Image source.

This isn’t part of a series or anything, but it’s a random though I’ve been having and I feel it’s worth turning into a post.

The Thought

If I ever to a Star Wars adaptation, it’s going to be one where everybody is Force-sensitive. Let’s do away with the absolutist “magic/no-magic” divide inspired by D&D that all the official RPGs so far have used. If the Force is described in the source material as being in everyone, then it should be in in everyone.

Players would not be forced to play Jedi - rather, the badassitude of their PCs would be explained by their connection to the Force. No more of that nonsense about how “you can still be cool even though you’re blind to the Force”. No, you’re cool because you opened yourself to it. It’s everywhere, and getting past a certain threshold of skill at any endeavor means becoming attuned to the Force. By definition, any character who is PC material in the sort of heroic story Star Wars favors is past that threshold.

Like, yeah, you can still be a Jedi who throws stuff around telekinetically and parries blaster bolts with a lightsaber, but you can also be an amazing gunfighter from the slums of Coruscant who can dodge blasters, react to stuff before it happens, and make shots that ricochet from five different surfaces before hitting some impossibly small target. And maybe both of you can jump really high because that’s always useful.

There’s a set of Force-based mechanics that all PCs gets access to, even if they have the least mystical background possible. They can use it to perform impossible feats of skill and luck. They can have intuitions and premonitions. Maybe they can study a mystical tradition to do more overtly supernatural stuff, but that’s not required.

And maybe one of the reasons the Dark Side and the Empire are evil is that they’re the ones who believe that only a select few elites should be given access to the Force.