Quote from: Christopher Brady;1023888I believe the quote in question was that as long as it didn't contradict the movies, then it was canon.  Which allowed him to still make movies as he wished, and if the EU ended up contradicting, too bad, so sad, the EU lost.

Once again, you are exactly correct, Eager Young Space Cadet!

Which is Uncle George basically saying "I'm going to ignore the books, but knock yourselves out."

Quote from: CausticJedi;1023860Well, I'm fucking talking about the concept that fucking Lucas himself said that the fucking EU (at the time) was canon material; it was developed, fucking laid out, and seemed to make good sense about when the fucking Empire was fucking created, when the fucking Death Star was made, when the fucking Clone Wars were fought, and fucking so on.

Really? What exactly did Lucas change? I ask because the Prequels were more or less the result of having painted himself into a corner with the first three movies. I don't see how they could have been that much different.

QuoteThen Lucas fucking came along and made the fucking prequel films which fucking trashed the entire timeline that was fucking made up until then...  the one he fucking said was a-ok then later not.

You're dumb. The movies have ALWAYS trumped the spin-off materials. Next you'll be telling me that because the toy Millennium Falcon only has one AA-gun emplacement and the one in the movie has two, the movies are somehow "wrong".

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1023888Some sure gave a lot of fucks...  Wow.

I believe the quote in question was that as long as it didn't contradict the movies, then it was canon.  Which allowed him to still make movies as he wished, and if the EU ended up contradicting, too bad, so sad, the EU lost.

Although I believe he may have tacitly ignored the Christmas special, in the same way he ignored mitochlorians for the rest of his prequels.

The midichlorians were mentioned in Revenge of the Sith. As for the Holiday Special, yeah it was a grease fire in an unsanitary diner but it wasn't nearly as bad as the Donnie & Marie Star Wars Special, complete with tap-dancing stormtroopers.

I don't think the idea was "examining the Mona Lisa lets you predict how the Rebels will attack the 3rd Death Star".

Thrawn was a master at tactics and intelligence analysis.  Studying a race and cultures philosophy, art, religion, etc gives you insight into how they think, what matters to them.  Using that as additional input on top of all the data everyone else is using, gives his mind a deeper understanding of the enemy that allows him to output his genius strategies.

He's like Sherlock Holmes, or House, etc. his brain works differently, allowing him some savant-level perception and analysis.

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've only ran a one-shot. I chucked the whole EU, along with everything past the first 6 movies, because I simply haven't read it;).

Quote from: Elfdart;1023928Really? What exactly did Lucas change? I ask because the Prequels were more or less the result of having painted himself into a corner with the first three movies. I don't see how they could have been that much different.

http://deckplans.00sf.com/Research/Prequel.html  I had run across this website years ago and happened to stumble across it again recently and I think this guy lays out a great argument with quotes and dates and such.  Skim through that a bit to better understand my POV.

QuoteYou're dumb. The movies have ALWAYS trumped the spin-off materials. Next you'll be telling me that because the toy Millennium Falcon only has one AA-gun emplacement and the one in the movie has two, the movies are somehow "wrong".

Oh, come on and please grow up.  "You're dumb."  Fucking please.  We're here arguing fantasy and make believe and I'm trying to get some enjoyment from it, but man, this 4chan attitude is somewhat a surprise.

The timeline that was established during the movies is too advanced, too compressed to make sense.  That's my argument.  The timeline that Lucas authorized as canon as written by WEG and other authors made sense as when things happened -- as I said, when the Death Star I and II were built, by whom; when Palpatine took over the galactic senate and created the Empire.... this last one is particularly jarring.  We're expected to believe that in the space of nineteen years, the entire galaxy pretty much forgot all about jedi -- enough that Solo who was well-traveled by the time of A New Hope, didn't know much about them and (through Solo) we're to understand that his is a common perception.

In the EU, the Empire had been around for about fifty-ish years and the Clone Wars were fought before that happened.  

Things like that.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1023931I don't think the idea was "examining the Mona Lisa lets you predict how the Rebels will attack the 3rd Death Star".

Thrawn was a master at tactics and intelligence analysis.  Studying a race and cultures philosophy, art, religion, etc gives you insight into how they think, what matters to them.  Using that as additional input on top of all the data everyone else is using, gives his mind a deeper understanding of the enemy that allows him to output his genius strategies.

He's like Sherlock Holmes, or House, etc. his brain works differently, allowing him some savant-level perception and analysis.

Yes, thank you!  This is all I was trying to say.  It may be as realistic as hyperspace travel, but I felt it was an interesting concept and I thought it was decently written.

Quote from: CausticJedi;1023984Yes, thank you!  This is all I was trying to say.  It may be as realistic as hyperspace travel, but I felt it was an interesting concept and I thought it was decently written.

Zahn's books were very well done. Consistent, good dialogue, the concepts and plot points were solid from beginning to end. And his take on the Clone Wars were *far* more interesting than Lucas's.

But that said. I still maintain the Old Republic era is vastly superior to anything in the modern era for gaming.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: CausticJedi;1023983http://deckplans.00sf.com/Research/Prequel.html  I had run across this website years ago and happened to stumble across it again recently and I think this guy lays out a great argument with quotes and dates and such.  Skim through that a bit to better understand my POV.

Yeah, that's a really nice article by someone with thoughtful patience who cares about continuity. Such a relief to read that in comparison to the various flavors of quickdraw apologists and "it's Star Wars - nothing needs to make any sense because there are laser swords and space wizards".

Quote from: Justin Alexander;1024004Whenever somebody claims that Luke is 40-50 years old at the beginning of A New Hope, I'm always baffled by it.

I kind of like the idea that Anakin's children were put in cryogenic stasis pods for a few decades as part of hiding them from their father.

Quote from: CausticJedi;1023983We're expected to believe that in the space of nineteen years, the entire galaxy pretty much forgot all about jedi -- enough that Solo who was well-traveled by the time of A New Hope, didn't know much about them and (through Solo) we're to understand that his is a common perception.

According to Star Wars : The Essential Atlas, the Galaxy has 100 Quadrillion citizens over 50 million words. The number of Jedi that existed around the time of Order 66 was around 10000. So about one Jedi per ten billion sentient. How hard is it to imagine forgetting something that statistically less than a fraction of one per cent of the population has ever seen with their own eyes?

Quote from: CausticJedi;1023983We're expected to believe that in the space of nineteen years, the entire galaxy pretty much forgot all about jedi -- enough that Solo who was well-traveled by the time of A New Hope, didn't know much about them and (through Solo) we're to understand that his is a common perception.

From the prequels, I got the impression that the Jedi were ultra-rare. We see a lot of them because the movies are about them, but most people never see one. Extrapolating from this, I can see the average Joe Solo saying "Eh, never believed in 'em anyway. Buncha Republic propaganda."

Plus, in order for Darth Vader to help the Emperor hunt down and destroy the Jedi, as Ben Kenobi says in ANH, it would have to have occurred in Vader/Anakin's adult lifetime.

Quote from: Elfdart;1023928Really? What exactly did Lucas change? I ask because the Prequels were more or less the result of having painted himself into a corner with the first three movies. I don't see how they could have been that much different.

Quote from: tenbones;1023993Zahn's books were very well done. Consistent, good dialogue, the concepts and plot points were solid from beginning to end. And his take on the Clone Wars were *far* more interesting than Lucas's.

But that said. I still maintain the Old Republic era is vastly superior to anything in the modern era for gaming.

The Zahn books were considered among the best, and a lot of fans really liked Mara Jade and Thrawn and wanted them to be canon.  However, the Zahn idea of the Clone Wars was cloned Jedi that went mad.  So when the prequels were made, Thrawn and Jade were suddenly non-canon.  But I also found out that there were a huge group of the fanbase didn't realize, or didn't want to, that they weren't.  That's how beloved they had become.

Mara Jade should have been spaced a hundred words after she first appeared.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1024094Mara Jade should have been spaced a hundred words after she first appeared.

Eh, she was typical for the times, but at least she had flaws.  Unlike the modern female heroine.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1024084The Zahn books were considered among the best, and a lot of fans really liked Mara Jade and Thrawn and wanted them to be canon.  However, the Zahn idea of the Clone Wars was cloned Jedi that went mad.  So when the prequels were made, Thrawn and Jade were suddenly non-canon.  But I also found out that there were a huge group of the fanbase didn't realize, or didn't want to, that they weren't.  That's how beloved they had become.

I haven't read the Zahn books.

I liked Mara Jade and Jacen, and Corran Horn though. Some of the best Star Wars writing came out of those New Jedi Order books published between 2000 and 2004, and these stories served as an inspiration for at least two of my Star Wars campaigns, in one, the players faced off against the Yuushan Vong invasion, and none of my players had read the books, so I had an absolutely tremendously good time, running a game where the player's were facing off against new types of ships, and force using aliens with completely unknown technology. It made for a very lively game.

In the other campaign I ran back in the first decade of the new millennium, I extrapolated, and made the players part of the crew of a Nebulon-B Pirate Frigate, Free Lance, and then intersected the players story with the plot right out of the The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide I: Onslaught story from Michael Stackpole where the players managed to get away from the Yuushan Vong in deep space where the Free Lance had setup an ambush for an Imperial convoy, and was instead ambushed by the Yuushan Vong. The players got to save the ship while the captain made the blind jumps, and then they got away after the Frigate was attacked and forced to surrender by Rogue Squadron.

Also these books and the Star Wars RPG from WOTC kept the Star Wars fans involved after the disastrous prequel trilogy.