It is really how you act in battle, like ORS for instance, hardly an ally of good as they attack a group who came to a complete halt hundreds of miles from their planet, powered down their weapons. Hell, I could have come to surrender and they just attacked me.
I have the explination for that, Simon, and that is that the Rage-filled secondary personality only kicks in when a stressful situation occurs requiring combat skills or survivalist techniques.
And the "What does it mean to be a lightsider" is pretty clear: Lightsiders wish to make the Galaxy better as a whole for people to live in, and provide freedom. In other words, fighting towards a greater good.
This is why it's so hard to rp a species based on a 1 sentence description.
A number of incidents come up (and they might not all come to immediately because if you are young IRL, your experience in life may be lacking a bit) but for instance:
Rage-filled secondary personality kicks in when a stressful situation occurs requiring combat skills or survivalist techniques?
What determines this kind of stressful situation? A near collision by two civilian transports cause the pilots to fly off the handle in a fit of rage?
We all know that rage (high emotion) can cause enough of a distraction to have people make mistakes on their jobs. How does this translate into combat effectiveness? Have Azguards made mistakes due to rage induced paranoia? How does this affect those not rage induced?
Misunderstandings between Non Azguards (Calamarian for instance) and Azguards that cause high levels of stress... Would the rage kick in by accident if the Azguard were tired?
Living things can be conditioned (ie: ringing a bell and a dog's mouth waters..etc..) What if what is being experienced is not combat nor requiring (conscious) survivalist techniques but the emotional impact (stress) is felt just as intensly.. would this then trigger an automatic response by the body (ie: conditioning) to go into this rage filled persona?
What if an Azguard wakes up on an operating table (hospital) and is disoriented? Survivalist techniques kick in and he kills hospital staff before getting his bearings and figuring out what is going on?
There are any number of instances that add a greater detail to races (especially original ones).
No... not all the time. Not every good guy thinks on a "big picture" galactic scale. Perhaps he just tries to raise his kids (if he/she has any) in a way that has them respect life.
Being a lightsider does not always involve fighting. Where is the virtue in a lightsider's cause if all they ever see is the "war"? If they are always "fighting"?
Killing another sentient creature, even if evil, erodes away at a lightsider's soul.
If you run your people into the meat grinder for the name of a cause, what makes you particularly better than the evil person who will do the same?
If no evidence of your cause is found among your people (since they are constantly fighting), where is the benefit?
If you fight for some far off future Golden Age (the "things will get better once this faction is gone, or that faction is gone) and just fight fight fight, pretty soon people get tired. They find themselves fighting just to fight.. they forget the reasons why they are fighting (because they cannot see those reasons evident in their own people (even if short and brief)).
You could always use those force training RPs of yours to visit your own worlds and describe how the people are and how they are living on a down to character level, face to face. No big propoganda slogans or mass corporate viewing, just you looking at your people...
Ok, Simon, you bring up good points, but I have far more detailed information on what affects Azguards, I just don't want to debate them here, neither do I wish to argue what makes people good. They are both interesting topics, but not the ones I am trying to find out here.
Anyways, I started a relaxing and entertaining thread through which I can try and show the Coalition (and the Azguards) as good people.
