Star Wars Wednesday - Rebel Eras

This week, the longest Star Wars Rebels clip yet appeared on Disney XP...XD (yeah, I think I'm going to make that typo regularly). Fortunately, it is also online for those of us who got distracted doing something else at the time. It is said that the show will cover the beginnings of the Rebellion, or something to that effect. Having written the Rebellion history section in FFG's Age of Rebellion and Wizard of the Coasts' Rebellion Era Sourcebook, I'll be watching with interest to see how things go this time around. 

First, for those who haven't seen the clip, it is well worth any fan's time to watch. Also, something like this would never happen in an RPG scenario. Nope. Not at all....um, ok...maybe.

 

So writing a history of the Rebellion, Galaxy and more requires a bit of research. This officially falls into Legends now days, so anything goes from here on out. Anyway, I needed a few books for reference on Age of Rebellion...

Obviously, some of these were more useful than others, but each played at least a small role. Some confirmed what came before, others brought new info and tales to be inserted or otherwise referred to along the way. They also confirmed that my desk can hold a rather ridiculous number of oversized Star Wars books without dumping them on my feet. And people thought I wouldn't use my drafting desk for anything in a computer age*... Well, what you don't see is the other, smaller drafting desk holding a bunch of stuff that should be on this desk, or on a shelf, or in a closet, in the dishwasher, or just about anywhere else but that desk. My office gets out of hand quickly during projects, and isn't much better in between. 

Of course, when I do clean up and attempt to rearrange, I do run across some interesting items, such as: 

 

Anyway, piecing together the continuity jigsaw puzzle is always entertaining as well as a challenge. Fitting Starkiller's events from Force Unleashed into the early Rebellion history established by the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook and later sources was a challenge on the Rebellion Era Campaign Guide. Balancing the details with the word count is also important and not easy. Anything that still seems hazy or I'm unsure about the correct direction, I'll note up in detail with the source material (or calling out new material on rare occasion) when I turn over the manuscript. From there it's on to the editors and Lucasfilm. I usually don't know the outcome until I'm holding the book in hand. With the new Legends direction, it will be interesting to see how that impacts future work.

I tend to not comment on too much behind the scenes work, but John Jackson Miller had a great interview recently that talks a bit about his experience with the current process. For a past look, Jason Fry is up to the 10th of the 12 starwars.com blog posts about The Essential Guide to Warfare. 

Also this week, FFG received a nice link on the main starwars.com page. Here's the link to the acutal blog post, which includes a bit about Far Horizons, as well as other upcoming products. 

Well, the storm has returned, so time to wrap this up. One final comment, for those following #RPGaDay, you can find my entries on twitter and g+

 

*I actually do draw on it. It now occurs to me that I there is a non-Star Wars post I need to follow up with eventually.