Are there any newly(ish) published species that are very different from the ones that used to be in the earlyer versions of the character builder or the unofficial species menagerie?

Do you allow both versions in your game? I guess I would, as long as both feel like the species they try to emulate.

Species stats doesn`t seem to matter any for the devs when they come up with NPCs, so I guess it`s all good

My table: If it's in the official books, use it. If it's fandex only, GM gets power of veto, but otherwise go for it. If you use a fandex species and official content comes out after campaign start, you may continue to use the fandex version unless it's causing some kind of balance problem.

I also usually allow one character rebuild after the first adventure in a campaign, provided the rebuild isn't too drastic or will otherwise negatively impact the campaign.

My table: If it's in the official books, use it. If it's fandex only, GM gets power of veto, but otherwise go for it. If you use a fandex species and official content comes out after campaign start, you may continue to use the fandex version unless it's causing some kind of balance problem.

I also usually allow one character rebuild after the first adventure in a campaign, provided the rebuild isn't too drastic or will otherwise negatively impact the campaign.

Good stuff.

While I'm with you 95%, if I'm GMing and the official stats come out, I'd probably give the player a few options, but none would include allowing the unofficial species stats to continue in play going forward. Either re-do the existing character with the official species stats, re-spec the character from the ground up, or if those options aren't appealing (for example, if the character was kind of build around a skillset that relied on the species stats of the old version), feel free to write up a totally new character, any make or model, with all the XP you've currently got on this PC.

I may throw an extra (small) handful of XP their way for their troubles, too.

One way to think of it is this, the player by accepting a fan-made species is accepting a risk. The risk is that the species will become a published species and will be potentially (if using the USM the potential is high) very different than what becomes RAW.

I don't like all of the hard decisions or choices to be on the GM, it is a shared experience. I trust that the RAW species are more balanced than the fan made ones every time.

So, if the species becomes RAW, the player should work with the updated stats. They should immediately base their character off of the correct stats, and abilities. They should look at how much XP things would have cost to be where they are at, based on the new stats. Then they should work at a deficit until they catch up to the new stats, or if they have spare that is unspent, it should be removed from play.

It seems like a harsh way to handle it, but at the same time, they wanted a species that was not RAW. Out of the dozens of species that are/were available, they somehow could not write a character around one of them. They accepted the species would at some point be RAW. They should accept the consequences of their choices. That is sort of the underlying point of Star Wars, actions have consequences.

Conversely you can look at the RAW "rule of cool" and ignore the new RAW version of the species. The downside is the next thing that affects them, they will expect the same treatment.

Even though I'm one of the authors of the USM, if there's an official version of a species, that's what I'll go with. I'd almost say that any fan-brew version of a species comes with the inherent caveat of "if FFG publishes an official version, that's what you're using."

Cyril and I knew when we started that the USM was going to become more and more outdated as more official supplements were released. And it's gotten to the point where so many of our previous efforts would wind up in the archive with too few new offerings that it just simply wasn't worth the time and effort of doing any further updates.

Though I did joke with one member of the FFG staff (don't recall who) at a prior GenCon that any species stats they do after the AoR Beta (where Cyril got really close on a few of the species) they have an intern compare what the writers came up with to the USM, and if they're even reasonably close, they alter the official stats to make sure they're quite different

Had that case with a Togruta and a Falleen once.

I Decided that I let the Base attributes be what they were because otherwise so many choices of the previous game wouldn´t have happend.

I relocated Strain and Woundlimit to the RAW version as well as any Special Ability (Pheromones and Pack Hunter in this cases)

In the end the Fallen got 5 XP on top due to the circumstance that the RAW had 5 more.

In other words, effects the that occure permamently are changed, static value that weren´t game changers may still exist on this one character.

Of Course future characters have to be RAW!