It's on my mind since I just answered a question on this subject, but I was wondering: how many of you do Character Creation in the order prescribed by the book? If you don't, what order do you use, and why?

Legally speaking, certain things are contingent on the technical order, but a lot are interchangeable. For reference, here's the official order:
0) Character Concept
1) Determine Background
2) Determine Duty/Obligation/Morality
3) Select a Species
4) Select Career
5) Select Specialization
6) Invest Experience Points
7) Determine Derived Attributes
8. Determine Motivation
9) Choose Gear and Appearance
10) Acquire Rebellion Resources/Choose Group Starting Ship/Whatever it is for FaD

My order generally goes something like this:
Character Concept
Select Career based on what Specialization I want to play for the concept (basically deciding based on talent tree)
Select Species (though this may be determined from the get-go in some cases)
Spend XP to raise characteristics
Determine Derived Attributes
Spend XP on skills/talents
Choose Gear and Appearance
Then, now that I've got a pretty good sketch of the character, I go through and figure out Obligation and Motivation. I often skip the Determine Background part and just write up a backstory when I've finished CharGen.

" I don't see these as actual rules, they're more like guidelines. "

I'm with you on this. Sometimes, I just know (Concept) I want to play a Trandoshan Bounty Hunter that dabbles a bit in gambling with the simple desire to get rich (for example). Bam! Concept, species, a motivation, basic career, and an eventual specialization in one simple sentence. Of course, some steps are in a specific order on (rules) purpose. You can't determine the final score of your derived attributes like Wound Threshold or Strain Threshold, if you haven't spent all XP you want to spend, abd therefor don't know your final attributes and any applicable talents.

Also, I do rarely use the backgrounds in the books. Again, more like ideas and guidelines than hard rules. If a player comes up with a background story, that is often better than a small one-liner or a single word fom a random table, which by itself is quite limited.

5 minutes ago, Xcapobl said:

Also, I do rarely use the backgrounds in the books. Again, more like ideas and guidelines than hard rules. If a player comes up with a background story, that is often better than a small one-liner or a single word fom a random table, which by itself is quite limited.

I definitely agree. I always saw the background options as prompts, not so much a substitute for a full backstory. I really like coming up with backstories, so I enjoy playing in campaigns with higher starting XP so I have more freedom with what the character has done in the past without it feeling incongruous with their stats.

If I have a concept, anything I know obviously gets filled in immediately and that step moves to the front. Otherwise:
1. Species and Specialization. I often find a species that sounds really interesting and then use that to figure out a spec, but this can very well end up the other way around.
2. Spend XP: Free skills, improve characteristics, talents, skills, and Force powers
3. Background, obligations/duties/morality, motivations
4. Gear
5. Appearance and personality

6 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

My order generally goes something like this:
Character Concept
Select Career based on what Specialization I want to play for the concept (basically deciding based on talent tree)
Select Species (though this may be determined from the get-go in some cases)
Spend XP to raise characteristics
Determine Derived Attributes
Spend XP on skills/talents
Choose Gear and Appearance
Then, now that I've got a pretty good sketch of the character, I go through and figure out Obligation and Motivation. I often skip the Determine Background part and just write up a backstory when I've finished CharGen.

17 minutes ago, Yaccarus said:

If I have a concept, anything I know obviously gets filled in immediately and that step moves to the front. Otherwise:
1. Species and Specialization. I often find a species that sounds really interesting and then use that to figure out a spec, but this can very well end up the other way around.
2. Spend XP: Free skills, improve characteristics, talents, skills, and Force powers
3. Background, obligations/duties/morality, motivations
4. Gear
5. Appearance and personality

As obligations/duties/morality can give you extra XP it does not make sense to do this after the "spend XP" step.

Not sure if you mean you already know how big obligation will be, and you only decide on the story part of it. But on the other hand you need to know the party size as well to be able to determine the (extra) obligation.

5 minutes ago, Rogues Rule said:

As obligations/duties/morality can give you extra XP it does not make sense to do this after the "spend XP" step.

Not sure if you mean you already know how big obligation will be, and you only decide on the story part of it. But on the other hand you need to know the party size as well to be able to determine the (extra) obligation.

We'd already know how much Obligation and how many players, so it's just a matter of selecting the story options.

I generally start with Concept.

Background, Duty/Obligation/Morality, Motivation, and Appearance pretty much derive directly from Concept. Often, species does too, especially when not human.

Then I figure out which career and specialisations best support the concept.

And the rest is just the by the book math of character creation and equipment shopping.

1 hour ago, Rogues Rule said:

As obligations/duties/morality can give you extra XP it does not make sense to do this after the "spend XP" step.

Not sure if you mean you already know how big obligation will be, and you only decide on the story part of it. But on the other hand you need to know the party size as well to be able to determine the (extra) obligation.

If I need more XP I use it and then make a mental note to take extra obligation. In my opinion, it makes more sense to come up with an obligation once I know the character better.

The order doesnt actually matter. But they had to pick one for the book.

12 hours ago, Daeglan said:

The order doesnt actually matter. But they had to pick one for the book.

That's true of any just about any character creation process in any RPG, especially once the player knows what they're doing.

The order provided for any process of character creation in pretty much every RPG is there to help guide new players so they're not immediately overwhelmed with options, especially for those systems with a much higher degree of crunchiness to what characters can do.