Official Characters

[laztheinfamous]

I'm sure that it has probably been used before now, but forgive the neophyte. Star Wars is a very different game then most other RPGs. First off, there is very little explaining what something is, because of the movies, and that my friends brings me to the very point I came here for. When to use the movie characters or other EU characters?

I like to use them as flavor. Just like pepper, a little bit goes a long way to making it Star Warsy enough. The occasional mission debrief from General Madine or Sabacc game with Lando. However, I will not use them as opponents. In my experience either the PCs crap their pants at having to fight Bobba Fett, or try to kill Darth Vader (and are fairly successful, as PCs often are).

How do you use official characters.

[CRMcNeill]

[Mythosaur]

I have used characters from the movies for flavor, and really it was just for flavor. Never really had the NPcharacters be aggressive or put the PC's against the wall with them.

I'm not opposed to using movie characters as opponents, just I haven't done so up to this point. Personally, I suspect PC's would enjoy the challenge. Though in the end, a GM could do whatever they want. C's winning could be an ambush. The NPC was only a Force hallucination, or even a shape changing alien that was masquerading as the movie character.

For that matter, maybe the GM intentionally set up Jar Jar Binks to get in a fight so that the PC's could take Jar Jar out of their star wars universe.

[Whill]

I love using character form the movies. No, they are not enemies. Sometimes they are background and their appearance only means something to the players not the PCs. Sometimes there is PC interaction and sometimes it is even important to the scene, adventure or campaign.

But you don't want to overdo it or then it become the cliche I refer to as "The Young Indiana Jones Syndrome" because in all of his adventures he just happened to encounter several famous historical figures per episode, and it often strained credulity even for the historical fiction genre.

There is already a good amount of chance encounters or near-encounters in the movie saga. R2 just happens to get sold by the Jawas to the son and brother of former masters. Yoda and Chewbaca were pals and then Obi-Wan runs into Chewbacca in the cantina. Obi-Wan meets Boba Fett and battles his father, then years later Obi-Wan almost runs into Boba Fett in his father's armor at Docking Bay 94.
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[Hellcat]

I try to stay away from the main movie characters in my games. With EU characters it depends. In the PbP I'm running here I've only used a few EU characters so far, three of them were as little as possible. One I've used a bit more heavily. The basics is that most of my games run concurrent to the events that happened but the PCs events would be on the outer edges of the events. That is to say in most of the adventures if I were to run an adventure taking place during the Battle of Yavin then the PCs would not take part in the battle so they'd have no effect on it but they would be taking part in a mission for the Alliance deemed important at the same time so that they would end up getting news of the battle. That way well know characters don't have their personalities changed by me.

But things are a little different in my book when your dealing with a certain point in the characters past that hasn't really been discussed. Their personality may have been a little different father back in their past so it's less who they are at the time folks really know of them.
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[Ankhanu]

Other than perhaps a name drop, I've never used the movie characters.

Well, that's not entirely true, my original gaming group dealt with Jabba once... my character lost his toes as a torture in that event

When to use them really depends on the type of game you want to portray, but I really think they should be used quite sparingly, if at all. They are powerful beings, and if there should be an "encounter", it should leave the PCs pretty shaken and at the point that they would reconsider encountering them again. They're a plot device, generally, and best used as such.
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[vong]

i love dropping names, but for the most part dont like using them unless i know my group very well.

One of 3 things can happen:
1. they dont get it, and your all let down with your Kyp Durron name drop
2. They get it, but want to "change the course of history" and just start shooting at him.
3. they get it, and like it!

so 1/3 aint bad, but not great if you know your group you can drop more names down, or less depending on the group!
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[garhkal]

[Hellcat]

[Fallon Kell]