I'm likely to be starting my new Star Wars game on Sunday (assuming our group's current GM finishes his Laundry campaign on schedule - with the way our group likes to faff about, this is by no means certain...) and I'm kicking off with the Whisper Base scenario to introduce the new system to the team. Whisper Base is on Onderon. Onderon is in the Inner Rim. This got me thinking.

At the moment, the only Knowledge skills covering geographical areas are Knowledge (Core Worlds) and Knowledge (Outer Rim). On a strict interpretation, that means that there are no skills covering the Colonies, the Inner Rim, the Expansion Region and the Mid-Rim. This, frankly, sucks.

I can see two ways to deal with the problem:

1) Introduce a bunch of new Knowledge skills to cover the missing areas. This has the downside of adding several new XP sinks for players who want to know things.

2) Expand the reach of the existing skills so that, say, Core Worlds covers everything out to the Inner Rim and Outer Rim covered the Expansion Region outward.

Any thoughts on which would be better?

2

Edit: really it depends how important the knowledge of each of these regions is to your campaign. If it's not a major issue, then I'd leave Outer Rim as including Outer Rim, Wild Space, and Unknown Regions. Wild Space adds +1 difficulty, Unknown Regions adds +2, or maybe an upgrade to be wildly wrong about something.

Then leave Core Worlds to be everything inside the Outer Rim. For all it's "outer-ness", there are probably more inhabited planets in the Outer Rim than in the regions coreward. Plus it seems to have a much higher degree of sentient variation...other than Duros, it seems to be where most of the "aliens" are found.

You could do the same +X difficulty for Knowledge (Core Worlds) for regions coreward of the Outer Rim, meaning Inner Rim or Expansion Region knowledge checks might get a +1 difficulty...

Totally 2. take the spiral of the galaxy and divide it in half. The bit towards the center? Call that Core Worlds. The bits on the outside? That's Outer Rim Worlds. From there, base your difficulty on how likely the character is to have heard of it (Coursacant is a <>, Byss would be a <><><><><><><>, and how specific the knowledge is (finding the best greasy spoon diner vs finding the imperial palace that you can see from space).

There. Done.

Yeah Frogs dead on.

I understand the temptation to break it down to specific regions and require a skill for each. It feels more accurate.

The problem is it leads to skill bloat, and hurts the players. See for every more detailed version of what could fold into broader skill, you get something of limited value that the player must still spend XP on. So while requiring a dozen seperate know skills sound "better" all you're doing is funneling XP away from their characters primary role and into some nitty gritty skill that might only come up in two or three adventures of a campaign.

Indeed, unless knowledge of specific areas is important to the campaign, and will prove an important distinction between characters (an all scholar campaign!) It doesn't aid the story. Same reasons Science and Humanities are both "Education" and why grenades and pistols are both "Ranged Light".

Outer rim is generally the backwater areas of the Galaxy that have only been colonized around 1000 years BBY. Barring any contact with Native sentiants of course, and hutt space. To me there is a lot of anachronism, and "Wild west" feel to the outer rim. The local cantina having spaces to park speeders, swoops, and even hitches for Riding beasts.

Everything else is "core worlds"

I'd go with what whafrog and Dessloik say. I tend to use one of the others, whichever is closest, then liberally apply black dice (which is good for our Scholar, who doesn't get much opportunity to use their talents!)

I honestly don't want the game to have more skill bloat than it already has; if anything we could happily trim half a dozen superfluous skills already.

I use them as option 2, with Outer Rim covering the Mid Rim as well. Compared to the number and scope of the other knowledge skills, creating 6 regional knowledge skills would be excessive granularity.

I'd suggest renaming them 'Coreward' and 'Rimward' if there's a personal desire to label them for a broaden use.

I sometimes also use Knowledge(Core Worlds) for more civilized areas of the outer rim. But I also allow outer rim in these situation with an increased difficulty.

Ever since I saw how these skills were presented in the rulebook I've interpreted Knowledge (Core Worlds) to cover the Deep Core, Core, Colonies and Inner Rim. Knowledge (Outer Rim) covers the Mid Rim, Expansion Region, Outer Rim and Wild Space. You rarely roll for anything concerning the Unknown Regions on account of them being, well, unknown, but if necessary I'd lump those in under Outer Rim.

Just my take on things, but it seemed logical.

Ever since I saw how these skills were presented in the rulebook I've interpreted Knowledge (Core Worlds) to cover the Deep Core, Core, Colonies and Inner Rim. Knowledge (Outer Rim) covers the Mid Rim, Expansion Region, Outer Rim and Wild Space. You rarely roll for anything concerning the Unknown Regions on account of them being, well, unknown, but if necessary I'd lump those in under Outer Rim.

Just my take on things, but it seemed logical.

That's the route I was thinking of taking. Since most of what's known is about the Core, Colonies, Inner Rim, Expansion Region, Mid-Rim and Outer Ri, that puts three regions under each skill.

Thanks for the advice, everyone.