As expected, Star Wars Celebration Europe held the biggest Star Wars news of the convention season. There were plenty of previews and interviews. My twitter feed basically exploded with live tweets and summaries from a variety of sources. I didn't make the trip, but thanks to the magic of the internet, I could see some of the best parts and get the news as it happened. I'm not covering all of that here - there are other sites that do that far better - but I'll share a bit about what I'm looking forward to...
First up, the news that John Williams will be doing the music for Episode VII was great news. I've listened to the Star Wars soundtracks even more than watching the movies. There isn't a Star Wars project that I've worked on where I didn't have one or more of the soundtracks running for at least a short time. After Star Wars first came out, in the pre-video days, the soundtrack was one of the few things you could actually own and replay. My dad got the double album, which had a few great photos inside. Some came with a poster, but his printing didn't. I remember rereading the liner notes a ton, while the music was playing. I can still pick out scenes from just the music. Here's the video on the official site.
Next was the first looks at the new animated series, Rebels. Dave Filoni is back to lead the project, which is great news. The look of the series is to be inspired by Ralph McQuarrie's concept art, which will also be great fun. Like many fans, I've always liked the look of his art and now some of that will be live on screen. Well, animated or make that well animated. Rebels is between Episodes III and IV and I expect the storylines to be useful for the RPG as well.
There were, of course, a lot more panels and so on. A fair number of them are on the official blog.
You can get some of the Celebration merchandise online here, including the cool new Star Wars Rebels logo shirt (already ordered mine). I was tempted to get the speederbike autobahn, which also looked cool. BTW, the next Celebration is in Anaheim, April 2014, right across the street from Disneyland. I expect future Celeberations to be in Anaheim or Orlando, near the parks, now that Disney owns Lucasfilm and will be adding attractions, etc.
Also, I've started receiving some questions about how to GM Star Wars. Thanks to those who have forwarded questions. I'll be posting about that in the future, possibly next week, depending on how things work out.
And one last thing. For those in the KC area, the KC Game Fair started a kickstarter to help fund this year's event in November 2013. Check it out if you're interested.