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Title: 'Star Wars'-Inspired Tabletop Games Bring Rebellion and Glory (without
Disney)

Link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/0...

"I am a huge fan of Star Wars," opines an article from the gaming Aftermath.
"As every Star Wars fan knows, being a Star Wars fan means you hate Star Wars
as much as you love it." But fortunately there's Going Rogue and Galactic -
two tabletop games "inspired" by the Star Wars universe (which just
successfully crowdfunded a printed illustrated hardcover edition). They're
described as "war among the stars" role-playing games, where members of The
Liberation dedicate their lives to the war against The Mandate - "rebels,
soldiers, spies, and criminals, or perhaps someone who simply picked up and
blaster and said 'enough is enough.'" The article notes that Going Rogue was
a way for the game's designer to work out their issues with Star Wars: "You
can re-skin Going Rogue to be all the original stuff [from Star Wars]. I
prefer, at this point, to play it not in canon Star Wars," Levine said. "And
also, there are things I hate about canon Star Wars. I think it sucks that
the Jedi are child kidnapping, sexless acetics!" In particular Going Rogue is
a remix of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which depicts the lives of a group
of rebel agents who give their lives for the rebellion before the original
trilogy. "I love Rogue One and I hate Rogue One," Levine said... But Going
Rogue aims to do more than just allow players to "fix" Star Wars's narrative
problems. It also allows players to explore this narrative of rebellion
without having to interface with an evil entertainment empire: Disney...
Going Rogue is an opportunity for Star Wars fans to make the story of Star
Wars their own, including making it more in league with their own politics by
taking Disney out of it. "Something I like about tabletop role playing and
adaptational tabletop role playing is it says, 'Actually, fuck them. They
don't get to own this thing,'" Levine said. "We can't fully divest from the
connection to Star Wars. Obviously, we are downstream of it in certain ways.
But we are also trying to say, fuck [Disney's] ownership of this thing that
you love." Aftermath adds that the game Going Rogue "intrigued me
specifically because it was inspired by Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and
Andor - in particular, Going Rogue has a mechanic baked into the game where
your character is more or less guaranteed to go out in a blaze of glory for
the cause." [The game's designer says] "I wanted to design the game in a way
that, as your character realized that they were willing to voluntarily
sacrifice their life for this, you were narratively guaranteed by the
mechanics that that sacrifice was worth it. You get to see, after they die,
how it transforms the galaxy. I wanted you to get that feeling because you
don't get that certainty in real life." They didn't make this game to
convince anyone to become a socialist, but instead to create an emotional
tool that serves as a mirror for the players' own feelings about what it
means to devote your life to a political cause.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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