Well, I feel strongly that Star Wars draws a lot on myth, and in particular the myth of the citzen militia seen in, well, that price of freedom roleplaying game. 

It should be noted that I am worrying about trying to play an insurgent against a 'realistic' Imperial military machine ending up looking more like:- 

Than Star Wars. I don't wanna sit around pretending to be a Taliban dude, and then get smoked by a space hellfire missile fired from a space predator drone in orbit. I wanna be the cool kind of rebel, like the guys in Price of Freedom. Or Star Wars. 

 You know, this conversation Aluminum Wolf is having with everyone is interesting as hell to watch.

Corradus said:

Who isn't letting him speak? I mean who can really do that unless they are a mod? In fact if you count the posts he has spoken the most by far of anyone in this thread. That is the point. He is repeating the same thing over and over. It would be grand if his many posts were rebuttals or answers to questions of others, but he rarely seems to respond to anyone's input, just repeats with yet more examples ad naseum.

This was an interesting topic for me. I've learned others' viewpoints. Aluminum Wolf's point is one of those I learned pages ago. But is it being repeated over and over and driving others away with boredom killing the thread?

Just my one 2 cred chips of course.

Sturn said:

Yeah, sorry, I should have clarified - by "let him speak" what I meant was "stop telling him to shut up". And before you protest that you weren't, yeah, you were. Perhaps not in so many words, but that's what you wanted and (from what I gather) what you still want.

Yes, he repeats himself. So what? *points to your scroll button* Thereyago. Rotate that towards you and it's all over. Problem solved.

Thanks for the 2 credits though. I could use a soda. Want one while I'm at it? You look like a Cola guy. You a cola guy?

Corradus said:

No I wasn't. Please refrain from telling me what I said and instead go read what I actually said. I've actually asked him several questions. You know, questions, those things that ask for answers (using your condescending tone there). In fact I actually asked him a question in my post right before your post saying we were asking him to, "shut up".  Not sure how that could be interpreted as, "shut up", the reason I retorted to your accusations. Stop repeating yourself? Sure in a nut shell I said that. At the same time I was asking him to answer OTHER things so no I wasn't telling him to shut up in fact I was asking him to respond, just please not with the same repeat.

Aluminum Wolf seems to be a big boy. I think he can defend himself fine. That is what I was asking him to do actually. I'm still waiting for his resource to support his claims. Perhaps you want to jump in to defend him again and go find those stats for me? I'll give you 2 more cred chips.

Isn't the new Adversary system going to fix this for us? That and the minions we already have? GMs will easily be able to make their Stormtroopers as inept or elite as they want them to using only the RAW. I haven't read the Adversary update yet, only read what others have posted about it.

AluminiumWolf said:

The Gamesmaster's Guide (or handbook or whatever) is fairly unapologetic about this. They say 1) their aim was to recreate the films, where the heroes fell stormtroopers with abandon (and PC in d6 Star Wars were meant to be the heroes, not just average guys) and 2) they are better than average "normal" (ie non heroic) guys. That is technically true (average for the world was 2D in attributes and 3D in skills, and stormtroopers have at least and usually higher than this in their relevant skills), and they had some decent skill codes (skill level), just the penalties for the armour nerfed most of the important ones. It doesn't hold up so well when comparing to the normal stats for rebel troopers and the like, as they had similar levels of skills (or at least effective skill levels).

If a GM really wanted them to be a serious threat, they were advised that the stats represented an average stormtrooper. If you wanted to have real elite troopers you should boost the stats. Something that also occurred to myself was that by removing the penalty of the armour they suddenly did become a step above normal dudes.

Either way, at least it was better than Saga d20, which while as I find the system quite interesting, rates a police officer as more of a challange than a Stormtrooper. Erm… What?

As far as rebel troopers: quite clearly, the ones on the Tantive at the beginning of Star Wars are massively outclassed by stormtroopers. Either they are so rubbish, or stormtroopers are so amazing, that the troopers are able to get through a defended narrow doorway with 1 (maybe 2) losses. However, I wouldn't judge anything on the performance in the battle of Hoth. There the rebel troopers are just so massively outclassed interms of the equipment (their guns just cannot do anything to the AT-ATs) that they are swept away. As far as I can tell the stormtroopers are only deployed after the rebels are in full retreat, and so have a massive combative and psychological edge on them. I would probably rate the training of the Hoth troopers as being fine, just they were fighting a battle the Rebels didn't want to fight, ie a pitched battle, where their more limited and less sophisticated resources were a crippling factor.

Personally I would rate the Stormtroopers as shock troopers. Competent, and good at their role, facing the enemy at close ranges, where psychology is as much as a factor as anything else. However, their fanatical loyalty to the Emperor would make them a bit inflexible in thinking. Basically, if you face them in the way they are designed to, in a stand up fight, they will be a serious danger. However, find more unconventional approaches and they should start to get outsmarted… which is exactly the approach the Rebels take, as far as I understand (though for some reason the Empire does essentially devolve into outright mookdom when it comes to the space battles, with inferior starfighters crewed by inferior pilots).

"That depends. If you are going for a cinematic unrealistic but fun game, then the Wolverines would have every chance to pull off a rescue. If it is more realistic, then in all likelihood they would fail against a trained force."

- That film pains me (as much as I find it a total laugh)… putting aside the complete nuttery that is the basic story of the film, a handful of teenagers are only finally defeated when they send in a battalion of Spetznatz, and even then they inflict heavy casualties. They shouldn't have been a speed bump in the road for any trained military force…

+1 to Borithan. Again, we need a Like button.

Sturn said:

borithan said:

It's been a while, but I do recall making penciled in adjustments in my WEG books for Stormtroopers. Again, way too weak for what is seen in the movies when fighting against Rebels. The WEG Rebel books, if I recall correctly, made them much better then your average Stormtrooper. I suppose those Rebels were considered the elite of the Rebels though.

In Saga there was a low level and high level Stormtrooper. I didn't like the gaming aspects of this (use this one when you are lower level, use this one when you are higher). The low levels were too weak, the high levels were too strong. I made up my own version that was somewhere in between.

borithan said:

But if you wanted to make a game that recreated the feel of Red Dawn, you would have to rate the Wolverines as better soldiers than the Soviets. (I assume - it has been a while since I watched it.) h

I also can't help but notice no one has commented on the relative fighting power of Ewoks vs. Stormtroopers… h

As to Nazis being the most popular army, I would have suggested looking at the Flames of War section of your local hobbycraft when they sold it. Half the SKUs were Nazi, and there were five different SKUs of Tiger Tanks. h

I have seen several sculpters on Frothers Unite comment that the first thing you do when making a WWII range is produce Waffen SS, as they will always sell well, and that standard US soldiers are notoriously poor sellers. h

Essentially, Nazis are to WWII what Space Marines are to 40k, and Jedi are to Star Wars. h

Or, I think you will get something closer to the intent of Star Wars, if you imagine the game that these guys would make:- h

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njBHyMUUWrk

If they thought their enemy would be these guys:- h

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzCJNgRjwcw

I've never paid much attention to Star Wars beyond the movies. Stormtroopers appear in all three of the original films, and with the exception of perhaps one scene, they seem to have horrible aim and go down when hit with any kind of attack. The lowly Ewoks take out dozens of them with clubs, bows & arrows and rocks. 
Moreover, they're also rather stupid. While sweeping Mos Eisley for two droids, a squad of stormtroopers comes across a locked door and decide to move on. I guess they could not concieve of a world in which intelligent humanoid droids can lock a door?

As such, I think yeah, they should probably be pushovers in the RPG, at least if the game is supposed to mirror the films and not the EU stuff, or novels, comics etc.. I don't know whether George Lucas intended them to be the elite troops of the Galactic Empire, but if that was his intent he seems to have changed his mind while filming the scenes that included them, because they come across as hopelessly inept virtually every time we see them.

In fact, one of the lines that never fails to make me laugh in Episode IV is when Ben Kenobi says "…And these blast points… too accurate for sand people. Only imperial stormtroopers are so precise."

Clearly, he has not watched Episodes IV-VI :)