as the Space Marines in 40K... and other than Chaos I don't know of any 'official' rebel groups (though I'm sure they exist in the vast bowels of 40K fiction).

Are Space Marines bad guys then? I know nothing of Warhammer games except they look awfully expensive.

Isn't Chaos the group from which Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 endlessly struggle to protect us?

The thing is, the Empire is a big place. Even being Imperials doesn't necessarily make your characters the bad guys. Between propaganda and the fact that Imperials did also fight legitimate pirates and such, there is plenty of room for an Imperial campaign that WASN'T all about being evil, but being more a cog in an evil machine that isn't aware that not everything is as peachy as it is in your neck of the woods.

Of course, its always interesting to start sneaking in some of that more nasty side of the Empire here or there, just to see how your Imperial characters react to the not so nice side of the Empire, whether they rationalize it, or just "keep their heads down", or eventually defect.

Quote from: Matt;807012Are Space Marines bad guys then? I know nothing of Warhammer games except they look awfully expensive.

There aren't really any 'good guys' in 40K... maybe the Tau but they're late to the party... or the Squats... but they were wiped out.
But like Emperor Norton points out... there are many shades of gray and the German army in WWII weren't all Nazis. I could totally get behind the sort of campaign he describes... hunting pirates and slowly coming to the realization that your side are 'the baddies'.

Quote from: Matt;807012Are Space Marines bad guys then? I know nothing of Warhammer games except they look awfully expensive.

In any other universe, a galaxy-spanning totalitarian regime like the Imperium (And it's subfactions like the Space Marines, the Imperial Guard, the Ecclesiarchy, etc) would be the big bads of the setting.

In 40k, they're still bad guys, but they're the viewpoint faction (And the best possible hope for humanity) because everyone else is worse; a galaxy-wide infestation of violent lunatics from a super-soldier program gone very badly wrong, space locusts which will just eat all biomass in the galaxy and move on, zombie-robots who hate everyone alive, an entire species of snuff movie fanatics (And their cousins, who really want to be snuff movie fanatics again, but are aware it went "badly" last time), and the inhabitants of a neighbouring universe made of every negative emotion that has ever been had who want to break through and overwrite fundamental reality.

The moral question 40k asks is, "what would it take to justify a totalitarian regime", and it's answer is "more than that".

I ran a campaign where the players were Imperial Intelligence officers. Lots of snooping and spying, then calling in the military for the attack. I had the players going up against splinter groups of the Rebellion and played up the rebels lack of concern with collateral damage. Had them act closer to real world insurgencies.
  The players would occasionally bump up against the nastier policies of The Empire, but had to weigh that'll against the in game civilian lives their efforts were saving. The players eventually soured on both sides, but they sure relished being able to call in Star Destroyer strikes and Storm Trooper assaults.

It's not canon, but after playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Old Republic was pretty much just as evil as the Empire. There's one  quest in particular, where you stop Republic troops having refugees run through a minefield for betting purposes.

Similarly, the video game Tie Fighter had a really great storyline from the Imperial viewpoint.

Quote from: Matt;807009Now I'm going to have to look up what the heck a Sith is. I don't remember that term in any of the original movies: I assume it's from the "prequels" I haven't seen.

From the wiki:
The first use of the word "Sith" was in the novelization of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, as a title for Darth Vader, the "Dark Lord of the Sith". The Sith were not formally introduced or mentioned on-screen until the release of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, in 1999, though they had been named in some Expanded Universe works before that time.

From a 1977 Topps Trading Card. The name has been around since early versions of the script. Details didn't come/exist until later.

Over a decade ago, we played a short campaign, where the characters were a plattoon of Stormtroopers who hunted pirates and slavers in the outer rim. I have no idea if it was because of this campaign or vice versa, but at the time, the group had this 'sympathy for the empire' thing going, treating the movies (and that is pretty much the only canon that counts) as completely biased propaganda instead of simply facts. (I remember that the ground battle at Endor was basically a huge massacre where the rebels had dumped cheap arms on the Ewoks and sacrificed them to the Imperial forces to slow them down).
It was a great campaign, even though it wasn't very long and had its cynical undertones at time (mostly in form of offircers and local governors who intrigue against each other and are all too willing to sacrifice their soldiers if that brings any political advantage) and wasn't necessarily very strongly embedded in the Star Wars theme.