"Darths and Droids" - Episode I Quiz

Answer: Qui-Gon Jinn

Qui-Gon Jinn is a stoic, calculated Jedi Knight, with his head firmly on his shoulders. No, wait, that's the movie. In the comic, it's the exact opposite. Jim's Qui-Gon is the most irrational and impulsive character you could possibly imagine! If everything is going the right way, you can practically count on Jim to come up with an absolutely outlandish plan or perform some extremely impulsive action and screw up the entire plot. Fortunately for him and the rest of the party, he is also extremely lucky, and they will somehow manage to walk away from pretty much every disaster he puts them into.

During the course of the game, Qui-Gon will use his sword for diplomacy, gamble away items that do not belong to him in the first place, attack important plot characters, attack things which aren't really there, and make plans that require the Game Master to redesign the entire campaign. Still, without Qui-Gon, this campaign would have been just as bland as the movie!

Answer: Ben

Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Ben, serves an important role in balancing out Qui-Gon's rash decisions. He also tries to separate his own knowledge of events from that of his character. While he sometimes enjoys the strange plot-twists brought on by Jim's unexpected surprises, and loves to come up with reasonable explanations for all the bizarre goings-on, Obi-Wan remains the most well-rounded character in the game.

Answer: Jar-Jar Binks

Ben brings his little sister Sally to the game because his parents couldn't find a babysitter for her. Sally's Jar-Jar is much more composed and logical than the movie character, and while she spends most of the time commenting on other peoples' actions, she does make some great observations and also some great decisions.

In fact, she makes up the entire battle-plan for the grand finale! "Darths & Droids" prides itself on having been the first place on the internet where the phrase "Jar-Jar, you're a genius!" appeared.

Heck, that phrase would've been inconceivable before Sally's interpretation of the odd Gungan. As time goes on, Sally learns how the game is played, but her penchant for playing make-believe really comes in handy for enriching the plot with wild and fantastic details.

Answer: Shmi Skywalker

Annie studies drama with Ben, and joins the game later than the other players. She finds role-playing to be an excellent exercise in improvisation and character-development. In other words, she finds the place where role-playing games are similar to on-stage acting.

Her characters are in-depth and usually stay true to their specific roles in the campaign. Her dialogue is mostly in-character, and she sometimes even takes it too far. At one point, she wins the "Darths & Droids Best Supporting Actress" award for a scene she plays out between her original character (Shmi) and her new character (Anakin).

Answer: Padme Amidala

Padme (or "Queen Armadillo") is originally an NPC (Non-Player Character) which is narrated by the Game Master. He uses her to criticize the players when they irrationally diverge away from perfectly reasonable solutions, but with little success. Eventually, Qui-Gon dies, and Jim is given control of Padme.

At that moment, she turns from a fairly-innocent character into a power-hungry politician, true to Jim's outlook on role-playing.

Answer: Governor Bibble

Jim has an innate distrust of anyone who has a goatee. He automatically suspects them of being "bad-guys", and will keep accusing Bibble (or "Bubble", as he calls him) of treachery and sabotage, even though Bibble really does nothing much in the campaign at all. Of course, Qui-Gon himself has a goatee, although Jim will do his best not to mention this at all. If anything, it's Qui-Gon who sabotages everyone else's efforts, although as the leader of the group that's his prerogative, and he doesn't really do it on purpose.

Not really.

Answer: Pete

In a completely bizarre take on the entire Star Wars saga, R2-D2 turns from a loveable little mechanic into... Well, Pete! Pete is what's called a "power player" - he's the kind of guy who pores for hours and hours over the statistics, and figures out all the odds and all the best possible combinations. He builds a robot character to fit his schemes, equipping it with all of the most useful skills for a science-fiction environment, such as piloting, electronics, etc. Of course, his character's advantages don't come cheap, and Pete pays for them with such "trivialities" as having no arms, no voice to talk with (except his incessant beeping), and a "Charisma" score of around 0.

The result is R2-D2: a stumpy little creep with a compulsion (and ability) to fix and finagle with anything that moves, and exploit every little rule in the book. Oh and of course, to get terribly excited whenever the team is faced with any extremely life-threatening and utterly hopeless situation - which is a common occurence under Jim's leadership. Did I say Pete was "Hardcore"? As he says: 'bring it on!'.

Answer: Darth Maul

Jim's tendency to attack anything that doesn't seem completely and absolutely harmless means that Darth Maul doesn't even get the chance to reveal his identity. That is, until he actually kills Jim's character and effectively shuts him up for a few minutes. Maul's exposition, which comes really late in the game, covers a lot of political meddling that's been going on behind the scenes, although by the time he gets to say what he has to say, it's already too late.

The Game Master then uses him as a tool to berate the players for having gone off on their own tangents instead of trying to understand the plot and motives.

Answer: Cheddar

Another shining example of Qui-Gon's completely irrational and hilariously funny behaviour. He's the last person to trust with remembering names or important plot points. He lives completely in the moment, and doesn't think more than one step forward. This is of course extremely dangerous behaviour, especially because he's supposed to be the leader of the group. But this is what makes "Darths and Droids" so much fun! So when Jim's around, expect to hear things like "Cheddar Monk" (instead of "Jedi Knight"), and refer to Amidala as "Queen Armadillo".

As a side note, the comic assumes that in the "Real-World", the whole idea of Star Wars never existed, so all of this is completely new to all the players around the table. They even end up explaining away a lot of things that simply didn't make sense in the Star Wars movies. It also leads to plot twists that are completely different from the plot of the original movie.

Answer: The Phantasmal Malevolence

A tough question to answer, but then again it appears on the very first page of "Darths and Droids", which is here:

http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0001.html