/swg/ Captain Phasma Gonna Get You Edition

Clearly, it's because nucanon didn't follow the formula by making her first appear in a holiday special.

No, Boba Fett's popularity was planned.
Seriously, my brother (who is old enough to have been a part of the generation that grew up with it) said he appeared in promotional materials a LOT for Empire and Jedi, especially Empire.
This was the era of the badass gun-toying vigilante hero's greatest popularity, and they kept playing up Boba Fett in promotional materials to be this kickass Man With No Name mysterious hardcore motherfucker. Not exaggerating that last bit either, explicit comparisons were drawn between Eastwood's character and Fett in this one magazine apparently. Fett might have had a reduced role in the film then originally planned or something, but Boba Fett was apparently hyped as cool before the movie even came out.

According to my brother;
>"In retrospect he basically does nothing and Phasma was basically the exact same thing, but when I was twelve years old I didn't even give a shit that he did nothing and was too stupid to recognize an obvious marketing ploy back then."

>Boba Fett
>hyped
Pop quiz: where is Boba Fett on the original 1981 poster?

He was the fucking explosion. THe one guy too cool to be seen as his character so you only see the by-product of him

Not talking about the poster (which by the way he has one of still), but in promotional stuff like magazines and interviews and shit.
Our generation did not invent hype and promotional materials user, we just got REALLY really good at it and made it standard practice for everything.

Empire was at the time a HUGELY anticipated film, especially among 80's nerddom, and they were no different then us when it comes to how excited we get over absolutely nothing of substance. They just didn't do it on the internet so it happened a lot less fast.

>When you find nudes of that hoochie staff sgt on the holonet

I'd legit buy a SW Christmas special 2.
Life day probably caused Kylo to turn evil anyway.

>What's your favorite moment playing any Star Wars game?
Going Rambo with a droideka in Battlefront II and winning the match.

Holy Force, I always forget how much I hate the First Order stormtrooper helmets until I see one again. They look like helmets you'd see on a cartoon duck in a Star Wars parody. Quack quack, nerfherder.

Not just the Holiday Special, but she also wasn't released as a unique action figure that could only be acquired by mailing away proof of purchase from all the other action figures.

By time ESB came out, Boba Fett toys were already sought-after items. His armor was dope as fuck and he was a badass bounty hunter. It only took the "No Disintegrations" line from Vader to cement his reputation as REAL in the film, and the rest is history.

In contrast, TFA put Phasma in because Kathleen Kennedy saw the chrome stormtrooper concept (which had been intended as one of many possible options for Kylo Ren) and insisted that J.J. Abrams use it. And after there was some minor backlash for announcing "only" two female characters in the film (Rey and Leia, of course), they had a meeting and shit themselves straining to think of another role for a woman.

What resulted was Captain Phasma, who was ham-fisted-ly played up in media to counteract aforesaid backlash, and yet had no significant role in the film.

>and yet had no significant role in the film.
She did though.
She shut down the shields :^)

Do you work at LucasFilm? you know too much.

I'll always love reading fanboy theories that can't help but chase at FEMINIST CONSPIRACIES instead of the much simpler answers: toy sales and mediocre writing.

I wish. But no, I just spend all my time on Star Wars speculation forums.

>2017
>not knowing how Disney/the politically correct business world works

You consumed the same interviews and press releases prior to TFA that I did, right? No? Well, let's go down the rabbit hole:

An interview with Michael Kaplan, costume designer for TFA, gave us the following:

Said Kaplan, "When I was trying to tackle Kylo Ren's character, I thought, what if he were The Lord of the Stormtroopers, in bright shining silver armor? Concept artists (Dermot Power). He produced a stunning illustration which was immediately shot down by JJ; not right for Kylo Ren! The drawing remained on our design room wall. One afternoon, Kathy Kennedy came in for a meeting, pointed at the illustration and exclaimed: “What is that? It’s fantastic!"

There's more, but I'm on the way to work. I'll do this later.

This thread is making me realize just how low my expectations for the next movie are. Hopefully they are a few cool ships for Xwing in it. That's all I ask for at this point

That sounds more like she just saw a random design sketch, and thought what if?
that's kind of pathetic, man, just saying.

I've got a good feeling about VIII and can't quite place why but my feelings are often pretty spot on about these things.

Any ideas of a good starting ship for my players in an old republic Saga game?

The good news is no JJ and its got at least one A-Wing in it.

Hopefully they take it in a direction that isn't just "Nu-Empire Strikes Back" but I'll need to see some real trailers to start getting hyped.

I hope you're right. I really wanted to like 7 but it was just disappointing.

Depends on what the game is going to focus around.

Fringe, military or whatever?

Give them a centurion-class painted red. It's missing most weapons and there's no crew.

>Said Kaplan, "When I was trying to tackle Kylo Ren's character, I thought, what if he were The Lord of the Stormtroopers, in bright shining silver armor? Concept artists (Dermot Power). He produced a stunning illustration which was immediately shot down by JJ; not right for Kylo Ren! The drawing remained on our design room wall. One afternoon, Kathy Kennedy came in for a meeting, pointed at the illustration and exclaimed: “What is that? It’s fantastic!"

You're only proving my 'toy sales' point.

Basically whatever. We're smack bang in the middle of the Mando war ats but until we're more comfortable with the system since we're all new there probably won't be much in the way of massive space battles so something simple will probably do best

>A w-w-woman did it!
>Must be a feminazi conspiracy attack on us True Fans (tm)

Grow up. Phasma can be a shit character without being some massive assault on your masculinity. Women can write schlock and push cheap marketing gimmicks too.

Previously owned by an ancestor of Booster Terrik?

For the force move upgrade that lets you rip items out of opponents hands, is there any opposed roll? I want my players to be able to use it, but I also dont want them to just yank everyones light sabers out of their hands whenever a fight starts.

And when it comes to crafting items (mainly in the Tech book) there are a lot of options that you can spend despair on in the crafting rolls, but outside of being a dick and spending a darkside destiny point on their roll how exactly would they get red dice on the check?

Consular class cruiser.

It can have a shit ton of customization points but comes most times with no guns. Modify the required crew to 2, this gives them a vessel with two people involved and room for a good amount npcs for quests/bus fare.

>no JJ
Abrams does fast, flashy and explosives stuff fairly well. But I think the lack of attention to detail tends to trip him up and that leads to plot holes later on as the roller coaster gets going- ordinarily in a stand-alone movie that isn't too much of an issue but his recent work has alienated quite a few Star Trek fans and a few Star Wars fans in doing that. The reason being is that we really get engrossed in the detail, while I quite liked TFA, when you put it next to R1 that lack of attention to detail and integrating it into a larger 'thing' that is the SW Universe, does make it a lesser film.

Rian Johnson is a bit of a wild card for the next movie, not a lot of experience, but what he has done with things like Looper and Breaking Bad means he can string a pretty solid story together.

For the roll, I have been giving skilled rivals and nemesis opposition dice to the pcs. So like any other opposed check.

For crafting, you could say with a despair everything is working properly but they messed something up that does not come out until combat and it upgrades so many attacks to get them used to it.

Even if it's Nu Empire Strikes Back, I'd be okay with it. Empire was good shit.

I just dont want some HURR YOU CAN SEE THE SUPERWEAPON IN THE SKY SOMEHOW IN REAL TIME ALSO YOU CAN SEE THE CAPITALS BLOW UP FROM HALF THE GALAXY AWAY BECUASE REASONS.

Im still fucking angry about that.
Fucking Abrams has no clue what 'scale' is/

Neither do most writers in the Scifi genre, so it's nothing new and this is Star Wars, fantastical, impossible shit is kind of the standard and to be totally fair, nobody has really delved into what firing a projectile into hyperspace would do, or how it would appear in the sky of any habitable planet not in the path of destruction.

Not saying it's not ridiculous just giving a more level headed opinion.

Oh sure, you can come up with some insane handwaving, which they actually did. It's on the wookie, and its pretty hilarious reading.

It's just so annoying to me that they did it the way they did, becuase they could quite happily have made it actually make sense.

Just remove everyone at Maz's looking up into the sky and inexplicably seeing superweapon fire from halfway across the galaxy.

Replace that with a sudden holonet news broadcast taking over the majority of the cantina's main room, so all the main characters are caught up looking at it as it announces the complete annihilation of the Hosnian system.

Then they hear TIE whine and "Those beasts, they're here!"
It's decided less retarded and works just as well.

Handwaving has kind of always been a part of Star Wars though, I don't disagree that they could have done it in a different way that didn't require as much of a handwave. I just don't see as much of a problem with it, I guess.

I still choose to interpret that as the Imperial ship projecting a fuckoff huge hologram into the upper atmosphere to demoralize them.

>I'm glad Rogue one was better
With people like this being the majority, I have lost all hope that we'll ever get to see an actually good big budget movie again.

Oh, for sure.
I dont mind handwaving per se - this is space fantasy in the truest sense, im not asking for some hard realism.

But i mean shit, they didnt even explain in film why you could see the weapon fire across the entire known galaxy.
They just said you could and rolled with it.
And that shit bugged me hardcore.

That's one way to handwave it I guess.

What's wrong with Rouge one?

Has anyone here gone to celebration or intending to go this year? I have questions.

The problem I had with the scale of the scene was that it turned the galaxy into a very tiny place thematically. When Alderaan blew up, the only inclination anybody has of it happening comes from Ben getting a massive case of the jibblies and even he's not sure what just happened.

That and there's no real tension in the scene. We get a tiny glimpse of Hosnia without it being identified, or without any kind of emotional connection to the place. We don't know any senators (Leia only shows up after the event) or have any reason to care about the place since everyone, including members of the Resistance are saying that the New Republic is too busy sitting around with their thumbs up their asses to do anything about the FO.

On a plot level, yes FO destroying Hosnia is very bad, but without an emotional anchor to care about, the whole scene comes off as dull.

>fans arguing over whether TFA or R1 was better when both movies were garbage

This makes me lose hope that we'll ever see a good Star Wars movie again in general. The nuance, subtlety, and substance are gone. All we have now are fanboys screaming "AT-STs AT-STs!!!" and craving more poorly-written Mary Sues, atrociously-coordinated action scenes, and fanservice to the originals.

This makes me lose the most hope.
>TFA comes out: "man they ripped off a new hope scene for scene this sucks they better not do it again"
>next movie is announced: "i hope they do Empire Strikes Back remade this'll be a good movie"

Yes, let's keep recycling plots while the House of Mouse keeps wiping their ass with half-assed scripts and throwing them out into production for another 400 Star Wars movies all made as marketing vehicles just like TFA and R1.

Christ, even Lucas didn't rape the franchise as hard as Disney is. At least Lucas used lube and a condom. Disney's greedy fatfuck CEOs are going in dry and raw and fucking the license for every centavo it's worth.

Exactly.

Set it inside the bar with a news report, see a newswoman freakng the fuck out on the holonet, see everyone in the bar lose their shit - the ones who are pro FO get set upon by the ones who are pro Resistance.
Han freaks out, worrying that Leia mightve been on Hosnian Prime trying to talk the Republic into doing something about the First Order.

Then the FO show up and the fight starts.

Has there ever really been one of those? I mean even Star Wars was relatively simple and cliched when you strip away the cool skin, and the mysticism about the force.
Yeah I understand, and that other user's explanation makes sense as well and would actually make more sense than most things in Star Wars.
I disagree on the it shrinks the galaxy part, because it's hyperspace that shits like shrooms on steroids, kidding lol, but I think the lack of a reason to care was intentional we're supposed to be following Rey's journey is and what reason does she have to care, save for basic decency and compassion?

>AT-STs AT-STs
Now that you mention it, I'd pay to see a series/show about walker crews.

...

That'd be a relatively interesting show, but it'd have to follow Imperials, and in Disney NuCanon the Empire is evil and bad and so we can't have them be the stars. It has to be standard, it has to be bland, it has to be inoffensive.

This I put down to TFA's lack of plot structure.

A New Hope is 3 acts plus interludes. Prologue: Leia's starship, Act I: Luke & Droids on Tatooine. Interlude: Alderaan is destroyed. Act II: Death Star escape. Interlude: Yavin Briefing. Act III: Trench Run.

Each Act is it's own mini-arc, with a different texture and feel as the stakes mount.

TFA in contrast is: Poe vs the FO, Finn & Poe Crash, Rey's intro, Rey & Finn on the Falcon, Han Solo & Co vs Loan Sharks and teeth things... and so on and so forth.

The movie has some pretty pictures, but it never really provides the differences in pace and difference in kind the way that the original movie did (and Empire does 3 acts as well, just with two of them occurring simultaneously).

The Force Awakens isn't a bad movie. It's just got the problem of being in the same series as two of the greatest films ever made, both of which are absolute machines when it comes to structure, pacing, and cinematography.

Calling someone who doesn't like the new Disney films a baiter is basically shouting "STOP DISLIKING WHAT I LIKE"

...

>the Empire is evil and bad and so we can't have them be the stars
If Vader and Thrawn can be stars in their own nucanon works, then so can a bunch of grunts. Just have it be about a bunch of moralfag Imps who question if they're the bad guys in the first half and eventually defect with their walker(s). Or do what muh Gundums does and have them be half of the story, while the other half is good old Johnny Reb. Or have them fight Saw's brand of crazy extremists. Nobody likes Saw's faction, not even the main Rebellion.

Except they're not the bad guys. Why does every Imperial story have to be about defecting? For fuck's sake, there's only been what, ONE Star Wars game where you play as an Imperial and nothing but an Imperial? TIE Fighter? It's been said in /swg/ many times before, but it apparently needs said again, the Empire isn't fucking evil. That meme needs to die.

Why didn't the Emperor clone himself in case he was defeated?

>the Empire isn't fucking evil
Yes it is. Doomsday weapons, genocide, and the goddamn Sith are evil according to the setting's rules.

He did in Legends.

According to later material and the Expanded Universe? No, they're not. The Rebellion in many ways is just as bad, if not worse, than the Empire, while the Empire is worse in some areas. The Rebellion isn't good and the Empire isn't evil, they're grey-shaded. If you analyze it and think critically about it rather than taking one episode's opening crawl as undisputed fact, then you arrive at that conclusion.

He did

Because they are the bad guys, AND always have been, that's it! discussion over!
Personal opinions of imperial policy do not matter.

If you want to go there, lets talk about the fact that Palpatine is pretty much the most evil bastard that's ever appeared in the Star Wars Universe in Both continuities. That his policies while they say they make things more secure and safer they move the fear and danger from outside of the former Republic territory to within it, transferring that fear to literally every Imperial soldier, and Stormtrooper ,and Officer, and Moff, and Governor, and so on. That is not a good thing and never will be.

>evil because the "good" guys said it was evil
stay pleb

>Legends works of highly variable quality and faithfulness to the OT's vision are more canon than the films which form the foundation of the setting
The films have always been taken precedence over everything else. The Rebels are the heroes, the Empire are the villains, and there are a few exceptions to the rule like Pellaeon and Borsk, but they remain statistical anomalies who do not disprove this rule.

We have a place for you friend it's here go there, be with your kind, we promise there are no jews there.

They've never been evil and never will be until Disney decides to fuck up the lore and make them that way.

Palpatine is a pragmatic Sith Lord. Yoda and the Council weren't evil for wanting to run the Jedi Order and maintain indirect control over galactic affairs, were they? How is Palpatine any more evil than they are for wanting his order to be in control? He's not. Order 66 was an act of war, not genocide. Get over it.

The Empire has numerous good qualities, and hell, the Rebellion does too. This isn't a stupid argument of "Rebels = bad, Empire = good", it's that the Empire and Rebellion BOTH have qualities to them. The Rebellion's great for aliens, the Empire's great for humans. The Empire's great for security, the Rebellion's great for lessened restrictions. The Empire's great for order and stability, the Rebellion's great for democracy and senate representation. The Empire's great for the Core Worlds and nearby areas, the Rebellion's great for the Outer Rim and nearby areas. The Empire is not wholly good nor evil, the Rebellion is not wholly good nor evil. Both have their good and evil people, and both have ideas and qualities of their own.

>everyone i disagree with needs to go to /pol/
>opposing opinions are /pol/
>if you like the empire you're /pol/
>if i don't like you you're /pol/

shut up

But the Empire hires smugglers, deals with crime lords and starts wars too.

>How is Palpatine any more evil than they are for wanting his order to be in control?
Because he blows up planets.

>hires smugglers
Depends on the type, and often it's penal service to avoid jail sentencing themselves.
>deals with crime lords
Yeah.
>starts wars
Not really. Regardless of what you think about the Alliance vs. Empire argument it was the Rebels that started the conflict with the Empire. Other than that the Empire only conventionally fought Separatist remnants, which was a continuation of a war already in progress.

>evil because the expository opening crawl that establishes the Star Wars setting says so
Yes. The original author defined the rules of the setting. Complaining about the Empire being evil is like complaining Mordor or Zeon being evil. The official rules of the setting, established by the author right from the get-go, say so, and the actions of those factions within the primary source material all scream "typical fictional bad guy."

>Tarkin blew up Alderaan which was harboring millions of rebel sympathizers and was actively supporting the rebellion with huge quantities of supplies, manpower, and weaponry, all while lying to the Empire and their own people about it
>blown up as a show of force after numerous rebel raids, insurgencies, and acts of terror committed against Imperial forces

That's war bud. Alderaan knew exactly what it was signing up for when it decided to supply the Rebellion. It was like the Germans sinking our ship that brought the US into WW1. You can't blame them for sinking a ship we used to supply their enemy behind their backs, and you can't blame the Empire for destroying a strongly-fortified planet that was heavily supporting their enemy behind their backs, all while the Rebellion had been doing shit to mess with the Empire for years prior.

I say that because you are from /pol/ and that screencap looks like it was from a /pol/ thread or a mini/pol/, (also known as /b/) thread, go back, because the empire is not good and has never been good, sure some good things happened like the Emperor's death, and the rise of the Rebellion, but Palpatine and the rest of the imperials didn't do those things.

>mini/pol/, (also known as /b/)
Fuck off back to tumblr or where you crawled in from.

Really? nazi/pol/ hasn't been trying to take over /b/ for years? am I the only one who's noticed that and also seen the archived /pol/ thread where they planned it?

>Mordor

Interestingly enough, Tolkien paints Sauron in a sympathetic light before the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He differed from his master Melkor because he wanted to truly bring order and peace to Middle-earth, viewing those descended from the Valar and Men as corrupt and inefficient. He also had a love of architecture and engineering. It wasn't until the Third Age when his hatred boiled over that he became wholly evil, began to claim he was more powerful than Melkor, and started his violent quest of domination.

Long story short, if Tolkien, a guy who did write many strictly good and strictly evil characters, can say that Sauron wasn't always a bad guy and had redeeming qualities, are you seriously telling me that Star Wars, a series started with the idea of being a classic sci-fi adventure serial that was grittier and more mature than then-sci-fi monster Star Trek, can't have shades of moral grey for its factions because of a single brief line in one of its movies' opening crawls?

So? The rebels do the same equivalent thing in the first movie.

How many people do they kill blowing up the planet-sized death star, again?

And if you're gonna make an argument about a military target, so was Yavin. Alderan shouldn't have been blown up, but that was all Tarkin - Big Emps had nothing to do with that decision and neither did Vader.

Tbh on a galactic scale Alderaan is more like Dresden or the US firebombing of Japan.

Naaaah.
ADB has a very solid analysis of why Fett is MUCH better turned than Phasma.
aarondembskibowden.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/we-need-to-talk-about-captain-phasma-and-boba-fett/

>an entire planet is at fault for the actions of its leader and members of its people.

I bet youre okay with drone strikes that wipe out entire villages to kill one guy.

Ah yes, the great debate for the 100th time.

The Force doesn't give a shit about what you think, the Empire was always destined to fail. The Sith are evil, the Empire is evil. That's it.

Sorry you can't fulfill your autistic fantasies in Star Wars without feeling good.

Any novel that is about Stormtroopers and the wars they wage? I'd like a book about the standard army of the Empire, to read about the bad guys through their eyes.

>shades of moral grey for its factions because of a single brief line in one of its movies' opening crawls
Sauron's days of being non-evil were long past by the time of LotR and they, in no way, absolve him of the sins he committed or the body count he racked up. And there were shades of gray in the Empire--you had people like Thrawn and Baron Fel--but they were still considered statistical anomalies.

Nothing the Empire has done absolves it of Alderaan, Ghorman, the Krytos virus, Honoghr, or Thrawn's off-screen genocide. Promises of order and safety do not absolve it of using WMDs. Many viewers (and George) also oppose totalitarianism. The Empire is very much a totalitarian state. The dissolution of the Senate is a clear sign of taxation and legislation without representation.

Their government and half their population knew what they were getting into, and they knew that they had to lie their Imperial loyalist citizens or else they'd spill the beans to the Empire.

Let's also not forget that Leia lied about the location of the Rebel base to Tarkin KNOWING that her planet was at stake. She could've told the truth and spared them, but she didn't. It's pretty apparent Tarkin knew this. If anyone's to blame for Alderaan's destruction, Leia shares equally with Tarkin in that regard.

Tarkin was never going to spare the planet, and she did tell the truth, Dantooine had a rebel base, idiot.

...

For the rarer or high powered items I usually give the pcs a mission or two to acquire special materials, Cortosis for example. How well they do on the mission and how much they get can influence their rolls. IE red dice

>half their population
WHere are you getting those numbers from?

You've decided that an entire planet of a fair few billion needed to die so that the Empire could make a point, and this ISNT morally bankrupt in any way.

You desperately need to stop trying so hard to justify the empire.
Theyre a larger-than-life evil empire in a series of films. They're not the good guys.

Dont get me wrong, I love seeing the Rebellion not being portrayed as the perfect good guys, but trying to pretend that the Empire in the films isnt most definitely the 'bad guys' is just ridiculous.

A mostly-abandoned Rebel base that was basically an outpost at that time.

>muh totalitarianism is wrong
>muh lucas didnt like it

Yeah, and Lucas let Solo live in Episode VI so he could sell more toys, and also didn't know how to pronounce "Gungans", and also thought JarJar would be the most important character of the entire Star Wars saga. It doesn't matter what he liked or didn't like. The galaxy's a shitty place with shitty people who want to do shitty things to each other. The New Republic and its disarmament policies and peace didn't do shit, and their period was even more violent and disastrous than the Empire. You gotta have weapons and armies and technology and force in Star Wars or else you get stepped on. Fuck off with that "give muh peace a chance empire is bad because muh weapons" bullshit.

It doesn't have to follow the imperials. Rebels use clone wars era tech all the time, and that includes walkers. They'd also be strapped for parts which helps with being gritty like 08th MS team.

We're not from /pol/, and you don't have to be from /pol/ to think the Empire isn't evil, dingus.

>millions of workers to die
>"The first Death Star is depicted in various sources of having a crew of 265,675, as well as 52,276 gunners, 607,360 troops, 30,984 stormtroopers, 42,782 ship support staff, and 180,216 pilots and support crew."

So even at best, that's less than a decent sized city, versus the entire population of a planet.
The Empire definitely isnt in the right here.

Also no disturbance in the force = the force wills it

>the force willed the death star and all of its crew to die

That's an even more retarded theory than midichlorians.

Never said you did, but the opinion that the empire is good, is shit tier and sounds like /pol/.
It may, be 40k inspired, I think the Imperium is just as evil as Sidious' Empire, but thats not really relevant.

>planet-sized death star
>160 km across
>Earth
>6,371 km across

>And if you're gonna make an argument about a military target, so was Yavin.
But we're not talking about Yavin, we're talking about Alderan all you've really done is conceded that the DS was a legitimate military target.

>That was all Tarkin
Oh my God you're right Plaps obviously built his super laser and never intended it be used on a civilian target which is why he gave very clear instructions oh waiiiiiiiittttttt....