When working up new worlds I like to include a bit of history but getting a basic understanding in which to create it is tough. The history of the galaxy is understandably a pretty complicated and exhaustive subject but its made harder by the fact that its so spread out all over the place. Does anyone know of a source, online or otherwise, that kind of puts into perspective? Just the basics put into a timeline so someone working up something new could create some events in the proper eras, wars, invasions etc.

Mandalorians, Sith, Hutts, galactic invasions and dozens of wars make it hard to visualize how a particular world developed unless you have a working understanding of what was going on around them.

Hmmmm. Not to my knowledge, no. Wookieepedia consolidates everything, but there's a lot of stuff, and the accuracy can be sometimes iffy.

Greetings, here is a link to Wookieepedia Star Wars timeline, it may seem a bit complex, but it shows all the basics and important events.
It even has a little button at the top that lets you switch between Cannon and Legends Historie, hope it helps.

I've got the essential atlas and it appears pretty complete but a little overkill. Thanks for the help. I suppose that tracing any Ginn world back just through the clone wars would be a good start but there is so much cool stuff going on before that could influence a culture.

One of the things you're working against is the reconfiguring of the canon that happened after Disney acquired Lucasfilm. The Expanded Universe was all placed under the "Legends" banner and removed from the canon. It was announced that all future publications would be true canon (before, there was a weird and confusing sort of canon hierarchy between the films, tv serials, books, comics, video games, etc). So all the books published prior to April 25, 2014 are non-canon and therefore not necessarily part of the history of the Star Wars galaxy.

That said, if you want to get a good overview of Star Wars Legends, it's hard to do better than Pablo Hidalgo's Essential Reader's Companion. It was published in late 2012, so with only about a year and a half in between it and the closing of the Expanded Universe, it's fairly complete!

Thanks I'll check it out. As for canon, I think the imagination ND labor of hundreds of fans over the years is too valuable to simply dismiss at the wave of an animated white glove. It's all canon to me. I'd rather disregard sonething new that conflicts.

What worked for me was to look at a the front of one of the books where it gives a timeline. Then I could piece together what I knew from some of the books and video games into a rough history. I'm sure I have a lot of holes, but it gave me a good starting point.

Technically, Edge of the Empire takes place in Legends canon. Just saying.

I was going to suggest the Essential Atlas, but you already have that. I'd also recommend the Essential Guide to Warfare since warfare is kind of a big part of Star Wars.

I'd probably recommend developing a good filter for what what is relevant for your needs. It's all awesome background material, but if you're running in the OT era, you probably only need to focus on OT era and Dark Times history, with some grounding in the Clone Wars.

In creating new worlds (or expanding on worlds that maybe warrant a paragraph on Wookieepedia at the most), I tend to focus on 3 key questions to use as a baseline to jump off from and expand from there:

1) How did the Clone Wars (or earlier events) affect this planet/it's people?

2) What do they think of the Empire?

3) What do they think of the Rebellion?

This works well enough for my campaign, I imagine you're probably best developing your own criteria to suit your own.

Technically, Edge of the Empire takes place in Legends canon. Just saying.

My games are Cannon in my universe.

Just picked up "essential guide to warfare".good stuff. I've already written in some history for Gizer concerning Xim's Tion March through the sector.

I use the new canon as the baseline, the understood history that my games take place in, and then introduce EU ideas into it, which helps streamline the problem of what is canon for the purposes of my games. That said, I consider Atlas locations to be accurate for astrogation purposes until contradicted by a canon source.

Ill have to admit, as much as I love Star Wars, this has to be the biggest pain the ass of any game Ive every run. Most RPG worlds are either completely your own or ready made. Trying to put Star Wars together is a nightmare.

Just picked up "essential guide to warfare".good stuff. I've already written in some history for Gizer concerning Xim's Tion March through the sector.

Agreed

I'll have to admit, as much as I love Star Wars, this has to be the biggest pain the ass of any game Ive every run. Most RPG worlds are either completely your own or ready made. Trying to put Star Wars together is a nightmare.

Agreed

Trying to put Star Wars together is a nightmare.

Yup. Just ask Pablo Hidalgo and the rest of his “Keepers of the Holocron” team at Disney.

Generally speaking I would start with the traditional way of worldbuilding; first focus on where your PC's are and expand when necessary.