Jan 11, 2012

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United We Stand: Cops and Robbers

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

I absolutely love hard mode Flashpoints. To anyone on the Dreshdae Cantina server, look me up and let’s run some. My freakin’ legs won’t drop in Directive 7.

On Sunday, I had the pleasure of sitting in a parenting Sunday school class with my parents. I’m still not sure how I got there, I certainly didn’t fit in, it was early in the morning and I’m not a morning person so I kind of just came to consciousness in the room. However, one thing that stuck out to me was I heard a mother ask was, “Should I be concerned if my child takes the ‘bad side’ in a violent game?”

I thought this was an incredibly interesting question and a new turn in the discussion about whether or not violent games are bad for younger children. While we gamers have our own opinions on the subject, for most of us might say that we are better off from our violent games, what about our alignment choices? What does it mean when we pick the ‘evil’ choice in a conversation, or choose to play our characters as violent, immoral people?

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Dec 22, 2011

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All The Galaxy’s A Stage: The Story So Far…

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

I’ve now had a chance to play my character on the Shien RP-PvE (NA) server for over a week.  With some time under my belt in the actual game some things are definitely jumping out at me.

Not bring able to sit on chairs is really a gap for me.  Well, that’s not completely true.  I can sit on chairs in my spaceship.  However, if I want to chill in the Cantina then I am out of luck.  I miss being able to have my avatar sit on chairs.  I am hoping that this is a feature that makes it in a patch…soon™.

There are no chat bubbles for launch.  I’m not too concerned about this personally.   But the RP community has many, many citizens who are dismayed at the lack of chat bubbles.  If it’s an option that can be toggled on and off, then I say bring it in.  Hopefully, chat bubbles also make it into the game…soon(tm).

Do you remember my article about the hidden grind of Social points?  Have you tried to get social points lately?  My main is at about 400 social points and I’ve been doing a notable amount of questing with guild-mates and others.  I am just over halfway through Social I.  I may be missing something, but social points are proving to be harder to get than a deal from a Toydarian.

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Nov 10, 2011

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All The Galaxy’s A Stage: Metagaming

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

There’s a concept in role-play known as metagaming.  For those of you new to role-play, this is the use of knowledge by a character that they should not have access to.  Wikipedia defines metagaming as, “the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one’s in-game decisions.”  When this approach is consciously taken by a player it is usually to gain some advantage in the game or RP scene.

Imagine the following scenario.  A character of yours is killed by another character.  You then create a new character who has detests the killer of your old character, and may even invest lots of time in creating a backstory to justify this hatred.  This would be metagaming.

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Nov 3, 2011

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All The Galaxy’s A Stage: RP Tracker – SWTOR-RP Wiki

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

For this month’s RP Tracker I would like to highlight a new feature that the team at swtor-rp recently released; the new swtor-rp Wiki is now live.  From what I understand the wiki design team opted to spend several months configuring, coding, and testing the best possible Wiki they could.  In my opinion, this effort was undoubtedly worth it.  As a member of the RP community I would like to extend a big thank you to the many spies that died to bring us…Oh wait, wrong context.

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Oct 27, 2011

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All The Galaxy’s A Stage: Jedi And Emotion – One Character’s Perspective

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

For sometime now I’ve been contemplating the line of the Jedi Code that reads, “There is no emotion; there is peace.”  The brilliance of the writing behind this line is that it is very much open to interpretation.

My experience is that the less you understand about the underlying mysticism of the Jedi philosophy the more likely you are to emphasize the literal wording of the Jedi Code over the potential of deeper meaning.  This line of the code, in partcular, is quite literally a mystery within a mystery within a grilled cheese sandwich.  And given the tendency for this line to be interpreted in so many ways I thought I’d take this opportunity to share one perspective.

Disclaimer:

This article contains my observations and opinion. I do not claim to have any official knowledge of this subject, and I am neither a writer or authority on Lore for BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic.  What follows will directly oppose some Expanded Universe canon.  In addition, your opinion may be different than mine.  You are encouraged to comment accordingly!

I’m going to ask you, dear reader, to indulge me and read the entire article before commenting.  What I am about to relate is the interpretation I’ve opted to take concerning the above line of the Code for a Jedi Master, called Sa Chi, that I currently role-play.

Denying Emotions?

Many posts I’ve read on this topic tend to get fixated on the idea that Jedi should have no emotion.  I’ve even seen RP that read runs along the lines of a Jedi Master telling their Padawan that they are supposed to spend a lifetime denying emotions, suppressing them.  And with this in mind I would like to present Sa’s first lesson:

No Jedi is going to reach enlightenment in the Force through suppression, aversion or denial.

From the first days of their training as a youngling or Padawan, Jedi work on learning how to release the false beliefs, attitudes, and values that cause emotions to surface in the first place. Emotions are a symptom, not a cause. With time, patience, training and persistence a Jedi can release much of the hidden baggage that leads to overwhelming emotions.

"You must unlearn what you have learned." ~ Yoda

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