Star Wars is one of the most expansive sagas of all time, but the history, background, and dynamics of the universe are much more expansive than what’s shown in the movies. Diving into the Legends canon as well as the official Star Wars storyline, this series hopes to flesh out the Star Wars galaxy and augment any effort to delve into it, whether it be for game masters, tabletop role players, or fan fiction aficionados.
After years of waiting for the return of Star Wars to their lives, many fans were disappointed by the showing of much of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. Spanning from the complaints regarding the obnoxiousness of Jar Jar Binks in Episode I to the wooden love scenes of Episode II to the melodrama thickly laid throughout Episode III, the world of the Star Wars prequels starts out life having to recover from a bad rep. Though the Clone Wars cartoons had their own issues, they opened the world of the Prequels to one of the most important (and coolest) eras of Star Wars history: the Clone Wars.
The Clone Wars were named for the ground troops of one of the two factions, the mass-produced clones of Jango Fett employed by the Galactic Republic in its final years. The Clone Wars were ultimately a culmination of one man’s plots: Palpatine, a Senator from Naboo that then used the pretexts of a culture in decline to win the Chancellorship, the dangers of war to become elevated to the Supreme Chancellorship, and the perils of uncertain galactic conflict to secure ever increasing levels of bureaucratic and legislative influence, until finally he was poised to execute the final stage of his plan: calling the whole conflict off.
Palpatine engineered the discontent and eventual banding together of the galaxy’s largest corporations and manufacturers, promising them wealth and influence for fighting against the Galactic Republic’s corrupt and inefficient administration. Simultaneously, Palpatine’s loyal servant, Count Dooku, arranged for Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas to hire Kaminoan cloners to produce a massive army of clones, each a genetically engineered copy of bounty hunter Jango Fett. With both sides armed and aggrieved, the Clone Wars began, each of Palpatine’s pawns playing their part.
Part of the reason for the crisis was to give Palpatine and his backers in the political and business sectors grounds to provide him with more and more power, but another, simpler goal of the conflict was to ensure the Jedi were prompted more and more into acting as warriors and generals, placing them in harm’s way and prompting the slow whittling-down of the Jedi on the field of battle. This culminated in the execution of Order 66 – at the height of Palpatine’s power, the Jedi came to force his hand, and after Anakin Skywalker saved him from Jedi Masters seeking to arrest him, he issued Order 66, prompting clone units across the galaxy to execute their embedded Jedi without warning. Caught completely by surprise by the passionless, completely duty-minded betrayal of their clone comrades, the Jedi were gunned down and the Temple stormed, killing nearly all of the thousands of Jedi in the galaxy in mere moments.
Though the ultimate execution of Palpatine’s plans constituted one of the most dramatic and tragic occurrences in galactic history, the war itself provides countless opportunities for roleplaying activities, especially for parties keen on exploring either combat or the difficulty of bringing peace to a place of war. One particularly interesting element of the conflict was the composition of the opposing forces: though the Republic had the services of the Jedi and the Confederacy of Independent Systems had the services of both Dark Side users and the galaxy’s criminal scum, most ground troops were either the preprogrammed, aggressive, obedient clones of the Republic or the thoughtless, cold robotic servants of the droid-using CIS. Essentially, both factions relied on tremendously dangerous, remorseless, completely de-individualized footsoldiers to do their bidding. Clones, naturally, often tried to save civilian lives and obey the spirit of their Jedi commanders’ orders, and the CIS wasn’t cruel so much as callous, but civilian casualties in the war were catastrophic. Space battles, like those shown in the opening of Episode III and hinted at in the backstory of the award-winning Thrawn Trilogy of Expanded Universe books were colossally hazardous to the planets below, skyscrapers being snapped in half and entire planets being burned or poisoned simply as collateral damage. In fact, the galaxy as a whole was so fatigued by war that Palpatine’s institution of law and order wasn’t decried so much as praised, embraced instead of fought. Player characters, their families, their investments, and their friends could easily be thrown into danger on a monthly basis, even a weekly one, with life as perilous and void of certainty as ever before.
One fixture of the war was the scale on which it was waged. While several large-scale engagements in the Core Worlds and in scattered corners of the galaxy were both notable and impactful, the largest amount of fighting stretched from roughly the Mid Rim to the Outer Rim, especially culminating in a vast series of battles termed the Outer Rim Sieges. The Sieges more or less amounted to a massive Republic military effort to drive the Separatists back, put the pressure on the constituent members, and destroy the infrastructure feeding the Separatist war machine, followed – inevitably – by Separatist counter-offensives and violent pushes to oust the Republic from the comparatively difficult to control worlds outside of the main galactic center. These events were massive, involving interplanetary assaults, covert raids, blockades, bombardments, and more, and seeing huge investments made on both sides on the quest to find a technological resolution to the war.
The Clone Wars is a massive source of RPG fodder, presenting game masters and players alike with tons of plot hooks and background lore to explore and exploit. The player characters could be Republic troopers, special forces clones like the ARC troopers or clone commandos, Separatist droids, infiltrators, spies, mercenaries, profiteers, philanthropists, refugees, bounty hunters, scouts, explorers, salvagers, victims of collateral damage or all of the above. The potential for plot points is also exceptional, with constant air, land, and space battles waged across the galaxy, countless plots and espionage operations at work, huge amounts of war material being built and lost, and the galaxy as a whole stepping ever closer to chaos or totalitarianism, providing plot hooks for mercenary and idealist players alike.
Campaigns will often be influenced in some way by the Clone Wars even if they aren’t set during it, too – a Star Wars tabletop RPG will often be set in the Galactic Civil War era, with battle scars and political plots from the Clone Wars still openly – or not so openly – visible; events in the wars thereafter are often colored by the issue of ensuring democracy while fighting a war that the likes of Palpatine could never again take advantage of; events before the wars will often contain the seeds of dissent and corruption that led to the crisis. Wherever you go in Star Wars history, parallels can be drawn with the Clone Wars and Palpatine’s assault on the institution of Republic leadership; wherever you go in Star Wars history, people will be killing one another for profit and influence in what amounts to a retro-futuristic Game of Thrones.
Overall, the Clone Wars is a vibrant and massive part of the Star Wars universe, and easily both one of the most important and most diverse events in galactic history. No war impacted so severely the future of the galaxy, making the Clone Wars a breeding ground for player characters, character backgrounds, lore, plot hooks, and potentials for adventure across the galaxy.
Dain Simpkins
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- The Praxeum: Legacy Era - April 10, 2017
