SW:ROE Rules

Introduction

Welcome to Star Wars: Rebuilding of Empires, an ongoing fan project since March 25th, 2004. Rebuilding of Empires takes place in an alternate-history universe setting. Events in the established Star Wars canon happened up until the rebirth of the Clone Emperor on Byss in the Dark Empire saga, and that is the point at which our established history changed from the currently-known Extended Universe.

In the Rebuilding of Empires timeline, all the major Imperial characters rallied around the Clone Emperor-- Thrawn, Isard, Zsinj, etc --and went to attack the fledgling New Republic government established at Coruscant. All major New Republic characters --Luke, Leia, Han, Lando, Mon Mothma, Admiral Akbar, etc-- rallied to defend the Republic from the Clone Emperor's assault. In this climactic battle, the forces mutually destroyed each other and all major characters were killed. The "official" Empire was destroyed in the assault, and the "New Republic" that was being established collapsed.

This "cleaned the slate" for the establishment of the Rebuilding of Empires saga, where the Galaxy was populated by dozens of differing, rival Factions, each setting up their own local governments to deal with the lawlessness that followed the Collapse. The Galaxy is now full of small Republics, Empires, Confederacies, and other nations, each trying to run their own affairs and interact with each other. Treaties are made and broken, fortunes rise and fall, war and peace each have their day, and NPC factions also make challenges.

Rebuilding of Empires is more of a story than a game. It is not so much about "winning" or being "better" than others so much as it is about writing good plots, characters, dialogue, and showing characters change-- for better or worse. There are wars, of course, but there is also trade, politics, diplomacy, threats both hollow and serious, spies, Jedi, and special forces raids that can't always be proven... or suffer unforeseen effects.

For New Players

We welcome new players, but it must be understand that we have, over several years, created a robust "internal canon" that does not reflect things the way the established EU does. Most places in the Rebuilding of Empires setting have their own history that has developed. We can accommodate new writers, but please be aware that you'll be entering a situation that is already in progress, so check the Timelines to make sure that the ideas you have to develop a sector government fit comfortably with the established backstory. If in doubt, ask one of the established players for help in the OOC (Out of Character) thread.

Some characters and weapons were declared off-limits by mutual agreement. The Eclipse, the Death Star, the Sun Crusher, and similar superweapons are destroyed and cannot be rebuilt as long as the Galaxy remains disunited. This prevents arguments over "superweapons". Smaller, ship-scale superlasers have appeared, but none powerful enough to destroy planets. Many of these weapons have been destroyed over time, either by being the target of attacks, or in one case through over-use against an overwhelming Yuuzhan Vong attack force.

Certain characters were declared dead at the beginning, as well. Zsinj, the Emperor, Luke Skywalker, etc-- again, to prevent arguments over their use and employment. Clones have appeared, such as clones of Dooku, Thrawn, General Grievous, and Ysanne Isard, but of them all only Ysanne Isard's clone was canon to the EU. The rest were made in-story and have followed independent arcs. A number of less important, minor characters have survived as well, but have not made major alterations to the story.

The most well-known canon character to survive was Boba Fett, who is largely run as an independent operator by the mods.

If you absolutely cannot live without Warlord Zsinj and Mara Jade commanding the Death Star Mk. III, then I recommend starting your own, new story.

Moderators

Dark Primus (Prime Moderator and Game Founder) An Ancient (Also primary Battle Mod for any PvP action) Coyote (Mostly oversees continuity and introducing new players to prior events that may shape their factions)

Any player-to-player issues or questions should be directed to the Mods. They have the highest authority over the rules, and are here to help run the game as smoothly as possible, whilst remaining good players themselves.

Time Scale

14 real days (2 weeks) = 1 story month

6 real months = 1 story year

Starting a Faction

Pick an unclaimed Sector from our story map. We work with the Star Wars Atlas, or the Official Online Companion found here:

It's best to pick a full Sector and the worlds within it, and not to pick a handful of individual worlds across the map. While hyperspace travel makes this plausible, it is almost guaranteed you'll have to conduct business by going through hyperlanes in someone else's territory, and it is likely that you'd face Interdictor cruisers and diplomatic difficulty.

Remember to announce what Sector you'd like in the latest OOC (Out Of Character) discussion thread in case anyone else already has an ongoing story arc in that Sector.

Then, look up that Sector on Wookiepedia to find out what systems and planets are in it. Wookiepedia can be found here: Enter the name of the Sector and see what systems pop up. Look around and see what you'll be getting if you claim that Sector. Sectors may be a mix of different ideologies (some worlds are firm believers in the Republic, while others consider themselves Imperial, etc) so when you take command of that Sector, have a story ready about why these people put their differences aside (and what compromises were made) for them to work together - or, if one group took over and forced their government system on the others.

You're encouraged to look up the worlds in Wookiepedia and find out about them so you can make informative, in-depth and in-character posts. If Wookiepedia says it is a lush jungle, don't try to describe it as a barren desert for no good reason. Remember to check the Summary thread to see about changes that are different in the Rebuilding of Empires alternate history timeline.

Point Values

Once you've found planets in your Sector, we have a point value for them:

Class and Ranking:	Point Value:	Explanation:	Examples:
Homeworld	600	Homeworld of a Major Starfaring Species	Coruscant, Corellia, Neimoidia, Clak'Dor VII
Powerful World	500	Powerful world of industry, finances, or defense, usually mostly urbanized	Eriadu, Druckenwell, Cato Neimoidia, Byss
Major World	400	Worlds that have a major impact and high population, but are not in the above categories.	Doldur, Christophsis, Bakura, Tynna
Average World	200	The default, average world of the galaxy - neither important nor insignificant	Naboo, Arkanis, Ylix, Umgul
Minor World	100	Worlds with sparse populations or resources, and little influence on the galaxy	Anoth, Bespin, Tatootine, Anobis
Colony	50	Small, purpose-oriented planetary colonies.	Mustafar, Nelvaan, Hoth, Yavin IV
Station or Base	50	Large purpose-oriented resource extraction stations or space colonies, not defense stations	Dragon Base, Centerpoint Station

Put your worlds together and add up the point values listed above. The resulting number of points is what you use to buy ships & yards with.

Using your points

Add up the points from the worlds in the Sector you've claimed. You get to use those points three times, in three different ways: A: Buy a full points' worth of shipyards B: Buy another full points' worth of initial fleet C: Finally, divide full points in half: 1/2 now goes to create a Police force; the other 1/2 can go to create a System Defense Militia (this last part is Optional, for the detail junkies).

Police: Police ships are never larger than Destroyer size. At least half their weapons must be Tractor Beams or Ion Cannons (Police try to capture, not kill, their targets).
Militia: Defense militias defend your worlds while the fleet's away. They are never larger than Cruisers. They NEVER deploy outside their home territory.
Shipyards: Shipyards cost 10 points for every 100 meters. So a 200 meter shipyard will cost 20 points; Two 200-meter yards would cost 40 points, and so on.

EXAMPLE: A player creates the Righteous Empire has enough worlds to equal 3000 points. He may purchase up to, but not exceeding, 3000 points worth of shipyards, AND 3000 points worth of ships-- and then 1500 points worth of Police, and 1500 points worth of planetary militia.

Constructing Ships

Building a ship that already exists (say, a Star Destroyer, Nebulon-B Frigate, etc) requires a shipyard big enough, and some time.Please remember that this is a Star Wars story that only accepts Star Wars ships. Cross-overs from other universes are NOT permitted-- no Battlestars, Birds of Prey, or Shadow Spider-ships, etc.

MODIFYING an existing ship, such as trading all the ion cannons for anti-starfighter guns, or dropping troops carrying capacity to expand hangar bays, requires 6 in-story months. DESIGNING a whole new ship has to be cleared with the Mods and requires 12 in-story months to design. (New factions may start with custom ships if they are approved) Expanding a shipyard requires 1 in-story month per every 100 meters of expansion. You can build several small ships of the same type in one yard, but not several small ships of different types (ie, many Corvettes in a Star Destroyer yard, but not some Corvettes and some Frigates).

BONUS: Factions with 3 contiguous Sectors or less can shave 1 month off of build times. Larger factions have more bureacracy, worker shortages, and other headaches to deal with. However, if your Sectors are seperated from each other by distance, this doesn't apply. This was done to give smaller, starting factions a bit of a competitive edge in shipbuilding.

Restrictions and Special Costs

Putting weapons on Civilian Ships

Some civilian ships carry weapons to protect themselves from pirates. But if you mount too many weapons on a civilian ship, it is no longer considered a civilian ship, but a combat ship, and open to attack from hostile navies. If you're not sure, use this quick method to determine if your civilian ship is actually militarized: **Determine how big your civilian ship is, and find a military ship close to the same size. Count the number of weapons on the military ship and divide by 10. The resulting number is how many weapons you can place on your civilian ship. If you go over that number, then it is no longer considered a civilian ship but a military vessel.

Superweapons

No planetary scale weaponry/'superweapons' on any sort of ship or station. (Centerpoint Station's weapon system has been disabled, but it's gravity well can still be activated). For specific plot arcs, ask a Mod for approval, but superweapons typically have to be destroyed at the end of the story arc in some dramatic fashion.

New Technology

Any new weapons development and technology need to be approved through moderators. Use the technology thread to seek approval.

Missiles

Missile technology is quite well known in the SW:ROE universe, as are countermeasures to missiles. While missile-based tactics can be highly effective, they are not exceptionally powerful compared to turbolaser-based tactics. Typically, missile-heavy ships have more initial firepower, but less endurance.

Cloaked Ships

Cloaking Devices are expensive and rare. Add +50% of the ship's value in points and time to build a cloak-equipped vessel (so an 8-point cruiser that takes 8 months to build is now a 12-point cruiser that takes 12 months to build, because of the cloak).

Cloaked fighter squadrons cost 4 points per squadron.

Cross-Faction designs

If you build ships from another political faction (ie, Republic trying to build or buy Imperial ships), then add +1 month to build. This doesn't apply to "older" ship models, from the Movie Era or earlier. Those "older" ships are now considered "common" designs, well known to everyone. This penalty can be removed by technology sharing or licensing of ship designs from another faction.

Armies & Fighters

Armies & fighter squadrons aren't on the points system, with the exception of cloaked fighter squadrons. The point system is for fleets, and only because we've had problems in the past with "fleet spam". No one's abused armies or fighter squadrons in such a way that we feel the need to limit them; there are always "just enough for plot/drama purposes".

Expanding your Faction

Once you have a new Faction, you can start adding worlds to your government to watch it grow. Bringing in new worlds means bringing in new industrial points, which means more ships, bigger fleets, etc. Again, we try to avoid ponderous rules, but there are some:

If your Faction has more than 17,000 points worth of worlds, then it takes 5 good quality, in-character story posts to get a new world to join your faction. These should involve some effort, not just one or two sentences of people introducing themselves and then signing a treaty. Give the prospective world a reason to join-- anything from fear from an outside attacker to a desire to join a lucrative trade network.

Smaller Factions (16,999 points and below) have it easier: they require at least 3 posts. If there's no information, make something up that is reasonable.

For Factions of all sizes: lifeless worlds, asteroid belts, etc-- 2 posts are fine.

Please note: Be reasonable. Don't negotiate some unknown world into your Faction and then, surprise surprise, it was a forgotten Imperial weapons depot with a working Death Star class superlaser hidden in a cave, or an army of Dark Troopers, or an entombed Jedi Master of godlike power. Remember, it's not a powergame, it's a story.

Force Users

When first starting out, you may choose to have some Force Users. A small, start-up government will probably be able to attract a single Master of modest power, a couple of Knights and a couple of Padawans. So far there has been little attempts to abuse this, so there are no formal rules made up for it. Ask a Mod for help, or discuss Force-Users and what you want to do with them openly in the OOC thread.

Force Powers

The Force is an incredibly powerful tool, allowing Jedi and Sith all throughout history to accomplish feats of unimaginable power. However, the capabilities of the Force are often misunderstood, as well as the capabilities of the individual Force User. We try to use the following scale to show how powerful a Jedi is in certain fields. This is not a mathematical scale that must be calculated with points; just a way to show, on a 1-to-10 scale, how powerful a Force User is. There are no real rules about this, but overpowered characters will be voted down by Mods or the majority. Most Force users will have one or two scores in the 7-8 range; one or two in the 0-2 range, and the rest in the middle. Only the most powerful of Masters would have scores in the 10's. Remember that in general, Battle Meditation and Healing are typically very rare skills.

0 - 10 (0= no talent; 1= weak; 5= average; 10= mega-powerful: Yoda, Palpatine, etc)

Athletics (ie, Speed, Jump, Endurance, Hand-to-Hand)
Battle Meditation
Combat (non-lightsaber)
Healing
Life Sense (ie, plant/animal affinity)
Lightsaber
Mechanical (ie, Piloting, Repairing, etc)
Mind Powers (ie, Mind Trick, Flow walking, etc)
Telekenesis (ie, Push/Pull, Control Descent, etc)

Restrictions

The Following Force Powers are off-limits to player characters unless under one-time use, story important circumstances, which must be allowed by a mod.

The ability to destroy a Planet (No Jedi is as powerful as the Death Star)

Shapeshifting (Unless you are of a shapeshifting race)
Power enough to destroy ships with your mind
Killing someone just by looking at them
Creating epic-scale natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. (True, Palpatine used a Force Storm but this would be considered a plot driven special case)
Any other powers deemed too excessive by majority vote-- don't worry, it's mostly out-of-proportion destruction of armies and fleets that we're worried about.

Notes on Characters

STAR WARS: REBUILDING OF EMPIRES primarily focuses of a player building a political faction, and running it on a Galaxy-wide scale. A faction is made up of not just the government and its leaders, but the entire society and culture. If that sounds like a daunting task, it is, which is why a lot of things are simplified.

To start with, we try to use as few stats and mathematics as possible. There are no complex character sheets or probability calculations. The Industrial Points and Ship Build rules are about as complex as it gets. The only reason those rules exist is mostly due to past abuse by writers who approached this more as a "contest for supremacy" than as a shared story.

A faction will be full of leaders, Jedi (or Sith), generals, soldiers and workers and so on. You are free to focus entirely on one main character while leaving the rest of the faction largely in the background, or if you like, you can flesh out a complex society that focuses on many different levels of storytelling.

The advantage of sticking with one main character is that it is easy. Faction statistics, Presidents or Prime Ministers, or whoever else can be minor supporting characters that don't need a lot of work or background; you don't even need names for some. The disadvantage to having one main character is that it can be limiting, and it can sometimes seem incredible that so much amazing adventures happen to one guy (or girl). Typically, even the most devoted sole-hero writers end up adding a small cast of a half-dozen supporting characters, even if their sole task is "minding the store" back home while the main character is out on a mission.

On the other hand, there are complex factions with ensemble casts: Kings or Queens, various Ministers and other representatives, generals, admirals, Jedi and their Padawans, foot soldiers and so on and sometimes even their children and/or pets. These are arguably "realistic", in that the Captain stays on the bridge and the away team confronts the danger, and they allow a lot of flexibility. It is much easier to pursue multiple adventures with multiple groups of hero teams. The downside is the complexity and time-consuming nature of the faction, and characters that aren't used for long periods become forgotten or ignored.

There is no "best" way. Some writers here focus on an individual hero, while others have armies of characters filling a variety of positions. It depends on what you want to do, and what your goals are.

Writing another person's characters

Sometimes, you need to have a conversation with another person's characters, or a deal or decision is being negotiated. There are two ways to do it: one, is long, slow, painful and drawn out and is a pain to read through. The other, is to use some finesse and present your side of the argument, and then leave things open for the other writer to respond.

The long, slow painful way is to basically turn your posts into chats. You post a sentence, then wait for the reply. That is not only annoying to read, but takes forever. It can take days or weeks to carry out a single conversation, and by that time things may have changed.

The better way is to use each others' third party characters, or Ambassadors. Simply tell the Ambassador or appointed diplomat what you want, and why you want it, and go ahead and write the Ambassador's reply in non-committal terms. Try to keep the Ambassador in character with the government he or she represents: if you're a Republic trying to negotiate free trade with an Empire, the Ambassador will probably be hesitant. But either way, the Ambassador should essentially reply with "I will forward your request to my government and let you know". The other writer responds as he or she sees fit.

Sometimes you have characters shared in an adventure, and you basically "loan" another writer one of your creations. This is best when you feel confident that the other writer has a handle on your character and will treat that character with the proper writing. Some writers have had other peoples' characters on loan for months or even years because they trust the other writer and like what that person is making with them. The story is also entering a phase where some characters shared by different writers are having families together, and the resulting offspring characters can essentially be considered wholly shared characters-- or one writer will concede primary control to another.

Being a good writer with cool characters, engaging dialogue and interesting plot ideas - the kind of person others enjoy working with, and are always glad to see post - is how you "win".