While I love the galactic civil war setting I would really like to explore some other historical epochs in Star Wars history. Is there any chance we will ever see source books for the Old Republic or the Clone Wars?

Never say never, but much of the content seems focused on the specific Rebellion era with slight references to previous times.

I would be surprised if the next major Core book cycle being anything other than The Force Awakens era.

Era books do not fit FFG's modus operandi at this time. It is doubtful that we will ever see anything dedicated to the Old Republic now that it has been decanonized. That's not to say that concepts won't be put into books. Refined cortosis gauntlets from the Legacy era made it into the F&D core and I am sure we will see other things that are not considered canon (like the Shield Gauntlets from WotC's books). No books promoting eras not considered canon will be, in all likelihood, produced. A Clone Wars book would probably not show up until down the road, if at all.

Yeah, if (and that's a fairly big if) we do see books that cover playing in other eras, mouthymerc's right in that the focus is more likely to be on the "canon" eras such as Clone Wars, Dark Times/Rebels, and the new sequel trilogy. Although it really wouldn't take much to tweak things to fit within the Dark Times/Rebels time frame; the only thing really lacking is a galaxy-wide organized resistance movement during that time, as the Rebel Alliance is still very much in its formative stages during the time frame of Rebels, which as of the current season is roughly 3 to 4 years or so prior to ANH; at least going by Filoni's comment I saw that Ezra is supposed to be about 16 at this point, and that it's been a couple years since the start of the series.

But those sorts of supplements are probably years off, as FFG's still got plenty of material to release for the three product lines in their current time frame of the Rebellion Era, and that's just the career sourcebooks, with a high likelihood of more adventure and location/theme-centric supplements in the vein of Lords of Nal Hutta, Strongholds of Resistance, and the upcoming Nexus of Power.

While I love the galactic civil war setting I would really like to explore some other historical epochs in Star Wars history. Is there any chance we will ever see source books for the Old Republic or the Clone Wars?

As others have said, it's not likely. But there's really no need anyway, the current core books provide all the tools required to run a game set in any era. Re-skinning equipment and minions is extremely simple.

Yep you can easily reskin the stats of almost anything. Also on the Edge section fo the forum yo ucna find the fan made straship conversion thread by Librarian npc which converts a number of modern and old republic ships to FFG standards if you don't like reskinning everything or want a different thing.

I have read comments in the past that the Kotor 2 era works perfectly for an edge game,and i think that the mandalorian wars/Kotor era is quite good for an AoR game and the SWTOR timeframe can be easily done by reskinning F&D and AoR books.

Considering that star wars technology looks and acts much the same in all eras, I think we have most of what we need to run any era we want. Unless you have tech from two different eras competing in the same scene, you can pretty much take the stats from these books, file the serial numbers off, and rebrand them with little trouble. Its more a question about background and setting information, which can be had from numerous sources. Our game is in the Dark Time, somewhat earlier than Rebels. I've found no trouble running it, and feel I could run an Old Republic game pretty easily without any Era specific source books.

I run a Jedi origins campaign that takes place 25,000 years before the movies. Its on the planet Tython, is a force based steampunk/martial arts type setting (Firefly). The weapons are slugthrowers and blades (no blasters or lightsabers). The force is seen as a balance of both light and dark. This system is perfect for my campaign!

As far as technology is concerned it seems to be static, but i think i read on the internet that the hyperdrive speed improved over the centuries so SWTOR era ships are supposed to be slower than Rebellion era ships. No idea where they got that info (which is most likely Legends anyway) but it can be a decent way to represent technology advancement: say any kotor or swtor era ships can't have more than x3 hyperdrive, any period between swtor and the prequels have x2 hyperdrive while clone wars to original trilogy era can get to x1 and below.

If you're doing a SWTOR game I recommend a starting XP count higher than 150.

One big problem you get when you do separate era books is the cross-compatibility of weapons, gear and vehicles. One of the strengths of the game we have now is that any one of those things is usable in any game line, no matter which book it appears in. Future era books are okay for this, but past era books would need a Grand List of Things That Don't Exist Yet. Sure, some of the generic items can be copied, but any specific, cool weapon (like the Nova Viper, or the E-11s, or pretty much everything in the sourcebooks) and practically all vehicles and droids wouldn't work (save for the seldom generic stats of those).

I think the best you're going to see is stuff put into books that supports other eras - particularly in the Force and Destiny line.

Already with the Guardian's book "Keeping the Peace" you can see they've provided Jedi Battle Armor, a Sith shield. The F&D core has Sith artifacts.

The fluff has and will mention previous eras to the Rebellion era - noting that equipment was originally from a certain era or was more common then, etc. There's even side bars that mention other eras. Strongholds of Resistance has a sidebar about the Crystal Caves (Canyons? - away from book) that mentions the consular Jedi character you play in the Old Republic MMO.

Keeping the Peace has a side bar about Jedi caches that may contain object from previous eras.

But I think that's most of what we're going to see - the mechanics will be there to support other eras but only passing mentions of it in the fluff.

I have to wonder if the Old Republic era is also shaky ground because someone feels like the tabletop RPG would take away from their MMO "RPG", or if there's some sort of licensing issue with Bioware's material separate from the main rights...

Since the rpg and game are totally different products developed by different companies under duifferent licences (and none of them is linked to Disney) i don't think that's aproblem at all. Meanoing FFG can do old republic era without any problems, they just are concentrating on the OT period,m and throwing snippets of lore and equipment when they can.

Since the rpg and game are totally different products developed by different companies under duifferent licences (and none of them is linked to Disney) i don't think that's aproblem at all. Meanoing FFG can do old republic era without any problems, they just are concentrating on the OT period,m and throwing snippets of lore and equipment when they can.

So when a ship or planet or character developed entirely by Bioware comes up... how would the licensing work?

Since the rpg and game are totally different products developed by different companies under duifferent licences (and none of them is linked to Disney) i don't think that's aproblem at all. Meanoing FFG can do old republic era without any problems, they just are concentrating on the OT period,m and throwing snippets of lore and equipment when they can.

So when a ship or planet or character developed entirely by Bioware comes up... how would the licensing work?

I thought all created content for Star Wars products, licensed by Lucas/Disney, were owned by Lucas/Disney. Thus they can be used at the discretion of Lucas/Disney's other licencees.

I am not a lawyer, just what was told to me in the past.

Things may have changed from the WotC days, when the video game side of the equation was run by the now-defunct LucasArts branch of Lucasfilm, but back then WotC could pick and choose what they wished from the video games, since it was covered under the Star Wars brand.

How it operates now with EA (a separate corporate entity from Disney and/or Lucasfilm) is anybody's guess. But I don't think we've seen much in the way of RPG material from the more recent video games in FFG's books, so it could be the situation is convoluted enough for the writers to feel it's not worth the bother. Then again, I generally don't pay much attention to Star War video games apart from Uprising, so there could be stuff that's from post-buyout video games that I don't recognize as such.

I'm genuinely curious, I don't mean this to be an argument, btw. Lareg and Tear44 could very well be right.

There haven't been any video games since after the buyout, aside from the new Battlefront and mobile games like Uprising. NuBattlefront doesn't offer much aside from a handful of weapons. The only other things of note on the video game side was the Force Unleashed games, The Old Republic, and Kinect Star Wars. There hasn't been much by way of equipment from TOR, although there's not much stuff in that anyway, but they have referenced a few things in the flavor text since (Strongholds mentions the Barsen'thor in the Chandrila section, who is the Jedi Consular character in that game). There's been a few things gear-wise from KotOR, such as the Verpine headband and bond gauntlets. I'm thinking there are a few other things, but I can't remember where.

I doubt there is much that is exclusive to the video games that isn't already considered common IP for Star Wars. And what is probably isn't worth fighting over anyways considering games like TOR focus on a time 5000 years before the time of the OT which FFG focuses on.

If I recall right Onslaught at Arda I made reference to TOR, the last planet you visit in the adventure used to be apart of that Sith Empire and there is a statue dedicated to someone from the game there (I think Malgus but would need to double check). So I think if FFG really wanted to they could pick from TOR, but honestly why bother? There is so much Star Wars material out there that unless they were doing a dedicated book to the era there is no real need to even worry about what BioWare is doing

My group will play in Legacy Era, starting a bit before Bastion was retaken by Roan Fel. I'm playing an Imperial Knight.

The game is pretty open, so all the GM must do is change some rarity numbers and we're good to go!

I think we have pretty much everything we need to run a different Era game, just re-skin what we have and you are ready to go.

If you're doing a SWTOR game I recommend a starting XP count higher than 150.

I agree. Maybe 250 xp?

I think we have pretty much everything we need to run a different Era game, just re-skin what we have and you are ready to go.

If you're doing a SWTOR game I recommend a starting XP count higher than 150.

I agree. Maybe 250 xp?

I think it can be done also with 150 xp IF you allow a second spec for free, otherwise i'd suggest adding another 30 xp to account for the second spec. Another solution could be to keep 150xp and allow starting at FR 2 but it's a pretty powerful tweak.