There's good anime?
Heh heh.
Well, I didn’t mention any of the … uh … “fan service” anime. There are youngsters about, if nothing else. 
How about some fun series that ended up in space at one point or another?
Oh, gack! No. Just no. 
"Yeah, it's 'Star Wars', but it's also..."
There's good anime?
I know you're not serious - however one would have to be a serious stone hearted bastard not to be crying by the end of the movie:
Could always use the opening of Starship Operators as the base of a beginning AOR campaign. Not the whole funding the war via reality TV show bit obviously but I could see a small independent system or alliance of systems getting overrun by the Empire and the junior officers and crew of a ship on patrol or students on a training mission refusing to stand down after their government surrenders, seizing the ship then running doing what damage they can to the Empire while trying to link up with the Alliance.
You guys must be pretty young not to think of Ice Pirates. It's a bad Knock off (comedy) making fun of alot of the movies listed above including SW.
I'm old enough to remember Ice Pirates.
But why in the name of Hades would I want to use a sub-par sci-fi setting as inspiration for a way-above-average sci-fi setting. Seriously, why...?
I don't care about anyone's age, but I do find it distressing that many (most?) of you are finding inspiration from other sci-fi series as opposed to alternate genres. I mean, Lucas fused westerns, samurai flicks, Arthurian legends, and WWII aerial battles into the awesomeness that is Star Wars. (And he even had Filoni stick a kaiju in the Clone Wars animated series!) So why wouldn't EotE GMs not want to pull from other genres?
I dig Cowboy Bebop, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Farscape, Babylon 5, The Black Hole, and Space Pirate Captain Harlock (obviously!) as much as the next guy... But they certainly wouldn't influence my Star Wars games. I mean, aside from Trek, most of those drew their influence from Star Wars.
But adapting the Miami Vice episodes "Smuggler's Blues" or "The Great McCarthy" into smuggling campaigns? (YT-2400s for fast boats with secret compartments?) Or adapting The Wild Bunch into a hired gun campaign? (Blasters for bullets?) Or adapting the original Italian Job into a thief campaign? (Landspeeders for Minis?) Or adapting Zulu for a scout/explorer campaign? (Indigenous aliens for native tribesmen?) Or adapting the real-life events of Black Hawk Down to a mercenary campaign? (Y-Wing down? Or perhaps stolen Lambda down?) Absolutely kick@$$ and a ton of fun.
Real-life events involving pirates - both classic and modern-day - as well as organized crime reports can also provide a wealth of material for missions in the Outer Rim.
Anyway, when it comes to imagining campaign ideas for EotE, it seems to me the sky is the limit. So why limit yourselves to film and literature that already provides you with force fields and lasers and space travel? Laziness?
Edited by Harlock999Anyway, when it comes to imagining campaign ideas for EotE, it seems to me the sky is the limit. So why limit yourselves to film and literature that already provides you with force fields and lasers and space travel? Laziness?
I dont see why a GM should limit themselves from ANY genre - soap opera, fantasy, professional wrestling, westerns, horror, spy - and even space. There's plenty of good ideas to be plundered from anywhere. While I dont think the daleks would be a good fit, but Cybermen? Hell yes! A long forgotten experiment by the Confederacy - the plan to graft living brains into battle droids for better response time - lays dormant until accidentally awakened. Now these augmented droids follow their last command: increase their number and overwhelm the enemy.
Or what about something like Mobile Police Patlabor? Dockworkers and criminals get ahold of Industrial load lifters and start running amuck? Sounds like a blast.
Mad Max could make an awesome frontier world setting - bikers with mohawks and bondage gear ruling the deserts and terrorizing communities. Great! Sign me up.
Hell, Lensman is the UR space opera from which all others spring and is a vast, endless wealth of ideas - especially for Jedi in the Old Republic. One could argue that if you're not stealing from EE Doc Smith, you're not doing Star Wars right.
Edited by DesslokGiven our characters bumbling attempts at being criminal, our campaign quickly got dubbed "Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Blasters"as it seems Guy Ritchie is running the dice. We go through hell, screw up everything, talk ourselves into MORE dangerous situations when we can just walk away, and still, somehow come through in one piece at the end. With the GM alternating between shaking his head and laughing.
The mention of Ice Pirates still causes my face to crack a smile. Whenever I hear it, I immediately think "space herpes!" 
Star Wars is space fantasy, or space opera, so other sources to draw from would be in a similar vein (though not necessarily about space). The epitome of golden-age space opera was Doc Smith's Lensman series which, if you haven't read it, is well worth the time. While his characterizations might be a bit cheesy and dated, the way the man described space battles was amazing, and even more immersive than modern movie special effects (which is even more amazing, considering he wrote the books in the 1930's and 40's). There's plenty of other examples, of course, especially if you read old "Amazing Stories" or "Astounding"/"Analog" science fiction, or any pulp science fiction.
By extension, the Green Lantern comics is good source material, being pretty much a comic version of the Lensman series. Of course, comics in general have the same over-the-top, good vs. evil feel that Star Wars has, so comic book fans should be easily brought over into the Star Wars fold.
Other non-science sources can also be used to get someone into Star Wars. Both classic and spaghetti westerns have the same themes, especially when you're playing EotE; the Outer Rim is pretty much the Old West. And speaking of the Old West, over in Japan, Akira Kurosawa made Japanese versions of American Westerns, with Samurais instead of cowboys, of course. These movies included The Seven Samurai (remade in the US as the Magnificent Seven), and a movie called The Hidden Fortress which, if you go through the plot, is pretty much... Star Wars Lucas has even admitted as such.
Lucas has even admitted as such.If they don't like science fiction, comics, westerns, or samurai flicks, what about mythology and folklore? Star Wars is seeped in mythology, including swashbuckling heros, brooding villians, quests, monsters (sometimes literally, but also in the form of Death Stars and star destroyers), wise mentors, falls into darkness as well as ultimate redemption, and pretty much anything else that you'd find in any number of heroic adventure stories.
If mythology made them fall asleep in English class, there's a bunch of TV shows and other movies that share elements with Star Wars. Many of these have already been mentioned (Firefly, Stargate, Terminator, any number of anime, etc), so I won't bother reiterating.
If they're still not interested... let them go back to stamp collecting while you run your next Edge of the Empire game