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Beyond the Skywalkers - Making Star Wars Your Own
6 Plays18 minutes ago
Daryl, Nick, & Robert kick off with a recap of the GenCon 2026 D&D/Wizards of the Coast announcement that sparked confusion over whether Edge Studios still holds the Star Wars RPG license (they do), which leads into a deep-dive history of the license's rocky journey from Fantasy Flight Games to Edge Studio. From there, the crew shifts to the main topic: five practical frameworks GMs can use to make a well-trodden IP like Star Wars feel personal at the table — from putting players in the shoes of background characters, to mining different eras and legacy material, to breaking canon outright.
00:00 Cold Open & Banter
01:40 GenCon News & the History of the Star Wars RPG License
22:27 Order 66 Podcast Shoutout & Running Bits
26:56 Main Topic: How Do You Make Star Wars Your Own?
29:36 "From a Certain Point of View" — Playing background characters instead of the movie heroes
36:54 Eras — Using the High Republic and other under-explored timeframes
46:38 Legends — Mining decanonized material (Warlord Era, Yuuzhan Vong, etc.)
57:14 Sequels & Legacy — Post-Skywalker Saga settings, including Order 66's Fractured Republic and the hosts' own campaigns
1:15:50 Breaking Canon — When and how to deviate from established continuity
1:27:56 Mixing Approaches, Final Thoughts & Sign-off
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
with the coachman D20 Radio. at Your game is rolled.
00:00:17
Speaker
How will We Roll Gaming is dedicated to spreading enjoyment of great role-playing games. We hope to bring you insights into games you may not have played, tips to be a better game master and player, and share us stories of momentous events at our tables.
00:00:29
Speaker
Every game is a new story to tell. I'm Daryl. I'm Nick. And here's Robert. And this is How We Roll.
Host Banter: Weather and Outings
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome back to the How We Roll Gaming Podcast, everybody. Hope you are having an awesome time. ah Nick, Robert, welcome. I hope the two of you are staying cool when, as one of the local weather guys has said, the gates of hell are open here.
00:01:01
Speaker
Oh, I'm keeping cool. I'm always cool, but ah yeah, i see it's getting a bit toasty outside. I've got a good 73 up here.
00:01:12
Speaker
get a fan blowing. I'm good. I went to see the Odyssey Tuesday night, and that was the first time that I had stepped outside of the house since getting home from Nick's on Saturday.
00:01:28
Speaker
it was so hot. I was, nope. had to go in i had to I had an onside week, so I had to go in. Oh.
Gen Con 2026 Announcements and Licensing Debates
00:01:38
Speaker
But we are recording this episode as Gen Con 2026 is going on, and we don't often toss a lot of gaming news at the top of our episodes, but this one, it's appropriate for the topic we're going to be talking about today, and it's also...
00:01:59
Speaker
related to a game near and dear to our heart, but in Wizards of the Coast's D&D presentation, they announced their Universes Beyond entries for 2027, including Star Wars.
00:02:15
Speaker
And it sparked a brief firestorm online about whether or not Edge Studio had lost the license, was it going back to Wizards?
00:02:28
Speaker
A... Complete meltdown on some areas. ah Yes. But it was like... it Another side of the apocalypse and others. But was like, is Edge losing the license? Is the license going back to Wizards? Was the sky falling?
00:02:44
Speaker
All of that stuff.
Star Wars RPG License Rumors
00:02:46
Speaker
And as it turns out, because of course Edge was there at Gen Con too, and Sam Gregor Stewart himself, the...
00:02:55
Speaker
RPG director for Edge Studio was like, point of order, we still have the license. And it was all like, calm down, everybody. Calm down. The Universes Beyond thing is the same as WOTC does for Magic the Gathering.
00:03:14
Speaker
And Universes Beyond is what they've been doing with Magic, where they have other IPs that they cross over with magic.
00:03:26
Speaker
Which isn't the first. type they they They did as specifically a one-shot starter set for based off one episode of Rick and Morty one time. They've done things like this before. Yeah, they did the Stranger Things starter box ah that all of the documentation was in-universe from Stranger Things.
Cultural Impact of D&D and Media Influence
00:03:48
Speaker
It was supposed to be like Eddie's DM's guide. Even though it was 5th edition, it was you know Eddie's DM guide with his notes and stuff like that.
00:04:00
Speaker
But you know they've got World of Warcraft. They've got Star Wars that they're going to be doing in this one. And it looks like they're doing them more or less quarterly, and each of them is is being called in Season of Blank.
00:04:19
Speaker
And the Star Wars is Season of Rebellion. And what that has typically been is it's been you one or two products, and then they dip, and they move on.
00:04:33
Speaker
Which is not a bad idea, especially because you could literally go to just about any forum talking about D&D. It's like, how do I reskin this into D&D? Pretty much. yeah Or just the die system.
00:04:46
Speaker
you know D&D is main but is yeah it's mainstream. It is a lot of new players' entry point because of the main street that brand identification. you know Because of Stranger Things. you When Stranger Things came out and they were playing D&D, D&D sales spiked.
00:05:12
Speaker
And I remember seeing and ah a video that Bob Worldbuilder did where he tracked D&D sales.
00:05:23
Speaker
And they would spike every time a new season of Stranger Things came out. like the The greatest irony of the Satanic Panic was it put D&D on the lips of most people who didn't know what D&D was.
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah. And they were scared about their kids. but and All these, the most scariest people of all, nerds hanging out. well And he also noticed that D&D YouTube would spike whenever a new season of Stranger Things came out because the new players coming into the game were seeking out informational content about the game.
00:06:05
Speaker
Now there are things like Fox Buck and Lawrence's game shows so it was in live plays of mostly D&D are hugely popular.
00:06:18
Speaker
But one of the takeaways that I've gotten from the reaction to the news is that there is still a huge audience for the Edge Star Wars role-playing game.
00:06:30
Speaker
And they that they that's they want new content. Yes, we very much want new content. I've never seen the the the k the Star Wars RPG board so animated after this because they were in like DEF CON like, what's going on?
00:06:47
Speaker
I mean, what did you say, Daryl? When Sam's like, we're you' not losing it. and People were like, then do something with it.
Challenges in Star Wars RPG Publishing
00:06:54
Speaker
Yes, because so it in discussions on the D20 radio discord a plug for our our home network, ah GM Phil of the Order 66 podcast pointed out that the last book that was published, not counting the reprints, was 2020.
00:07:16
Speaker
It's been six years. Now, I do under... lot happened in two years. context.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to apply some context here. um And nuance. think it's very difficult. This is probably the longest pre-main topic intro that we've done. But it's still on topic for what we're talking about.
00:07:47
Speaker
ah December 2019, parent company Asmodee just completely cuts the PG group. no No notice, no no public statements, nothing, just RPG group gone.
00:08:05
Speaker
The closest thing to a public statement was from one of the writers over in FFG's fiction line posting on social media saying RPG development is not currently in FFG's current plans or something to that effect.
00:08:28
Speaker
Nothing. No word. yeah Not necessarily a death sentence in this space, but then things happen. Yeah, so it created a run on every game line that they had.
00:08:43
Speaker
People were panic buying. I was panic buying because at the time I was first picking up a few Legend of the Five Rings books here and there. But at this point, I started panic buying every time I had the extra cash. I was buying another Legend of the Five Rings book because I didn't know if they were going to come again.
00:09:06
Speaker
And I bought my Legend of the Five Rings dice then. It took six years five years, six years to actually play it when you started your game, Robert.
00:09:19
Speaker
Yes, and it was only recently that I was able to get my own Five Ring dice. So i i panic but people were panic buying the Star Wars dice and Genesis dice.
00:09:30
Speaker
Every book and accessory that they could get their hands on because as far as anyone knew, that was the end. So then May 10th, 2020 at Gamma is when it was publicly, not even really announced, it was just publicly stated that they were restructuring and each of their imprint studios was going to have a specific type of game that they were going to work on. Whereas before, each studio had a scattering of different game types that they worked on.
00:10:13
Speaker
Like Fantasy Flight had RPGs and tabletop board games and tabletop miniature games and card car games.
00:10:24
Speaker
So they restructured. FFG was assigned tabletop board games and card games. Atomic Mass Games got all of the miniature games.
00:10:36
Speaker
And Edge Studio, which had been their European translation and distribution arm for everything, became the RPG Studio.
00:10:48
Speaker
Notice the date that I gave there, though. That was May 10th, 2020. What happened to the world in the next couple of weeks? A certain quarantine.
00:11:00
Speaker
The world shut down, effectively. Pretty much. yeah Which, on the one hand, was good for a great many RPGs that were already in development and were capable of shipping out on the time. Not for one when In other areas.
00:11:19
Speaker
When you're totally restructuring your gaming company. Kind of not good to have a viral outbreak. So June of 2020 is when they announced that they had rehired Sam Gregor Stewart, the rp former RPG director of FFG, to fulfill that same role for Edge.
00:11:46
Speaker
So great continuity of leadership. Sam's an awesome guy. Sam is a great RPG developer. But what none of us knew at that time and didn't know for another year, year and a half is the transfer. It wasn't as easy as saying, okay, we've restructured corporate at a corporate level.
00:12:14
Speaker
asbo As Asmodee we are the owners of the license because we're FFG's parent company. We're just going to have this studio that we own be the development arm now. It wasn't that simple.
00:12:29
Speaker
it was There was red tape to go through. Yeah, there was red tape to go through in the contract. bureaucracy And it took a while to get... Gotta have some sharp scissors.
00:12:42
Speaker
and by that time when Edge was prepared to start the job of reprinting the books that existed and developing new ones, the printers that they had been using, these books are now, you know, a year, year and a half at least, out of their work queue.
00:13:10
Speaker
And you can't just go in and say, hey, give us back our old slot in the queue. On top of which, something as simple as changing the FFG logo on the covers and the spine of the books required... It's still a design process.
00:13:29
Speaker
Well, and it also required re-approval by Lucasfilm. The approval process had to start from step one again on all 30-ish books of the line.
00:13:45
Speaker
And on top of the queue issue was the fact that also lots of large manufacturing was shut down due to quarantine. Yeah. As well as large manufacturing and shipping was shut down again. So there's already massive queues.
00:14:01
Speaker
And I know from Sam's Q&A at the 2023 Gamer Nation Con... Nation Con... twenty three yeah twenty three camemer nation k that um the they thought that they would have to get a new dice manufacturer.
00:14:21
Speaker
They thought that there for some reason they wouldn't be able to use the same dice manufacturer. And so they would have to have new molds made of the dice and all of that. And as they were going through the process of finding a new...
00:14:37
Speaker
dice manufacturer and seeing about getting new molds made and everything, they discovered, oh, we can use the old dice manufacturer.
00:14:48
Speaker
So that was a whole drama in and of itself. And that's why when the reprints started, the reprints were coming out in small trickles because they were getting back into the publishing, the printing queue at the printer.
00:15:06
Speaker
So now they're basically at the point of being a new studio with the license fresh to develop new material.
00:15:20
Speaker
And have already rolled out a great deal of ice and other materials are already. Yeah, it's exploded back onto the market.
Impact of Asmodee's Acquisition by Embracer Group
00:15:29
Speaker
Yeah. So nature is healing.
00:15:34
Speaker
Well, and if we if we want to be di get into the real weeds of the business side of things, during all of this, Asmodee was acquired by Embracer Group, which owns a bunch of pop culture IPs.
00:15:52
Speaker
And they also, at some point in there, started the process of spinning Asmodee back off as its own company, as well as another one of their studios as its own company.
00:16:08
Speaker
Of the three entities as a whole, Asmodee was the one that was performing the best. So Asmodee got saddled with the $920 million dollars worth of debt that was set up in ah in the process of spinning the two studios off into their own company.
00:16:40
Speaker
So Asmodee has that that they had no choice but to take on. So if we if we look at Edge's output, there's not a lot of marketing going on.
00:16:58
Speaker
99% of the marketing ah push is behind Arkham Horror, which is a great game. Still need to play it, but great game. Still need to play it, but it's a great game.
00:17:12
Speaker
but And there is logic behind the idea that it is easier to produce... new material for an IP that you or your parent company owns.
00:17:28
Speaker
Asmodee owns Arkham Horror. It does not own Star Wars. It doesn't own Star Wars. It doesn't own Legend of the Five Rings. And yet Five Rings has a book that's coming out, hopefully, maybe.
00:17:44
Speaker
But speaking to the marketing, as red tap the only reason I know that that new book is coming out, Robert, is because a player saw it at Hedge's booth at Gen Con and took a picture of it.
00:18:00
Speaker
Even so, it's still good to know. because there' We've been missing that Scorpion book. But what my point is, they didn't announce it. A fan said, hey, look.
00:18:14
Speaker
And that fan has all our thank yous. the The Genesis Twilight Imperium setting is another IP. It's another setting that Asmodee owns, Twilight Imperium.
00:18:30
Speaker
It's the Genesis setting that's gotten the most books. It got the most recent release, but that wasn't pushed. Meanwhile, in the two years since it has been released...
00:18:45
Speaker
Not counting Free RPG Day giveaways, not counting game material in the back of a comics miniseries, Arkham Horror is about to have its eighth and or ninth release in that two years.
00:19:03
Speaker
and it's getting a lot of promotional push. I don't begrudge them doing that. I just, I wish that there was spotlight put on their other lines. You know I've got, um, it's not in the stack behind me anymore. I've got the starter set of Dungeons and Kittens. Dungeons and Kittens is new, and they're not pushing that either.
00:19:23
Speaker
And it's adorable. They most certainly do have a Q of priority RPGs. Yeah. So i don't know if it's just because it's a new, fresh system and it's proven to be popular. So it's getting a big push because it's new.
00:19:42
Speaker
But it sure would be nice to see some push behind Star
Legacy and Popularity of Star Wars RPG
00:19:48
Speaker
Wars. My understanding is that they have not abandoned development on Star Wars.
00:19:54
Speaker
that they are developing material, but the approvals process at Lucasfilm is so arcane that um I've heard the story told ah from GM Chris when he was interviewed on on Nate's YouTube channel, Tabletop Empire, that...
00:20:21
Speaker
He's friends with people who worked at Wizards when they originally had the Star Wars license previously. And they developed, completed, and were ready to publish their Force Unleashed sourcebook in time to hit shelves at the same time as the video game so they could take advantage of some corporate synergy.
00:20:49
Speaker
Lucasfilm's approvals process is such that it was not approved and able to be released until 18 months after the video game hit shelves.
00:21:00
Speaker
Can confirm. So it's crazy. There's you know talk in the ether that there's a book that is just stalled in Lucasfilm approvals purgatory.
00:21:16
Speaker
And they can't say anything. Until Lucasfilm says you can say something. So what we're saying is if we have to stage a heist. Yes. Sure, Nick. Sure.
00:21:29
Speaker
Stage a heist to steal a book that hasn't been printed yet. Yes. Can you steal an idea, Nick? I believe there's a movie. That's what ID lawyers are all about.
00:21:42
Speaker
I believe there's a movie. get tangled with them, though. I believe there's a movie about that. I think it has something to do with ah of dreams or something. I don't know.
00:21:54
Speaker
Still haven't seen it. That's us going on for 20 minutes about the... the are Mostly me rambling for 20 minutes about the brouhaha from Gen Con and the the state of of Star Wars, which is what we're going to be spending more time talking about.
00:22:15
Speaker
so Now we've talked about Star Wars, let's go talk about Dungeon Kittens. No, not really. yeah Yes, let's the episode is about Dungeons and Kittens. Woo! ah I fooled you.
00:22:27
Speaker
Before we dive into today's topic, though, ah we would like to spotlight the flagship show of the D20 Radio Network, the Order 66 podcast. sha you're ah right If you're a fan of the Star Wars role-playing game,
Influence of Order 66 Podcast
00:22:44
Speaker
it's one of the most influential and enduring RPG podcasts out there.
00:22:50
Speaker
While the show is currently on an extended hiatus, their back catalog is absolutely worth exploring. In particular, check out their fractured Republic setting, which imagines the Star Wars galaxy more than a century after the Skywalker saga and creates an entirely new era for GMs and players to tell their own stories. And if you enjoyed today's discussion about making Star Wars your own, do yourself a favor and add the Order 66 podcast to your listening list.
00:23:20
Speaker
The show is packed with years of GM advice, campaign inspiration, and thoughtful conversations that are just as valuable today as they were when they first were first released. Yep. I had considered ah reaching out to GM Phil, the co-host of Order 66, to come on for this episode and join us ah because of their Fractured Republic setting. And then it occurred to me, oh yeah, Gen Con.
00:23:49
Speaker
Yeah, they're a little busy. yeah phil Phil is at Gen Con because, well, Phil is also one of the founding members of Studio 404 that makes Genesis content on the Genesis Foundry. So Phil is there at Gen Con repping Studio 404.
00:24:09
Speaker
So yeah I was like, I'm glad I didn't even send the the DM. He'd be like, Daryl, where do you think I am right now? Yeah. i mean Who knows? Maybe they can join us at the end of the year. Maybe. They can return in.
00:24:29
Speaker
Maybe. Wrong podcast, Nick. Oh, you're right. don't do that bit here. We don't do that. Yeah, you just left me out. I have no idea what you're talking about. We don't do that here. We've got a running gag on 66.
Running Gags and Character Returns
00:24:46
Speaker
We've got a running our podcast now we've got a We've got a running gag on casual nerdity where whatever we're talking about, we pick a character through it. And at some point, know, like if we were talking about, ah if you were a character and what we were talking about, Robert, we would say, and Robert will return.
00:25:11
Speaker
in Avengers Doomsday with that slow piano Avengers theme from the first, from those first teasers underneath. Yeah. we We are beating it to death. I am sure our listeners are tired of it, but you know, you know us, we live and die by the bit.
00:25:30
Speaker
Of course you do. And our our dream is to get as many people as possible on for that episode. But you know we, Last time it was ah new Clone Trooper Kix will return in Avengers Doomsday.
00:25:48
Speaker
um our Our next episode, if it's kind of... The joke's not going to land as well because our next episode is going to be Spider-Man Brand New Day. Whoever we pick, there is... Well, we know Spider-Man is not going to appear...
00:26:10
Speaker
We'll return and see. Do we? Do Allegedly. Well, and I mean, he he hasn't been announced, but do you think that they're not going to save some surprises?
00:26:25
Speaker
I'm not saying he will be. But do we really know? Anyone truly know? know. Exactly. i said it so We're going to see the movie tab tomorrow. wow We're talking about brand new days. like like And I still have no idea what's going on in that movie.
00:26:44
Speaker
Oh, um I did. ah you know Somebody accidentally spoiled something. ah Sadie Sink is playing Uncle Ben. I knew it! Anyway. Anyway. Anyway, let' let's get back on
Creating Unique Star Wars RPG Campaigns
00:26:57
Speaker
track. Let's start talking the Star Wars RPG. And since we're stalking talking Star Wars RPG... this is where the fun begins.
00:27:06
Speaker
ah Yes. So Star Wars is a property that pretty much everyone has heard of, even if they haven't seen it. I do know people who haven't seen anything Star Wars.
00:27:22
Speaker
I used to work with somebody who you has never seen a Star Wars. It's fine. you banished them to the outer darkness, I assume. It hurt, but we can understand, and then we educate. Yeah.
00:27:34
Speaker
I mean, it not every piece of entertainment is for everyone. As I very frequently say, if we all liked the same thing, the world would be a really boring place.
00:27:48
Speaker
So... Here's the thing, though. When you're dealing with a known property like Star Wars, well, I mean, we've we've got nine movies in the so-called Skywalker saga.
00:28:06
Speaker
We've got more movies. Right. We've got two more movies that take place in that timeline. Right. We've got a bunch of TV shows that take place in that timeline. We've got a few metric tons of books and comics that take place. slightly smaller metric tons of video games.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yeah. yeah So when you're bringing an IP like that to your table, the main characters who accomplish the big things...
00:28:43
Speaker
The ones who defeat the Empire are not your players' characters. So what can you do to make Star Wars specifically?
00:28:56
Speaker
Any IP, yes, but we are specifically focusing on Star Wars to today. How do you make Star Wars your own so that your players are invested and not sitting there and in the back of their minds going,
00:29:11
Speaker
Well, this is all pointless because we know that the movie characters are the are the big damn heroes. And to assist with this task, I have created a list of points to explore from.
00:29:28
Speaker
So, since you have made these points, why don't you kick us off, Nick? Yes, make it away. Point number one. i I call it from a certain point of view.
00:29:42
Speaker
Basically, you are Let's say that we're... Let's say that... We'll take a scene from the movies. The Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.
00:29:54
Speaker
Massive battle sequence. We know what the heroes are doing. Luke is flying in the air speeder. Han and Leia are arguing. Chewie's trying to fix things up. Chewie's fixing that ship. And C-3PO led those stormtroopers into a womp room in a deleted scene.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yes. But there's a whole army of the Rebellion here. Yeah, i mean, the first transport is away. A whole army of the Rebellion, part of which is led by Cliff Clavin.
00:30:33
Speaker
So, a simple solution would be... You are rebellion soldiers, and you are here at the Battle of Hoth. So, you're talking about taking taking the spotlight and taking it off of the main characters and moving it about 100 feet to the left.
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah. And seeing what's going on with those characters. Yeah, it's like main heroes. call this area a certain point of view. Yes, because you gotta mean, the main characters get away, but who were the people that slowed the Empire down?
00:31:13
Speaker
What is their story? How did they get here? Did they get off? where they cat went on What happened with the crew of that transport and its fighter escort?
00:31:26
Speaker
What if there's a group of soldiers that didn't die by the Empire, but they're now stranded on Hoth with its bleak environment and Wampa Predators? There's all sorts of things that you can do there. I mean, famously, and I know that this kind of overlaps with one of your other points, famously, part of the Shadows of the Empire video game did exactly this because its main character, Dash Rendar, was at the Battle of Hoth.
00:31:58
Speaker
ah And we followed him. Of both the original and the rebooted Battlefront games is like, you get to take part of an average soldier on the battlefield. People want to be part of these big events, but also recognize we I can't be the the big hero.
00:32:17
Speaker
can't the hero. Like the old Battlefront 2 game had an entire campaign of what if you're just the 501st Legion going from Republic to Empire? Yeah. Like,
00:32:28
Speaker
Or heck, from a certain point of view, Rogue One is just a certain point of view movie. It is. yeah based off on one i get How do they get the Death Star plans?
00:32:40
Speaker
It's literally based off of the first sentence of the first move movie's opening crawl. The Rebels have run a major victory and it's stolen the ah plans to the Empire's battle station, the Death Star. That's the whole movie about that.
00:32:55
Speaker
yeah Only now do we know that Rogue One was a strategic victory, at a very costly victory. Yeah, and in fact, that that idea of taking it from those opening sentences of The Crawl was the focus of the first teaser for the movie.
00:33:15
Speaker
It started with The Crawl, and which then you got video distortion and then went into clips from the movie. which i but that was that was just absolute brilliance. You know, it, it highlighted those words and then went into distortion. it Brilliant.
00:33:35
Speaker
I loved it. Yes. Or if being a soldier may not be as exciting as you think, what about episode, what about episode four when they go to the Tatooine cantina?
Using Side Characters in RPG Narratives
00:33:49
Speaker
There are a ton of aliens and ne'er-do-wells in there. What's devil horn story? what about that fur guy? What about the guy that has Deathmark in like 13 systems?
00:34:01
Speaker
There was a whole book about that. Exactly. But there are stories to be told and places where your characters could in thrust shoulders and be like, I was, oh, I'm not the main character, but you can it also leads to the fun like cameo moment. It's like, oh, like you like speaking on that canteen example, You could have like a regular meeting of ne'er-de-wells. It gets interrupted by someone cutting off a dude's arm, and it suddenly becomes a different arm in the in the next scene.
00:34:35
Speaker
yeah you're just going to... It was that guy's problem. Yeah, exactly. And he's like, back to your drinks. And part of why I'm sure you chose this this title for this bullet point, Nick, is they've released three books in the new canon with that title from a certain point of view where that's exactly the point of it, that you are looking at the background characters in all of the original three movies and you're exploring their stories.
00:35:15
Speaker
So yeah it can be done. If they can do it in fiction, you can do it in an RPG. Yeah. if tested Certainly can do it in an RPG. And again, it just requires us, again, the scenes that we just discussed have been made into memes, made into parodies. like It's probably the easiest way to do it with giving like that little bit of fan service to those that would recognize it and still enough for people to be like, oh, i I know what you're talking about.
00:35:44
Speaker
There's just enough for them to be the Leo meme. yeah And it's just gone further from there. We got the movies, we got the shows, we got the video games. You even do the books if you're that ambitious.
00:35:58
Speaker
But again, it's it depends on your audience. ah Put it in that. yeah But it's ambitious. It's definitely what I felt was like the best way to explain like the surface the most simple and surface level. You're passing. It's not a crossover. It's a pass-through.
00:36:17
Speaker
Exactly. yeah And sometimes it's fun to be like, no, I'm not going to be the guy that fights Darth Vader. I'm going to be the guy on the ship trying to not get shot down by all the TIE fighters and the Death Star cannons.
00:36:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a dozen ships that came out of that. It's like, you're one of those guys. I'm the A-Wing pilot that rams to the Executor's Bridge.
00:36:42
Speaker
they They did that one. They did that one and from a certain point of view, Return of the Jedi. but Maybe next time. that That is the simplest version. The next one is definitely requires a bit more knowledge, but also gives them more freedom.
00:37:01
Speaker
Eras. Star Wars takes place over multiple eras. Yes. yes and I remember when I was little, there was a Star Wars book that had A timeline. They literally just gave you the timeline.
00:37:14
Speaker
Well, and here's where I'm going to pull that pin out. Because i mean I've already been working towards this with, I've been trying to work on some homebrew source books for the High Republic publishing initiatives era.
00:37:33
Speaker
yeah It's an era of Star Wars that's set you know two to three hundred years before the Skywalker saga. And the novels give us enough of a framework to work with that period of time that you can take that. And there's plenty of room around the stories that are taking place in those novels that to build games.
00:38:04
Speaker
you know If you're looking at phase two, which is the furthest back in that, because they they did the same thing that the movie trilogies did in that the middle part, like the prequel trilogy, is set before the first and third parts.
00:38:21
Speaker
But you know with that, there' The Republic is still exploring the Outer Rim. They're still mapping hyperspace routes. A lot of that territory, it's not undiscovered, but it's largely...
00:38:39
Speaker
unfamiliar to the Republic. So what's old new. And what's new kind of a wild West kind of thing. Exactly. Like a wild West kind of thing. You know,
00:38:56
Speaker
one of the characters that shows up in phase two is the Marshall of a, not really a desert planet, but it's more of a wild Westy kind of environment.
00:39:08
Speaker
They didn't put a desert planet in Star Wars? Oh, they did. Okay. Oh, they did. You almost scared me there, Daryl. But they went out of their way to not make the planet that she was on a stereotypical Star Wars desert planet for that reason.
00:39:26
Speaker
Respect, then. you It was arid. It was old westy. It was desert adjacent. But it was not Tatooine. It was kind of more like Oklahoma, Colorado. Yeah.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah. So you could, you could do that. You could be hyperspace prospectors. You could get involved in main, in the storyline that was happening then, because there was a religious cult that they weren't anti-force.
00:40:04
Speaker
They were anti-use of the force. they respected and worshipped the force, but they felt that people who used it, like the Jedi, were basically wasting a finite resource.
00:40:21
Speaker
Or not so much wasting a finite resource, but if you as a Jedi use the force to lift a rock out of the way of a cave that somebody is trapped in,
00:40:37
Speaker
that takes the that much force away from another location where somebody else might be in need. So kind of a desecration balance thing.
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah. yeah It's very interesting. And so you could play with those concepts, especially if you want to be Jedi. your if you're If any of your players are Jedi,
00:41:03
Speaker
they don't have to be involved in the main storyline involving, um involving the path, which is the name of, of the cult, but they can run into practitioners and followers of the path.
00:41:19
Speaker
That same phase two also took a look at Jedha during this time period where, Jeddah was where a bunch of different force-focused religions all had a convocation set up on Jeddah so that they could all confer and share resources and debate and things like that. so There's a meeting of minds of of different philosophies. Yeah.
00:41:51
Speaker
And it it introduced half a dozen different force traditions. in that convocation. So it opens up a lot that you could play with just by having the setting.
00:42:05
Speaker
Then if you're in phases one and three, you have a conflict going on in the galaxy where basically a group of bikers, the whose leader has a mat on for the Jedi, make a run to try to, to,
00:42:24
Speaker
to you knock out the Republic and maybe even take over part of the galaxy. And in phase three, they actually do take control of part of the outer rim and using a large scale interdiction field, they cut off that part of the galaxy from the Republic.
00:42:46
Speaker
So you could be somebody who's trapped behind the storm wall. You can be somebody who's trying to get through the storm wall. You can do all of that and still not necessarily be involved in the Republican Jedi versus the Nile storyline.
00:43:02
Speaker
And that's just one. one That's one on era. One era. Zoro's has got plenty. You can go all the way back to the Infinite Empire era. You could go to the Great Hyperspace War.
00:43:15
Speaker
You could go to the Sith Wars. You could be The Jedi Civil War with Revan and Malak. The Old Republic. The Old Republic. The Great War. The Cold War.
00:43:27
Speaker
The Second Great War. All that MMO stuff. Definitely got a lot there. ah The time around around the Phantom Menace. That's good two and a half decades there. The Clone Wars.
00:43:41
Speaker
The Hundred Year Darkness. oh Technically, the Clone Wars is part of the Skywalker saga. That's part of this certain point of view, Nick. yeah but again there's there's There's multiple eras to mine from from from that you can plant your characters in. And again, don't have to touch the main stories of these other characters. It's again it's a certain point of view, but bigger.
00:44:10
Speaker
It's no longer like you're going to cross through and it's like, oh, as you said, the Leo means like, you don't have to. The galaxy is not large and vast. It's just be like, oh, I recognize that star spider. It's like, oh, I want to know about that stuff.
00:44:26
Speaker
Yeah, because the thing about the Star Wars galaxy is if you actually look at a map, it is literally a galaxy. It is huge. and And if you actually track the actual movie line,
00:44:39
Speaker
the movie storyline, the Skywalker saga, they don't touch that many planets.
Inspiration from Star Wars Legends
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah. most Most of the planets on that map are coming from all of this ancillary media that we're talking about pulling from. Exactly.
00:44:53
Speaker
And sometimes that gives you creative freedom. You see a planet on there, know one no one's ever, to they've never actually explained what's on there. You could make something. I've done some. I've done that. I've taken a world and be like, this is an agri-world now.
00:45:08
Speaker
It's, As this many species, this is what they're fighting over. This is what it uses to export and import. And I'm like a story there. same yeah like down ti there's just like It has literally just like two lines and where it is in the galaxy.
00:45:23
Speaker
Well, it's involved in in this area of time. There's apparently a battle here that no one talked about. That's all that's mentioned. So they have that something going on here. Literally half of the map is called the Unknown Regions.
00:45:37
Speaker
That's basically Star Wars saying... Make whatever you want. It could be literally working anything. Yes and no. To a degree. To a degree. there's You can definitely be like, okay, in this part is a planet that does this.
00:45:55
Speaker
Because we We do have some material in canon for the Unknown Regions in the form of Timothy Zahn's, in both the, what I still always pull a a DC Comics here, in the pre-crisis and post-crisis continuities, in both Legends and current canon,
00:46:19
Speaker
There has been exploration of the Chiss Ascendancy and some surrounding areas in the Unknown Regions. which good you absolutely right But if you've looked at the map, it's like maybe three or four planets. evil yeah they dot Even in adding in that stuff, there's tons still left.
00:46:39
Speaker
But that's a good pivot point into my next bullet point. Legends. Yes. yeah What has now been considered... Not what happened a certain point of view. Yes.
00:46:55
Speaker
But the idea is that you can always, mo like though those stories are not considered canon, one, they're still being reprinted because yes money. or fun and And two, a lot of the people that are now currently working in Star Wars, just like us, grew up with Legends to a degree.
00:47:18
Speaker
grew up with that material and are slowly bringing in parts or taking inspiration from. So you can do the same. Dig into any of those old books.
00:47:29
Speaker
I have done the same. yeah because your All three of us have. Yes, but in my first ever campaign I ran, Ashes of an Empire, i took a Legends era, the Warlord era after Palpatine's death, where after he died,
00:47:46
Speaker
ambitious imperial officers and governors and moffs basically split up and formed their own little fiefdoms everywhere. And it fractured the empire and gave the new republic a foothold to start building up, taking over, and getting into the core worlds.
00:48:03
Speaker
Well, I took that premise and be like, well, what if those officers were actually competent in some areas? And it dragged on. So now there's the official empire, there's the New Republic, but then there's this warlord here, this warlord there, this warlord there.
00:48:24
Speaker
What would happen if you were just a group of people having to traverse that chaotic time? um In the middle of ah of a conflict that is much larger than then you know.
00:48:39
Speaker
And the little time we played it, it kind of worked. They worked for the New Republic a few times. They actually worked for one of the warlords. And they kind of liked working for one of the warlords.
00:48:49
Speaker
Or at least a second in command. And was like, okay. Let's do it. Again, stuff like that. like yeah like As we mentioned, there's tons of stuff about about other eras. There's other parts of eras. There's even stuff like... There's tons of material to mine from. so that you can...
00:49:11
Speaker
And a lot of it also has a lot of, like, RPG support as well. Yes. I've certainly seen some of your books on it, Nick, because they've explored the Warlord era. They've explored what happened after after the New Republic was formed.
00:49:27
Speaker
They even had the Yuuzhan Vong era. I saw a book about that. That would be fun. And I know, Daryl, you've even contemplated, what if the Yuuzhan Vong came during the Clone Wars type of idea? Yep, that's right.
00:49:39
Speaker
That's been a talk for, that it was even talked about even with the the Clone Wars team, they were wanting to introduce something like that. Yeah, they were going to have them invade. They were going to have a one-off episode where a group of, I don't know if it was supposed to be Anakin and Obi-Wan or just a group of clone troopers were going to encounter some Yuuzhan Vong scouts.
00:50:04
Speaker
And that would be an experience. Yep. Like, again, Mixing and matching like different ideas and concepts is also fun. Like there's been like there's things like ah like the the the project Deathwing and the Death Troopers is a concept that that Daryl's actually played with. Yep. Yeah.
00:50:28
Speaker
I've used them. there There are ways to make it to bring in these unique ideas that legends because again, legends lasted Several decades.
00:50:41
Speaker
And just tons of material to mine from. Yeah, sorry. Like, like, like, like,
00:50:55
Speaker
all of that Yeah, there's, I have in the past made liberal use of plucking a character here and a character there from legends and dropping them into, dropping them into, you know, the current continuity, adapting them to it. as like I don't think I will ever, even if she never shows up in a game, i will never run a timeline that Lumaya does not exist in.
00:51:27
Speaker
Because she's a cool character. is. Or i kind of got fixed on the Warlord era. I wouldn't run that without Zing. Love Zing. And the Warlord era has made a quiet return to the canon. little bit through the Mandalorian. Though I want my boy Zim Zing back. hey Robert, have you seen Mando and Grogu yet?
00:51:53
Speaker
i've Life, no. No. It opens with Mando going after a warlord. Really fun on storyline there.
00:52:04
Speaker
It opens with him after going after a warlord, and Sigourney Weaver's new Republic General has, you you know the the old the old bit that post-World War two ah the intelligence agencies created a deck of cards with the most wanted yeah the deck of 52 yeah she's got one ah I like that she's got one for the Imperials that are that the New Republic is trying to get and one of Mando's lines is I'll bring in every card in your deck
00:52:49
Speaker
a Nice. It's a fun thing. But it's like, it's just as you guys are saying, I will i will always bring in dirge and one day I will have someone do the fun jousting bit.
00:53:03
Speaker
I mean, Nick, dirge is canon again. i know. Dirge is canon again. so I will have the dumb speeder jousting bit happen. have the light we'll have have the have the dumb speeder jousting bit happen No, because we know you want the jousting bit.
00:53:22
Speaker
and i' Nick was very, very mad at me. in he He was adapting that Clone Wars micro-series for us in a Clone Wars campaign we were playing, and my Jedi was was it basically in Obi-Wan's shoes from that opening arc, and he was setting up the joust, and I refused to Not because i I was trying to spite Nick, but my character was basically... Not at first. I wasn't doing it to spite Nick at first. right
00:53:59
Speaker
I'll agree with that. with just It was just how my character was reacting to Dirge. Like, no, that's stupid. Why would I do that?
00:54:09
Speaker
I'm not going to fight the invincible Gundai. No. And the the more he kept acting in character and refusing it, the more agitated Nick got about it. And I was like, oh, well, I can also just push Nick's buttons this way.
00:54:26
Speaker
Yeah, my buttons were pushed.
00:54:32
Speaker
So, they they yeah. But that that's another way that you can do things, thinking of it. you know like That Clone Wars micro series is no longer considered to be part of canon.
00:54:45
Speaker
you can take one of those legends stories like that. And since they're not part of the current Canon anymore, you can slot your PCs into those stories.
00:55:00
Speaker
Or it it it helps with a lot of plotting because go it's already been, or I'm going to date myself with this. A game I grew up on was Jedi outcast two, where you play Kyle Katarn fighting against the son and his,
00:55:15
Speaker
reborn. I always found the reborn to be a cool concept, artificially giving someone the force. That's a cool concept. you You did that, Robert, in my Raiders of the Lost Jedi campaign.
00:55:31
Speaker
I'm blanking on the name of the planet that, uh, Dark Forces 2 Jedi Knight, the big climax took place on... Rassan. With... Yeah, it with... on ah With Kyle Vitar versus... Versus Jarek.
00:55:48
Speaker
Jarek. Jarek. And I had one of the player characters, you know because it was kind of ambiguous what happened to Jarek at the end of the fight, right?
00:56:00
Speaker
Kind of like dissipated. Yeah. So... My player characters, you know the the campaign was set in the future. They were working for the University of New Alderaan, looking for Jedi artifacts and force-related things. It was 150-ish years later.
00:56:20
Speaker
They went to Ruusan, and one of the players found a portal to the World Between Worlds. Nice. And when he went into the World Between Worlds, he found Jarek.
00:56:34
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. And Jarek came out of the portal. And he was the big bad of the session. Oh, that's cool. That's actually pretty slick. That's pretty cool. yeah I like that. I like that a lot. Heck, the World Between Worlds gives all the possibilities.
00:56:54
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, what if i some idiot brings back Bane during the Clone Wars? There's Tartan. Speaking of your nature of your ah of your ah ah Raiders of the Lost Jedi campaign, next bullet point is sequels and legacy.
00:57:17
Speaker
yes Yes. This is where we go off to the very end of the Skywalker saga.
Crafting RPGs Beyond the Skywalker Saga
00:57:24
Speaker
He's not Skywalker. But anyway. Well, i at night I brought it. That's why I put it in both. It's like,
00:57:31
Speaker
There are two schools of thought. There's the sequel trilogy and then there's Legacy, which are both different ways of both canon and legends of looking past the furthest edge of the Skywalker saga.
00:57:46
Speaker
Yes. and before we dive in really quick to what we've done, this is going back to our our cross promotion of Order 66 podcast. Yes, they've done this.
00:58:01
Speaker
Chris and Phil's Fractured Republic is set, I want to say it's 200, 250 years after the sequel trilogy. And as the title would imply, the galaxy didn't reunify primarily under a single republic anymore.
00:58:22
Speaker
There is a republic, but its size and influence is small. And there are about seven other controlling factions in the galaxy, each with their own territory.
00:58:34
Speaker
Yeah, and it makes sense. Some people may be kind of sick of a centralized galactic government. After it rose and fell and rose and fell again.
00:58:46
Speaker
And they were in the in the process ah in their most recent episode, which has been a while of spotlighting each of the different factions. um I should have pulled up the notes on them so I could go over them all. I'm doing this by, by memory. Your memory is pretty good though.
00:59:05
Speaker
It's been a while since I've listened to the episodes too. One of the factions is the Hutts. fair And the Hutts are basically running on pure capitalism. The Hutts never die.
00:59:19
Speaker
um One of the factions are, and I can't remember the name of their government, is the Mandalorians. And the Mandalorians are basically like, we're we are basically a search and rescue civilization.
00:59:41
Speaker
They, there, there may be, there may be Mandalorian Jedi, but they are more Mandalorian than Jedi. And there are Jedi, but the Jedi are not tied solely to the Republic.
00:59:57
Speaker
Um, There is a a there's basically a space Russia. I can't remember the name of that faction. And there, there's a whole, the different factions have different alliances and relationships with one another.
01:00:16
Speaker
um And then they have, they have basically a league of nations among them all. Do you remember if one of the government is a monarchy?
01:00:27
Speaker
I don't remember. i think there was one, I can't recall. I feel like that would have to be one of them. Eight different powers. There's got to be like at least one monarchy.
01:00:38
Speaker
A classical monarchy has to be in there. and Or an absolute. You know. yeah There is kind of a UN security force, the Galactic Rangers.
01:00:51
Speaker
But... The Rangers don't have jurisdiction in all of the factions. I don't know what that sounds like. And so it's, and if they have the structure of their Jedi order that they're using, Jedi will frequently as Padawans or sometimes Knights be,
01:01:18
Speaker
ah members of or consultants to the Rangers, because of course you're going to, obviously going to have somebody who wants to play a Jedi, but if you're running a Rangers team, heavy campaign, you need a reason to get in there. And in fact, Nick, I i told Phil once at Gamer Nation Con that I screamed at my radio listening to the episode where he brought this up because damn him for making me like a usage of this term.
01:01:52
Speaker
but um the uniform jackets of the Rangers are gray. And so the Jedi that work with them wear gray outer robes. And so he's like, so they're gray Jedi.
01:02:07
Speaker
That's what people will call them. They call the Rangers or they call the Jedi that work with the Rangers gray Jedi. I like that. i love that. Because the universe that makes sense. And it's probably the only time I'd ever, like,
01:02:22
Speaker
No time to get into that, but they I've always been like, get out of here if you're a great Jedi. But that sounds fun as an in-universe way of acknowledging that, especially if the Jedi are like, that's not a thing. That's not a thing.
01:02:38
Speaker
We just, we're working. And... my My last word on their Fractured Republic setting before saying, again, go listen to the episodes because it's at a it's a great idea and a great setting that they have put a lot of work into is at Gamer Nation Con, I got to play in a game that Phil ran that was set in the Fractured Republic.
01:03:09
Speaker
Oh, nice. And and it was it it was at this last Gamer Nation Con, so it was X-Files themed story-wise, even though it was Star Wars The Fractured Republic.
01:03:27
Speaker
There were, I think the the pre-gen characters, I believe there were two rangers... two Jedi and two operatives who were basically Mulder and Scully.
01:03:44
Speaker
And all ended up on this planet where something something funky was going on and they were all investigating it. And it was a lot of fun, even though the Fractured Republic setting didn't, you know all of the lore and everything that they've developed for Fractured Republic didn't weigh heavily on the game. It was so much fun because you weren't being necessarily a traditional Jedi because they're, um,
01:04:16
Speaker
Their premise, their jumping off point for the Jedi was, since they're working with current canon, after the events of the sequel trilogy, Rey agreed with Luke that the Jedi had become too dogmatic and needed to be, their scope and philosophies needed to be broadened little bit. And we're talking 250 years down the line after that decision.
01:04:44
Speaker
So it's not your traditional prequel style stick up their butt Jedi. So again it's a lot of fun. Again, that's sort of the fun of exploring beyond what we know.
01:04:58
Speaker
And as Daryl's talked about his Fractured, the Fractured Republic of the Order 66 podcast, Nick and I have done our own kind of legacy campaign world building through our own campaign legacy of the force about Nine years after the Battle of Exegol.
01:05:16
Speaker
And the Republic exists as technically a galactic government. But we basically made it the original 13 colonies before the actual constitution was made.
01:05:32
Speaker
So it's basically an articles of confederation to where it has a very weak central power. And there's a lot more power given to the individual planets that make up the place.
01:05:45
Speaker
So much. this is And there are plenty that decided not to, to join with this. Yes. And people can just not join. yeah Just as an aside, you said original 13 colonies and I'm in such a science fiction head since we're talking about, um, Star Trek or Star Wars that I immediately thought Battlestar Galactica. Oh yeah.
01:06:08
Speaker
But yes, but basically this, The Senate is basically, people there's sectors, and then there's, course, the clusters in the sectors. So there's one senator, but also one representative.
01:06:24
Speaker
And sometimes the representative the person who ran against the senator, so there's two competing voices for the same place around there. And there's, of course, a chancellor,
01:06:36
Speaker
and kind of going off what Daryl said about Rey and the Fractured Republic, in our version, Rey didn't train anybody. She really did go, going to be the last Jedi, and just go off on her own and say, I'm not training anybody.
01:06:55
Speaker
And I'm not even a Jedi. I'm just a person. No order, no plan, which, in this case, Finn felt yeah as...
01:07:06
Speaker
Kind had their own fracture, but more of okay fracture. Yes. To where Finn took his ideology to be they have to protect the Republic and instead created a, we call it a Jedi, it's basically a force order that basically answers to the Chancellor. They're the Chancellor's Guard and they are just force users with lightsabers that fight for the Republic.
01:07:35
Speaker
more as a military unit rather than a philosophical force society. yeah It's meant to reflect that, yes, this is sort of a new schism, but it's also to reflect an idea of like where the galaxy would be thinking in a post, oh, wow, not just, yeah like, this is where the full galaxy goes.
01:07:59
Speaker
ah no Probably wasn't just an evil god old guy. He was a dark wizard who basically could destroy everything. And in our session, the Empire and First Order have basically been reduced to nothing.
01:08:18
Speaker
they ah The New Republic doesn't even consider them ah military anymore. They're more just kind of on the same range of pirates. That's as best they can get. new systems But in that way that they've kind of push them off to the side gives certain other people opportunities which we spend power up here is a vacuum and yes we're not going to spoil anything since said player is right here yeah but things are deaf and without spoiling you could definitely see that we are taking things in a very unique perspective in relation to how the threat is yeah And in the opening, we kind of did what the High Republic is doing. We had them start as navigators and mappers because the New Republic was like, you know, for once we have peace.
01:09:18
Speaker
Let's go back to mapping the Unrund regions again. Well, and similarly, you know we mentioned my Raiders of the Lost Jedi campaign a little earlier.
01:09:32
Speaker
i was... crazily on a lot of the same pages that Chris and Phil were years before they started working on Fractured Republic. But I was about 150 years after the sequels.
01:09:48
Speaker
there was a There was not a Republic. There was a Galactic Alliance. And it was smaller than the Republic. And just like they had...
01:10:01
Speaker
ah with theirs and you have with yours. Worlds and sectors could join or not join if they didn't want to. The big difference between both the Fractured Republic setting and yours is there was a recognized area of space that I called the Imperial Commonwealth, that it was the people who wanted the publicly stated ideals of the empire with with without all of the you fascism and dictatorship.
01:10:42
Speaker
Impression, slavery, death weapons. And I pulled in elements from legends. ah I pulled in the Imperial Knights from the Star Wars Legacy comic.
01:10:57
Speaker
yeah so the part why That's why I named it Clip Point, Point Sequel, and Legacy, because in Legends, they went as far as 130 years post the Battle of Yavin. and But both are like, and currently, Star Wars, especially starting next year, willll be where we're getting ah our we've started to get our first couple books post- post-episode 9, and we're going to get our first movie post-episode 9 next year with Starfighter.
01:11:29
Speaker
And what I was doing in the setting in Raiders of the Lost Jedi is it had kind of a Star Trek-y feel in that they were they were doing exploration-type things, but the players could be
Future Campaigns: Post-Sequel Exploration
01:11:49
Speaker
Jedi. The players could be ah you know they were hired by that university to go out on this. So there was archeologist and there was a i don't remember. It was a hired gun, a bounty hunter. There was, there was there was a shooty protector type guy because you're going to run into problems ah because they're looking for Jedi and force related things. There was,
01:12:17
Speaker
two or three Jedi on the team, but they were all flavored differently. And I was also able to then use that to, since given the goal of what they were looking for, i was able to pull things from canon and legends that had maybe been referenced or mentioned. Like they, in the second session, they ran into the mirror talisman,
01:12:47
Speaker
From the comics. And know what? It attached itself to one of the Jedi and she liked it. She kept it.
01:12:58
Speaker
She kept the talisman. So i mean there was constantly a a con an internal conflict for her for the talisman because i had statted everything out all the consequences of it um there were consequences to her keeping it and they continued with every session uh had episode nine come out before the campaign sputtered out because it faced the big bad of scheduling
01:13:33
Speaker
I would have had them find Luke and Leia's sabers on Tatooine. Oh, that would have been sick, yeah. Let me dig this random patch of sand. What is this? Well, no, it would have been a four, six. I know, I'm just one of the One of their two quest givers, and this is before Ahsoka, one of the two quest givers, for want of a better term, who would send them out on their assignments was HuYang.
01:13:59
Speaker
Oh, great choice. And he was working, since David Tennant a voiced Hu Yang, he was working with a professor at the university, Professor professor Medig Ciethry, who, and this is before Rebels got to this point, I cast Tom Baker as Professor Medig Ciethry, which, I don't remember what language I used, Medig Ciethry translates to Doctor Four.
01:14:31
Speaker
since he was the fourth Doctor. Nice. Yes, but we're saying sequels and legacy give you a good starting point with their end point, and you can basically go from there, make what you will, but you at least have a structure.
01:14:49
Speaker
it allows you to work with the most of the universe, yeah but also gives you the freedom of going forward. Yeah, you could do the Fractual Republic, you could do something like Legacy of the Force,
01:15:01
Speaker
You could do a whole Star Wars Call of Cthulhu type of thing and bring in Abeloff. You could do whatever you want. yeah Basically, one of the only that i you're not limited because there's nothing yet that has stopped it.
Altering Star Wars Canon for RPGs
01:15:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I was about to say. One of the things I like about working with a time frame after the movies is for those who are even remotely concerned about this kind of thing,
01:15:31
Speaker
you don't have to worry about stepping on the cannon. You can be the big damn heroes, because guess what? There are no big damn heroes for this story.
01:15:44
Speaker
It's your yeah story. Exactly. Speaking of cannons, let's get our big old sledgehammers out, because it's time to break it.
01:15:56
Speaker
Yes. Now this is where... This may sound paradoxical, but like sometimes canon and this might, this will defend every single Star Wars fan out there, but sometimes canon just doesn't work for your story.
01:16:15
Speaker
Not with what you want to go with. Maybe, maybe the Empire does blow up Yavin 4 before Luke can get to it. Maybe during the Clone Wars, Dooku starts believing his own hype and stops working with Sidious and just runs the Confederacy like a legitimate opposition government.
01:16:36
Speaker
Maybe your Starship gets it's caught in a black hole and time dilated to a different era. yeah And then you spend eight years on a space station. or that's Cannon breaking is definitely what would seem like the least likely option, but it's it is an option worth exploring.
01:17:04
Speaker
Some video games have gone into that canon breaking. It's like, what if if the Force Unleashed? What if Starkiller does kill Vader and becomes Palpatine's new apprentice?
01:17:17
Speaker
What if we got a Force Unleashed 3? So, here here's the thing about about breaking canon, and it's just a general caveat in that if you're playing in an existing licensed setting like Star Wars, there's usually a reason why.
01:17:39
Speaker
um Because you like the setting in the stories. So when you break the canon, you have to be careful not to also break the setting. Yes. that's You have to be careful not to break it in a way that removes the thing that makes it Star Wars.
01:18:00
Speaker
Yes, you can break the timeline or the chronology, but you probably shouldn't break the established rules of the setting.
01:18:11
Speaker
Yeah. There are, like, that's a, again, it's a, it definitely wouldn't be my first pick. If I had the to scale my bullet points and what we discussed from easiest to the most difficult,
01:18:27
Speaker
breaking established parts of timeline and even some bending some rules of the can of of the setting requires you to know the setting enough to be like, okay, I'm going to bend and break here, but here's where I can't, can't move. Now, here there are ways to go about it.
01:18:50
Speaker
Probably the best way is what we've already been talking about, what if. and taking an existing branch point. And Star Wars itself did that back in the Legends continuity with their Infinities comics through Dark Horse. And by virtue of that, while it was never branded Infinities, the Star Wars Tales come anthology comic that they released, it was all pretty much non-canon
01:19:23
Speaker
Infinities stuff. There's some things like that they just wanted to do, but they never said, like, this could be, and some of it isn't.
01:19:35
Speaker
theres There's another way to go about that, too. And you can look at official Star Wars material for inspiration. Look at the three seasons so far, and hopefully counting, of Visions.
01:19:52
Speaker
Yes. reimaginineed A lot of those are very clearly not none yeah not the main timeline. But they take all feels.
01:20:04
Speaker
They take what they want and recontextize. It's or better even also the Lego Star Wars specials. Yes. The fun ones.
01:20:18
Speaker
In a similar vein, take... the parts, the pieces of what we love about Star Wars and mixes it up. It's still Star Wars. It fundamentally still has the feel of Star Wars.
01:20:35
Speaker
But it's not your average Star War. Yeah, like radical change and canon breaking is, YouTube mentioned it earlier, my idea for taking a Clone Wars campaign And having the Yuuzhan Vong invade.
01:20:54
Speaker
Which, i see I really want to play that, but now anytime I i announce a Clone Wars campaign, because I i would pull a bait and switch. Obviously.
01:21:06
Speaker
I make no pretense about that. I would pull a bait and switch, I would float a Clone Wars campaign, I would say up front, hey, events may happen that diverge from the Star Wars canon.
01:21:25
Speaker
ah So be prepared just in case that happens. I would run pretty standard Clone Wars stuff for the first few sessions and then slowly start peppering in the Vong invasion.
01:21:38
Speaker
Now, I can't run it for you all of you guys because if I announce a co Clone Wars campaign, you're going to be waiting for it. We promise to be surprised. It's too late.
01:21:51
Speaker
a good surprise... like And this would be good for like another episode, but a good surprise and twist doesn't mean you don't know there's a twist.
01:22:03
Speaker
It's all in... it's all It's just like a joke. It's all in the setup. yes I mean, like nick Nick, M. Night Shyamalan has made an entire career out of movies that you say, oh, it's a Shyamalan. There's a twist.
01:22:19
Speaker
Exactly! heck, in our Legacy of the Force campaign, we had that kind of twist, and you, Daryl, said, okay, either this is going to happen or this is going to happen. But you still like that it happened.
01:22:31
Speaker
and it's not it's not the again like that I feel that could be a whole episode it's on about twists. but it's like Yeah, when or when not to. It's all in the buildup. It's ideas sheet nick move on it's all on the buildup.
01:22:48
Speaker
But Daryl, can you get M. Night Shyamalan? No. would you Okay, you know what? I like most of his catalogs. Would you want M. Night Shyamalan Star Wars?
01:23:02
Speaker
I meant more as a consultant on twists. Not on Star Wars. What is the one time that he has worked on a licensed IP? Don't mention or touch my avatar.
01:23:18
Speaker
So, you know, just saying. There was one good thing that came out of that movie. That's it.
01:23:25
Speaker
I'm just saying. But, yeah, you... it's fun. There's there's also, it doesn't even necessarily have to be a radical change.
01:23:37
Speaker
I was talking about this ah the last time I was on me and Steve talk RPGs um in the first star Wars campaign that I was ever part of.
01:23:49
Speaker
And several of us GMed. I had that same thought that we were talking about, you know, our players or our characters aren't going to be the ones to bring down the empire.
01:24:03
Speaker
But for the game, for some of the games that I run, how can i give them big grand star Wars level victories?
Enhancing Campaigns with New Factions
01:24:18
Speaker
And for i partly i came up with a large-scale weapon that the Empire was using. So there's your standard Rebels versus Empire. Here's something big that we can ultimately take out.
01:24:34
Speaker
But I also introduced a new faction in the galaxy. I totally ripped off some ideas from jims start and the name from Jim Starlin's Dreadstar comic in that I introduced the Holy Church of the Instrumentality.
01:24:54
Speaker
ah yeah. You mentioned They were a religion that they weren't quite Yuzhan Vong level about it. They did not mind technology.
01:25:06
Speaker
but they felt that artificial intelligence, like droids and such, were an affront to the Force because they mimic life.
01:25:18
Speaker
And their leader was a Force-sensitive who was also the the primary figure traditionally the primary figure their religion And he ba they had a pretty large segment of space that they basically said, hey, Republic, or Empire in this case, you do your thing.
01:25:44
Speaker
We're going to stay over here. We're going to do our thing. But he was basically sitting back, watching the Galactic Civil War and waiting for it to end,
01:25:59
Speaker
knowing that whoever wins and takes charge, be it the rebellion restoring the Republic or be it the Empire, their resources are going to be stretched thin by this civil war.
01:26:13
Speaker
They're going to be tired. They're going to have depleted resources. And that's when we start our crusade. Mm-hmm. And so there would occasionally be sessions where they were fighting against things with the Holy Church of the Instrumentality.
01:26:36
Speaker
So you can create it and it doesn't have to be that specific kind of faction. You can create a large, powerful faction that's sitting out there in the galaxy, biding its time to take over. You can set it in continuity.
01:26:55
Speaker
go ahead, Nick. Take it from the Empire at War games, the Zahn Consortium. Massive criminal under... the work Yeah, you... It was a militaristic one.
01:27:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. and And pizza. And pizza delivery. And pizza. And pizza delivery.
01:27:15
Speaker
No timers. But yeah, you can you can make that change and break canon without breaking canon, if that makes sense.
01:27:28
Speaker
Again, it usually relies on... And again, if I had to scale these talking points, it usually it's that old rule of thumb.
01:27:39
Speaker
If you're going to break rules, you've got to know the rules. yes one and We're not going to tell you what to run. yeah right We would recommend not starting your first ever campaign with a canon breaking setting.
01:27:55
Speaker
As we've been talking about all of these different categories, I've noticed something. hope Most successful games that make Star Wars their own pepper in a little bit from more than one of these categories. Very true. yeah Like what I was just talking about with the instrumentality.
01:28:21
Speaker
It's a little bit of radical change, canon breaking, and it's a lot of certain point of view. yeah are it's like It's like one part cut one part breaking canon to two parts certain point of view.
01:28:37
Speaker
Going back to it. And Robert, it's one part sort of legacy and sequel, but also a good halfway bit of lessons.
01:28:49
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, mix and match what works for your table. But remember, too, all at the same time, kind of like I was touching on just a bit ago, you're playing Star Wars for a reason.
01:29:04
Speaker
it's you You're playing Star Wars as opposed to Twilight Imperium or Dune or what have you for reason.
01:29:15
Speaker
And likely that's what your players are there for as well. They're looking for a Star Wars, be it either just it's familiar to them or they want something more grounded in the Star Wars universe.
Conclusion and Community Engagement
01:29:30
Speaker
Either way, yeah it should if you're if they're coming for your table for a Star Wars game, always remember that you got to put that in the forefront of what the Star Wars means to you and more specifically, what your players are coming for.
01:29:48
Speaker
oh I just had another idea of cannon breaking Nick. Remember when Dark Horse published that comic based on Lucas's original script, the Star Wars?
01:30:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that too. That was cool. You could set it in that. Yeah. Which is a whole different beast. What saying is the joy of Star Wars is that it is so big, so comprehensive with everyone just contributing to it that there is no end to what you can do in it.
01:30:23
Speaker
You know what else you can do in Star Wars? You can create a species of anthropmbo anthropomorphic... Squirrel! Squirrel!
01:30:35
Speaker
They have already made anthropomorphic teddy bears. And anthropomorphic rabbits. And hamsters. Uh-huh. And weasels.
01:30:46
Speaker
So... No, that's not far off. Huh. no that imagine I'd imagine that that any reasonable... so probably did They'd probably be evil. they didn't I could imagine the Sith would have... No, they they would be unbeatable, Nick.
01:31:02
Speaker
They would be unbeatable because Marvel has shown us this. the The squirrel will come in and then... Finish him! You no there might be one already.
01:31:15
Speaker
na that oh what what There's something called a Chikari that is basically it' almost a fictional, sapient, squirrel-like alien species. oh Let's see.
01:31:34
Speaker
It's C-H-I-K-A-R-R-I. And they're on Wikipedia. Hang on. Spell that for me again. C-H-I-K-A-R-I. k a R-R-I.
01:31:49
Speaker
Thank you. my My browser was not wanting to cooperate at first and take any typing. In fact, this is one of their character concepts. No, no, no, no, no.
01:32:01
Speaker
I see. Oh, no, no. Do not want. Hey, Nick, can I play that species in our next Star Wars game? Do not want.
01:32:14
Speaker
Do not want. What, you don't i want him? i name's Placo. Robert, I i will stat those out as a playable species.
01:32:27
Speaker
You're the best, Daryl. Just remind me. i ah well I think we have sufficiently traumatized Nick. Star Wars has traumatized Nick.
01:32:40
Speaker
Star Wars has betrayed me! Again! butre like a millionth time! I guess it's time now, sin before Nick loses the capacity to speak for his portion of this, for me to say, head over to HowWeRollGaming.com, your central hub for everything How We Roll Gaming. You'll find details on our current campaigns, our full podcast archive, plus quick links to our merch store and all our social channels so you can stay connected wherever you hang out online. Wait, that's a game, Placo? No! No! And if you're looking to support the show directly, the best way is through Patreon at patreon.com slash howwerollgaming.
01:33:20
Speaker
We've got membership steers starting at just $2 a month with perks ranging from special recognition in our Discord community to on-air credits and exclusive discounts in the merch store. And while you're supporting us, you can help also help the show at no extra cost by using our DriveThru RPG affiliate link when picking up your next tabletop goodies.
01:33:41
Speaker
And finally... We want to hear from you who got questions you want to tackle. Like, why? why and Please, why Topics you'd love to see ah on the show or a legendary RPG glory story we're on this show. Drop us line at any time at podcasts at howwerollgaming.com. We read everything.
01:34:06
Speaker
might just end up in the show. We'll make priorities for any J'Kari stories. Yes, I was about to say, you know if you are a particular fan of the Chikari, please let us know so that we can read that that email on the air.
01:34:25
Speaker
But remember, the galaxy doesn't need another Luke Skywalker. It needs your characters, especially if they're Chikari. So until next time, I'm Daryl.
01:34:39
Speaker
I'm in pain, and also Nick. And I'm Robert. And this is How We Roll. This episode of the How We Roll Gaming podcast is copyright 2026, How We Roll Gaming, LLC.
01:34:56
Speaker
All games and associated intellectual properties are copyright their respective owners, and How We Roll Gaming makes no claim of ownership by discussing them here.