Hello Everyone!

Now I usually don't care much for the "but muh canon" discussions, but I came across something rather curios.

Age of Rebellion finally hit the shelf in its german adaptation and apparently everything regarding Bothans is missing from the book. Obviously stats, as well as descriptions and any artworks have been purged.

I found that rather strange since it is merely a translation and not some kind of new edition.

But apparently Disney is prepping for a possible re-design and re-iteration of the hardy Death Star plan stealing species.

Considering the game overall is a bit older than the Disney aquisition of the franchise I was wondering if future reprints of the english version might be canonised as well.

Anyway, I thought it interesting and thought I would share.

*edit*

Here is the source in german from IGN

http://de.ign.com/star-wars-universe/123902/news/star-wars-lucasfilm-verbannt-den-bothaner-look-aus-dem-aktue

Interesting. Most of the de-canonization of stuff in the pre-Disney days was done at Lucas's whim, like the redesign of the Zygerrians into cat people. But a redesign of the Bothans? That would surprise me, since the Story Group is presumably not in the business of willy-nilly nuking stuff. If there's anything to this rumor, it might suggest they'll show up in another Rogue One -style movie, I suppose, redesigned to be more screen-friendly?

Bothans aren't decanonized; they're mentioned in RotJ, after all. But the only thing currently canonical about them is that they delivered information to the Rebels that there was a second Death Star under construction at Endor, that the Emperor would be there at a particular time, and that many of them died to deliver that information.

Oh, I think it's also canon that there is a part of the galaxy called "Bothan Space", and a planet called Bothawui - a galaxy map is canon, and I think it shows all that (I forget the source of the map, though).

But they probably(?) don't look like this guy:

I think it's just a decision to use them and The Mouse isn't going to use the current interpretations.

There are actually old-style Bothan pictures in the book, but they are never labelled as 'Bothan'.

And this is the official take:

Very suspicious...

The removal alone is kinda weird, but add in that they aren't shy about mining the EU for materials, and that makes it triple weird. There's already two acceptable Bothan designs they could have pulled... And even a modified version would have been accepted by the fanbase.

So sounds like a redesign is probable

I wonder if there's a "Bothan spy" featured in the Han solo movie that has prompted the change

Not to sound like a critic, but is it just a rumor that the Bothans were removed from the book, or is there any confirmation?

Ramifications are significant.

3 minutes ago, warchild1x said:

I wonder if there's a "Bothan spy" featured in the Han solo movie that has prompted the change

Yeah, I figure they must have plans for Bothans to be in some project - the Solo movie, whatever the mysterious third Star Wars Story is going to be, Episode 8 or 9, or even whatever TV project that's going to follow Rebels.

I have a friend who has the book, gonna ask him

3 hours ago, Blackbird888 said:

Not to sound like a critic, but is it just a rumor that the Bothans were removed from the book, or is there any confirmation?

Ramifications are significant.

My game master has the german copy and I've seen it today. I can confirm that they are indeed missing.

So did another species replace them, or are there only 7 in the book?

Only 7 species, unfortunately (I have the book in front of me)

Reprints of the German EotE are announced to be affected as well.

Wait does these mean they're reprinting AoR and deliberately replacing them?!

What were they replaced with or is the new AoR short one race?

Wait the Beginner has a Bothan Commander, will that be replaced too eventually?!

They're not replacing them. They're just removed.

As of now the german AoR print only has 7 player races.

I've seen at least one illustration of a Bothan left in the book, but to my understanding any remaining depictions of them are under the stipulation that they're not refered to or referenced as Bothans specifically.

Overall just an odd move by Disney. You'd think that they could just wait until they have something new and concrete for Bothans and THEN put that iteration into reprints instead of just leaving it blank for what will most likely be 1 or at most 2 reprint cycles.

Well, if that means we will get different bothans, than those inane political schemers like Borrsk Fey'lya, who put personal gain above galactic safety...

I am actually game.

3 hours ago, copperbell said:

Wait the Beginner has a Bothan Commander, will that be replaced too eventually?!

Good question. The English AoR Beginner Game is currently at the printer. Let's wait and see if they changed anything. Although I have to admit that I would be annoyed if the English books are unaffected, and only the translations get nerfed.

It's probably ultimately that the Bothan's appearance might be changed. Which isn't a new thing as the physical looks of Bothans have changed quite a bit over the history of the franchise.

For what it's worth, the Bothan Commander pre-gen for the Age of Rebellion Beginner Box is still available in the support section for that product's page, and his appearance hasn't changed any as of yet.

Also, Bothans were included as one of the playable species in the EotE core rulebook as well as the AoR core rulebook.

Good point. Does the German reprint still have Bothan's as a playable species in the EotE book?

27 minutes ago, kaosoe said:

Good point. Does the German reprint still have Bothan's as a playable species in the EotE book?

Most Edge books should have them. But I haven't seen a Edge print from the current publisher yet.

AoR is brand new over here, while Edge has been around for a while. German prints had a lot of touble with publishing and only got a new publisher a few months ago, going by "Ulisses Spiele".

It seems they want to pick up the slack when it comes to publications over all. Edge also only had one career book in german all these years. Doesn't bother me much, but most of the rest of my table isn't exactly fluent in english.

The German EotE core books are out of print, and one of the reasons for the reprint delay is the removal of the Bothans, the then-required re-certification by both FFG and Disney, etc.

2 hours ago, Farnir said:

The German EotE core books are out of print, and one of the reasons for the reprint delay is the removal of the Bothans, the then-required re-certification by both FFG and Disney, etc.

So...many Bothans died to bring you the reprinted German EotE core rule book?

Interesting. Both Bothans and Bothawui are canon with the former mentioned in ROTJ and a battle being fought in the space nearby the latter in TCW. So they are either changing biology, culture, or both. I'm betting culture because it seems like with the exception of the Hutts they are moving away from the idea that if you see a species in a role or hear them mentioned in some role during the movies that role becomes a typical one for their species. Sure you see some Twi'lek dancing girls in the new canon but its not like the old canon where pretty much every twi'lwk female was a dancer or former dancer and slave or former slave. Even some of the Twi'lek dancing girls you see in the new canon aren't professional dancers like the ones from TCW that are snipers by day and dancers by night.

My guess is instead of Bothans being a species known for being politcal schemers and spies they'll jst be a culture that happens to have some really good spies.

A considerable physical redesign seems apparent. This article documents the gradual change in appearance from vaguely animal-like elfin humans (early West End Games) to the dog-goat-horse depiction common now (as late as The Old Republic ). Will they appear more like their original depictions, or totally different? Only time will tell.

Depicting their behavior and culture is likely to change as well. For its faults, nu-canon is doing a better job of not depicting entire species defined only by their hat. Oh, the Han Solo doesn't want to know the odds? All Corellians hate the odds. Bothan spies stole the DS2 plans? It's an entire culture of espionage and deceit. Oola was a slave? Twi'leks are a chronically enslaved race. And so on.

23 minutes ago, Blackbird888 said:

A considerable physical redesign seems apparent. This article documents the gradual change in appearance from vaguely animal-like elfin humans (early West End Games) to the dog-goat-horse depiction common now (as late as The Old Republic ). Will they appear more like their original depictions, or totally different? Only time will tell.

Depicting their behavior and culture is likely to change as well. For its faults, nu-canon is doing a better job of not depicting entire species defined only by their hat. Oh, the Han Solo doesn't want to know the odds? All Corellians hate the odds. Bothan spies stole the DS2 plans? It's an entire culture of espionage and deceit. Oola was a slave? Twi'leks are a chronically enslaved race. And so on.

Interesting article. It's right to point out that Bothers went from shaggy dwarfs, to essentially, monkey-people, but it's wrong about when the redesign occurred. The new interpretation didn't come with 1997's X-wing comics, but two years earlier, when Heir to the Empire got its comic book adaptation. The blame in this case falls on French artist Olivier Vatine. The comic was beautiful, but Vatine visually redesigned most everything introduced in Zahn's original novel: Bothans, Bimms, ysalimiri, vornskrs, Noghri, and several characters. I'm not sure if he and Dark Horse were just like, screw it, we're ignoring the WEG stuff, or if Lucasfilm was just too cheap at that time to ship a bunch of WEG source material to France for the artist.

Either way, this was an issue with early EU, so it's interesting that things have come full circle in the Disney era.