This is the main reason why I think including canon characters is a bad idea.

a) we're nerds...

OBJECTION! Show me the proof! I demand proof, gorramit!

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit to you the following evidence:

OBJECTION! Show me the proof! I demand proof, gorramit!

The prosecution rests.

Gedet'ye, nar dralshy'a.

**** you and your evidence ... I mean, who really uses evidence nowadays, anyways...?

Ok, I wanted to weigh on this too. There have been a lot of great points brought up here already, I would like to share my philosophy on the game and the role of Game Master, or should it more aptly be called Game Operations Director. (For some, Dictator)

Before you start your Campaign, you have to talk to the players and everyone has to be in agrence in what kind of game they want. If the group can not decide on what kind kind of campaign type to play, then it will nothing but trouble.

So the first question to ask, what is canon, sacred, and untouchable. This would be the "Rails" of the Campiagn setting, but I like to look at it as being the wood planks that make up the box of my sandbox game.

"So guys, are we going to follow in line with the movies, the Cartoon, and which books?"

For example, I don't care about 99% of the novels, and the Mandalorians in my universe are nothing like the books, I follow the Clone Wars cartoon. They are not the super Knights of Badassness, be all end all to the universe, super Jedi killers rulers of the Galaxy, like some like to think of them. (This is my opinion, not trying to start a new flame topic here )

So for me I do not run a "what if or Infinity" campaign. We all agree that no one can go kill little Luke. BTW, if would be fun to have that crazy old wizard get involved if they did try it.

Some argue that this makes the game too restrictive and too small! Wow. Ok, I will be looking for a repalcement player.

Some, that is all they want to do is cause mayhem and havoc with the movie continuity. Fine, that is not the game I want to play though.

So, anyway it should be up to the whole group to decide what your Canon will be. I have enough to do to get the campaign going and run it with out rewriting the Star Wars movie history, alternate timelines, and what if secenorios.

If that is what my group wanted, then I may try it one day, but all of my groups have always agreed to the "you can't change the movies" policy.

I do like to have the Big guys from the Universe pop in once in awhile. And I don't need stats for them. Official or fan made. It has no bearing on my story. I don't need Hans gambling skill so the players can try to win the Falcon from him in Sabacc. If he did gamble with them, he wouldn't put his ship up for grabs. If they ever did face Vader, the best strategy is to run, that is a fight they can't win. And it would only be a plot device, not a combat encounter. I am looking forward to having Lando in the upcoming adventure module, and there had not better be any stormtroopers on Cloud City!!!! My players know they can't blow up cloud city, but the characters don't. That is what we decided from day one.

So, enough of my rambling.

The correct answer to the question is: what do you want to do with YOUR game. The end.

I think it should be a group decision, but it is really up to the GM. If the group does decide to go kill little Annie before the Big Pod Race, well first off you get no more XP for super meta gaming, how does your character know about this one little insignificant little slave in this obscure town on this out of the way planet??

Final ramble, not too long ago I had a player that wanted to be Mandalroian, I said ok, but I don't go with the books. He said ok. When something came up from the book, and I didn't know about it, "but it is in wookieepedia" I was like too bad, no, we agreed from the get go about this. He got all mad and bent out of shape. (It was super trivial about customs or something) Not too long after, the player got replaced in my group. Along for other reasons too, but this was the start of it.

So from day 1, set up the type of game you guys are going to play, and that should be it.

Ciao.

Ok, I wanted to weigh on this too. There have been a lot of great points brought up here already, I would like to share my philosophy on the game and the role of Game Master, or should it more aptly be called Game Operations Director. (For some, Dictator)

I see what you did there.

The galaxy and the Empire are big places. p. 325 CRB "3.2 billion habitable systems", "69 million or so have sufficient population for Imperial membership", "only about 1.75 million planets are fully represented and integrated into the Galactic Empire."

Put another way, if a player species lived to be 500 years old and could snap their fingers and visit one world per day their entire life, they would only get to about 10.4% of the systems fully integrated into the Empire. Nevermind the habitable worlds in the galaxy.

On that scale there was a lot going on in the war the canon icon characters never had a thing to do with, plenty of room for glory and no worry about bumping into a canon character imo.

Makes you rethink things when you realize that almost 90% of the inhabited galaxy falls into the Imperial-light fringe that Edge is intended to highlight.

As a Game Master, one of your primary concerns should be player agency. Never let an adventure or campaign plot stand in the way of your players creating their own story and solving in-game problems in a way they find satisfying.

A million times this!

That said, there should be a social contract between Players and GM which basically states: "Do What Thou Wilt, But Giveth Me Time To Prepareth.".

This comes right after the cardinal rule: "Don't be a d!ck."

I let the players roam where they will, it's their story. With that said at the beginning of my game they were very clear that they wanted me to provide some environment structure and challenges when things get a little to wandery (that's my new made up word, wandery), and that they didn't want to be within 50 parsecs of any of the main characters from the movies.

Lucky me. Done.

This is the main reason why I think including canon characters is a bad idea.

a) we're nerds; everyone is going to argue the toss about why the 'official' stats are wrong.

"Anything that has stats can be killed."

Ergo, don't give them stats.

I had Darth Vader show up in one scene, a distance away as the group fled up the ramp into their ship. They turned back and saw him standing, about to engage the crime lord/hidden Jedi they had been working for up until now. The wisest of them held the others back as the ship lifted off.

Afterwards, they asked me what his stats were. I told them bluntly: he had no stats. If they had engaged him, they couldn't have won. It's like trying to fight a setpiece in a video game. No Wounds, no Strain. To be honest, I wasn't sure what I'd roll if they decided to fight him; probably something like Brawn 4/Lightsaber 5, and use every dark Force point I had to bump the difficulty on each of their checks -- if they had been able to beat a Fear check to begin with.

Anything without stats can be killed too, even if it requires getting a new GM.

You guys know this game takes place between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, right?

No, MY game takes place wherever I want it to be. 3 years before the battle of Yavin? Done and done. 100 years later? Easy peasy. Crime and hutts and smuggling is pretty universal, regardless of if someone is running around at the dawn of the republic or as the stars are growing cold and dim.

Afterwards, they asked me what his stats were. I told them bluntly: he had no stats. If they had engaged him, they couldn't have won. It's like trying to fight a setpiece in a video game. No Wounds, no Strain.

It's your game obviously, but I can't see anyone I know wanting to play something like that. An RPG isn't a videogame. Vader isn't a force of nature like Planescape's Lady of Pain or something. He's not Q from Star Trek. He's just a guy, with stats. Can't see too many players enjoying that kind of 'plot armour' for pet NPCs.

Just another reason why I didn't want to deal with canon characters. The players have their own enemies and allies, some tough, some weaker. And if any of them die, they're dead. That goes for the PCs too.

In the example of killing Luke or Anakin. Okay, why? "Because he's going to become a powerful Jedi/Sith Lord." In canon, no one knows, this, and if the players find some way of explaining how they know, the canon is altered. A "premature" attack against either Skywalker in their youth can result in the spontaneous manifestation of their powers, and an immediate flipping of all Destiny points in Skywalkers' favor.

And what if they succeed? Well, then the GM has a wide open galaxy to play with. Kill Luke before he leaves Tatooine? Everyone feels it and comes to see what happened. Obi-wan probably reacts first, may even sense the danger and be there in time to defend Luke. Yoda senses the change in Destiny and comes out of hiding. Vader feels the death of his son, and the Emperor foresees a new threat that must be eliminated.

Didn't Doc Brown warn you not to mess around with history?

See, I'd go with a more organic approach to messing with continuity. Take, for example, my old all-Jedi game set during E1-E3. Being a small (well, small-ish) group to draw upon, it was inevitable that my Jedi characters wound up bumping into some of the canon characters. Being that they were kind of wild rebels of the order, they became friends with like minded Jedi - AKA, folks like Qui-Gon (and by extension, Obi-Wan).

Over the next decade or two of game time, they grew to like Kenobi's charge and disliked the way that he was being screwed by the order. So when it came time for Palpatine to apply subtle pressure to Skywalker while Kenobi was away, they were able to step in and be a support network for him when he badly needed one. It didn't stop order 66 from going down (and their own personal nemesis wound up taking Vader's place in the Empire), but it did have some profound and cool ripples on the universe.

They made a difference and my players didn't have to go "Hey! Lets go murder that random slave child!" to do it.

It's your game obviously, but I can't see anyone I know wanting to play something like that. An RPG isn't a videogame. Vader isn't a force of nature like Planescape's Lady of Pain or something. He's not Q from Star Trek. He's just a guy, with stats. Can't see too many players enjoying that kind of 'plot armour' for pet NPCs.

It was more a deterrent than a policy. With all deference to video games, I do occasionally have things I think of as "cutscenes," when I have to push through some action or another for some reason. I ask the players what they're doing and decide if they succeed or not without rolling dice. (A common one is when we go over our time limit for the session, but we're not quite at a good stopping point yet.) And since the party had already said they were running up the ramp as it closed, I described Vader's appearance to them.

In that instance, it was insurance against me having to drum up some stats real quick for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo. We all knew that they, as characters just barely out of the starting gates, wouldn't stand a chance, but since this game took place a few years after the end of the Clone Wars none of them knew who Vader was. One player reflexively went to try and save their old boss when another said that he was stopping her; since he was a full-grown Wookiee and she was a very young Twi'lek, I just said he succeeded. Even if I hadn't, the ramp would have closed before she could get out.

My personal preference is to allow the game to shape up how it goes, and I try to keep all the canon characters out of the way. My solution moment-to-moment is not to have stats set out for major movie characters, but if I were to incorporate Darth Vader into an adventure as a persistent adversary, I'd definitely work up some stats for him.

Fair comment, Captain R. That sounds like it would work well.

I think 'canon' is always going to be a bit tricky (which is why I cleared my decks!) but you seem to have a good handle on it.