FATE style Star Wars

[devonapple]

Look at debt for a lot of your dark side excursions. I think the spellcasting debt would work awesome for what you want (YS290 "The dark powers are always willing to help").

Force wielders can gain one Fate Point for one point of Dark Side Debt, as often as they want.  Dark Side Debt will compel your actions so that you take Lawbreaker Stunts (The Tenets of The Force are probably reasonably similar to The Laws of Magic)

I think this is a great twist, folks.

[Drachasor]

Personally, I don't like the idea of using Refresh to denote whether you are light side or dark side. Use aspects for that since it's more of a philosophical view point. It seems like you're trying to draw too much from WEG Star Wars, but Fate doesn't really work in that light exactly. Set your Refresh level and have to leave at least 1 Refresh for whatever your level is. Changing those rules just seems like a way to complicate things.

It isn't just a philosophical viewpoint.  Like breaking the laws of magic, the Dark Side corrupts.  That's canon in the Star Wars universe.  So I think some combination of Debt and refresh make sense for mimicking this aspect of the Force.

[AlexFallad]

Well, a Jedi with a low Refresh rate (like 1 or 2) is going to be vulnerable to temptation for debt (not to mention Compels, and woe to you if your Aspect is Quick to Anger or Protective of My Attachments).

Along a philosophical line, I think a lot of defensive uses for The Force would use Discipline and offensive uses would be governed by Conviction.  A higher Conviction would "tempt" a Jedi to seek more aggressive solutions.

Like using The Force to unleash the lightning...definitely Conviction.  Throwing someone back against a wall to smash? Same.  Calmly lifting a freakin' X-wing out of a bog? Discipline...

[toturi]

The Dark Side corrupts and the Light redeems. Those are the canon of the Star Wars universe. There are those who give themselves to the Dark Side and there are those who choose to immerse themselves in the Light.

Remember in Star Wars, there is the "will of the Force" (usually interpreted to mean the Word of George/the Wishes of Lucas). It is just as likely that a Jedi that is low in Refresh has given himself over to his Destiny and is following the will of the Force and is constantly being Compelled to do good. A Dark Jedi/Sith who has more Refresh would be able to resist being Redeemed.

[Malckuss]

Something I suggested to one of the latest takes on Star wars with Fate on RPG.net was stealing two ideas from Strands of Fate and Fred's Fate blog on the Fate Fractal was that everything need to work like other aspects of the system. So I suggested creating a Dark Side Stress track, and make the the lower three tiers of Consequences persistent, which according to SoF means to "call on the dark side" and gain a bonus to the roll equal to the stress the consequence of that tier would give and taking consequences moves you closer to falling to the dark side.

[Howl]

Something I suggested to one of the latest takes on Star wars with Fate on RPG.net was stealing two ideas from Strands of Fate and Fred's Fate blog on the Fate Fractal was that everything need to work like other aspects of the system. So I suggested creating a Dark Side Stress track, and make the the lower three tiers of Consequences persistent, which according to SoF means to "call on the dark side" and gain a bonus to the roll equal to the stress the consequence of that tier would give and taking consequences moves you closer to falling to the dark side.

Thats a great idea and it works like that in SW saga edition. You can call on the dark side to give yourself a boost( spending a force point and rolling an extra 1d6) or you can use dark side powers you dont have usually. But this gives you dark side points, bringing you closer to the dark side.
And you could model the dark side stress track afther the Hunger stress track in DFRPG.

[jybil178]

Thats a great idea and it works like that in SW saga edition. You can call on the dark side to give yourself a boost( spending a force point and rolling an extra 1d6) or you can use dark side powers you dont have usually. But this gives you dark side points, bringing you closer to the dark side.
And you could model the dark side stress track afther the Hunger stress track in DFRPG.

Hehe, this was actually the exact idea I had!  It also makes sense to have it probably be based on discipline, or the appropriate alternative.  I almost forgot about this one too, hehe ^^ Thanks!

[Malckuss]

You are welcome. If I think of anything else I'll be sure to chime in.

[Howl]

Glad I could help.

And Discipline sound like the right skill to control the force, especially for Jedi. Since Sith use their emotions perhaps empathy would be the right skill to use for them. Or just go with discipline for both, so it doesnt get complicated!
Like I already said, I would be very interested to see this idea when developed so if you get SW running in FATE please post it.

[Kommisar]

I would model Force Powers very much like DFRPG models magic with Conviction and Discipline.

Regardless of where one falls on the Lightside / Darkside spectrum a force user, just like a Wizard in the Dresdenverse, has to believe in the Force and his place in it.  Three are lots of differing philosophies there, for sure!  A Jedi Master would normally believe strongly in their being part of something larger than themselves (The Force) whereas a Sith Lord believes equally strongly in his mastery and control of the Force.  The flavor of one's belief will vary; but the key is that belief.

Then there is Discipline.  How a Force-user has learned to control himself and the energies of the Force available to them.  In the movies and novels, you can easily find instances of Jedi that were "Strong with the Force" yet lacked the discipline needed.  On the other hand, one should not assume that all Sith are undisciplined.  Far, far from it.  The scariest, nastiest and most powerful Sith Lords were extremely disciplined.  And while they would use their emotions to fuel their powers; the goal was to ensure that a Sith used their emotions while not allowing their emotions to control them.  One can debate that this is not, in the long run, possible; this is the stance of the Jedi after all.  You can take both Darth Bane and Darth Cadeus as examples of just this.

Oh, yea.  Massive Star Wars geek here.      I've been playing around with using the FATE system to run a SW game since I found the system.  It just fits so beautifully!

One of the things I have been working on is adding a mechanism to reflect the continued use of the Dark Side on one's body.  Name me a Sith Lord that doesn't have at least scary looking eyes!  My current thinking is that changing a character's aspects as they continue down the path of the Dark Side is the best way

[sinker]

I seriously think that debt and the lawbreaker power is the perfect way to handle the dark side. It just fits beautifully.

[Howl]

Oh, yea.  Massive Star Wars geek here.

One of the things I have been working on is adding a mechanism to reflect the continued use of the Dark Side on one's body.  Name me a Sith Lord that doesn't have at least scary looking eyes!  My current thinking is that changing a character's aspects as they continue down the path of the Dark Side is the best way

You are not alone! 

Great idea to reflect the use of the dark side on one's body. I havent thought of that myself. And I agree the best way to do that is to change the characters aspect as they dwell into the dark side more. 

[darkseph]

Hey, nice thread!

I tried to get the topic started last year, but it didn't work out. I also think that Dresden Files Evocation might be a good fit for the Force (though it might be overcomplicating things a bit. I feel that Dresden Magic is just way more versatile and therefore more in need of a freeform system than the Force). The similar but less fiddly approach would be something along the Control power in Strands of Fate, if anybody has read that.

That being said, I was working on hacking the Force, Dresden Style. Basically instead of Elements you get Control, Sense and Alter powers, which you could Refine. Also, I did model the Dark Side using Lawbreaker stunts and made them requirement for certain Force powers. For example, to use a Lightning attack, one needs "Steeped in the Dark Side", which is basically the [-3] Lawbreaker power. Basically there is a progression from "Temptation of the Dark Side", which acts like Demonic Copilot and has to be taken by any Force User. Once you knocked yourself out with it, it would be replaced by Tainted [-1], touched [-2] and finally steeped [-3].

I was undecided whether using the Attack Option would be a Dark Side act (as using an offensive block) by standard. Also, I got stuck in modelling the Sense (precognition etc.) and Control powers (speed, jump,...). Somehow just using a Maneuver to make yourself "Swift as the Wind" seems lame when there are so many nice Powers in Dresden Files like Inhuman Speed, Cassandra's tears, etc...

Cheers,
darkseph