Realm Guide – A Galaxy Far, Far Away
This week, we take a look at a realm that is both from an RPG *and* a movie…
That’s right guys! I am excited to bring you this amazing find this week. I came across an obscure movie from the 70’s that, I guess, must have been a cult hit, because not only did it get two sequels (although they were a few years apart, so I could understand if you didn’t realize they were related). I found an RPG published by West End Games that takes place in the world of those movies!
Now licensed adaptations of RPG settings are nothing new. I mean, we all know that there’s a Middle Earth Roleplaying System that takes place in the world of the Silmarillion. Or there’s Call of Cthulhu, which is based on the series of stories that HP Lovecraft adapted from John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. But I don’t know that there’s ever been a direct adaptation of a movie before. And I say, more power to West End Games for trying it out. I think it could be a neat chance to expand on the world you see in the movie.
So real quick, let’s go through the movies because I don’t know that you’ll have seen them before. So the series of movies comprises Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi (you can see from the different titles how it’s hard to tell they’re all a part of the same movie series. I don’t know why they didn’t just call them Star Wars 2, and Star Wars 3). They tell the story of a young farm boy who leaves his home behind to go out in search of adventure. Along the way he meets an old man who is friends with his dad, a guy in a vest and his best friend, a princess who doesn’t need saving, and a bad guy in a mask that I thought had asthma, but, once I got my hands on this book, discovered that he was in fact a cyborg who had been damaged by his best friend!
See what I mean about Samurai Films?
Anyway, over the course of these movies, our main characters get in space ships and fly from planet to planet saving the day! They remind me a lot of either a good old-fashioned Western like True Grit, or a Samurai Film like Ran. Actually now that I think about it, they’er a lot like that movie Serenity–only they go across a whole galaxy using something called a “hyperdrive” which they don’t really explain in the movie, but the RPG books take the trouble to detail:
[A] hyperdrive is a miracle of advanced technology. Powered by incredibly efficient fusion generators, hyperdrive engines hurl ships into hyperspace, a dimension of space-time that can be entered only at faster-than-light speeds.
See? I don’t know why they didn’t put that in the movie–but extra dimensions are definitely a crucial element of any good RPG. Anyway, let’s dive into the world(s) of Star Wars and see what makes them tick.
Worlds of the Movies
Now the world of Star Wars is pretty big. Indeed, it’s a whole galaxy as you might have guessed by the title of this article. The galaxy is broken up into sectors–now unfortunately there aren’t really any maps in the West End Games books, and I couldn’t really find a picture of what the galaxy of Star Wars looks like. But I can tell you that I’ve been able to piece together some of it.
So the three main planets in the movies are Tattooine (which, let me tell you, I’m glad was in the sourcebook), Yavin, and Endor.
Tatooine is a barren desert world, vaguely remniscent of Arrakis from the movie Dune, only instead of weird religious allegory and political struggle, it’s home to a teenaged boy who dreams of adventure. It has TWO SUNS which I think is a pretty cool RPG type detail. And as far as I can tell, the whole planet is covered in desert (hence the Arrakis comparison), but one of the most common professions here is that of a moisture farmer. There are lots of critters that live on this planet, in a city called Mos Eisley, where you can see a number of the creatures detailed more extensively in the books.
These include Jawas–inherently paranoid and suspicious scavengers who are the frequent prey of Sand People and the monstrous Krayt Dragons that inhabit the Dune Sea. Of course they don’t talk about the Krayt Dragon at all in the movie, and they barely mention it in the RPG, but if you manage to track down Star Wars, there’s a part where Ben makes a noise and scares off a bunch of guys in masks (called Sand People or Tusken raiders). That noise is almost certainly a Krayt Dragon call that frightens them away, which makes sense, as pretty much every dragon I’ve run across has some kind of frightful presence.
Yavin is the planet where the heroes of the movie, the Rebel Alliance make their headquarters. There, in an ancient mysterious temple in a jungle, the Rebels have made their home base.
Endor — or should I say it’s MOON is a pretty important location to the Star Wars galaxy as well. It’s here where one of the final battles goes down (the other one happens on a space station just above it). It’s a lush forest that is populated with huge trees, kind of like the redwood forests in California, but more foresty. This is owing to a low axial tilt and a regular orbit of the gas giant, which is home to a race of creatures called the Ewoks. Ewoks are a lot like forest Jawas. They are primitive–and in one of the sections in the Sourcebook, there’s a letter from one of the bad guys that talks about how they can ignore these “furballs.” Let me assure you, that’s not the case! I don’t want to say too much more, but it’s one of the greatest parts of the third movie.
Worlds of the Game
And then there are the planets that are mentioned in the book that seem lush and ripe for exploration! Like I say, most of these are only mentioned in passing, or in alien/creature entries, so there’s still plenty of room to expand on them for your own game. That’s one of the neat things about Star Wars, is that, because it’s a little obscure, there’s plenty of room to come up with your own creatures or planets and they’ll fit right in with the crazy mixed-up stuff you can find in “published” material.
Anyway, let me talk about two worlds here, to whet your appetitie. Ithor and Kashyyyk.
Ithor is the fourth planet in the Ottega star system, in the Lesser Plorriod Cluster. It is the homeworld of the Ithorians, a race of aliens who tend to live in balance with their planet and are nicknamed “Hammerheads” (see below). Ithor is a lush, tropical world teeming with a wide variety of animal and plant life. Though the Ithorians have tamed their own regions, there are still plenty of wild and unexplored territories.
There are two main landmasses on Ithor, as well as numerous islands that have been untouched by the civilized Ithor. Although even then, according to West End Games, the developed parts of Ithor still resemble overgrown jungles to most other star travellers. It is a world where “technology and nature beautifully co-exist,” because of the influence of the Ithorian herds–which aren’t herds like herds of cattle, but, are in fact high-tech city pods. The book describes them as giant disk-shaped cities that are several levels high and roam about on “repulsorlift” engines (I can’t go into every technological advancement here, but these are one of the coolest things from Star Wars, they’re like engines that let something hover several feet off of the ground as it’s repulsed away).
Kashyyyk is another forest world, but don’t worry, there are other kinds of planets. These ones are just the most like some of the planets in the movies. I think West End Games wanted to have some familiar elements for fans of the movies, so that they’d know that they were dealing with people who understood the how important forest and jungle planets are to Star Wars.
Now Kashyyyk is a much bigger forest world–not as primitive as the world of Endor, but it is an arboreal world of unmatched beauty and danger. The whole planet can be sliced into horizontal sections that each function as their own ecosystem–with the uppermost level being shared by flying creatures and the dominant species on the planet, the Wookiees.
If you’ve seen Star Wars, you’ll know that a Wookiee, Chewbacca, is the best friend of one of the other characters, who wears a vest and likes to shoot at people he owes money to. Wookiees are giant furred humanoids with massive claws who make their home in treetop villages on Kashyyyk. They make use of a good deal of handcrafted, nontechnological items in their everyday aesthetic, but unlike the Ewoks, the Wookiees (hah, that kind of sounds like Ewok backwards) know how to use technological devices. And since Wookiees are so strong, they’re unfortunately the subject of a lot of oppression by the badguys who keep the inhabitants under permanent martial law.
They broke the law by not being one of us, so we killed them. “Yeah, seems fair.”
As you can see, there’s a lot to dig into in the galaxy of Star Wars. I could spend all day talking about some of the other planets, like Ryloth, the home of the Twi’leks, who are the aliens with big tentacles on their heads–although you might be surprised to learn they’re actually head tails.
There’s an adventure, Flashpoint Brak, which details the Brak Sector of the galaxy–I’ve got a picture of the map, but like I say, the maps aren’t super detailed–it’s up to you to fill in the blanks.The Brak Sector is itself pretty huge and includes worlds like the Bracana system, which is a world dedicated to being an Imperial Shipyard (they’re the bad guys), or the Aramand Cluster, which is home to a big mining consortium.
And even just off of those details, you can get an idea of what the planets should feel like. The galaxy of Star Wars is big–but each of the planets can be condensed down to cool places the characters will want to interact with–the big refineries of the Aramand Cluster could be a great place to have a showdown. Especially if your characters are taking advantage of some of the unique aspects of the Star Wars setting and playing as some of the classes that are only barely shown in the movies, like the Jedi. They use weapons called light sabers, which aren’t lightweight swords, but rather sabers made out of a beam of light that can reflect lasers!
Anyway, that’s it for now. I just wanted to provide you with a very brief intro to Star Wars. I hope there’s enough to whet your appetite and get you to dig in… we may not know much about the worlds of the movies, but I think a big part of the fun is getting to explore what’s out there and maybe even add your own contribution to the galaxy.
As they say in the movie: May The Force be with you!
