I really enjoy the Suns of Fortune supplement expanding on the Corellian Sector, but it has gotten me thinking of what other Systems and Sectors will be awarded such treatment. I'm hoping that at the least FFG will provide a Hutt Space supplement to coincide with the release of the Smuggler supplement, but think that a Kessel supplement would also prove to be rewarding for GMs and Players alike.

I would imagine a decent description of the Imperial prison on Kessel and the mines, the types of research being done, the spice trade, as well as a good description of the Maw. I think that having some great details and descriptions for the Maw would allow GMs to construct a version of the Kessel Run that players could attempt and possibly run in under 12 parsecs (depending on silhouette size of course).

I think this sort of supplement would be advantageous to both EotE and AoR campaigns that may have gotten in a bit of trouble.

I'd like to hear your thoughts as to what you would love to be included in this sort of supplement as well as other Systems and Sectors that you think FFG needs to provide to satisfy your players.

Kessel not much of a fun place to visit from the (painful) memory of reading about it in the past, its an airless rock full of mines with bitey critters in it and the poor saps that harvest the glitterstim by 'feel' in complete darkness.

What I think a lot of us could get a bit of use out of is something particular to the EoE setting- an ' Underworld ' sourcebook

Who do I contact to buy spice from Kessel upon arrival?

Who are the major players in Hutt space?

Who is the Black Sun and why should you kiss your arse goodbye when dealing with them?

Where can we go to get dodgy ship mods?

What planets have shadowports we can lie-up in?

Where do bounty-hunter clans come from and why are they scary?

All that kind of stuff needs a healthy dose of filling in the blanks for a lot of people new to the game and the expanded star wars universe thats not in the films or cartoons.

Tapani sector, Corporate Sector and Hutt space definitely. Hapan space might make a good one too. I think Kessel would do better as part of a smuggler sourcebook or the Hutt Space book than getting a source book of its own though.

. . .allow GMs to construct a version of the Kessel Run that players could attempt and possibly run in under 12 parsecs (depending on silhouette size of course).

With the old Expanded Universe now being swept away, hopefully we can do away with this nonsense. Anyone with a pair of eyes and a brain can tell that Solo is obviously trying to big himself up to a senile old man and a backwater rube with that line. He knows it's nonsense, and judging by Kenobi's reaction, HE knows that it's nonsense too. It's a perfect, subtle moment of characterization for Han.

And yet Kevin J Anderson; Worlds Worst Star Wars Writer saddles us with this bogus "well, he just flew a faster route" hokum because he doesn't pick up on subtle writing. NO! Bad Anderson! Let the line stand without this "lets fix a mistake" crap.

(Also, can we dump the "Kessel Spice Makes You Psychic" crap while we're at it? God I hate KJA so much.)

. . .allow GMs to construct a version of the Kessel Run that players could attempt and possibly run in under 12 parsecs (depending on silhouette size of course).

With the old Expanded Universe now being swept away, hopefully we can do away with this nonsense. Anyone with a pair of eyes and a brain can tell that Solo is obviously trying to big himself up to a senile old man and a backwater rube with that line. He knows it's nonsense, and judging by Kenobi's reaction, HE knows that it's nonsense too. It's a perfect, subtle moment of characterization for Han.

And yet Kevin J Anderson; Worlds Worst Star Wars Writer saddles us with this bogus "well, he just flew a faster route" hokum because he doesn't pick up on subtle writing. NO! Bad Anderson! Let the line stand without this "lets fix a mistake" crap.

(Also, can we dump the "Kessel Spice Makes You Psychic" crap while we're at it? God I hate KJA so much.)

Ok, I don't know about this Kevin J Anderson fellow, but I feel for you man. I hate coming across references to really bad EU ideas/writing. Some of the designs and concepts out there are truly terrible. I'm glad that it's being tossed out and cherry picked for what holds up going forward.

That said, I don't think I can read that cynically into Han Solo's bragging. He seems truly disappointed that they haven't heard of his ship and its achievements. As such, I enjoy the description of shorter distance equating to shorter time now as an adult. As a kid I knew that Lucas had flubbed the writing of that by throwing in par sec and not catching his mistake, but because it is in A New Hope it needed to get retcon'd somehow.

EotE actually subscribes to this interpretation as evidenced by the Adventure supplement for Beyond the Rim when dealing with how players travel to Cholganna. The series of Astrogation checks allow you to reach your destination faster by mapping a direct but difficult route through the Chol Nebula. Even if this is not your interpretation of the reference scene, it can at least provide an interesting mechanic for the game.

(Kessel making you psychic sounds stupid, btw)

(Kessel [spice] making you psychic sounds stupid, btw)

Well... EotE treats that as a "maybe". The GM may grant the telepathy to users "at his discretion", or just treat it as a hallucination caused by the Glitterstim.

And is the idea any worse than creatures that nullify the Force (ysalamiri), creatures that are entirely immune/unaffected by the Force (Yuuzhan Vong), creatures made of healing jelly from another dimension (Waru), or creatures that live in your blood and let you use the Force (midichlorians)...? Mind you, I tend to answer "yes" to some of those...

(Kessel [spice] making you psychic sounds stupid, btw)

Well... EotE treats that as a "maybe". The GM may grant the telepathy to users "at his discretion", or just treat it as a hallucination caused by the Glitterstim.

And is the idea any worse than creatures that nullify the Force (ysalamiri), creatures that are entirely immune/unaffected by the Force (Yuuzhan Vong), creatures made of healing jelly from another dimension (Waru), or creatures that live in your blood and let you use the Force (midichlorians)...? Mind you, I tend to answer "yes" to some of those...

But are any of those really worse than an invincible starfighter/blastboat that can blow up stars? I hate the Crystal Star but some of KJA's insanity is hard to top.

Really, that long dark period after the Thrawn trilogy but before the X-Wing books is like a 4 year long punch to the baby-maker. It just seems that KJA led the charge up Big Suck Hill.

(IG-88's brain as the Death Star's computer core? Really, Kevin? Please share that weed with the rest of us. . . .)

I would imagine a decent description of the Imperial prison on Kessel and the mines, the types of research being done, the spice trade, as well as a good description of the Maw. I think that having some great details and descriptions for the Maw would allow GMs to construct a version of the Kessel Run that players could attempt and possibly run in under 12 parsecs (depending on silhouette size of course).

A suppliment in the same ballpark as "Suns of Fortune" would probably be too much for a location that the players may only visit once or twice (if they're very unlucky). The secret research taking place in the Maw is probably too far under the radar for most player characters to visit often (and stay out of Imperial hands).

However, what I do like is the possibility of a Kessel adventure book like "Beyond the Rim" or "Jewel of Yavin". The spice mines and the surrounding areas are interesting enough to support a heroic adventure to break out (or even better, to break in). You could even rope the Maw in with some slick writing to explain why the PCs do not become targets of the ISB. An adventure book could spell out a fair amount of source for GMs who want details while making the most use of its pages by combining an action packed odessey into one of the darkest corners of the galaxy.

Anything that Kevin J Anderson wrote should be be beaten dead before it's tossed on the scrapheap of bad writing. He was simply terrible. I lost even more respect when he revealed in an author note that he didn't even type his own crap. He dictated it, and paid some poor deluded woman to do it for him.

If they do Kessel, assign it to someone who's actually smart and start over.

Yeah and I still think KJA's writing of Daala was signs of closet sexism on his part. He only ever threw her at forces she basically couldn't lose against or ones that had unbeatable heroes or indestructible superweapons. He should have and easily could have given her a few wins against credible threats. Though what they did with her in LOTF and FOTJ was even crazier.

Still his vision of Kessel was the least crazy of his ideas IMO.

Anything that Kevin J Anderson wrote should be be beaten dead before it's tossed on the scrapheap of bad writing. He was simply terrible. I lost even more respect when he revealed in an author note that he didn't even type his own crap. He dictated it, and paid some poor deluded woman to do it for him.

I didn't know about the dictation thing, but it doesn't surprise me either.

Thing is, it's not just Star Wars he's polluted. I've heard tales from the X-Files fans and the Dune readers that both his books in those expanded universes were also terrible and low points of the series. It seems that no matter where he goes, he stinks up the room.

I'll contend that, page for page, the Crystal Star is a worse book by far. The problem with Anderson is that his damage is far more reaching than just one (more or less) easily ignored book, We had to put up with Daala and her incompetentcy for a decade now. Really, who thought it would be a good idea to let a war criminal have the keys to the Republic and then be naive enough to be shocked when she turns out to be a evil dictator.

True though you can't really blame KJA for that fit of madness. Yeah he created Daala than turned what should have been a credible threat into a bad joke but I doubt he had anything to do with making her head of the GA.

(Kessel [spice] making you psychic sounds stupid, btw)

Well... EotE treats that as a "maybe". The GM may grant the telepathy to users "at his discretion", or just treat it as a hallucination caused by the Glitterstim.

And is the idea any worse than creatures that nullify the Force (ysalamiri), creatures that are entirely immune/unaffected by the Force (Yuuzhan Vong), creatures made of healing jelly from another dimension (Waru), or creatures that live in your blood and let you use the Force (midichlorians)...? Mind you, I tend to answer "yes" to some of those...

I don't think we should be comparing how bad those examples are to whether spice grants you special psychic powers...they're all terrible.

It's details like those that have caused me to perpetually keep the EU at arms length, relegated to a dim world of vague understanding for the past twenty odd years. But as a GM, I've begun to scour the SW Encyclopedia, Wookieepedia, and the old SAGA/WEG .pdfs online for more details in describing the galaxy for my PCs at the table. I want them to be able to travel to lesser known worlds and still know that in some way their stories do connect back to Star Wars canon. While FFG draws most of their details from the EU and prior SWRPGs, I believe that they are critical and objective enough to filter the good from the bad. It makes me think that these sorts of details are what SW writers should be mining for in their stories rather than just making something new up. It's hard to know that some great stories got banished from canon because of when they appeared and that they won't make a lick of sense or impact the galaxy until someone mines them for the new stories coming out. Therefore, I think as GMs it become a fine line you walk between what works for your players and the things in the EU that should never be spoken of again.

anyhow, i didn't mean for this to be one of my longer posts, but i think the EU brings that out in all of us to an extent.

Definitely need the talent tree for "Low Level Mining Engineer" on Kessel. I just have the feeling that this is the next specialization on my smuggler's life path.

Definitely need the talent tree for "Low Level Mining Engineer" on Kessel. I just have the feeling that this is the next specialization on my smuggler's life path.

Remember on the edge of the Empire it's not what laws you break... it's just what you get caught doing

A Kessel supplement sounds great... Always good to have a dark place to "mine" for adventures!

1) IIRC, "12 parsecs" was a Harrison Ford improv thing, just like "we're all fine here, thank you...how are you?" Ford said something that he thought sounded "space-y," so while the scene was definitely able to run with it, it wasn't in the script. So it's not entirely due to a missed subtlety.

2) Also IIRC, the scene in the EU where "12 parsecs" was explained with the whole Maw and everything was written by A.C. Crispin and happened quite shortly before his encounter with Kenobi & Skywalker in Chalmun's Cantina. Though perhaps KJ Anderson came up with the explanation beforehand?

1) IIRC, "12 parsecs" was a Harrison Ford improv thing, just like "we're all fine here, thank you...how are you?" Ford said something that he thought sounded "space-y," so while the scene was definitely able to run with it, it wasn't in the script. So it's not entirely due to a missed subtlety.

Yeah if I remember correctly in the novelization Han says the Falcon made the Kessel Run in 12 standard time parts. Personally I think parsecs sounds better, and the EU came up with a simple way to make what he said reasonable so why complain?

A Kessel supplement sounds great... Always good to have a dark place to "mine" for adventures!

Yuk yuk

I have read a lot of KJA books besides the star wars ones. I often view his books as Sci-Fi candy. Something to read, but not something I want a lot of or save for later. But I like his version of Kessel better with Moruth Doole then the Colicoids .

Kessel could just be an adventure. Not a sector book like SoF.

i would totally be down for that adventure book.

A Kessel supplement sounds great... Always good to have a dark place to "mine" for adventures!

Yuk yuk

Sorry.... It was very late.