Hey folks - Long time lurker here, first time poster. I finally decided to register, and thought I'd come right out of the gate with something that may be of use to folks looking to start up an EotE campaign.
One of my biggest issues with starting a new RPG is when on the first session, everybody shows up with characters they created in a vacuum, isolated from other players and the GM. Inevitably, it turns out no one has some seemingly key skill, or the party turns out to have massive overlap because everyone wanted to play the same or similar type of character.
So before pencil touches paper, I like to make sure that the players create what essentially amounts to a script bible for their characters, and a few connections amongst the group (to avoid any silly "You meet in a Tavern" moments) so that there is a certain measure of trust amongst group members, but not so much that the characters get along 100% perfectly all the time. I find this to be of extra importance in games that center around criminal enterprise, such as EotE, or Shadowrun. Who hasn't played the Shadowrun game that devolved into a free-for-all shootout with most or all of the characters dead, and a campaign derailed, and a GM hurting himself slamming his head into the table as hard as he can?
Now, to be fair, I'm not GMing my EotE game that starts this week, but I did draft up the following document for my GM to use at his request, and I will now share it with you.
The Game of 20 Questions
The idea here is the GM asks the questions below, one at a time, and then the players all answer them so the whole group knows their answer, and then write their answer down. Hold back on making suggestions unless everyone seems stuck. One person's idea may spur more ideas for others. That being said, if you can think of a question that will expand someone's answer or make it better, definitely ask it, and encourage the players to ask each other for more details.
1. What species is your character?
2. What is your characters homeworld?
3. What is your character's Career and Specialization?
Now at this point we've confirmed that we've got a solid mix of characters, and not five people whose hearts were all set on Bounty Hunter.
4. How would others describe your character's appearance?
5. What is your character's primary motivation for adventuring in the Fringe?
This will make it easy to select from the Motivation chart at the end of character creation.
6. Who is the person outside the group which your character trusts the most?
This allows the players to create a few barebones NPCs for the GM. This question includes a character's identity, how the PC met this character, why they're close, and more. Obviously some players will be better at this off the bat, and some players may skimp on the details but then you or they can fill them in later. This can help you with plot hooks later on, as well as providing NPCs who can feed the group information you want us to act on (if used sparingly in this way).
7. What are your character's strengths and weaknesses? What does he/she think his/her strengths or weaknesses are?
If these are different, perhaps a mini-adventure can revolve around a character learning his true potential, or having a traumatic experience where they fail horribly at something they thought was a strength and dealing with that fallout.
8. What does your character think of concepts like honor and duty?
This could maybe tell you if a character has a history with the Imperials or the Rebels. Obviously we're supposed to be good guys, more or less, but internal group conflicts about loyalty and personal honor can be interesting.
9. What does your character think about the Imperials? Rebels? Black Sun gang? Hutts? What about upper and lower class citizens of the Empire?
This tells you campaign expectations. Maybe the group already hates Imperials. Well, placing some Stormtroopers in a scene is begging them to try to fight them then. Maybe the group hasn't experienced the brutality of the Empire much, or maybe they think the Rebels are terrorists, but your campaign ideas revolve around us running supplies for the Rebels, so you need to show them the badness of the Empire a few times, or make it personal. Maybe they don't care about any of it. Either way, it tells you what you can expect from us, and what you have to do to achieve forward, self-perpetuating motion in whatever direction you want the campaign to go.
10. Is your character prejudiced in any way?
Wookies and Trandoshans notoriously hate each other. And most Imperial humans look down on anything non-human. Maybe someone is bad with mechanics and technology and kind of disdains Droids.
11. Who is your character most loyal to?
This can be different from the most trusted person. Maybe it's another player character.
12. What are your character's favorite and least favorite things?
Why are these things important to the character? Are they significant to a character's backstory?
13. Does your character have any recurring mannerisms?
A nervous tic, a unique greeting, the way a character drums on the table when he's focusing on something, etc. Everyone has at least one, if not several. However, it's probably best to keep it to one or two per character, or it will probably get a little silly. The idea is it fades into the background and only comes up every once in while. Maybe it's just used to flavor a scene. Maybe the players are tailing a guy through the Corellian streets who reveals that he knows he's being followed and he knows it's the group because of some habit of one of the characters. This is also a good one to keep in mind for memorable recurring NPCs.
14. How emotional is your character? What kind of emotion is your character most likely to display?
Everyone shows some kind of emotion. Even a stone faced killer either has something that makes him happy, or deals with his anger or guilt when the job is done. Do not let a player say "none" to this question, even a droid player, or you're going to have someone who's really boring for you and everyone else to interact with.
15. How would your character deal with insubordination/betrayal?
Maybe the character is the captain of the ship. Or maybe when they were younger they ran a street gang. Maybe they're former Imperial Navy. Maybe they're just a parent. What happens when they are disobeyed? What happens when they realize they've been set up? Do they go on a tear of vengeance? Calmly collect themselves and check their source better next time? Try to set up a long con or a shell game to ensnare their betrayer later on?
16. How would your character's parents describe him/her?
This tells you a lot about a character's upbringing. Even if a character is an orphan, it's important for the player to use this opportunity to come up with whoever raised them, and to tell what that person thinks of them now, or would think of them if they were still alive. Even a street rat type kid probably had someone who helped them along the way, even if it was just a slightly older other street rat type kid, so again, no weaseling out of this question.
17. What is your character's highest ambition?
Where does the character want to end up in a few years? This tells you some more about the kinds of campaigns the players want to see. Someone who wants to be a Senator when the Rebellion overthrows the Empire probably wants the opportunity to make lots of contacts and friends, while someone who wants to be a bounty hunter known around the whole galaxy wants a campaign about taking down progressively bigger and badder enemies.
18. What is your character's opinion of the Force? Jedi? Sith?
Does your character even really know or care what the difference is? Or is it just a hokey religion?
19. What's your character's biggest secret?
Keeping secrets from other characters is one thing, but as players we shouldn't keep secrets from each other. We're all on the same team, telling a story together. It requires a bit of maturity to separate player knowledge from character knowledge, but it should improve everyone's experience. Your mileage may vary on this one, but my personal belief is that players are a team of writers and actors. Finding out that Bob had surreptitiously been adding things to the script all along could be construed as a personal, out of game betrayal. I don't like to run that risk, so I prefer secrets to be in the open, out of character anyway. That way, everyone can help that storyline come to mean something more to the whole group and the overall story. Again, YMMV.
20. How will your character die?
This is probably the most important question of them all, as it's the one that's less about the character, and more about the player. This tells you how comfortable someone is with the idea of their character dying. This tells you if they want to go down in a blaze of glory (i.e., make sure it means something), or if they think one day their luck may just run out (and thus the death itself will have meaning, regardless of the external situation). Perhaps the player wants to make a noble sacrifice, or maybe they foresee a tragic end to their character. Regardless, the ideas of Destiny and Fate are huge in Star Wars, and this tells you what kind of Destiny a player wants their character to have.
Group Connections
The other thing I like to do are to find some way to create connections between the characters. This usually works best if the players do not know it's coming, so don't tell anyone including me what you decide to do for it. But I'll give you a few ideas of what I mean.
In the last Legend of the Five Rings game I did, I had players write down on an index card the story of an event which got them special attention from their superiors, without talking about it. Then, I surprised them - pass the card to the left, read what the other person wrote, then write how you were involved in the situation. Then, I had them pass one more time, and had them write how the events listed on this new affected their character, but they weren't allowed to have an active role in the events of the story. It worked really well, but it was also campaign specific.
If I were running the campaign, I'd probably do something like this: Let the group decide who owns the ship, or if the group decides it's a communal effort, then pick someone like whoever will be the primary pilot. Have that character pick another character, and explain how they know each other. Whatever they say is basically considered fact for both characters, unless it blatantly contradicts the chosen player's established stuff above (pretty hard to break out of prison on Coruscant together five years ago if player two is a wookie who never left Kashyyyk before two years ago, for instance). Then the player who was chosen gets to pick someone who hadn't been chosen yet and establish their character's connection, and so on until the last player chosen connects back to the first player to go. Now every character is connected to two others, one they chose, and one chosen for them, which provides a basic level of trust amongst the group
NPC Seeds
Next, I would have players write down what I call the 3-2-1. Three friends, two enemies/rivals, then one person who was considered a friend who had betrayed them in some way, or who they had betrayed, or something else where they are no longer friends. However, the catch is they must use broad archetypes to describe the characters. Then I look for ways to draw connections between these archetypes. Maybe one player's "Friend - Ace Mechanic" is also another player's "Friend - Down on his luck Sabaac buddy". There's basically a free adventure idea in that combo, as I'm sure you can pick out. Or maybe one player's "Friend - Insider at Imperial listening post" is another players "Betrayed - Runaway bride who left me at the altar"... imagine the sparks when the group calls on this character to get them out of a bad situation, or even just going to meet their "source".
The beauty of this system is once I make the requisite connections, if possible (I'll usually make one or two tops for each player), I write descriptions of who these NPCs are, some descriptive details, names, etc. and send them to each player. However, I do not always tell them when there's a connection made, and as such, forbid them from explicitly sharing these lists out of character, unless otherwise noted, and must instead wait for organic opportunities to call upon or bring up NPCs that they are connected to. Maybe the players are allowed to know and share that they have a mutual friend in their Sabaac loving mechanic. But maybe the idea of one player morosely describing his long lost love over dinner one day and another player coming to the realization that he also knows this person and what he decides to do with that information is too good of an opportunity to pass up.
This also provides a huge set of campaign seeds, as long as these rivals and betrayers are sprinkled lightly through the campaign.
Hi-five for reading the whole thing!
Thanks for reading this - I certainly would appreciate any feedback or questions or comments. I know this was a heck of a long first post, but I wanted to provide something helpful to my group that maybe could be helpful to others, as these forums have been an immeasurable help to my friends over the years. Thanks to the whole community for being awesome 
~Korhal23
Edited by Korhal23