I am hoping the Core Rules will contain some stated "know them, love them characters" such as Han Solo, Darth Vader, The Emperor and maybe a few other names.

The reason being is once we get a "sense" of a few of these characters, we can really tackle a lot of the EU characters for home-brewing, until they may or may not be released later on.  Think Fantasy Flight will be including these guys in the core rules or do you think they may be taken care of in a supplement?

The How the Grrth Stole Life Day module includes stats for Watto, Dr Evazan, Ponda Baba and even Boba Fett. It is available from threat-detected.com.

Garrett

Azai said:

Well…… Han Solo and Cewbacca both are on the front cover of the book, so…… Yeah. It's a safe bet that all New Hope people will probably be in the book. And forget homebrew, I hope there will be EU characters in the corebook itself. We're already seeing EU characters in the X-wing mini's game like Tycho Celchu (A-Wing) and Soontir Fel (TIE Interceptor), plus there is that picture of Mara Jade at the beginning of Ch.8 The Force in the BETA book, so hopefully FFG gave some love to the EU for the rest of us.

Azai said:

I doubt we'll be seeing the likes of Vader or the Emperor until "Force & Destiny" hits shelves around in 2015.

Personally, I'd prefer that "official stats" for any characters be relagated to a supplement rather than take up room in the corebook (kind of like how WEG did it back in the day).

Locrious said:

I think it unlikely that we will see any canon characters in the book that fall out side the themes of 'Edge of the Empire', so its safe to assume that they will include Captain Solo, Chewbacca, IG-88, Boba Fett, and so on. Until say 'Force and Destiny' I think the current set of generic statistics for an Emperor's hand will have to suffice for Mara Jade.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I agree. An FFG version of WEG's Original Trilogy Sourcebook, including char-gen stats for the new species contained within, sounds like an easy sell to me.

None of the canon characters were given stats in the beta, at least, and if they were going to include them at all, I'd have  thought that that would have been the time to playtest them to make sure they fit what the characters should be capable of doing.

Personally, I hope they aren't in the corebook. There are more important things to include, and I personally don't plan on having Han Solo turn up to overshadow the players just by being there.

Lesson I've learned from gaming… if you give it stats then players will try to either fight it or show how much more "badass" they are than it. Vader was a huge threat to any party as I never used any of the stats. Same with characters like Elminster (Forgotten Realms) or the Dragon Kings (Dark Sun). That way they are always a threat just by showing up.

The reason I want the stats as a baseline is I want my player to realistically go toe-to-toe with the big guys if they so desire. As much as I love the canon people, I like to have a "real" world where "story" doesn't protect known characters. They are just meat-bags like everyone else. 

Also if I design a nemesis character that is challenging I want to know how they match up to the offical stats of the named guys, to make sure I don't accidently overshadow or undershadow what I am designing.  Though then again I can just do a lot of research and create the characters on my own, but that is just so time consuming ;)

From a GM point of view I'm always a fan of having characters like that in the book as it gives you a good template to work with when building your own npcs. I can look at how Han Solo has been constructed and see how the rules have been used to capture his archetype and personality….even if they fall short it gives me a better idea of how to get closer or what is possible.


I can't think of an occassion where I've ever needed to use a 'famous' character's stats in a campaign but they definitily help me and lots of other GM's with crafting adventures/npcs. In fact, the only time I've used them is as playtest characters, I'll try out an encounter with a group of roughly levelled 'canon' npcs and see how it runs. As they tend to be fairly conservatively optimised (but closer to player ability than your usual npcs) they are perfect for this.

Well, here's a thought as far as stats for the "canon characters" go…

Web Enhancement.

Green Ronin did this with a couple characters from Dragon Age 2 (Tallis and Varric), offering DA RPG stat blocks for them at 1st level, 5th level, and 10th level.  Granted, the Varric one you had to pay for, but it also included expanded crafting rules for the DA RPG.  Plus, you know, Felicia Day as an elf :D

But back to my point.  As a Web Enhancement, the stats are there for those folks that want them, either as guidelines for players on how to mold their PCs in a similar direction, or for GMs that want an NPC of a similar level of abilitiy or background.

One possible issue with doing canon characters is that EotE is only the first book in the line, and two of the Original Trilogy's iconic heroes, Leia and Luke, are better suited to Age of Rebellion and Force & Destiny respectively, where Han and Chewie are the poster boys for Edge of the Empire.  Leia has very litle in the way of Fringe or Outer Rim elements to her character, and while Luke was raised on Tatooine, he soon becomes the focal point of the rebirth of the Jedi Order in the galaxy as the first of a new generation of Jedi Knights.

 Luke Skywalker could easily be stated up as a force sensitive colonist.

I agree that Luke and Leia may be a bit out of place. (Well, Luke could probably exist as he was in A new hope)

But to work with this setting we have people like : Han, Chewie, Lando, Boba Fett, Dengar, Bossk, Jabba the Hutt, Greedo, IG-88.  Lots of fringer and other elements we have that could be stated.

But essentially the goal is to just get a guideline to be able to mold our own npcs that line up with the canons, and since I actually want my players to be able to interact with canon characters to get their stats too.  Though this is really to save time, because I could just wing it and create themself and then just adjust it when their stats come out.

Well, the Core book is going to be almost 450 Pages. The beta was a LOT smaller than that. The Beta had no background data on purpose. They were only concerned with the game rules for testing purposes. That said, the additional pages will most like be made of background info and perhaps a bit more Gamemaster stuff.

The description says "Extensive background information on the Star Wars universe, its systems, laws, and criminal organizations." I would almost guarantee this will include famous characters. It would probably be a safe bet they might only carry characters that have to do with the current book… Han Solo, Boba Fett, IG-88, Lando… etc. I mean having Yoda (for example) seems to be impossible until they put out the force book.

With any presentation of canon stats, I hope to see the return of Voren Na'al and Arhul Hexotrophan for one.

Genghis12 said:

As much as I'd love to see that kind of nod to the old WEG days, I doubt it'll happen.  There's almost a feeling that FFG is trying to keep a respectable distance between themselves and the EU, at least for the moment.  And while LucasFilm may pretty much own those characters, they've not been seen since WEG days for the most part (I could be wrong, as for the most part I don't keep strict track of what's going on in the EU these days), and so FFG may be reluctant to make use of another company's property, particularly when they could just create their own historian character(s).

Once there's a firmer idea of how much of the post-RotJ EU is going to be jettisoned by the new movies, we'll probably see FFG dipping a bit more freely into the existing EU lore once there's a clearer picture of what's going to be "safe" and what's not.  For all we know, the new movies will put things like Shadows of the Empire (one of LucasFilms' earlier multimedia tie-in events) into the non-canon category.  Or a Ghtroc-720 will show up on screen and look nothing like the flying space turtle that a lot of SW gamers have come to know and love (or loathe) over the years.