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Welcome to the beginning of our treatment of Rogue One! For over 1500 strips we've been adding our comments here, usually something to do with tabletop roleplaying games, in the context of the current strip. For a while now it's been getting more and more difficult to come up with something interesting to say without retreading old ground, so for Rogue One we're going to try something a little different.
If we have something pertinent to say, we'll put it here as usual, but if nothing springs to mind, we won't strain ourselves trying to come up with something just for the sake of filling space.
To compensate for this, we've invited two of our readers to add their comments to each strip. We'll be sending them comics a few days in advance and asking them to write something to go in this space. But here's the trick: Although fans of our comic and of Star Wars, these two readers have not yet seen Rogue One. They are going to be interpreting what they see in our comic without any knowledge of what actually happens in the movie.
One request: Go easy on them. Most of you know a lot more about Rogue One that our guest writers do. They've bravely volunteered to do this for a bit of fun. They will no doubt misunderstand things that are completely obvious to many of you. Criticising them for not "getting" something would be missing the point.
Without further ado, we hand you over to first Keybounce, and then aurilee.
One of the few things that I knew about Rogue One was that it was set before Episode IV. Since Episode IV started with several skipped sessions, I was expecting Rogue One to be set in that zone.
I was not expecting to find that it is set after Episode VI, before Episode VII, with the wedding about to happen. But by far, the strangest thing I see from the screen caps: no one seems to have aged. And, they're all playing the same characters. I thought Rogue One was new characters, not Luke, Leia, Han, R2, and Chewie. Oh, and 3PO. And if it's taking place years after Episode VI (just like all the other campaigns had years in between), they should all look older than they did in VI.
Now, our DM (rDM? rDMM? rDBMS?) wanted me to introduce myself a bit. So: ...
Hmm. Ahh. I am a 400 foot tall purple platypus bear with pink horns and silver wings.
No? Ok, would you believe 40 feet, bone horns, and green wings?
How about 8 feet and a hang glider?
Fine. I'm old enough to have seen Star Wars the opening weekend, before it got renamed Episode IV. I enjoyed most of the series, but fell asleep while watching Episode III (near the end, on TV), and never went back to see what I missed. (And yes, I'm a fan of old TV like Get Smart and Last Airbender ... too bad neither of them were ever remade into movies, but then, there haven't been sequels to either Highlander's "There can be only one" nor The Matrix either.)
Speaking of which, how about some bonus comics in a universe where certain sequels were never made? :-) Just think, spoof a bad sequel and it goes out of existence. Even better, do a screencap of Gilligan's Island, and watch the series disappear :-)
Getting back to the comic: It's three years since Episode V, where Han/Greedo/Freddo/epic backstory was outed as being a traitor, and redeemed himself. One year since Episode VI, and the ... multiple deep surprises by the Comic Irregulars (sneaking Vader's path of redemption underneath everyone ... in addition to her being his mother. Oh, spoiler :-)
We've got a real-life wedding coming up. So, I'm going to assume that there is some sort of wedding event in Rogue One that this will play into. The background of these screencaps all look like Endor. So does Endor play a role in R1? Are they "starting" at Endor, ready to play new people?
Hmm. I just realized: Apparently Episode VI ended around Life Day—we even saw comments about the increased fireworks budget for Life Day celebration—and if this is a year later, it might also be Life Day again. Will we see some "just because" screencaps from a TV special?
— Keybounce
Greetings!
Before I jump into talking about the strip, I'll do a brief introduction.
I go by aurilee on most internet places, including the forums here. As a general overview of my life, I live in Canada (Montreal specifically), work in IT and spend my spare time on music, gaming, math, languages, cooking and wishing I was still living in the country. Sometimes, I sleep.
My first experience with Star Wars was watching and re-watching the original VHS tapes (courtesy of my dad). I was probably about 4 years old the first time I watched A New Hope. Also courtesy of my father, I never got to see Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones in the theatre (he decided it'd be a waste of time and money apparently). By the time Revenge of the Sith came out though, my brother and I had worn him down. We went to see it on opening night after watching Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones at home to catch up. As a Star Wars fan who was never part of the "fandom", I actually didn't hate the prequels. I thought they were mediocre movies that were sometimes bad and sometimes really cool. They certainly didn't captivate or entertain me as much as the original trilogy, but I just couldn't get all riled up about them like everyone else seemed to.
All that to say, the one and only time I saw the prequels was all within 24hrs of each other, over 10 years ago and they barely left an impression on me. Since then I've seen bits and pieces on TV or at someone's house, but reading Darths & Droids was very much like experiencing the prequels for the first time. It actually made me realise how much I'd forgotten. That's part of what made me interested in undertaking this whole blogging thing.
And now we have Rogue One. As the the intro said, I haven't seen it. I never really got into EU stuff outside of the KOTOR games and I just didn't really feel motivated after my disappointment with Episode VII. So what is Rogue One? A ship? Like Slave One? In any case, let's get to the commentary...
Ok, I know these people! Will the new campaign be the honeymoon? The bachelor(ette) party? Or just something they'll try to squeeze into the next three days?
The GM's line about the other adventure seems to be a ploy to get them interested in a new campaign. At least, that's what I'd do if I was a crafty GM trying to lure players into my game. I mean, the guy's basically saying, "Hey, remember that adventure that was really awesome that we all dropped everything for last time? Wouldn't it be super fantastic if I had another one prepared and we could do that again?".
Not much else to say here so far... although I just realised that we haven't seen Pete build a character in... forever. Everyone else has built themselves new characters since Phantom Menace but Pete has stuck with R2 the entire time. Are there droids in Rogue One? Because if not I'm really going to miss Pete and Sally's droid-rights rhetoric and phrases like "meatspace". And I just can't imagine Pete munchkin-ing a non-droid character.
And... That's all for this strip. See y'all with the next one!
— aurilee
Transcript
Ben: Jim! Annie! Good to see you in person again!
Pete: Yeah, in meatspace.
Sally: It's so exciting, just three days to go! Are you nervous?
Jim: I wasn't...
Annie: No, Sally, it's going to be great. Thanks for being a bridesmaid.
Corey: I can't wait to use my new camera at the wedding.
Annie: When did you get into photography?
Corey: A year ago now, just after we finished the Endor adventure.
Annie: Are you on FotoPhace? I'll follow you.
Ben: A lot's changed in the three years since you last visited from LA.
GM: That adventure you came back for had some of my favourite plot twists, like Vader being Padmé.
Jim: Yeah! My favourite one was being a traitor.
Pete: Didn't you know about that?
Jim: Yeah, all the best twists are the ones you know about.