While I understand the logic some apply to not wanting or providing stats for "official" named characters, there's one thing about them having stats that I've found tremendously helpful at times: it provides a benchmark frame of reference should you need to give an example the players can relate to. For instance, being able to say, "About the same proficiency with the Force as Luke on Hoth." If you have those stats of Luke's available, that parallel can be drawn to the stats of a PC or NPC.

The simplest answer is there is no such benchmark. Mostly this is due to the way the game is designed, it's completely open-ended. In theory you could play until you had every spec and power, which runs into thousands of XP. Meanwhile, some prefer to stat, say, Obiwan as a starting character, accounting for his on-screen abilities as good rolls on a minimum of dice; while others might give him hundreds or thousands of XP.

Also, the cap of playability depends on how you play the game. You can easily set up a combat god that will max out in short order and leave little room to grow in that regard; or you can keep a PC at the baseline stats, spending only on skills and talents.

So if FFG provided stats, they'd be putting a straight jacket on their open-ended, play it as you like it system. I can't see why they'd want to do that.

While I understand the logic some apply to not wanting or providing stats for "official" named characters, there's one thing about them having stats that I've found tremendously helpful at times: it provides a benchmark frame of reference should you need to give an example the players can relate to. For instance, being able to say, "About the same proficiency with the Force as Luke on Hoth." If you have those stats of Luke's available, that parallel can be drawn to the stats of a PC or NPC.

The simplest answer is there is no such benchmark. Mostly this is due to the way the game is designed, it's completely open-ended. In theory you could play until you had every spec and power, which runs into thousands of XP. Meanwhile, some prefer to stat, say, Obiwan as a starting character, accounting for his on-screen abilities as good rolls on a minimum of dice; while others might give him hundreds or thousands of XP.

Also, the cap of playability depends on how you play the game. You can easily set up a combat god that will max out in short order and leave little room to grow in that regard; or you can keep a PC at the baseline stats, spending only on skills and talents.

So if FFG provided stats, they'd be putting a straight jacket on their open-ended, play it as you like it system. I can't see why they'd want to do that.

The mechanics of a game really do need to have some sort of scale. I've seen too many RPGs that fall apart as the stats or the number of dice or whatever go up, because there's no scale and the developers did all their balancing of hit vs defense, damage vs soak, etc, on starting-level characters.

The mechanics of a game really do need to have some sort of scale. I've seen too many RPGs that fall apart as the stats or the number of dice or whatever go up, because there's no scale and the developers did all their balancing of hit vs defense, damage vs soak, etc, on starting-level characters.

I think the *mechanics* have a scale, but it doesn't mean you can easily slot a movie-PC's capabilities to them.

I'll occasionally name-drop, but in my campaign, the PCs are the stars. It's their story, not Luke's or Han's. Depending on how far they get in the Rebellion, I might arrange a scene with Luke or Leia, or maybe Adm. Akbar or Gen. Dodanna, to give a mission briefing, or something to that effect. I've also used Vader as a boogieman ("You do not want to get on Vader's radar!"). But as far as the story goes, it's all about the PCs. Canon characters already have their own stories in the movies, series, and books. They don't need more air time in my campaign

Though those stories might indeed intervene. Many bothan spies died, but a few came through. There was this Rebel Group with their VCX-100 freighter, etc nothing wrong with meeting canon characters, and if the group likes this play style then nothing wrong with beating the competition to the punch either, even when I think that the galaxy is big enough to have stories without constantly bringing in canon characters. PCs get quite powerful on their own, and once you reached your third or fifths dedication you are rolling enough dice and should have accomplished enough to be quite a big number within the a) underworld b) within the alliance c) notorious within the Inquisition d) all of that combined to competing for the Endor mission with a certain other Clique within the Alliance ;-)

It might be not your groups destiny to do the same stuff (or maybe it is, depending on the GM), but that galaxy is big, the empire has literally million of capital ships and million of worlds and there are a lot of unknown grand admirals to stop outside of Vader, Thrawn and Zaarin which totally deserve their cannon or not so cannon endings,

I have had major (and minor) movie characters show up, but just in a perfunctory way. And used VERY sparingly.

Ackbar and Leia asks the PCs to go on a mission.

Luke needs some repairs on his x-wing helping R2 with it.

Characters have to meet Solo and Chewie for a supplies pickup/dropoff.

Wire tapped an office which had an imperial meeting room which had Piett in it.

That kinda thing.

But I NEVER have the movie character have any real action in the game. Just as background characters. After all, the major movie characters are BACKGROUND characters in my players movie!

I recall one and only one game where this ever happened at our table, and it was Saga Edition Star Wars. My friend was GMing and I was the only player, and the general goal was to be a nobody on the Tantive IV at the start of A New Hope and see what happened. Well my character fled to the escape pods (call it cowardice or meta-gaming) and managed to rescue the princess, which resulted in a crash landing on Tatooine. A bit of wandering brought us to a moisture farm, and once the regular cast (plus my character and Leia) made it to Mos Eisley, the GM decided we should probably get away from the main characters a bit. My character got mistaken for the killer of Greedo, whose relatives came for blood, and by the time a chase and firefight were over, the Falcon had already been forced to blast off without me.

Then we did our own thing, and ended up telling a bunch of great stories up through about level 10, with my character dabbling in Force powers (courtesy of a mystic with little power), facing down an Imperial Moff, and falling in with an Emperor's Hand on the run, at which point he went hunting for Luke after Hoth, since he was a hero and vanished and somebody ought to care. Or it was meta-gaming again. Anyways, we glossed over Yoda saying he went to Cloud City, and arrived just in time for the evacuation. My character could sense a couple of Force sensitives (Luke and Vader), and started pursuit, arriving right after Vader's big revelation. The dice gimmicks then ruined the canon Vader power. He tried to hurl my character into the abyss with the Force, but a fluke of Rebuke let me toss HIM in instead, and be the one to rescue Luke.

After that, we never touched canon characters instead. The campaign ended with my character leading a full-on Rebel assault on Coruscant while the bulk of the Imperial fleet was waiting at Endor as a trap, and it made for a great story, and we liked it better than dealing with the canon.

I have had major (and minor) movie characters show up, but just in a perfunctory way. And used VERY sparingly.

Ackbar and Leia asks the PCs to go on a mission.

Luke needs some repairs on his x-wing helping R2 with it.

Characters have to meet Solo and Chewie for a supplies pickup/dropoff.

Wire tapped an office which had an imperial meeting room which had Piett in it.

That kinda thing.

But I NEVER have the movie character have any real action in the game. Just as background characters. After all, the major movie characters are BACKGROUND characters in my players movie!

Imho sometimes a background character can have his ass kicking scene in the background and move along just fine. Clear the path, do another part of the mission, etc. No point to have this stuff describe in detail, but when evacuting Hoth then Rogue Squadron can take out a lot of targets while the characters prepair their own escape or holding off imperials somewhere else. Han might draw away three ISD when his Hyperdrives fail and lure them into the asteroid field while the players run for their lives or well … change the time-line slightly and actually engage themselves to rescue the falcon and making the movie characters in this case to the damsel in distress (even when we all know that this damsel can escape on their own just fine, the characters might think otherwise and have already enough experience to be actually do the job.

One thing really important when dealing with movie characters is that the group decides how to deal with the time-lime. Create their own time-line which is based on the original and adds the player characters actions or assume characters actions have always been part of the timeline and consider playing basically in the past with a fix timetime to follow.

Personally I prefer to have the movie time line as guideline and change the events based on character actions, but both approaches are legitimate and both require different ways to deal with movie characters. Killing off Luke because a PC screwed up would change the timeline dramatically for example and results in a lot of work for the game to re-imagine the "new" timeline. Star Wars is in this regard a little bit like a time travel adventure as we have a legends timeline for next 100 years or so and at least quite detailed and specific events even in Disney Canon.

Ahsoka is the mentor of my gf's character and it's been awesome. Ahsoka's been "on screen" twice in the nearly year-long game, so her inclusion hasn't ruined a thing. In fact, it's allowed some awesome things to occur.

It was getting late, so I didn't have time to mention an awesome moment...

The PCs had to go to Dathomir to find a very special flower, which was a piece to the main plot. To find it, however, they had to find and parley with the Nightwitches. Us all being big fans of the Clone Wars series, I described the remnants of the "zombie battle" from the show. As one of the PCs had fought for the Separatists, he was of course interested in what had happened, so we chewed that scene a little.

They finally came upon the Nightwitch temple, which seemed abandoned, and entered. Ashka (my gf's Togruta "Jedi" PC) felt the dark side keenly and everyone was on edge. After entering the main chamber, a chilling voice asked them who they were and why they were there. Suddenly, Nightwitches appeared all around them and a menacing cloaked figure approached. After some dialogue, the former-Separatist recognized the leader as Ventress. The player suggested he'd met her once before, during a battle from the Clone Wars, and knew of her ruthlessness and power. We all agreed that was perfect and went with it.

Ventress, sensing Ashka's Force ability, focused on her. Ventress commented on Ashka reminding her of someone, but never mentioned Ahsoka. The player understood, of course, which built even more excitement. They spoke, made a deal and got the location of the flower. Before they left, Ventress told Ashka, "Give her my regards...". Ashka asked who and Ventress simply replied, "I think you know...'Padawan'". It was an awesome scene and everyone loved it.

I'm not really doing it true justice as it's difficult to convey the cadence and flow as well as it happened, but I'd like to think it illustrates how having canon figures, especially as mentors and friends, can help facilitate a deeper immersion into the setting.