Depends upon the style of my campaign.

(1) I've run some games with the notion that I want to go back to the roots as much as possible. That means the original movie (and novelization), Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the Daley Han Solo books, and that's about it. Some stuff cribbed from ESB and RotJ, such as the bounty hunters.

(2) My other favorite is a "movies plus Zahn" canon where I focus on movies IV-V-VI and the Timothy Zahn books. I like this one because it brings in Mara Jade and some other fun characters.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1022503The WEG source books are my main, uh...  Sources of information.  We tend to play in an undetermined period of time in the setting, usually sometime after A New Hope, but other than that, it's up in the air.

Same here. Only gotten to GM it once though so far.

I start in the Old Republic. I stay in the Old Republic.

This allows me to use ALL of the WeG modern-era Star Wars gear as "new breakthroughs". Otherwise I stick the the Old Republic lore and do my own thing.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1022628De gustibus non est disputandum. As someone who started the EU at the same time and kept with it to the bitter end, I still find my selected subset more satisfying than the IMO dull and cynical New Canon.

Fair enough.  There are no denying the good parts of the EU -- original Thrawn, the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian trilogies, Rogue Squadron.

Quote from: KingCheops;1022619But honestly, as someone who lived and breathed EU as a teenager (1990 to 1998 roughly), I think the new canon is off to a much better start so why not just use that?

I'm fine with Rebels out of the new canon (Rogue One was also good), but I'm less cool with Luke Skywalker turning into Mopey McDipshit.

Well, I never had anything much to do with the EU at all. It intimidated the hell out of me, because by the time I even LOOKED at it it was umpty million books and comics and whatever. So, I never really looked.

In my current Star Wars-ish game setting, I set the Clone Wars eighty years before the Battle of Yavin, and had the newborn Luke and Leia in stasis for most of it. Ep 1 never happened. Anakin was found and brought up as a youngling. Most of Ep 2 was abridged. The Clone Wars and Ep 3 happened pretty much as presented, though with better acting. The Empire had time to make the Jedi into some hokey old religion. I ran a game campaign simultaneously with Ep 4, 5, and 6, where the PCs were, for example, in Cloud City, watching Han Solo getting frozen in Carbonite - they didn't know him from Adam, and it was happening in the background.

Two years ago I ran a new game set simultaneously with Ep 7, with new characters - some were Stormtroopers escaping from StarKiller Base after Finn and Poe created a distraction, with another group set on Jakku, who were children/younger relatives of the old PCs, with a couple of Luke's students who had escaped the bloodletting. I am currently taking these groups, now joined up, just after the events of Ep 8, which happened at the very beginning of our game, and they are dealing with the destruction of the Resistance.

Unlike most of you, I really love the new canon - Clone Wars, Rebels, Force Awakens, and Last Jedi. I think they are amazing.

Quote from: jeff37923;1022711Vargold, CausticJedi, this one is for you!  

Ha!  You are awesome, thanks!  


*looks up character*

"Don-Wan Kihotay"?  Ugh.  Now I know why I forgot the name.  Even as a kid, I recognized lousy puns when I read them.

Quote from: flyingmice;1022766Well, I never had anything much to do with the EU at all. It intimidated the hell out of me, because by the time I even LOOKED at it it was umpty million books and comics and whatever. So, I never really looked.

In my current Star Wars-ish game setting, I set the Clone Wars eighty years before the Battle of Yavin, and had the newborn Luke and Leia in stasis for most of it. Ep 1 never happened. Anakin was found and brought up as a youngling. Most of Ep 2 was abridged. The Clone Wars and Ep 3 happened pretty much as presented, though with better acting. The Empire had time to make the Jedi into some hokey old religion. I ran a game campaign simultaneously with Ep 4, 5, and 6, where the PCs were, for example, in Cloud City, watching Han Solo getting frozen in Carbonite - they didn't know him from Adam, and it was happening in the background.

Two years ago I ran a new game set simultaneously with Ep 7, with new characters - some were Stormtroopers escaping from StarKiller Base after Finn and Poe created a distraction, with another group set on Jakku, who were children/younger relatives of the old PCs, with a couple of Luke's students who had escaped the bloodletting. I am currently taking these groups, now joined up, just after the events of Ep 8, which happened at the very beginning of our game, and they are dealing with the destruction of the Resistance.

Unlike most of you, I really love the new canon - Clone Wars, Rebels, Force Awakens, and Last Jedi. I think they are amazing.

Oh, I love the movies, no matter the faults (and I know they have them).  But as far as canon goes in games I run...  well, it will depend.  If I decide to play in the era of TLJ for example, I'm still ignoring the prequels as the timeline is completely borked when they were made.

Quote from: CausticJedi;1022776Oh, I love the movies, no matter the faults (and I know they have them).  But as far as canon goes in games I run...  well, it will depend.  If I decide to play in the era of TLJ for example, I'm still ignoring the prequels as the timeline is completely borked when they were made.

Hi Jedi!

The prequels really have dick-all to do with the time of the Last Jedi, so that's easy enough to do.

Quote from: CausticJedi;1022776Oh, I love the movies, no matter the faults (and I know they have them).  But as far as canon goes in games I run...  well, it will depend.  If I decide to play in the era of TLJ for example, I'm still ignoring the prequels as the timeline is completely borked when they were made.

The only reason I use the WEG stuff is because it's well establish and has been around, if out of print, for years.  It's also mostly timeline neutral for the most part.  As for the new films, and this is a side tangent, is that Rian Johnson has said that he was more or less given free reign to do what he wanted because there was no plan for this trilogy, which after watching the last three films (before he made that statement, I'd like to add), I can agree.  They don't seem to have a coherent direction, which makes it hard for me and my friends to actually play in that part of the setting.  So we don't.  We go somewhere else.

Quote from: flyingmice;1022783Hi Jedi!

The prequels really have dick-all to do with the time of the Last Jedi, so that's easy enough to do.

Yeah, that's true.  Vader's gone, Yoda's (technically) gone, Obi-Wan is gone, Luke is (essentially) gone...  but no matter what, MACE WINDU LIVES ON.  Being force-lightning blasted out a 1,000-story building window is nothing.  Just a flesh wound, really.  And we've all seen how missing an arm is a piddling nuisance if that.  Seriously.  Samuel Jackson needs to come back for the next movie, if nothing else but to say, "Use the motherfucking force, Rey!"

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1022784The only reason I use the WEG stuff is because it's well establish and has been around, if out of print, for years.  It's also mostly timeline neutral for the most part.  As for the new films, and this is a side tangent, is that Rian Johnson has said that he was more or less given free reign to do what he wanted because there was no plan for this trilogy, which after watching the last three films (before he made that statement, I'd like to add), I can agree.  They don't seem to have a coherent direction, which makes it hard for me and my friends to actually play in that part of the setting.  So we don't.  We go somewhere else.

Interesting.  I find that what's most irritating to me is that Lucas apparently gave his blessing on the timeline that WEG et al had come up with and made it official canon, yet went all apeshit stupid when it came to actually filming the prequel movies.  So that's why I toss them, besides the overall poor dialog and some of the actors were just not there.  

As far as a coherent direction, I suppose for myself, I'll wait until the next few films come out and I'll see.  As I've said earlier, my current game is during the Rebellion era so that pretty much makes Episodes IV through infinity irrelevant for my purposes anyway.

Quote from: flyingmice;1022766Unlike most of you, I really love the new canon - Clone Wars, Rebels, Force Awakens, and Last Jedi. I think they are amazing.

There are parts of Rebels I really like. The storyline with Ahsoka was particularly good. I haven't had a chance to watch the latest episodes though.

Quote from: jeff37923;1022481I'm of the opinion that the Star Wars EU had some great material for use in games as well as some pure crap that is best ignored. So, if you were running a Star Wars game, what would you keep and what would you throw away from the EU?

For me, I'd keep material from Rogue Squadron, Wraith Squadron, and the Thrawn Trilogy as well as the Modular Taskforce Cruiser and the idea of the World Devastators. The rest of the Dark Empire Sourcebook is crap and the comic series is pure bullshit and can get flushed. The Yuuzhan Vong are stupid as fuck and are best as a very minor side campaign item. The Jedi Academy series never added anything to my games nor did Tales of the Jedi. Shadows of the Empire was always very questionable.

I stick to canon in the form of the films and TV series (Clone Wars and Rebels) for baseline continuity. They did bring in Thrawn as a character in Rebels, and he is very Thrawn complete with a canon novel by Timothy Zahn so it's not like they don't care about the EU. Disney still owns all the EU stuff, and the people who work on those shows try and sneak stuff back in, which is why Darth Bane appeared in the last season of Clone Wars (voiced by Mark Hamill no less), so he could be part of canon.

When it comes to storylines, I don't consider EU events to be canon for the purposes of running a Star Wars RPG UNLESS it doesn't conflict with existing canon, but I wouldn't even mention it unless it was somehow relevant to the game at the time. Characters and locations I am a bit more fluid with. My games have spent a lot of time on both Coruscant and Nar Shaddaa, both of which are ecumenopoli. Honestly I think the old KOTOR games as well as The Old Republic MMO have given me better source material for using them so far as locations go than any of the novels I have read. But the novels have all the neat NPCs, which you can cross reference with existing canon just in case someone at Disney found a way to sneak them in somehow. Others bring is as you find relevant. My Star Wars Galaxy would probably have an Admiral Daala out there. There would definitely be a Lumiya, because of course there would be a Lumiya and she might even hang out with Asajj Ventress once in a while, before getting her ass handed to her by Ahsoka. I bring in more Mandalorian lore than is currently canon because I always have lots of Mandalorians. But I kind of like how Mandalore is no longer the Space Outback and that it's portrayed as a very high tech society who embrace a martial tradition. But I'd still be tempted to use material from the Republic Commando series while I play the soundtrack to the game, and sing along with Vode An.

A good amount of the Old Republic stuff can still be used. Tatooine is still Tatooine. Nar Shaddaa, Coruscant is still Coruscant and not Had Abaddon like it could have been. The thing is that unless the characters are part of the Empire, or Jedi or part of some major group, a lot of canon or EU events just wouldn't matter. A game run in Hutt Space during the Rebellion period is not going to be a lot different than a game run in Hutt Space during the Old Republic. Rebels is a good example of an adventuring party whose adventures only rarely overlap, mostly in the form of cameos, with canon on occasion. The rest of the time they're doing their own thing.

The thing with Star Wars is that even without the EU, it is huge. Really big. When running Star Wars, only bring in what you need for your campaign, and don't even mention any of the other stuff. Rogue One and the latest trilogy? Not a Gungan nor Ewok to be seen anywhere. I haven't seen the latest movie yet, but I will. And at least with Porgs, those have a reason for existing. It was easier to turn Puffins into Porgs than it would have been to digitally delete all the Puffins from Luke's island. Most importantly though, it's your game and your mileage may vary. Feel free to break the mold. I once used a Gungan Engineer as an NPC, complete with the accent. The players were totally triggered until he installed a ray shield on the ship, and then suddenly he was invited to all the reindeer games. But I deviate from Lucas in that while I have had NPCs act as comic relief, they are not comic relief characters. Okay, that's a lie, I have had comic relief NPCs but they don't last more than a scene or two.

I consider canon fluid. Events will probably go as planned unless something changes them. It's not time travel, because to the PCs, this is the first time all this stuff is happening. Say you're playing an Imperial game and your PCs are all officers on the Death Star and one of them is really good at Hyperspace calculations because he min/maxed it in character creation, and said Imperial Officer says something to the effect of, "Um... Lord Vader. If I may? If you plug this thumb drive into your USB port, you'll see that I recalculated the Hyperjump to go just a little bit further, adjusted by a nano degree so we don't fly into the gas giant's gravity well, and with my calculations, we'll come out on the other side of the planet, and won't have to worry about little things like establishing a stable orbit. We pop in, destroy the Rebel base, and then be back in Coruscant in time for the Space Opera. The one you like, with the floating balls and snake things." Lord Vader approves, Captain Skippy is now Admiral Skippy for a while and peace is re-established in the Empire. And Vader gets to take credit, which means Skippy gets to live to be in the next movie.

Well, my Star Wars canon is Star Wars-Empire Strikes Back-Return of the Jedi. Like 'Alien' movies post 'Aliens', Terminator movies post T2, or Highlander or Robocop post the first one, anything else is strictly optional.