I think you’re right about Ben being Obi-Wan, and switching to Leia. I think Annie’s going to be Han, though, and Jim will be Luke. Annie’s all about the roleplaying. I see her wanting to try something different for the second campaign, and Luke’s a bit too similar to Anakin. Plus, this way you get Annie as Han romancing Ben as Leia, while her real-life boyfriend Jim is sitting at the table. Too much good drama in that situation to pass up.
Sally’s already been playing C-3PO, so she’s likely to take that role again. R2 seems the odds-on favorite for Pete, but Chewie sounds a lot like one of his character builds - this time, he took “non-verbal” for a big strength bonus, instead of a big intelligence bonus.
I read most of the strips one night a month ago and lolled all the time. Both LOtR and Star Wars are battle between good and evil to the extreme. They also fit the type of fantasy characters roleplayers want to play. The contrast to the deeply evil mind set of the players is hilarious. "Look, there’s an alien life form! Let’s kill it so we can rob stuff! " Somehow it had never occurred to me that roleplaying is mostly about getting extra points for criminal behavior.
I wonder if they’re going to introduce a new player to the game, who will play Luke. Then they CAN hit him with “I am your father.” It won’t be a surprise to us, but it would be a great joke to play on the newbie player…
Also, I’d like to say that their explanation for Jar-Jar’s appearance was wonderful
Another point: The previous transitions from one movie to the next have had a gap of a few years (for the players) between them (I think there was two years between AotC and RotS, for instance). Which means that Sally is going to be somewhere in her mid-teens for ANH, and so should be considerably more mature. And heck, might even have a boyfriend.
Oh, and Jim will probably have his doctorate by then, too, though I’m not sure if that’ll make for more than a one-off joke.
Before I posted above, I thought long and hard about a way to get Annie to be Han (or even Luke), but I still can’t see her giving up Vader. He’s her character. She built him from the ground up. And while he’s not too important in the first movie (and thus he could be an NPC), I can’t see her not taking him back in Empire to flesh him out more. And, by Jedi, not having her in the role would ruin the pathos. (Plus, as a drama student, she’s definitely going to want to have a good death scene.)
I also don’t see them changing the father thing. From the beginning, they’ve always kept all the big important lines and moments. The only way I could think of to leave it out was them not knowing that Annie was playing him, having given the GM notes behind the scenes. (Thus the reveal would be Annie saying she is Luke’s father) But that just seems too convoluted.
A new Luke who isn’t told is a good idea I hadn’t thought of, but I still like the idea better of the characters somehow not knowing. I’m just not sure there’s a way to pull that off.
The only other idea I’ve had is if it goes in reverse, and Vader actually says, “I killed your father,” as was originally intended*. But that robs the story of so much that I don’t see it happening.
*The line itself was not present, but, in the first draft of Empire, the big reveal was that Vader had killed Anakin. This was why Luke would have to kill him in Jedi.
Hasn’t it been hinted at multiple times (or maybe stated outright, I can’t remember) that Annie is pregnant? So if she does have a kid, then maybe they bring in a new guy to play Han or Luke, and she can only show up occasionally to play Vader.
Annie being pregnant looks to me like a textbook example of a rumor springing up without any evidence. IIRC, it started from her just having something that she didn’t want to talk about, and brainstorming of what it might be led to jumping to conclusions, and now everyone (especially Pete) is cherry-picking all the evidence.
I very much doubt that Annie is going to be Darth Vader. Her personality strikes me as someone who is much more interested in creating a strong overall story arc for the campaign, and not so much in building up her character’s stats. Anakin served his purpose for the story they were telling to this point. Now that story’s over, I’d expect her to want to move on to something new.
Thinking about the story as a GM, if it were my campaign, I doubt I’d allow Annie to play Vader. While I don’t mind parties with a mix of alignments, Vader isn’t just evil, he’s the primary antagonist to the story, and putting that sort of character in the hands of a player cedes almost all of your narrative control over the campaign. If a character openly takes sides against the rest of the party, the way Anakin has turned on Obi Wan (both in the comic, and in the movies themselves) it usually requires that the PC be handed over to the GM to be run as an NPC - indeed, in the original West End Games version of the Star Wars RPG, this was an explicit rule if a character ever turned to the Dark Side. (Not that they’re using that system in the comic, of course.)
Lastly, looking at it from the logistics of creating this comic, there’s just not enough material to work with to have Annie play Vader and still be part of the group. Vader’s only on-screen with the protagonists maybe ten times in the entire trilogy, and most of those are fight scenes. Unless they want to script it so that she’s basically never at the table with the rest of the party, and spends most of the campaign in solo sessions with the GM, having Vader as a PC just doesn’t work for the comic.
I suspect that Luke will still be Anakin’s son, but the relationship shown in the movies will be subverted in some way. The most obvious thing I can think of is that Luke is established to be Vader’s son from the beginning of the campaign, and the scene in Empire with Luke hanging on to the weather vane shockingly reveals that Vader isn’t his father after all. (Maybe he’s Luke’s mother, and it’s been Padme in the gimp suit this entire time!) That, or the big surprise in that scene will relate to the players in some way, and not the characters. Or they’ll use the scene to reveal something trivial or banal, using the high drama of the original scene as a comedic contrast.
‘Luke, I am your father.’ ‘Well, yeah, duh. I kind of figured that out with the whole “Skywalker” thing.’ ‘Also, I parked in your spot.’ ‘Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!’
I think it’s a very smart choice. They’ve got someone who is not only completely ignorant of role playing but doesn’t even like it much. So bit by bit he’ll grow into a role player just like Luke grew into the role of a Jedi warrior.
And they’re doing it in a way that is not a rehash of DM of the Rings, and just arguing with or trying to trick the GM. I still say DMotR cheated in always falling back on that, and that D&D is better because of it doesn’t do so.
You don’t think Pete argues with the GM and tries to derail the adventure by following his own interests?
I’m not saying that DM of the Rings is perfect or something, but at least you could tell that there were people playing some kind of game. My least favourite Darths & Droids strips are where one NPC is talking to another NPC and there’s no player interaction at all; there were a disappointingly large amount of those at one point.
