This is an opinion-search, I suppose, but a curiosity I have, so...

As you play Edge, Age, and now Destiny, how much of things do you let those things you know happened guide you? With the official burning of the EU, lots of Star Wars material is gone, unless you still choose to incorporate it (it's still fresh in many of our minds, so that helps), but the line currently wants to focus on the movies time frame, anyway, where events are still scripted from '77 on, leaving that newly cleared space still empty, since Disney hasn't repopulated it, yet. As your group plays, I assume that they aren't Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie, but people of their own fabrication, so do you try to make opportunities to fit in their actions, around the pillars of things we know will happen, or did you just pick a timestamp to start, and then say "okay, whatever you guys do, that's where we go. You might topple the Empire tomorrow, kill Darth Vader, or whatever."? Certainly, what you are trying to accomplish will scale with that, but I am just wondering how much is "you can do what you want, but Hoth will still fall, Han will still get frozen, and on; you've seen the movies", and how much is either "you've seen the movies, so barring extreme actions from you, you have an idea of where the huge metaplot will go, while you act out smaller parts, within it" or "from this point on, RoTJ isn't a thing. You guys will shape the fates of the stars."

One of the irritating things I've had with movie-based RPGs is a combination of you know what's going to happen, sort of, and there are certain things you can't go near doing, because it's someone else's job. If you play Jedi-aspiring characters, potentially the 501st, and possibly even Vader, COULD show up to get you, and while it's nice that the one time Vader crops up in material, I've heard he's less a stat, and more a 1st round: did you run? No. Okay, you're hurt badly, or someone died. Vader's fine. Round 2: Did you run? No. TPK. Vader's fine, it could sort of smack of suck to say "can't use him, because the party can't do anything to him. I have some friends who have been playing Star Wars d6 since the early 80s, and they are all cheesy, important people in the Alliance, most have written up their characters children, and played them up to a moderate level, just to give themselves something else to play, though they only play two or three times a year now, and while they have many of them read some EU novels, they made up a lot of stuff, and ignored a lot more. I sort of like it because post ROTJ, the universe was their oyster, a field to make whatever they wanted, and to hell with what Luke Skywalker was doing.

So what do you do; use the movie events as tentpoles and milestones, to sort of guide the party along, though allowing them to do things within these events, so that they aren't just watching ESB, or throw the reins off, and say "if you think you can kill the Emperor, you're welcome to try", and NOT say, in the back of your head, "well, you aren't Vader, doing the Vader slam, in the throne room of the Death Star, so no, you can't"?

Just wondering. It can be fun to see the different paths some games follow. Of course, if you said "I'd rather play KOTOR, or Legacy era (Legacy especially might work, with the again-passing of the Jedi), this might mean less, but if you like them, you probably know some of their events, and would have to choose to stick to, or ignore them, too. Thanks, and have fun.

For me, I like a clean slate. Whatever happened on the big screen happened, and same goes for the Clone Wars as well as Rebels, but I've carved out a section of space for myself and I'm going to do whatever I want with it. The big screen stuff will go on in the background, but my players have center stage in my little corner of the universe.

I rewrote history for my campaign. The Death Star is intact, Luke, Leia and the rest dead. My players should feel like what they do matters, not that no matter what they do the Rebels will win with the help of furry stone-age critters.

I'm a canon tyrant. I use the EU as-is - the big struggle between Alliance and Empire has its set path. But there's plenty of steps they can take to help it get to its eventual destination. But most of my groups are not interested in shaping the fate of the galaxy - they're content to play their own characters, and that's not to say they can't have epic adventures of their own.

Pretty much everything in the novels, and most of the comics, are expected to occur (or have occurred) as written, right up to the end of the Fate of the Jedi arc IRL time. I've picked a few items to toss from the Clone Wars cartoon (both of them - the speeder bike jousting against droids was dumb, and the Ones are retconned more or less out of existence). But since my players don't tend to run into any major established players - and stay away from the major planets, even - I don't have to worry too much.

None of my groups have ever tried a campaign or campaign series in the new canon though we might someday as more details get filled in.

Other then that we've tried everything. We've had campaigns or series of campaigns that followed EU/Legends with our party mostly or completely off screen, we've had both of the above that followed EU/Legends until something we did threw things off the rails, and we've had ones that followed EU/Legends for only part of the first scene or went off on their own decades or centuries before the campaign started plus ones set in the Infinities settings.

I choose a starting point and then everything after that is malleable. If they don't get involved, the canon proceeds pretty much as normal, but if they choose to get involved and change the story as we know it, then I am all for that. I don't thrust my players into canon, and I don't thrust canon on to my players either, if they want it to change there are ways to do that.

Well, I'm in one game set in the EU (Jedi Academy) era. My character's a padawan under Luke Skywalker. So the big name functions mostly as a quest giver/teacher while I go running around doing stuff.

The GM in that game has me off planet most of the time, so I'm not running into Exar Kun.

NEWS

RUMOURS

URBAN MYTH

That is all the movies mean to our characters. The movies are Canon, and are likely going to be the only Canon we use. Though there are thoughts of using Rebels and Comic Books too.

I've my own region of Outer Rim space. My own systems. Some are effected by events of the movies, others aren't, and others are blissfully ignorant.

There are plans to include a Rebellion Broadcast Network at some point, where the downtrodden and oppressed gain hope hearing about the fight for freedom. But that will be some way down the line. Our campaigning is going to start 19 BBY, with a bunch of Clone Troopers trying to kill me due to Order 66.

As other characters are created, each will have their own origin story and mini campaign. Most are thinking Order 66 survivors, like me being a Padawan at the time. We scatter to the Outer Rim but are drawn together by the common cause of fighting Imperial tyranny.

Revenge of the Sith is the big introduction to our campaign. Events that follow will be treated like news, rumours, gossip or urban myth. If an opportunity arrives to join the action in any of the Canon, we might do so. But the closest we are likely to get is Mon Mothma or Princess Leia making a broadcast to dispell Empire propaganda.

The main campaign I am playing in started 6 months after Endor, with the movies and Clone Wars cannon (but what is public knowledge is much less) and our GM is happily looting what he likes from the EU but the course of events has changed. For example we weren't able to stop the assassination of Mon Mothma (but did limit it so only she bought the farm and the rest of the Alliance leadership is alive) and Director Izzard has only just gained power and a certain blue skinned Grand Admiral has only just returned from the outer rim.

My players are padawan survivors that are now working for the Aldaran resistance 8 or 9 years before a New Hope. They are setting in motion the building of what will become the alliance or they will fall and potentially become the Emperor's Hand. They can change cannon but it better be some good roleplaying to do so

I'm all for changing canon and using What If scenarios in my games.

What if the droids escape pod was shot down and the characters found the deathstar plans in r2s scattered parts?

What if Luke was blown up in the trench run or his torpedo didn't go in and one of the players had to take the shot?

What if Luke and Leia never met Han and he was frozen in carbonite elsewhere and delivery to Jabba? The players may see him hanging on the wall of Jabba's palace!

What if the players had to take down the shield generator and it doesn't quite go according to plan?

Oh, the fun that could be had!

We play in the gaps. But that's okay because SW leaves a LOT of VERY BIG gaps. The setting is an entire galaxy. That said, there is minor overlap with the canon events. They are going to meet Vader at some point. If by some miracle of planning or smarts they killed him for example, then yes my timeline would then diverge from the movies. But generally unless something very dramatic happens, the canon events are still going to be rolling on in the background.

And that to me is a good thing. Or at least a wiley GM can make it so. Many fine stories are told with a backdrop of titanic events of history. How many historical war movies have you seen and how many of them were lessened by the fact you knew how the war was going to end? If your story were Schindler's List, would it be lessened by the fact that Schindler didn't fight Hitler? Individual stories can be leant more depth and drama by placing them against a powerful backdrop. If you've seen that arc in Season 5 of TCW - the wrong Jedi - you'll get a feel for what I mean. Ahsoka is swept up in events far bigger than her, you can actually feel the rise of the Empire. Could you have done the same story just with regular police and a regular crime? Yes, in all essential points it would have been the same. But would it have been as powerful without the oppressive feel of Palpatine solidifying his powerbase, of the Jedi council afraid of their growing inconsequence, of finding former allies were now part of something bigger, more frightening than the individuals you knew? That's what making the stories part of a wider history can give you - a real, classical Tragedy feel. In common modern day parlance people take 'Tragedy' just to mean a film or play where the ending is unhappy. But in fact it's the feel of great events carrying things along to an inevitable fate that defines tragedy. It's not accident or unhappiness that defines Tragedy. It's smallness against the tsunami of history (or fate if you prefer).

So you can play in the gaps very happily without contradicting canon and just ignore it. And that's fine. But you can also play in the gaps and use the vast events as a dramatic backdrop to create a feeling of depth and reality and epic to the setting.

At least that's how I do it.

What if C3po kisses Leia instead of luke

What if C3po kisses Leia instead of luke

Or are you just writing a slash fiction?

What if Yoda's guidance system malfunctioned and he landed on Hoth instead:

"For 18 years, froze my butt off I have!"

Or...

"Want to build a snowman, do you, hmm?"

In the last Star Wars game I ran, (d20, so it's been a while), the six movies were canon, but nothing else was. My group had various levels of experience with the EU, so the simplest way to deal with that was too ignore it entirely. We spent most of our time playing around in the gap between the trilogies, so it didn't really matter much.

That being said, it would be cool to start a new campaign where the PC's are the Jedi sent to negotiate the truce between the Trade Federation and Naboo, instead of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, and just let the whole thing run as far off the rails as possible.

The only way canon or "established continuity" exists in my games is if it's in the past of the starting point of the game.

I don't want my PCs being second fiddle.

I like the approach of doing one of the following:

>> Picking an era or time where there's no canon to collide with.

So like Kotor or a long time after the movies, etc.

- Completely blowing up canon in session 0, i.e., the premise of the game creates a completely alternate Star Wars universe.

Maybe Anakin killed Obi-wan. And became Emperor with his new Sith apprentice Ahsoka.

Maybe Obi-wan actually trained Luke since infancy on Tatooine ("I've defeated Sith Lords! Surely I can deal with a moisture farmer who won't let me train his adopted son...") and they've set up a small Jedi Academy...and a twist in Act II comes when Luke takes Vader's offer on Bespin....

I don't necessarily set out to derail canon, but it often winds up like that. Our E1-3 All Jedi game had Big Names drop in and out all the time, and the players because good enough friends with Anakin that he could use them as a non-judgmental sounding board when things got heavy - so that when things DID get heavy for the poor guy, when he really needed a support network instead of snuggling up to Palpatine, they were able to save him from falling.

Now, Palpatine still set the galaxy on fire, but he did so without his right hand man (actually his right hand man is now the team's nemesis, who they had captured during the siege of Courscant and had imprisoned in the Jedi Temple when Order 66 dropped. So if we ever get around to playing that sequel game, they'll have a personal stake in the galaxy than if were just Vader).

I've finally got round to gearing up towards a F&D campaign with two PCs. I'm going to give them a choice of starting frameworks - 1) The Tales of the Jedi era (using the old WEG companion to steer us), or 2) (and my unlikely favourite) as an alternative-canon delegation of two, sent to force a certain settlement between a slimy neimoidian and a terminally blank, painted-faced queen.

I'd love to see where the latter takes us.

Maybe Obi-wan actually trained Luke since infancy on Tatooine ("I've defeated Sith Lords! Surely I can deal with a moisture farmer who won't let me train his adopted son...") and they've set up a small Jedi Academy...and a twist in Act II comes when Luke takes Vader's offer on Bespin....

I had an idea similar to this a while ago - what if circumstances led to Obi-Wan crash-landing with a baby Luke on some outer rim hell-hole other than Tatooine? What if he raised Luke as his own son and then the time (and opportunity) came to send him out into the galaxy? How would that pan out?

For the most part, I create and add new stuff that doesn't necessarily infringe on canon. Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie have their own story going on, but they are part of a much larger setting. And that setting has a lot more going on in it than just those four people. I want my PCs to have their own, awesome story as well. Some overlap may happen since they share the same setting.

That being said, I will also alter canon if I want or if the players do so. In my Star Wars, for example, the PCs happened to be on Alderaan saving Bail Organa from an assassin shortly before the Deathstar showed up. They managed to get offworld with him before the planet blew up. So I certainly set up the potential canon change, but the players made it happen themselves. They convinced him to hide in the shadows and let everyone believe he is dead, and for the moment the PCs are mixing their own Edge adventures with some of Organa's Age missions while not fully committing themselves to the Rebellion.

Movies as canon, EU I cherry pick, play in the gaps and/or parallel to the main story but not in it.

My PCs have met canon characters. Movie ones only fleetingly to avoid any issues. EU characters that I've chosen to exist the PCs have brushed shoulders with much more (A pre-Yavin Mara Jade was involved in a few sessions once before she moved on). My PCs have also done things that touch up to the main story such as rescue the first X-wing prototypes for the Alliance, locate the ruins of Yavin, discover that a new Super Star Destroyer is being built, etc. But, never anything directly changing movie canon, just filling in the details. For example, finding the Death Star plans was once fair game. With Rogue One, it's now probably going to be untouchable.

I think, whether you use the canon events as an epic backdrop to your campaign or a fluid mess that the PCs can rearrange, whether you use canon NPCs as brief encounters or integral parts, the key thing is that the players feel their actions matter and they have a story of their own to tell.

Though I like to stick to Canon, I've recently found myself wanting to "rewrite Canon for more exciting narrative purposes".

My Force Sensitive is going to begin without a lightsaber. To find the Kyber Crystal I was going to have him go to Dantooine to find a "Dantari Crystal".

From the description: "Discovered within the eggs of the kinrath - giant, venomous, cave dwelling arachnids......."

Immediately my imagination pictured my character moving through a dark, damp cave littered with webs to find the nest of a big ugly spider. Unfortunately, a Wookieepedia search uncovered a stupid-looking four-legged thing with a description more like ants than spiders. So stuff it! I'm going to enter the lair of a giant venomous spider to take a crystal from her nest.

Minor change from Canon, and nothing that effects the galactic scheme of things.

In mine some padawan walks into the Jedi Council meeting to deliver a message and then asks "Why is a Dark Lord of the Sith standing here?" There is a brief "wha?" and then a flash of green, purple and blue light and the future Emperor is no more.

Can't stand canon. Our game is our game. Borrow what you want. Discard what you don't. The players are the stars.