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Chess

2021-02-28T15:00:05Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:BD4E:3A95:12FF:4067:

:''"They say it's the game of kings. That chess teaches one to think strategically. What a load of rubbish! Both sides have identical pieces, the rules stay invariably the same. How does this mirror real life?"''
[[Image:Chessblackarmy.jpg|thumb|Chess, yes it IS this exciting.]]
:--Radovid, on why chess completely fucking fails as a wargame.

The most famous tabletop game in all of human history. According to /tg/, '''chess''' is just a cheap western knockoff of the ancient Chinese game of <strike>[[go]]</strike> ''Wei Qi'' despite the game being invented in India during the 7th century. The game was altered and refined until the late 15th century, which gave rise to the ''Chess'' version used to this day.

Despite its rampant popularity and how it is associated with geniuses, it is obvious it fails in every way to simulate war, tactics, combat or anything else it has been hyped over for centuries about. Common complaints include the lack of army list and deployment options, the Knight's plain weird movement and the fact that the King is both the most important piece and completely useless (though that could just be a political statement).

Being one of the, if not the, most popular games without a luck component (rivaled only by [[Go]]), Chess has been the center of most AI player research. While Chess has not been solved, and likely won’t for some time, chess AI is good enough that even weak machines (a phone from 2009!) can make top level players work for their victory, and champions have been beaten by top of the line AI.

==Rules==
;Basic rules
* Two players play this game.
* [[Image:Checkmate.png|thumb|<del>[[Just as planned]]</del>. [[Derp|That's not even a legal move!]]]]The players' goal is to <strike>kill the King of the opponent</strike> put the opposition King in a situation that would result in his death next turn, without a way to escape. This is called a checkmate; the Persian "Shāh Māt" literally means "The king is dead" with some changes in Arabic. If the king is threatened, we call it check and - because of the Brutality Rule (below) (and because you would immediately lose after it) - you cannot allow him to be killed. You have to:
** move the King away,
** get a piece of your own between the King and the piece threatening to provide cover or
** capture the attacker piece.
*If you can't do any of these, the death of the King is inevitable; you lose.
* If a King is dead, his troops will surrender IMMEDIATELY. If you expose your king but you can kill the enemy king in the next move (such as by placing your own king within striking range of the enemy one), you still lose (and thus, are not allowed to expose him in the first place, because of the Rule of Brutality).
* You can also lose when you resign, or if you run out of time (on a timed game, usually professional games). If neither player has enough resources to kill the enemy King, or if both players agree to this, the game ends in a tie. Stalemate also ends the game in a tie, look below.
* The game doesn't encourage passive play, if the same position is repeated three times or if 50 turns pass without moving a pawn or killing anyone, there is no progress made and both players are allowed (not forced) to claim a tie.

;The arena
The battlefield is an 8 by 8 board, the columns (files) marked with letters, the rows (ranks) with numbers so that the squares can be referenced easily (with [[Main Page|d4]] or similarly). The board is checkered, h1 is white.

The game is played in turns, one turn is the period of time between (for example) before white's move to after black's next move.

;Brutality rule
Even pre-teen kids play this game, so no actual killing is ever shown. The game ends if a king is threatened with inevitable "capture". So, it's against the rules to expose your king (for example, by moving a piece previously granting cover to the king (think of it as if the piece was pinned down) or moving the king to a threatened square) because the opponent could kill the king. (These moves would only be good for losing anyway.) Also, when killing any other pieces, it's officially called capturing them.
However, throughout history, and in military philosophy, it is generally considered that if one can get their opponent to surrender and said opponent can't gain anything from surrendering beyond what the winner sees fit, that is better and more productive than a fight, which is risky and whose resources could be better spent elsewhere. Today is the logic behind military cyber attacks followed up by an email, for example, letting opponents know their system has been compromised.

;Combat system
In this game, initiative is key because there ''aren't'' tons of hit points granted for every piece. If your piece attacks first, even a pawn can kill the enemy queen, because everyone has only a single wound. Everyone is always surprised (apparently they don't really want to fight and are forced to by the king) so if it's your turn, you can capture any piece you threaten. You can't attack pieces through cover (except with the Knight). You can't move without attacking (except with the pawn) but you can attack empty squares too (again, except with the pawn). If you attack either an empty square or an enemy piece, you'll win the fight and you must move the attacking piece to the attacked square. This move is compulsory, you cannot decide not to. You can't attack your own piece, even when they provide cover for the enemy, we aren't [[skaven|savages]] here. Quite easy and streamlined, eh? Guess it reminds you of [[4e|something]]...

=== The Pieces ===
[[Image:Chessmechs.jpg|center|640px]]
Unlike similar games, you don't get to assemble your battleforce. It is probably because the field is rather small (40' by 40'), and both players have 16 pieces. So the starting force is the same for both players (an approximately 38-point army).

'''King:''' {BOSS} <big>♔ ♚</big> One of the weakest individual pieces, he is on the battlefield to give the army a morale bonus to fight indefinitely. If one interprets each turn as perpetual fighting and movement, they drug their troops. But in the context of classical warfare, the turn might represent an entire year, where warfare meant a lot of standing around waiting and little bursts of conflict. He can attack all the squares around him like any basic D&D characters. He isn't worth any points but you must field one to play, and he is subject to the Brutality rule as outlined above.

'''Rook:''' {TRUKK} <big>♖ ♜</big> You have two of these powerful pieces. They are basically castles with cannons on them so they can attack everything in the row and column they are on(but watch out, Cover rules apply for them too). Just like everyone else, they can only attack once per turn. Funnily enough, they too have to move to the square they attacked. Capable of "Castling," a complex maneuver outlined below. They are said to be worth 5 points.

'''Bishop:''' {MEKBOYZ} <big>♗ ♝</big> People will tell you that they have similar powers to the Rook. Don't believe them! Basically, they can do everything the Rook can, but only diagonally, which means that half of the battlefield is simply as unreachable as another continent. This is why you get two of them, one for the white squares, and another for the black. Due to this limitation, they are considered worth less than the Rooks at 3 points. And no, you aren't allowed to ask why <s> the king brought fucking preachers to a battlefield</s> the clergy is taking sides in a mortal conflict since they are just supposed to fund those.

'''Queen:''' {Battlewagon} <big>♕ ♛</big> This is easy. She gets to do everything the Rook AND the Bishop can. She is the strongest piece in your army, she '''''really''''' doesn't get [[-4 STR]]. Tournament rules only permit fielding one Queen per army, but an army can airdrop the equipment to turn a Pawn into another Queen as reinforcements in the late game if they can get far enough into enemy territory. The Queen became a powerful piece when the game came to Europe, back in India she and the king were almost equally incompetent with the Queen being slightly better. Today, the Queen is globally accepted as the most powerful single piece on the board, but because pieces insta-die if attacked this also means you have to be very cautious when playing her. Point value is 9, and worth every one.

'''Knight:''' {DEFFCOPTAS} <big>♘ ♞</big> This is the most controversial piece of the Chess army. People will tell you that it's difficult to keep in mind how they can attack. Lies! It's very easy: a Knight is basically a character with a reach weapon. He can't attack squares next to him and he can attack all the squares 10 feet of him, except the ones which the Queen would be able to (most likely balance reasons, and everything about chess is a giant commentary on feudal hierarchy, i.e., the Queen<the Knight). This leaves 8 targetable squares, arranged in L-shapes around him. He is also the only piece able to attack pieces behind cover. Still, for their limited range and mobility, the are considered as valuable as a bishop unit at 3 points.

'''Pawn:''' {BOYZ}<big>♙ ♟</big> The backbone of your army. You've got 8 of them, and they can move only forward one step in a turn. If they haven't moved or attacked yet, they can move two squares to give them a head start. However, unlike most pieces, they can't attack forward, only diagonally, forward-left or forward-right, and they can't attack empty squares. They seem quite weak and indeed, they are the unit against which others are measured, being worth only a single point, but this changes when they reach the opponent's end of the battlefield. When they are there, they don't become unusable, they get special powers instead: They will become a queen, a rook, a bishop or a knight (your choice). No you cannot make your pawn into another king, as much sense as it would make to have a backup (or not, given that doubling your opponent's chances for a checkmate or Brutality rule shenanigans is effin' stupid). This doesn't even take a turn, at the moment they reach the end of the battlefield, you can switch the pieces. In professional play, the arbiter can provide you with the extra piece, in casual play, you can just use counters. If your opponent claims that you can only use previously captured pieces, either he lies or I do right now, and it's not a bad idea to just agree on this sort of thing in advance. Pawns also have a special skill called "En passant", which you can use when one of your Pawns stands on any square of the fourth line from your enemy's view and one of his Pawns tries crossing a square that your Pawn could attack (i.e. the enemy Pawn doing the aforementioned 2-square move). When using the skill, your Pawn moves to that attackable square while killing the enemy Pawn who was trying to sneak across.

=== Army setup ===
[[Image:Chess_algebraic_notation.png|right]]
White can field pieces from a1 to h2, black from h8 to a7. Each army is built with 38 points + one "King" command unit. Flexibility was sacrificed for the sake of game balance, so both armies must deploy the same units in a strict predefined formation. This is enforced even outside tournament matches; almost all chess players will refuse to play if you don't assemble and deploy your 38-point army in this manner.

* You place the King and the Queen to the middle of the row closest to the players: Queens d1 and d8, Kings e1 and e8.
* Next to them (c1, g1, c8, g8) come the bishops, then the knights and finally the rooks.
* The second row (a-h 2 and a-h 7) is filled with the 8 pawns of the players.

== The gameplay ==

* First both players roll a die. Whoever rolled higher rejoices; white starts (unless you're Napoleon). The players take turns after each other to play.
* To maximize tactical combat, you and your opponent can use only one piece in a turn, unlike games where you move all of them in the same turn.
* In your turn, you have to attack (or move) with a piece. You can't pass. After all, this battle is lead by The King Himself, we can't just do nothing!
* If you can't move but your King isn't threatened right now, the game ends in a tie. This is called a stalemate and is often the refuge of the inferior side in the endgame.

=== Special rules ===
[[Image:Chess_Castle.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Pretty much this.]]
;En Passant
The foreign name is because this is a stupid rule from a previous edition buried right at the back where nobody reads it. It's clearly an attempt by chess's authors to imitate D&D's "attack of opportunity," proving that chess is really just a bad knock-off of 4th edition D&D. If an enemy pawn moves two squares on its first move, and it arrives right next to (1 step to the left or the right) a pawn of yours, you can take it as if it only moved 1 square; the pawn is moved into the square the enemy pawn moved over (ie, where it would be if it had only moved one square) and the enemy pawn removed. This is the only way to take a piece in chess without ever occupying the same square as it. Absolutely nobody knows this rule exists the first time they encounter it; in fact, one of the biggest challenges in writing grandmaster-level chess programs is programming them to argue for half an hour that you can't do that with a pawn.

;Castling
If you think that your King is too exposed, you can "castle" him by moving the King two squares toward the Rook you want to use for this maneuver, and immediately placing the castle to the far side of the king. This is a very unrealistic representation of the king retreating to his castle, since there have been approximately zero real-life battles where a king hid behind a castle and the castle responded by wandering off and killing two knights and a member of the enemy clergy. It only takes one turn and thus, is a really powerful move, as no other Chess maneuver can re-position multiple pieces. However, this has multiple conditions:
* The King and the Rook you want to use haven't attacked or moved yet this game.
* There are no pieces between the Rook and the King.
* The King isn't threatened and he doesn't move through threatened squares (we assume that in older editions all pieces got AoOs against the King and this move was forbidden because of the Brutality Rule). Of course you cannot move him onto a threatened square either. These rules don't apply to the Rook.
* To munchkins: The King and the Rook must be on the same row, you cannot castle with a pawn-rook.

===How to suck at chess===

F2-F3<br>E7-E5<br>G2-G4<br>D8-H4

If this happens to you, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fool's_mate some versions outright call you an idiot.]

== [[Serious Business]] ==

Professional players claim that Chess is serious business so they invented a lot of extra rules like this association football throw-in rule: "At the moment of delivering the ball, the thrower must face the field of play, have both feet on the ground on or outside the touch line, and use both hands to deliver the ball from behind and over his head." - unnecessary rules that exist solely because some fucker tried to be smart and exploit a loophole in the rules. Seriously: 310 words just about the shit you gotta do when TOUCHING the pieces. I won't 1d4ise these, so go [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess to The Other Wiki] and see for yourself.

If any of the rules aren't clear for you, why the fuck are you reading a wiki about this? There's a goddamn store in my neighborhood that sells ONLY books about chess. It's been done to death; there's probably entire shelves about chess at your local library.

== Variants ==

Chess is nothing but a huge ripoff of older and cooler games (Shatranj, Chess with elephants... [[Derp|which for some reason are weaker than the modern Knight]]) but has still managed to give birth to a few amusing variants. One is commonly called "Bughouse" (like that has to do with anything) or "4 player chess". Most people cry witchcraft at this point, but it actually works. Bughouse is two teams playing against each other so that one member of each team is white and the other is black. (It's racist but what can you do?) Every time your partner takes a piece he hands it to you. Every turn you have you can either move a piece that's already on the board or drop that captured piece on any unoccupied square. Yes, this makes surprise butt sex possible through chess. By playing this way you can annoy your opponent for hours by dropping pawns all over the place as long as you have a partner with half a brain. Usually Bughouse is played on a very limited clock because no one wants to watch slow butt sex.

WARNING: Do not attempt Bughouse unless you are actually good at chess or you are likely to break your brain. A game does not get to be called Bughouse because it is played by the sane.

There are also a variety of 3D chess versions but only [[Star Trek|Trekkies]] know how to play them, so nobody cares. An interesting (in a mind-bendingly weird sort of way) variant is [[Timecube Chess]], in which chess is played in the past, future, and four simultaneous presents.

Now if you paid attention to what you just read, you may have guessed that western chess came from a much older (and very different) indian version. And that indian version did not just spawn a few variants in Europe but in eastern Asia as well. One well-known version is Shogi or japanese chess. It has two-sided pieces, a promotion system that [[FAIL|arguably makes some pieces less interesting once promoted]], a supply/capture system and some more subtleties that make [[weeaboo|some]] say that it is superior to all other versions of chess, but all in all, it's not really that exciting. Like most things in Japan, especially [[mahjong|overly complicated games that are not role-playing games]], it is considered [[serious business]]. As in, dedicated cable TV channels, public tournaments and scouting for players in elementary school serious business. Unlike most classic board games without luck, including normal chess and [[Go]] for all but the largest board sizes, Shogi has not yet been "solved": It is still possible for (the best) human players to beat AI players. The ability to return captured pieces to play means that shogi victories tend to build to a steamroll ending. The outcome of the game hinges on coming out ahead on a string of tactical exchanges in order to achieve overall strategic advantage in pieces.

Another variant is Xiangqi or chinese chess. There is a promotion system as well, plus the game has elephants, chariots that player call cars or tanks nowadays, catapults or cannons, your <s>king</s> {{BLAM|'''*BLAM!*'''None shall taint the name of the Holy Emperor by putting him in a game!}} {{BLAM|'''*RE-BLAM!*'''The emperor is a coward and is holding the glorious revolution of the people back!}} general has two personal guards, each side has a fortress and there is a river in the middle of the battlefield. Much like western chess, all these elements are not enough to make it awesome because all of them are held back by the rules and by some logical flaws. The elephants cannot cross the river and have a stupid movement pattern so they can only be used in defense and have only seven possible positions on the board making them easy to threaten. At the end of the day, your two elephants are just trying to protect each other. The two guards cannot leave the fortress, meaning that they have only five possible positions on the board and are pretty useless. Firing the catapult [[derp|moves it to the destination of the projectile]] [[wat|and you can only fire it if there is something between it and its target.]] The promotion system only applies to pawns and the horse has the same movement pattern as the knight but cannot jump over other units. Since there is no equivalent of the bishop and queen (which means in modern terms, the 'king' would be called a 'monarch' or the 'chief executive', democratically, the 'President' or 'Prime Minister' or for extremes, the Supreme Soviet or Duce) the car (which moves exactly like the rook) and the catapult (that has a pretty retarded movement pattern) are the only pieces that can really help you control the board. Xiangqi also has loads of variants including one with four players, supplies and no river (meaning that the elephants can finally be useful), a version played mostly in Hong Kong that is pretty similar to [[Stratego]], one based on the Three Kingdoms war for three players... Xiangqi is not that different from western chess in that the game is not as awesome as it sounds, and the general is the central piece of the game and is completely useless unless you are a manly man and decide to move your general out of the fortres and checkmate with him. That tactic is called feijiang and contrary to popular belief, does not translate to "flying general" but is chinese for "fuck you".

There is a korean variant of it called Janggi which is nearly identical save for a few things that makes it a bit more interesting : the general/king starts at the center of the castle rather than the back edge ; players place their pieces in turn, one by one because they are allowed the switch the position of the horse and the elephant giving the green (equivalent of white) player the advantage of starting but the red (equivalent of black, duh) player the advantage of reacting to the other guy's choice of where to put his elephants ; the pawns don't get promoted and can move sideways from the beginning ; the catapult [[derp|can only fire AND move if there is a piece in front of it]] ; the rules for stalemate are a bit different ; and most importantly, there is no river meaning you can use the elephants offensively. The biggest difference though is that while xiangqi is alive and well and played in China plus south-east Asia plus by the diaspora from these areas, janggi is mostly played for money by old people while everyone watching bets on the winner, and nobody outside of korean retirement homes gives a shit about it, not even the growing number of koreaboos. Too bad, it's a nifty alternative.

There is also a thai variant that resembles western chess and is actually more interesting, but nobody cares about it.

=== Modern variants ===

Among the more common things some game designers do is try to "fix" various flaws in chess (usually the reliance in top level play of memorizing the opening playbook, and the tendency to stalemate at the endgame) or expand it in some way, by making their own variant. There are many hundreds of these; to give you a general taste of what these look like, here are some notable ones:

* Many, many attempts to make a three-dimensional chess.
* Many, many attempts to make three or four player chess.
* '''Fisher Random Chess''', by '''that''' Bobby Fisher, which randomizes the starting positions.
* '''Grand Chess''', which makes the board 10x10, adds two Queen-equivalent pieces, and removes Castling in an mildly elegant way.
** (There are a large number of 10x8 variants that add two pieces that Grand Chess evolved out of (most notably, '''Capablanca Chess''', designed by '''that''' Capablanca), but Grand Chess is probably more popular, as it adds an element of space missing in most chess variants.)
* '''Marseilles Chess''', in which every move after the first is a double move (that is, you can move one piece twice, or two pieces once).
* '''Hexagonal Chess''', played on a Hexagonal board. There are several versions, that usually differ only by the starting setup and pawn movements.
* '''Circular Chess''', played on a circular board.
* '''Bughouse Chess''', mentioned above, in which two teams of two play, and can place captured pieces from their teammate's opponent on the board.
* '''Alice Chess''', the "other" two board game, in which you change boards each time you move.
* '''Anti-King Chess''', which adds an "Anti-King" to each side, in front of the other side's King's Pawn; if your Anti-King is not in check, you lose.
* '''Ultima''', (not to be confused with '''that''' [[Ultima]]) in which every piece but the King and Pawns is replaced by a piece that moves like a Queen, but captures uniquely--including one that doesn't capture at all, but merely completely immobilizes enemy pieces adjacent to it--and the Pawns have their own replacement that "merely" moves like a Rook.
* '''Maharajah and the Sepoys''', in which White has the ultrapowerful Maharajah, which moves like a Queen or a Knight, but only that, and Black has the regular chess army with slightly weaker pawns. Among skilled players, Black always wins, but the variant is useful in teaching Chess strategy.
* '''Kreigspiel''', in which you can't see your opponent's pieces. Requires a referee.
* '''Martian Chess''', the [[Icehouse]] chess thing covered in our [[Icehouse]] article. [[Icehouse]].
* '''Arimaa''', of interest only because it was designed to be "hard" for computer players to handle. Eventually, somebody made a computer program that could reliably beat the best human players. I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
* '''"Chess 2: The Sequel"''', made by people who've made a career out of trying to add random elements and fighting-game logic to board games and otherwise only notable for its preposterously ambitious name.
* '''Chess Boxing''', which alternates rounds of boxing with rounds of Blitz Chess (that is, chess with very aggressive timer).
* '''[[The Duke]]''': Shogi crossed with Concentration of all things, pieces flip on move changing their moves. Actually a pretty clever game but absurdly complex to actually play.

==Fictional versions of Chess==

Fantasy and science fiction writers have tried their hand at making chess variants to suit their worldbuilding; probably the best known is [[Star Trek]]'s three-dimensional chess (for which rules were never officially supplied), although works as diverse as A Song of Ice and Fire, Star Wars, John Carter of Mars, and [[Discworld]] have their own versions of chess (some of them even had rules).

;Dragon Chess ([[Dungeons & Dragons]])

A fantasy variant created by [[Gary Gygax]] himself, and taking place on three, vertically-stacked 8 X 12 boards, representing the sky, ground, and subterranean caves. The ground pieces resemble a normal chess board if half the pieces were the bastard offspring of the classic chessmen, the sky board starts with six [[sylph]]s, two [[griffon]]s, and a [[dragon]] (the dragon can actually capture "remotely," that is, without moving from its spot), and the underground has six [[dwarf]]s, two [[basilisk]]s (who can lock enemy pieces in place until they move or are captured), and an elemental. All of them can fight among themselves or attack and move up and down via a Byzantine set of rules and interactions that make a certain amount of sense but are super-complicated. Well-known to be a broken mess of a game, one which Gygax tried and failed to [[house rules| clean up into something halfway-respectable]] off and on throughout his life. Played in-universe by denizens of most ''D&D'' settings.

;3D-Chess ([[Star Trek]])

A future version of the game with multi-layered board, with the pieces moving up and down accordingly. Other than that the rules seem to be the same as regular Chess.

;Dejarik ([[Star Wars]])

Played in a circular board, and the pieces are holographic representations of real creatures in the Star Wars universe, including a FREAKING RANCOR. Movements are based on how the creatures moved in "real" life. A extremely important rule: if your opponent is a Wookie, let him win.

;Magical Chess ([[Harry Potter]])

Normal Chess with magically animated pieces. They will respond to verbal commands and in the films will physically destroy enemy pieces when doing a capture. (In the books they just shout tons of quasi-helpful advice at the player and try to politic to avoid being sacrificed.)

;The OTHER Magical Chess (No Game No Life)

More of a Chess theme war simulator. Pieces will refuse to move if it means their gonna die, change alliances, and can be motivated to combat trough speeches that appeal to the love for their families or [[/d/|their fetishes]]

;Prosfair (Blood Blockade Battlefront)

And here is when things get bonkers. A bizarre version with rules that become more complex the longer the game goes. Pieces will gain levels and some of them can only be placed in the board at certain times. The arena initially consist of one large board surrounded by 4 smaller ones, and then more small ones appear, and then all the small boards became spherical. There is a time limit of 99 hours because at that point the game will be starting altering reality, but most human players will have died or going insane before that. If this description sound chaotic an vague, is because that is how is presented in the series.

;Stealth Chess ([[Discworld]])

This variant is said to be played by the Assassin's guild in Ankh-Morpork. It's deceptively simple, adding a seventh piece to the game, the Assassin. Each player controls two assassins who move invisibly on the board (this is simulated in game by giving the board two additional columns called the "slurks" for just the assassin piece, which tracks how far they've moved through the game). Assassins begin in the slurks beside your castles, can move one square in any direction (though not diagonally), and move two squares to capture. For example, if the assassin has moved two squares in the slurk, it may then choose to appear in any square two away from its starting square, then move an additional square to capture a piece if desired. This means that if an assassin has moved fifteen squares in a single game before popping out, it may essentially appear anywhere on the board. Crucially, assassins can capture both enemy and allied pieces, though out of professional courtesy they're not allowed to capture other assassins.

;Regicide ([[Warhammer 40,000]])
A 40K IP-licensed game named after 40k's equivalent of Chess. If you're hearing about it only now, that was pretty much the game's reception in a nutshell. It's essentially Chess set up as Orks vs. Space Marines, but with [[Rip and tear|blood soaked animations]] and the option to use guns and psychic powers to wear down pieces rather than capturing them the old way. The game itself was actually pretty mediocre, but still better than regular chess.

==TLDR==
Chess is a fucking escort mission disguised as a board game (and we all hate escort missions).

==See Also==

[[Warhammer 40,000 Regicide]]: A [[Video_games|vidya]] variant of chess with 40k units you know and love from the Space Marines and Orks chopping each other apart in place of the classic chess pieces. [https://youtu.be/_KIUzm5TiK0 Now you can finally put the BRUTAL in "Brutality Rule."]

==External Links==
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1627752/ /tg/ shows how Chess should be played]
*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_variants Wikipedia attempts to list Chess Variants]

{{Board Games}}
[[Category:Board Games]]

The Orville

2021-02-28T14:40:34Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:BD4E:3A95:12FF:4067: /* Season Two */

[[File:The Orville.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The Orville from The Orville]]
{{Delete|See Talk Page. I'm not sure this show has enough of a following to justify a page here}}
'''The Orville''' is <s>[[Star Trek]] fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off</s> a comedy drama sci-fi television series that began as a homage to Star Trek, created by and starring Seth MacFarlane of [[Fail|''Family Guy'']] infamy-- [[Skub|No wait, come back!]]

The guy's a huge Trekkie, to the point of having a few cameos in Star Trek, who went to the FOX execs and pitched his idea for a loving comedic sendup of The Next Generation because he felt too many shows sunk into a quagmire (pun intended, and ours not his) of grimdark. Many of the executive producers and developers are notable industry Trekkies such as David Goodman (who wrote the ''Futurama'' Trek parody episode), or Trek alumni such as Brannon Braga. First airing in 2017, the series is about the strung-out not-Picard protagonist Captain Edward Mercer, played by MacFarlane himself, of the eponymous not-Enterprise spaceship "The Orville" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#Orville likely named after one of the Wright Brothers]). His ex-wife Kelly is the first officer while the crew includes the beefy gay not-Worf alien Bortus, asshole not-Lore android Isaac, and John LaMarr and Gordon Malloy - an even more ridiculous parody of Harry Kim and Tom Paris. They explore the galaxy while dealing with personal problems and fighting various bad guys. The show has a mix of drama, comedy and commentary on real world issues.

=Can you play in this universe or what?=
There is no dedicated RPG for ''The Orville''. But that hasn't stopped elegant/tg/entlemen from trying. As a ''Trek'' knockoff it's Trekkies who've mooted systems for it. For those interested in the (dysfunctional) character-relations: GURPS. TRAVELLER, for those with a hard-SF bent. And then there's always ''Far Trek''.
[https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/the-orville-which-rpg-system-would-you-use/ Here's a 2017 discussion.]

And, yes, servants of the Divine Emperor: you ''can'' buy miniatures, through WizKids.

=The Show=

==Season One==
The first season was supposed to have thirteen episodes but The Suits didn't like the episode revolving around (gay) porn addiction, so that got pulled, leaving the first season with twelve episodes.

The pilot episode (creatively named "Pilot") introduces Ed and the ship, with the story about how he and ex-wife Kelly begin their posting on the Orville while trying to build a professional relationship. A later episode reveals why Ed and Kelly divorced in the first place, and it involved a slimy (in the "disgustingly immoral" sense, not the "covered in slime" sense... until you make him happy) alien playboy. As the crew learn to work together, one of the better episodes sets the stage for this; "Majority Rule", an episode with good (albeit heisted from ''Black Mirror'') commentary on social currency systems. "About a Girl" is a Bortus-centered episode that explores his relationships during a vital part of his race's life cycle.

Since this is a Star Trek homage, the show has to have a bad guy faction the protagonists alternate between killing and studying. Between the showrunners of both shows, you can bet they represent - or strawman - something the showrunner opposes in real-life. That's where the Krill come in; [[vampire|Nosferatu]]-looking reptilian aliens with a fatal weakness to UV radiation. The Krill are villains because they follow a [[Protectorate of Menoth|violently xenophobic religion]] that claims all non-Krill are soulless abominations to be killed or subjugated. Also, [[Derp|the god of this religion and one of its religious phrases were named for throwaway jokes about the car rental company Avis and Katniss Everdeen from "The Hunger Games" franchise]].

This brings us to the subject the show is most preachy (pun intended) about by far, its anti-religion slant. The backstory shares Star Trek's "better off atheist" overtones and a quarter of the season's episodes are just about beating the "religion bad" drum - "If Stars Should Appear", "Krill" (named for the above aliens) and "Mad Idolatry" (Star Trek's "Who Watches the Watchers" with the serial numbers filed off). If that wasn't heavy-handed enough, every religion is replete with visual references to Christianity - eg; Krill places of worship looking like chapels complete with pews - and there's also a poke at Islam (the Krill's "Temeen Everdeen" is both [[What|a blink-and-you'll-miss-it wink at The Hunger Games]] and their equivalent of Islam's "Allahu Akbar"). The end result is a show pushing anti-religious atheism hard enough to make Star Trek look like [[C.S. Lewis|The Chronicles of Narnia]] (even non-religious viewers have also complained about it). Hey, if Seth can bog down a season of a TV show with it, we can bog down a paragraph of a webpage talking about it.

The critics did their best to tank the show this season, but most ''viewers'' liked it, a few recurring complaints notwithstanding. In light of positive reception it received, the show was greenlit for a second season.

==Season Two==
In the second season, the network got a little more confident in the show so, to save money, they aired Bortas' porno, held over from the previous one.

The main change here was writing out Alara a couple eps in. The character's actress, Halston Sage, was rumored to have briefly dated Seth MacFarlane, although it is just as likely that other factors such as her role on ''Prodigal Son'' or a desire for a pay increase could've contributed to or caused her departure. The dating rumor may have got the oxygen it did due to a later episode where Captain Mercer dates a too-young version of his own First Officer, showing that [[Derp|dating a co-worker and subordinate 20 years younger than you rarely ends well]]. This all may come back to haunt the showrunners as Alara was one of the better received characters. Don't worry though, Alara's character was immediately replaced with another alien of the very same race, gender, and profession... despite the lore establishing that Alara's career path as a security officer is unusual by her species' standards. Alara's final episode ''is'' a good sendoff for the character.

The next big change is the Krill, who become the "lesser villains that need to team up with the good guys to fight worse villains" cliché. Given all the villainous setup the Krill have, this is jarring, the more so because this season pulls it out its own butt ''twice''.

At first Ed and crew were caught between some contrived race of not-Orks doing WAAAAGH! against the Krill while Ed's dating a new woman. Then... surprise! Ed's new woman is really Teleya - a female Krill he captured in Season 1 - disguised as a human to get close to Ed and kill him (resulting in plot holes because Teleya was last seen imprisoned on Earth and she's a schoolteacher not a solider or a spy), but they're forced to work together when trapped on a death world. We don't see the orks again in this season. Then the ''real'' team up with the Krill happens because the rest of Isaac's robotic race, the Kaylons, have gone [[Necrons|Full Skynet]] against organic life. Ironically, throughout the Season Isaac gradually turned good, becoming the crew's not-Data member in spite of his race's decision. The Kaylons attempt to invade Earth and look set to become the show's Borg equivalent (minus organic parts and assimilation).

The cast seems to be gelling better - Halston's departure and rumored situation between her and Seth aside, the writers have a better idea of what the show should be and the humor is now used in service of the stories. Alara's loss aside, it's a step up overall.

==Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow==
The show is slated for a third season, but was cancelled by Fox and moved from TV to the streaming service Hulu. However, filming was delayed by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Some commend The Orville as a well-made, witty breath of [[Noblebright|fresh air]] in an overly [[Grimdark|stagnant]] genre with a side of nostalgia. Others denounce The Orville as a derivative, sophomoric, uncomfortable vanity protect (some consider MacFarlane stunt-casting himself as the main character the height of vanity, especially when the show pushes his views on the audience - at least Roddenberry let others play Kirk and Wesley). Some think both sides have a point. Trekkies are equally divided on the show; many Trekkies [[butthurt]] over Discovery endorse The Orville, a significant number of Discovery fans hate The Orville, and a small and overlooked group quietly enjoys both.

As always, stay tuned for how this turns out.

= Would you like to know more? =
*[https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/The_Orville Not Main Memory Alpha]. The wiki.

[[Category: Television]]

The Orville

2021-02-28T14:37:50Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:BD4E:3A95:12FF:4067: /* Season One */

[[File:The Orville.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The Orville from The Orville]]
{{Delete|See Talk Page. I'm not sure this show has enough of a following to justify a page here}}
'''The Orville''' is <s>[[Star Trek]] fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off</s> a comedy drama sci-fi television series that began as a homage to Star Trek, created by and starring Seth MacFarlane of [[Fail|''Family Guy'']] infamy-- [[Skub|No wait, come back!]]

The guy's a huge Trekkie, to the point of having a few cameos in Star Trek, who went to the FOX execs and pitched his idea for a loving comedic sendup of The Next Generation because he felt too many shows sunk into a quagmire (pun intended, and ours not his) of grimdark. Many of the executive producers and developers are notable industry Trekkies such as David Goodman (who wrote the ''Futurama'' Trek parody episode), or Trek alumni such as Brannon Braga. First airing in 2017, the series is about the strung-out not-Picard protagonist Captain Edward Mercer, played by MacFarlane himself, of the eponymous not-Enterprise spaceship "The Orville" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#Orville likely named after one of the Wright Brothers]). His ex-wife Kelly is the first officer while the crew includes the beefy gay not-Worf alien Bortus, asshole not-Lore android Isaac, and John LaMarr and Gordon Malloy - an even more ridiculous parody of Harry Kim and Tom Paris. They explore the galaxy while dealing with personal problems and fighting various bad guys. The show has a mix of drama, comedy and commentary on real world issues.

=Can you play in this universe or what?=
There is no dedicated RPG for ''The Orville''. But that hasn't stopped elegant/tg/entlemen from trying. As a ''Trek'' knockoff it's Trekkies who've mooted systems for it. For those interested in the (dysfunctional) character-relations: GURPS. TRAVELLER, for those with a hard-SF bent. And then there's always ''Far Trek''.
[https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/the-orville-which-rpg-system-would-you-use/ Here's a 2017 discussion.]

And, yes, servants of the Divine Emperor: you ''can'' buy miniatures, through WizKids.

=The Show=

==Season One==
The first season was supposed to have thirteen episodes but The Suits didn't like the episode revolving around (gay) porn addiction, so that got pulled, leaving the first season with twelve episodes.

The pilot episode (creatively named "Pilot") introduces Ed and the ship, with the story about how he and ex-wife Kelly begin their posting on the Orville while trying to build a professional relationship. A later episode reveals why Ed and Kelly divorced in the first place, and it involved a slimy (in the "disgustingly immoral" sense, not the "covered in slime" sense... until you make him happy) alien playboy. As the crew learn to work together, one of the better episodes sets the stage for this; "Majority Rule", an episode with good (albeit heisted from ''Black Mirror'') commentary on social currency systems. "About a Girl" is a Bortus-centered episode that explores his relationships during a vital part of his race's life cycle.

Since this is a Star Trek homage, the show has to have a bad guy faction the protagonists alternate between killing and studying. Between the showrunners of both shows, you can bet they represent - or strawman - something the showrunner opposes in real-life. That's where the Krill come in; [[vampire|Nosferatu]]-looking reptilian aliens with a fatal weakness to UV radiation. The Krill are villains because they follow a [[Protectorate of Menoth|violently xenophobic religion]] that claims all non-Krill are soulless abominations to be killed or subjugated. Also, [[Derp|the god of this religion and one of its religious phrases were named for throwaway jokes about the car rental company Avis and Katniss Everdeen from "The Hunger Games" franchise]].

This brings us to the subject the show is most preachy (pun intended) about by far, its anti-religion slant. The backstory shares Star Trek's "better off atheist" overtones and a quarter of the season's episodes are just about beating the "religion bad" drum - "If Stars Should Appear", "Krill" (named for the above aliens) and "Mad Idolatry" (Star Trek's "Who Watches the Watchers" with the serial numbers filed off). If that wasn't heavy-handed enough, every religion is replete with visual references to Christianity - eg; Krill places of worship looking like chapels complete with pews - and there's also a poke at Islam (the Krill's "Temeen Everdeen" is both [[What|a blink-and-you'll-miss-it wink at The Hunger Games]] and their equivalent of Islam's "Allahu Akbar"). The end result is a show pushing anti-religious atheism hard enough to make Star Trek look like [[C.S. Lewis|The Chronicles of Narnia]] (even non-religious viewers have also complained about it). Hey, if Seth can bog down a season of a TV show with it, we can bog down a paragraph of a webpage talking about it.

The critics did their best to tank the show this season, but most ''viewers'' liked it, a few recurring complaints notwithstanding. In light of positive reception it received, the show was greenlit for a second season.

==Season Two==
In the second season, the network got a little more confident in the show so, to save money, they aired Bortas' porno, held over from the previous one.

The main change here was writing out Alara a couple eps in. The character's actress, Halston Sage, was rumored to have briefly dated Seth MacFarlane, although it is just as likely that other factors such as her role on ''Prodigal Son'' or a desire for a pay increase could've contributed to or caused her departure. The dating rumor may have got the oxygen it did due to a later episode where Captain Mercer dates a too-young version of his own First Officer, showing that [[Derp|dating a co-worker and subordinate 20 years younger than you rarely ends well]]. This all may come back to haunt the showrunners as Alara was one of the better received characters. Don't worry though, Alara's character was immediately replaced with another alien of the very same race, gender, and profession... despite the lore establishing that Alara's career path as a security officer is unusual by her species' standards. Alara's final episode ''is'' a good sendoff for the character.

The next big change is the Krill, who become the "lesser villains that need to team up with the good guys to fight worse villains" cliché. Given all the villainous setup the Krill have, this is jarring, the more so because this season pulls it out its own butt ''twice''.

At first Ed and crew were caught between some contrived race of Space Orks doing WAAAAGH against the Krill while Ed's dating a new woman. Then... surprise, Ed's new woman turns out to be Teleya - a female Krill he captured in Season 1 - disguised as a human to get close to Ed and kill him (resulting in plot holes because Teleya was last seen imprisoned on Earth and she's a schoolteacher not a solider or a spy), but they're forced to work together when trapped on a death world. We don't see the orks again in this season. Then the ''real'' team up with the Krill happens because the rest of Isaac's robotic race, the Kaylons, have gone [[Necrons|Full Skynet]] against organic life. While throughout the Season Isaac gradually turned good, becoming the crew's not-Data member, the rest of his race aren't so friendly. The Kaylons attempt to invade Earth and look set to become the show's Borg equivalent (minus organic parts and assimilation).

The cast seems to be gelling better - Halston's departure and rumored situation between her and Seth aside, the writers have a better idea of what the show should be and the humor is now used in service of the stories; again, Alara's loss aside, it's a step up overall.

==Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow==
The show is slated for a third season, but was cancelled by Fox and moved from TV to the streaming service Hulu. However, filming was delayed by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Some commend The Orville as a well-made, witty breath of [[Noblebright|fresh air]] in an overly [[Grimdark|stagnant]] genre with a side of nostalgia. Others denounce The Orville as a derivative, sophomoric, uncomfortable vanity protect (some consider MacFarlane stunt-casting himself as the main character the height of vanity, especially when the show pushes his views on the audience - at least Roddenberry let others play Kirk and Wesley). Some think both sides have a point. Trekkies are equally divided on the show; many Trekkies [[butthurt]] over Discovery endorse The Orville, a significant number of Discovery fans hate The Orville, and a small and overlooked group quietly enjoys both.

As always, stay tuned for how this turns out.

= Would you like to know more? =
*[https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/The_Orville Not Main Memory Alpha]. The wiki.

[[Category: Television]]

Star Wars

2021-02-28T14:21:37Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:BD4E:3A95:12FF:4067: /* Disney Canon */

[[File:Star-Wars-Logo (1).jpg|center|500px|]]

{{Topquote|A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....|Star Wars opening text}}
'''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D0ZQPqeJkk/ Star Wars]''' is one of, if not ''the'', most influential media franchises of modern times, let alone its effect on science-fiction and fantasy. Indeed, among [[/tg/|nerddom]], it is challenged by only a few others, like [[Star Trek]] and [[The Lord of the Rings]].

The incredibly ardent fandom is spread worldwide and has a strong presence in popular culture. Many of the characters, like Darth Vader and Yoda, are iconic even to the general public. John Williams' score for the original trilogy is one of the best-known film scores of all time, right up there with greats like Jaws, Jurassic Park (also composed by John Williams), Indiana Jones (John Williams again!), Shrek, Harry Potter (there's a reason Hollywood often relies on John Williams for their soundtracks) and the Avengers. The universe has spawned numerous video games, hundreds of novels, multiple TV shows, one of the largest merchandising franchises ever, and, relevant to /tg/, a whole bunch of board, card, and roleplaying games.

It is also the current leading world source of [[Skub]].

==The Basic Concept==
Star Wars was originally a series of epic science-fantasy "space operas" that roughly followed the mythic cycle that's been around since Homer. They're set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," [Note: this makes the entire series a fairy tale] where a mysterious life force called (reasonably enough) the Force permeates everything. This, in turn, can be wielded by certain people, giving them pseudo-magical abilities; thank the Emperor ([[Emperor|no, the other one]]) there were no Commissars in that universe. Those who use it for good become mystical, selfless warrior monks called Jedi, whereas those who use it for evil are ruthless, self-serving bastards called Sith. However, the Force must always be in balance, so any time the Sith arise to cause imbalance, the Jedi have to pull together and take them out to restore the natural order (so we are told in the prequels).

A financial, critical, popular and cultural H-bomb, these movies are basically the filter through which Generation X perceives the world... for better or worse.

The so-called Original Trilogy (made up of films IV through VI, released from 1977 to 1983) follows a young man named Luke Skywalker as he learns the ways of the Jedi. Meanwhile, the Rebel Alliance is fighting to end the oppressive Galactic Empire which Darth Vader, a Lord of the Sith, serves. The first movie tagged (in 1978) ''Episode IV: A New Hope'' posits that the military imperium holds the Emperor as figurehead leader of a Senate, soon to be abolished; as the movies continue, we learn that the emprah is secretly Vader's master. Luke's Rebel companions in Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi defeat the evil Emperor, but along the way Luke discovers who's his daddy - ME! Darth Vader! I'm yo daddy because I did this to yo mama. The third movie's novelisation, at last, names the emperor: "Palpatine".

In between we got an "Extended Universe", which LucasArts commissioned, and some leaks of variants of the movies' scripts. We learnt from the early drafts that "Starkiller" was the first floated name for Luke, that a "padawan" is an apprentice, and so on. We learnt from a ''RotJ'' leak that the Empire's base is <strike>Trantor</strike>Coruscant, a city over an entire planet. The canonical 1996 All-But-The-Movie multimedia ''Shadows of the Empire'' - which was naff despite being canon, you totally don't have to deal with it yourself, excepting Joel McNeely's soundtrack which was awesome - has scenes on Coruscant.

The so-called Prequel Trilogy (made up of films I through III, released from 1999 to 2005) explained how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader and how the Galactic Empire was established. This involves a lot of convoluted politicking in the Republic, which is then torn apart in the Clone Wars, where the Republic (with an army of clones led by the Jedi) fights against the Confederacy (with an army of robots led by [[Necrons|General Grievous]] and secretly controlled by the Sith). It was not as well received as the first trilogy, for reasons we'll talk about below.

There's also a so-called Sequel Trilogy (made up of films VII, VIII, and IX), which started in 2015 and picked up the story some three decades after the Emperor's defeat with a new generation of heroes taking on the remains of the evil Empire, which is a group of extremist former Imperials calling themselves the First Order. However, Episode VII aka ''The Force Awakens'', was directed by J.J. Abrams, who's mostly known for the [[skub|skubtastic]] [[Star Trek]] reboot and was widely criticized for ripping off Episode IV (the whole trilogy apes the original trilogy a lot but none as much as VII) and a [[Mary Sue]] protagonist. Meanwhile Episode VIII was written and directed by Rian Johnson who was a young director known for plot twists and genre experimentation on a handful of movies and television episodes that openly said he wanted to "subvert expectations" and make half of viewers dislike his work, then got pissed when half of them disliked his work. The result managed to fracture the Star Wars fanbase over issues of dull rehashing for VII and a whole laundry list of reasons for VIII (ranging from small ones such as it being too different, to major issues like half the movie being filler and the plot not even making basic sense), as well as those who still enjoyed them and very little common ground between the three groups. Abrams returned for Episode IX which got a mixed reception from both those who liked VIII and those who didn't.
General issue with the sequels is that there was no plan on what to do in each part of the trilogy and they came up with everything as they went along and it really shows. Thus it really feels like the whole trilogy lacks direction, as it was directed by two guys with conflicting visions, yet almost complete freedom to do what they wanted, including [[derp|undoing stuff done in the other guys movie]].

Finally, there are the so-called Anthology movies, standalone one-shots involving characters and plotlines that aren't a part of the main "Saga" films, except they kind of are. The first, Rogue One (2016), is an immediate prequel to Episode IV that follows those Rebel spies who stole the Death Star plans. The second film follows a young Han Solo and pals Chewie and Lando. <s>A third rumored one follows Boba Fett</s> Became a series.

There are also four separate TV series. The first one, ''Clone Wars'', was based on traditional animation, whereas the later one, '''''The''' Clone Wars'', was a weird 3D animation. They're both pretty good. There was also a terrible theatrical release that was basically just an advertisement for ''The Clone Wars'', but, since it's quite bad(hint: babysitting Jabba the Hutt's kid), nobody talks about it much. The third series is Disney's ''"Rebels"'' which is set between Episodes III-IV and it takes itself far less seriously than Clone Wars did, and is more of a homage to the original trilogy since not every character in the series is the owner of a lightsaber nor are they constantly talking about grown-up politics, senators and trade embargoes, which played a large role in the prequel trilogy and found their way to The Clone Wars as well. Finally there is Resistance, which only lasted two seasons (for comparison, Clone Wars lasted 7 and Rebels lasted 4) and wasn't particularly well received by the fans, largely due to general lack of interest in the [[fluff]] of the sequel trilogy.

And so, after voicing a Mandalorian character one time in an episode of Clone Wars, Jon Favreau’s ego boner couldn’t contain itself any longer and gave birth to the first live action Star Wars TV series, The Mandalorian - building on the Disney version of Mandalorians as a sort of [[Eldar Corsairs|weedy, neo space Viking]], which seems feeble when compared to the old EU version of Mandalorians, who were more like space [[Orks|Maoris]]. Still, it ended up being pretty good; good enough for Disney to go ahead with another <s>two</s> four live action series (because if there is anyone who loves to rub skub into their pores, they are Star Wars fans). The first is a prequel to the Rogue One film, y’know, to build on the backstories of people you never needed to know about in the first place. The second series will focus on Obi Wan Kenobi’s time in exile after the saddling Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru with a kid they never asked for, nor wanted. This is what passes for entertainment in this day and age. A one season serieson Ahsoka (from 3d Clone Wars) and one on Boba Fett.

And then there's the whole Expanded Universe, which covers pretty much everything not covered by the films, like the Old Republic (set thousands of years before the prequel trilogy, when there were a hell of a lot more Sith and Jedi around) and the New Republic (set immediately after the original trilogy, explaining what became of all the characters. It could also reach 40k levels of grimdark with races like the [[Dark Eldar|Yuuzhan]] [[Tyranids|Vong]] characters like [[Vampire|Darth Nihilus]] and beings like [[Old Ones|Abeloth]]...and of course Ewoks.

The EU is no longer considered in the main canon of the films and TV series, due to the new sequel trilogy which does not follow EU, the reason for this being, according to Disney, that following EU would restrict their creative freedom. The reaction to this was, well, [[skub|mixed, for lack of a better word, especially considering how a lot of the so-called creative freedom in the sequels consists of aping the Original Trilogy]], and because so much of EU ''was'' canon, like that whole ''Shadows of the Empire'' mess. The Rats have since noted that they'll slot ''some'' of it in on a case-by-case basis, but the canon is in a highly fluid state at the moment. EU is now officially called Star Wars Legends, though most fans still refer to it as EU.

==Why is it so popular?==

Star Wars is as accessible as science fiction gets. It doesn't require extensive knowledge of a fictional world (a la ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' or ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'') or cultural background (as ''[[Star Trek]]'' sometimes does) to make sense. Those elements are present for those who want them, but they largely stay in the (very rich and vibrant) background. It has well-shot action and good ''enough'' dialogue to make it interesting for both kids and adults (as well as allowing parents who grew up with it to watch it with their children, thereby hooking the next generation of viewers). It has simple, good-vs.-evil themes that resonate with almost anyone, anywhere, at any time. The science fiction elements are generally handled well if you don't obsess over making science fiction realistic and hard (or at least they WERE handled well until Episode VII). It's a prime gateway drug for sci-fi which still holds up to the experienced eye, [[Isaac Asimov]] saw and rather enjoyed the films. All in Fourteen hours of cinema, plus optional sides for those who want it.

There's a ton of merchandise that is, of course, really cool. Also, given it's crossed over into the mainstream, many people feel comfortable being part of the community without feeling judged as "nerds" (as they might with ''Lord of the Rings'', ''D&D'', ''Star Trek'', ''Warhammer'', etc.).

Again, they roughly follow the mythic cycle that's been around since Homer. If you think about it, 6 of the 9 films can be summarized as: hero begins his journey under the tutelage of a wise (more or less) man, they encounter a threat which has captured/enslaved a princess/girl, who was in one way or another connected to an important secret (usually a superweapon but could be the identity of a political figure or the location of someone); the heroes save the princess/girl but someone dies tragically in a battle against the villain while someone else is blowing up a space station or a spaceship afterwards they are happy, they celebrate and mourn the loss of the poor bloke who died.

Additionally, the first film can be summarized as a samurai and a gunslinger team up to save a princess from Nazis in space. That is multiple cinematic genres at once, following the style of the epic myth.

==Setting==
Due to article bloat, [[Star Wars Setting]] is now its own page.

==Movies==
Also due to article bloat, [[Star Wars Movies]] are also their own page.

==Expanded Universe==

It can be said what makes a franchise into a long term lasting thing is when a wealth of extra story and background is created that expands on the original story far beyond what there was. It could be argued Star Wars leads the race in this, as the sheer amount of extra novels, graphic novels and games based on Star Wars can and does overwhelm the ordinary fan.

===The original EU/Star Wars "Legends"===

[[Image: Choices_of_One_PB_art.jpg|right|200px|thumb|The waifu was so strong with Mara Jade, Luke Skywalker himself decided to wife her up]]
The background has expanded into the distant past before the founding of the current Jedi and Sith orders and into the (not-quite-so) far future looking at the descendants of Luke Skywalker and other popular characters. Uniquely, especially considering [[Warhammer 40K|other]] [[Star Trek|franchises']] track records, the Star Wars Expanded Universe is <strike>remarkably</strike> <strike>sorta</strike> sometimes internally consistent, both with other sources within the universe and with the films themselves, at least in comparison to other comparable settings. Of course, it's got plenty of its own [[C. S. Goto|problem children]] that slipped through, and the [[skub]] mine of it all isn't much shallower than that of 40K. Good portions of it do hold up well, largely due to the efforts of Lucas' company's continuity department leaning on everyone to hold it together. One thing that greatly helps is continuity books and articles aren't afraid to make small retcons to make even the most obscure and shitty sources (like that terrible PS1 fighting game) seem like part of an organized plot. Particularly well-loved parts include characters like Grand Admiral Thrawn (a rare alien officer in the Empire and popular enough that Disney brought him back to the canon from the EU) and Mara Jade (pictured right, a Force-using former agent of Emperor Palpatine who later turned good, became a Jedi Master, married Luke and had a son with him) - interestingly both were created by the same author [[Timothy Zahn]].

Upon their acquisition, Disney said "fuck it" and threw out everything but the films and the Clone Wars cartoons. Some popular old stuff got mentions or appearances (and Thrawn got to be a major character), but the overall quality is even lower than the old EU. What was set up as a major book contains phrases like "The TIE wibbles and wobbles through the air" and random virtue signalling. As though to top the previous, Disney literally published a book with an entire chapter about mass wedding farts (Yes. Really.). The only good stuff is from established EU authors writing stuff far away from era of the Disney films.

The [[rage]] over the EU's scrapping was major among many fans of it, but for all Disney's shortcomings, they were in a tight spot. Towards the end all that continuity and consistency got thrown out the airlock for increasingly dumb and disjointed narratives and garbled plot threads to the point that the Star Wars logo was just about as much a sign of quality as the Nintendo approval stamp on shitty SNES games.

Another problem was that Disney is mostly family-friendly, and some of the Star Wars EU could get really dark. As in Warhammer 40k levels of grimdark. Examples of this are the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong - forcenull space-Druchii (no no, not Comorrites though they have the pain and body modification fetishes for it, space-'''Druchii''', riding enslaved tyranid bioships) from another galaxy, Mnggal-Mnggal - mindraping gelatin lost on its way to Star Trek, and Abeloth - an ancient (she predates the Jedi and the Sith) yandere Force entity more like something from the Cthulhu Mythos and is so dangerous the Jedi and the Sith '''joined forces''' to fight her. It's difficult to envision how Disney could have kept the EU when even before all that it was struggling to find a market beyond the most [[neckbeards|dedicated fans]].

===The Books===

'''The Good EU'''
[[Image: Heir-to-the-empire-cover.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Heir to the Empire (1991): The book that started it all]]
* '''The Thrawn Trilogy''': The origination point for the EU despite not being the first Star Wars books published, and focuses on the conflict with the Imperial remnants left over after RotJ. Named for the main villain, Grand Admiral Thrawn, who went on to become one of Star Wars most well-loved characters. Basically the story "The Force Awakens" wishes it was (also introduced the character Mara Jade, a sexy redhead that's everything Disney wishes Rey was and more). Oh, and also gave us the Republic capital planet Coruscant.
* '''The Han Solo Adventures''': Star's End was the second spinoff book written and the first good one. Hit store shelves before Empire Strikes Back was even in theaters. Han and Chewie are trying to get some work done on the Falcon and get volun-told to bust out some political prisoners to pay for it. The Z-95 Headhunter fighter comes from this one. Would have made for a better film than ''Solo'' did.
* '''Shadows of the Empire''': Shadows is set between ESB and RotJ and fills in the details of getting the Death Star II's plans, finding out where Han was taken, Luke building his own saber, etc by the introduction of a bounty hunter by the name of Dash Rendar who is just another Han Solo. It was a Major Multimedia Event at the time, including a soundtrack and an uneven video game which we'll get to. The game was why Rendar, that fill-in for Han, even exists: he's your avatar. The Special Edition rerelease of ''A New Hope'' added the Outrider to the background of one scene. As for Steve Perry's book, it's notable for Xizor the ultra sexy crime boss; he comes close to porking Leia, but she evades his wiles. We guess that's why they didn't pick Crispin to write it.
*'''The Darth Bane Trilogy''': The origin of the Rule of Two for the Sith, along with a compelling protagonist and his apprentice.
* '''Cloak of Deception''': Luceno's prequel to the prequels, a political thriller, much more focused than ''The Phantom Menace''. Foreshadows ''Clones'' characters.
* '''Shatterpoint''': The Mace Windu spinoff, ''Heart of Darkness'' style with Samuel Jackson playing the Charles Marlow role. Windu cracks off lines like "we're going to beat him like a rented gong".
* '''Revenge of the Sith''': The novelization is actually considered a serious improvement over the movie itself.
* '''Darth Plagueis''': Shows how Palpatine becomes a Sith Lord under his mentor. Less Star Wars than Star Politics, which is a good thing for this particular story.
* '''Jedi Apprentice''': That Qui-Gon / Obi-Wan series for kids, started by Dave Wolverton and continued by Jude Watson over a near-flawless run of eight books, until Xanatos bites it and there's no focused villain anymore. What a waste we barely got to see this relationship in the movie.

'''The Bad EU'''
* '''Jedi Academy Trilogy''': Luke sets up his academy on Yavin IV and tries to teach [[Rage|Kyp Durron]]. Imperial remnant superweapons hit ludicrous territory with the sun crusher. This was the beginning of Kevin J Anderson hammering out a couple dozen Star Wars books over about four years.
* '''Young Jedi Knights Series''': Set between Jedi Academy and New Jedi Order, mostly follows Han & Leia's kids.
* '''I, Jedi''': A retelling of the Jedi Academy Trilogy (see above) with more of Corran Horn from the first set of X-Wing books. Less derp in general but significantly more [[Mary Sue]]age of Horn.
* '''Legacy of the Force''': The survivors of the Yuuzhan Vong War are trying to rebuild the galaxy, but Jacen Solo turns Sith and becomes the main villain. The book series is infamous for nearly killing the Star Wars brand and issues between various writers years before Disney went down the same road (Jacen Solo was also a major influence for Kylo Ren). The biggest complaints were Jacen killing off Mara Jade, the villains having plot armor through bouts of incompetence from the heroes, poor dialogue, long-winded writing and the story being overstuffed with allusions to post 9/11 US culture and politics.

'''The [[Skub]] EU'''
[[Image: Yuuzhan-vong-eu2_bg.jpg|right|200px|thumb|The Yuuzhan Vong, [[Skub|either badass and interesting or grimderp canon-defiling villains]]]]
* '''New Jedi Order''': The longest-running Star Wars book series (19 books long) being about an extragalactic invasion and the Jedi's role in fighting it. Luke and his wife Mara are training new Jedi including Han and Leia's kids while Han and Leia build bridges between the New Republic and Imperial Remnants. Until the extragalactic invaders arrive; the Yuuzhan Vong - [[Culexus|Force-null]] [[Imperium of Man|religious fanatics]] with [[Tyranids|organic technology]] and a fixation on [[Dark Eldar|pain and body modification]]. The resulting war sees a body count that rivals anything in Warhammer 40k, including Chewie's death Majora's Mask style plus the deaths of Han and Leia's youngest son and Admiral Ackbar. Mara gives birth to Ben Skywalker and overcomes a terminal illness. The Vong take over and [[Tyranids|terraform]] part of the galaxy, including Coruscant, and lots is learned about the Force. A real love-it-or-hate-it series, some parts are good, some are bad and some are weird.
* '''Dark Empire''': Palpatine's back to save a dying franchise decades before Disney tried it. He even uses clone bodies to do so (but unlike Disney, Dark Horse didn't flip-flop on the lore), wrecks a fleet of enemy ships using the Force and at some point has his power reflected back at him. Starts off good, falls apart fast. Known for its love-it-or-hate-it artstyle and dialogue. Original version of Episode 9.
* '''Courtship of Princess Leia''': Deals with another Imperial remnant, where a Queen who could be potential ally against the Imperials offers a deal which hinges on Leia marrying her prince son. In response, Han sorta-kinda (totally) kidnaps Leia. Luke teams up with the prince in question (who's a bit of a Jedi fanboy but basically a competent officer) to find them. This one introduced the planet Dathomir and the force witches the Nightsisters, which were ultimately adapted to be Maul's homeworld.
* '''X-Wing''': A long running series that passed between several authors that followed Wedge and his squad post RotJ. Initially focused on the liberation of Coruscant and was solid if formulaic, but eventually spiraled off into skub territory. cv
* '''Fate of the Jedi''': Want some Cthulhu with your Star Wars? Luke, his son Ben, Leia and the remaining Jedi work to counter anti-Jedi backlash following the events of LotF while Han takes a bigger role in politics. Things go from bad to worse when several Jedi suffer mysterious shared bouts of psychosis and an ancient Sith tribe emerges from hiding. Things then go from worse to cosmic horror when both sides encounter Abeloth, a yandere, Lovecraftian Force entity so dangerous the Jedi and the Sith have to ''team up'' to fight her (yes really!). But Abeloth escapes her prison, and both sides have to stop her before she plunges the Force and the galaxy into chaos. During these events, Ben Skywalker finds himself in a Batman/Catwoman situation with the Sith apprentice Vestara Khai. While being an OoM better than the preceding book series, FotJ has a very divided opinion among SW fans.
* '''The Paradise Snare''': AC Crispin's first book (1997) in a new Han trilogy, an ANH prequel this time. Han escapes his Oliver Twist youth ("F8GAN", LOL). He ends up in a "spice" (LOL) operation because it was the late 1990s and we were all reciting "D.A.R.E., Drugs Are Bad Mmkay" in school before heading off to raves at night. Young Harrison Ford shuts down this particular hacienda; with the help of Crispin's self-insert, who then gets to bounce on his lap. Those readers who could ignore the cringe, and we admit there was a ''lot'' of cringe from several directions, were generally entertained. It was all a bit episodic for a film but, again, that didn't stop the Rat House from scrapping it and filming what they filmed instead... which was ''also'' episodic and full of cringe.

'''The Not EU'''
* '''Splinter of the Mind's Eye''': Alan Dean Foster's sequel to ''Star Wars'' before anyone, perhaps even Georgie himself, knew what was coming in ''Empire Strikes Back''. Much [[Incest Smith|chemistry]] between Luke and Leia.
* '''Dark Forces''': The novelisation of the games, starring Kyle Katarn. Pretty good writing except for the action scenes, which are rote accounts of the missions in-game. At the time Katarn wasn't considered a canon character and the first game, proposing yet another heist of the Death Star Plans, was explicitly ''disavowed'' as canon. As time went on LucasArts warmed up at least to Katarn who, unlike Dash Rendar, acquired a personality.

== Disney Canon ==
[[Image:Star_Wars_Disney_Princesses.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Love it or hate it, they are now official ''Disney Princesses''.]]
It's still [[skub|debatable]] whether or not the new Canon holds up to the old EU, or learns to fix the problems that plagued it. We probably won't see what comes of it for decades to come. Disney Canon, as of 2020, seems to largely be built around the nine main movies though there have been growing rumors of a shakeup that may render the Disney triology non-canon due to severe backlash and financial losses. There's also shows like Rebels and Clone Wars alongside anthology movies fleshing out stories that had been told in comics and books back before the Disney buy-up, but can now be seen on film.

A curious thing that has begun happening: Certain elements of the old EU are slipping into the Disney Canon. Plotlines like the Emperor returning, the Death Star plans heist and Han's path to become the smuggler we know him as all have bits and pieces from EU canon in them. In some cases, whole characters are ported in; the best example is Admiral Thrawn, who appears in Rebels. Other times, popular characters has their traits or stories ported into new ones (Finn and Cassian are both expies of Kyle Katarn, for example). This gives some credence to the argument that Lucasfilms and Disney wanted to wipe the slate with all the stories that had been told in the EU, so they could create their own, fully realized canon Star Wars setting that one could make movies - ''many'' movies - from. Considering the amount of shitty fan-fiction-esque stories the EU had, this may be for the best, but of course, storylines that people have loved for ages are also thrown out with the bathwater.

Detractors of Disney-era Star Wars often talk loads about how the sequel trilogy invalidates the original trilogy. Other complaints raised are how Disney screwed over Luke and how many cool characters are either cannibalized for story elements (like Kyle Katarn) or completely removed from canon (like Mara Jade). These are semi-valid arguments of course, but they ignore some of the biggest issues with the EU originally - it wasn't sponsored by George Lucas and Lucasfilms. They were sponsored fan-fiction in a sense, semi-canon from the outset and not really something that could be considered a part of the Star Wars setting, though George Lucas did work with the writers to a point, such as with the New Jedi Order book series (he gave them permission to kill off Chewbacca in the story). In fact, George never really considered them real stories; more like a parallel universe of his own Star Wars works. He accepted it because they bring in the big bucks when people would beg to have the official Star Wars logo on anything they produced.

That, and the sequel trilogy, underwhelming as it may be, was George's idea in broad strokes. The series was always going to have a sequel trilogy, and while the outcome isn't exactly what he (or we) wanted, quite a lot of it is. Luke being an exile on a far-away planet, who has to be roused to fight by a new, female Jedi? George's idea, not Disney's. A son of Han and Leia struggling with the Dark Side? Also George's idea (though Disney lifted a lot form the original version - Jacen Solo - for Kylo Ren). If anything, much of the direction comes from Lucasfilms; Disney just wants the movie to sell well. It's similar with Marvel nowadays.

So for better or worse, the Disney Canon is the first time the wider setting of Star Wars beyond the series and movies have become irrevocably canon, rather than "kinda-sorta-canon". Much of what we've gotten that is new is based roughly on George's own work as well. Remember this when discussing EU vs Disney in Star Wars - Either setting is cool for their own reasons, but the Mouse got little to do with it - and if you don't like it, bring it up with big man Lucas. Whatever the case, CEO Big Iger briefly resigned in 2019... before being brought back in 2020 following severe financial and PR losses for Disney due to comparatively poor reception of the Disney canon, controversial statements from Disney staff against fans and shutdowns related to the global coronavirus pandemic. Disney preceded to rebuild that goodwill and hope with The Mandalorian... only to undermine it with the [[SJW|politically-motivated]] firing of Cara Dune's actress, Gina Carano. There have been massive rumblings of change and even a civil war in Disney Star Wars between factions of staff supporting producers/directors Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau and staff supporting Lucasfilm president/film producer Kathleen Kennedy.

It should be noted that the TV shows below are either now part of the Disney canon (such as the 2008 Clone Wars series), or made by Disney. There is also a major Star Wars project called Star Wars: The High Republic. It's an upcoming multimedia project spanning books and comics worked on by various writers including Claudia Gray and Cavan Scott ([[Warhammer Adventures|yes, ''that'' Cavan Scott]]). The stated goal is to tell one cohesive story set in the High Republic Era, two centuries prior to Phantom Menace. It was slated for a 2020 release but was pushed back to 2021, purportedly due to the COVID-19 pandemic (purportedly because they could still work on the story from home in this day and age but have chosen to extend the deadline) and the first comics were released to tepid reception.

December 2020 gave us a major announcement of several new films and TV series, as well as further information about already announced things. These include:

* '''[[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]]''': Live-action series that started in 2019. Unsurprisingly, Season 3 is on it's way and will release in 2022.
* '''Ahsoka''': Live-action series by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni (the chads responsible for The Mandalorian, the latter also responsible for [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]], [[Star Wars:Rebels|Rebels]] and the character of Ahsoka (and [[Star Wars:Resistance|Resistance]] but [[heresy|let's not talk about that]])) featuring the titular fan favorite character who made her live-action debut in The Mandalorian Season 2, starring Rosario Dawson and is a spin-off of The Mandalorian and will have cross-overs with it. Though not officially confirmed, is highly likely to feature the live-action debut of [[tactical genius|Thrawn]], who was name-dropped by Ahsoka in The Mandalorian as her quarry. Release date unknown but is confirmed to run only for one season.
* '''Rangers of the New Republic''': Live-action series and another spin-off of The Mandalorian, again by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni and is said to have cross-overs with The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. Not much is known at the moment but the name tells us at that it would focus on the titular galactic government, something we still don't know much about due to the world-building fuck-up of the sequel trilogy. Release date unknown.
* '''The Bad Batch''': Animated series and a spin-off of The Clone Wars. Focuses on the titular clone commando unit that was introduced in the last season of The Clone Wars, seemingly set during Republics transition into the Empire. [[Awesome|Dee Bradley Baker is back playing all the main characters]]. Release in 2021.
* '''Andor''': Live-action series and a spy-thriller focusing on the titular character who was introduced in Rogue One. Release in 2022.
* '''The Acolyte''': Live-action series set during the High Republic-era, a thus-far unexplored era 100-300 years before the original movie during which the Republic was at it's peak. Release date unknown.
* '''Obi-Wan Kenobi''': Live-action series featuring the return of Ewan McGregor as the titular character set 10 years after Revenge of the Sith. Hayden Christensen is also confirmed to be returning, though how it will work is unknown as Anakin was Vader at this time and thus he would be in his armor and have his voiced dubbed over by someone, likely/hopefully James Earl Jones. Release in 2022 and is confirmed to only run for one season.
* '''A Droid Story''': Animated series featuring R2-D2 and C-3PO and a new character, possibly a droid as well. That is all we know for now but will likely be targeted towards kids, just like the animated series Droids from the 80s. Release date unknown.
* '''Lando''': Live-action series focusing on the titular character. Not much known aside from that at the moment, not even will it feature Billy-Dee Williams or Donald Glover. Release date unknown.
* '''Visions''': [[Anime]] anthology-series made by different anime studios across Japan. Will run for 10 episodes, with each episode likely produced by a different studio. It's unknown which studios are involved but considering their track record, Production IG, Sunrise and Trigger are likely involved. Release date unknown.
* '''Rogue Squadron''': Live-action film, the first one after the sequels. Will feature the titular elite starfighter squadron and is directed by Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman (but also [[RAGE|writer and director of Wonder Woman 1984]]). Will it focus on the Rogue Squadron from EU led by Wedge Antilles or will it be completely different remains to seen. Release in 2023.
* '''Film by Taika Waititi''': Nothing about it is known at the moment except that it is happening, it is live-action and will be directed by Taika Waititi of Thor: Ragnarök-fame who also played IG-11 in The Mandalorian and directed the last episode of the first season. Release likely in either 2024 or 2025.
* '''The Book of Boba Fett''': Live-action series, revealed post-credits in the last episode of The Mandalorian Season 2, which had Boba Fett returning to Jabba's palace, kill everyone inside and then sit on his old bosses throne. Release in 2021.

==Wookieepedia==
One of the largest fan wikis ever created, this bad boy is extensively cited, has enormous variety, and has page upon page of talk. It was if Lexicanum, the 40k fan wiki, and our own glorious site were fused into a terrible beast.

==Impact on 1d4chan and associated games etc==

Star Wars has had subtle and clear impacts on a number of other franchises and genres and it can be ''incredibly'' hard to gauge the extent of it all. Certainly it didn't create the concepts of sci-fi, space battles, sweeping storylines, and a blending of mystical and scientific ideas, but it certainly popularized them during the years of the original trilogy and influenced many people that would go on to have interests in sci-fi, fantasy and epic adventure today.

Hell, look me in the eye and tell me that the lightsaber didn't give us the [[power weapon]]. But then again, magic weapons.
==Sabacc and Pazaak==
A rather unusual entry here but it's well in line, Sabacc is an actual tabletop card game from the Star Wars universe which is basically a hybrid of Poker and Blackjack. A Sabacc Deck has 80 cards, most of which in four suits of 16 cards numbered one to 16 (two suits positive, two suits negative), plus 16 wildcards that could be positive/negative or (in the case of the Idiot) Zero. The goal of the game is to have a set of three cards who's total as close as possible to, but not over, 23 or -23. If you got 23/-23 (Pure Sabacc) which could only be beaten by an Idiot's Array (the Idiot, a Two and a Three, thus 23). The stakes are raised every cycle until the cards go down or one player is left standing who gets the pot. Like most card games there are variations, such as a single suit hand beating a mixed hand of equal value, light beating dark, dark beating light, instant tiebreaker with new hands in the case of a tie; one variation even uses dice (presumably to set a handicap the hand has to overcome).

The notable thing about Sabacc that sets it apart from real world card games is that the Cards can change value every turn. A Pure Sabacc can easily become an instant lose 25 and an absolutely lousy hand can become an Idiot's Array. They can be stabilized to fix their value, but everyone knows when you do so. This feature has so far prevented Sabacc from being released in tabletop form as of yet. ''(Of course, there are ways to deal with this, such as simply re-dealing unfixed cards, but never let it be said that nerds will choose practicality over purity.)''

In universe, Han Solo won the Millenium Falcon off Lando in a game of Sabacc.

Pazaak is an older game from an in-universe perspective, similar to Blackjack but its player versus player rather than player versus dealer and also has some aspects of a collectible card game. Goal of the game is to raise cards from the main deck until their total value is 20 or they can also choose to stand if they get close but don't want to risk it. Best out of five wins.

CCG-aspect of Pazaak comes from the sidedeck: both players collect ten cards for their side deck and then randomly take four cards from their side deck to their hand in the beginning of the game. Hand cards are used to either lower or raise the total value: so if the player raises cards from the main deck to the total value of 25, they can prevent dropping out if they have a -5 card or higher in their hand.
Cards which only either raise or lower the value are the most common of the side cards.
More rarer are cards which can be used to both raise and lower the value.
Then there are flip cards, which change certain main deck cards on the table to negative ones. So if the player plays a 2&4 flip card, all 2:s and 4:s on the table become -2:s and -4:s. Flip cards exist in 2&4:s and 3&6:s.
Then there is the double card, which doubles the value of the last played card. So if the player raises a 5 from the main deck, playing the double card would turn it into a 10.
Finally, the rarest side deck card is the tiebreaker, which grants the player a win if the game would otherwise end in a tie.

==Tabletop games for Star Wars==

=== Role-playing Games ===

[[West End Games]] made a Star Wars [[role-playing game]] called [[Star Wars RPG|Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game]] AKA '''Star Wars D6'''. Like many West End products, it's a good game with the great misfortune of being published by West End Games.

[[Wizards of the Coast]] picked up the license later and made two distinct RPGs based on their [[d20 System]], called [[Star Wars D20]] (imaginatively). Could be fun, but generally broken as hell, much like [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition|its parent game]]. It was then utterly revised that into what they called the '''Saga Edition''', which is relatively balanced and pretty good.

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] is presently selling [[Star Wars Roleplaying Game|a whole line of Star Wars-themed RPGs]], each one focusing on a specific style of play. You want to play a bunch of scruffy space outlaws (Edge of the Empire), members of the nascent Rebellion (Age of Rebellion), or exiled Jedi Knights (Force and Destiny), then they got you covered. Unlike their [[Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay]] games, which are all ''juuuuust'' different enough from one another to completely buttfuck any attempts at blending, all three gamelines use identical mechanics and are fully cross-compatible. Uses symbol-counting [[dice pool]]s with ludicrously overpriced custom dice.
Like the other RPGs they decided with the retardedly similar name, and thus this one is sometimes called '''Star Wars FFG''' to avoid confusion.

FFG have kept milking the franchise and in summer 2017, decided to [[Necromancer | reanimate]] the [[Star Wars RPG|Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game]] with a "30th Year Anniversary Edition" print of the original game. It '''''finally''''' shipped in July 2018 after spending a year in limbo.

=== Card Games ===

The big [[card game]] set in the Star Wars universe is the [[Star Wars Customizable Card Game]]. It's no longer produced by Decipher, but there is still a sufficiently large player community to organize annual tournaments, rule on cards, and so on. SWCCG was radically different from the norm of card games, being divided into light and dark side cards with different backings, with light and dark always playing against each other. For tournament play a player would need both a light and dark deck. The gameplay was also radically different from most CCGs; in Magic terms the closest analog would be that every SWCCG deck was fundamentally a mill deck, with some hard to assemble insta-win combos themed to the plots of the movies.

[[Wizards of the Coast]] made the [[Star Wars Trading Card Game]]. It is now dead.

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] made [[Star Wars: Destiny CCG]]. It is also now dead.

Obviously, nobody is capable of creating a Star Wars card game with an interesting name.

Aside from the real, physical, games there was also ''Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game''. It was a real, functioning, card game within the MMO that used all virtual cards. Unfortunately no server emulators have implemented it yet.

=== Miniature Games ===

The first Star Wars miniatures game was ''Star Wars Miniature Battles'' released by West End Games in 1989. It and the minis were readily available through the early half of the 1990's, although the line was never particularly diverse. Even accounting for vehicles the whole line was only a couple dozen products and you could get all the rebel heroes in a single box if you just wanted them for the RPG, plus a another box for Vader and a mix of imperials.

Concurrent to this, Galoob managed to get their hands on Star Wars for their Micro Machines toy line, and released an '''enormous''' line of minis which conformed to no consistent scale but were at least cheap, durable, and prepainted. Homebrew adaptations of other systems to use them were a thing in the 90's but vanished as they became scarce.

[[Wizards of the Coast]] did a tabletop battles game imaginatively called Star Wars: Miniatures, based on an extremely dumbed down version of the D&D ruleset. The figures were meant to tie in with the Saga edition RPG, it wasn't terrible on its own, just impossible to collect for competitive play since figures came in random booster packs so you never know what you were getting for what faction. Who could possibly stand for that?

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] is producing the [[X-Wing]] miniatures game based on individual starfighter combat (because, let's be honest, that's what ''Star'' Wars is all about). They have also released [[Star Wars: Armada]] which is a larger scale "fleet" combat simulator, using capital ships and squadrons of starfighters.

'''Star Wars: Imperial Assault'''

The latest [[Fantasy Flight Games]] addition to its Star Wars related games is a mix between a miniature board game and a skirmish wargame. It has two play modes:

One for campaign play where 1-4 players control a team of Rebel heroes and another player has the role of the DM, who controls the Imperial forces. The campaign, as the name suggests, focuses on character personalization, xp gain and the like, which you can find in any light RPG-esque (board)game. The main goal is to get a few friends together and casually play through the missions. Think of it as a Star Wars version of the original [[Hero Quest]].

The other play mode is skirmish play, where two players each get to assemble a team of miniatures plus a command deck (cards that have specific effects when played) and play against each other in an open-play scenario. The play area is still very limited to a few game tiles (as in a campaign mission) but players are free to bring whatever they want (with a few limitations of course). The skirmish part of Imperial assault is as close as you can get to an actual Star Wars skirmish wargame, but it is a missed opportunity from Fantasy Flight to create a true skirmish wargame (ala [[Infinity (wargame)|Infinity]]), not based on tiles and so confined spaces. Who knows what they have plans for though...

'''Star Wars Legion'''

And Fantasy Flight have now given us a fully fledged wargame, complete with AT-ST in the first wave. (They're 32mm scale, which means [[Games Workshop|no reusing your Imperial Assault miniatures]].) Legion has an integrated turn system, and the usual FF custom dice and forest worth of dead trees in cards and tokens that will be familiar to X-Wing and Armada players. The miniatures are PVC, reasonably detailed, easy to assemble pieces. A standard battle is 800 points, which could be anywhere from half a dozen to 16 units on the field, with an average army fielding 8-12 units comprising 30-ish models.

=== Board Games ===

The most famous and arguably best one is [[Star Wars: Rebellion]], an asymmetric two-player game that plays through the Original Trilogy in a wargame/worker placement-esque game. The Empire player must expand their already huge military base over the galaxy to build more ships and huge superweapons while searching for the Rebel Base, while the Rebels do their best to bite them in their heel, obscuring their movements and annoying the Empire until they have enough support to overthrow the Empire. As a [[Fantasy Flight Games|FFG]] boardgame, it's filled with a ludicrous amount of bits and pieces (including sweet models of Star Destroyers, Death Stars and Calamari Cruisers), as well as the trademark filled-with-small-exceptions ruleset. It's pretty sweet and still considered one of the best board games of its kind.

=== Card Miniature Games ===

In the late 00's, WizKids produced a short lived construct-able miniatures Star Wars game based on their styrene card system for Pirates of the Spanish Main. Although the game sold well, when NECA bought WizKids from Topps the rights did not transfer and it went out of print.

==Video Games for Star Wars==

To put it bluntly, every game which could possibly have ''Star Wars'' slapped onto it, exists. Flight simulators. Racers. Rail shooters. Doom clones. MMOs. Age of Empires reskins. An official expansion for ''The Sims 4''. Hell, there's even a Kinect variety game. Here's a few standouts...

* '''Knights of the Old Republic''': A pair of single player RPGs depicting a Sith war several thousand years before ''A New Hope''. KotOR is widely regarded as the best Star Wars video game ever, and was the framework for BioWare's ''Mass Effect'' series. Of all the Legends stuff, KotOR appears to still be in good standing with Disney since they continue to borrow from it. The sequel by Obsidian was the original subversive take on the franchise TLJ wanted to be but failed miserably; this sequel, also, failed, less because it was Different, more because those assholes didn't let its devs finish it before dumping it in game-stores. Much much later came a skubtastic MMO simply called "Old Republic" (since you can play as things other than Jedi and Sith) that is the sequel, which had a very rough start but stabilized enough to still survive to this day somehow. Though the gameplay is pretty meh due to being an MMO, the storylines are mostly good, with the best of them being some of the best Star Wars stories out there. Possibly still canon in the Disney continuity since a lot of things get borrowed or referenced from it. Also the only thing in the EU to still receive new content. Fans often treat these games as canon even if they are technically not, due to being set so long before the films that there aren't many contradictions between canon and legends.

* '''Jedi Knight''': A series that started of as an early FPS named Dark Forces (so early that it was the time when FPS games were still known as [[Doom]]-clones) but Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight had the protagonist become a Jedi. The Dark Forces name was dropped in favor of Jedi Knight after this. The series combines surprisingly deep lightsaber combat with standard shooting, though the levels can get very mazy at times. Introduced Kyle Katarn, who despite starting out in a non-EU game ended up so beloved that he entered canon. There was a Mara Jade expansion, "Mysteries of the Sith", amounting to a new game. The replayability is off the charts thanks to LucasArts' decision to open all three of these games to mods, resulting in fan-made missions several of which were as good as the original (for them, see The Massassi Temple site, still active in all its late-1990s glory). Unfortunately, there has not been a new game since 2003's (Dark Forces 4 : Jedi Knight 3 : ) ''Jedi Academy'' and likely will never be thanks to Disney. They were recently re-released on modern consoles so at least their existence is acknowledged; between such releases, and the modding community on PC, more people have that chance to play them.

* '''Republic Commando''': An FPS that has the player command a squad of commandos. Its a great shooter but unfortunately, it never received a sequel and to make things worse, ended on a cliffhanger. The second act of the game, set entirely on a drifting Acclamator-class assault ship is particularly memorable and highly atmospheric. If one can look past outdated graphics, it is one of the best Star Wars games ever made and holds it's own in the FPS-genre as a whole. It is also notably more violent and [[grimdark]] than Star Wars usually is. The soundtrack is also quite noteworthy, while it does make great use of John Williams music as most Star Wars games do, it also has it's own original and rather unique soundtrack consisting of Mandalorian warchants which you should seriously go and listen to.

* '''Empire at War''': Made by the original developers of [[Command and Conquer]], it is the most notable strategy game to have come out of Star Wars. Notable for featuring three different modes of play: ground battles, space battles and galactic conquest map. Though ground battles are a bit meh, the space battles are great and the galactic conquest is certainly more interesting than only playing random skirmish matches. Even though its over 10 years old, it has a very active modding community. Republic at War, which changes the games Galactic Civil War setting to Clone Wars and Thrawns Revenge, set much further into the Galactic Civil War than portrayed in the films, are particularly great. There is also a remake mod in the works, aiming to bring the game up to modern standards in terms of visuals, sound and UI and the results do look good. Unfortunately, no great 40k mod.

* '''Bounty Hunter''': Featuring Jango Fett as the protagonist and tells the story of he ended up being the clone template. A third person action adventure game that makes the player [[meme|FEEL like a Mandalorian]]. Particular highlight is the first level of the second chapter set on Coruscant as no other game before or since has allowed the player to explore Coruscant to this extent. 1313 was meant to do that even better but fuck Disney.

* '''Star Wars Galaxies''': An early MMO, launched after ''Everquest'' but before ''WoW''. Galaxies is noteworthy for making force powers a prestige achievement requiring enormous in-game effort to unlock. The first expansion pack added a subgame that's a pretty solid flight game in its own right and the game eventually added an original, fully playable, trading card game that sadly has not yet been implemented in any simulator. Then ''World of Warcraft'' hit, Sony panicked and made Jedi a starting class and replaced the skill system with massive level grind, and offered refunds to the raging army of neckbeards. Subscription numbers tanked and never recovered. It would effectively be replaced by ''The Old Republic'', an MMO using the acclaimed KotOR setting. Like most "dead" MMOs that people loved it still lives on through illegal private servers (don't worry, the guys providing it would get busted, not people playing on it).

* '''X-Wing (and TIE Fighter)''': A series of ''Wing Commander'' clones released in the 90's. While badly dated today, they were the best fighter sims of their time, and if you can get past the highly primitive graphics some people still consider them to be the best to this day. Why? The mission scripting and AI are top notch for the genre and absolutely brutal to fight against; on all but the simplest missions you're almost guaranteed to fail the first time and eventually develop a sixth sense about the fighters threatening your objective vs the fighters just there to kill you (ignore those, learn to be hard to hit). Interestingly, TIE Fighter is largely seen as the best of the series while the N64 era Rogue Squadron and Shadows Of The Empire games are seen as being far more visually modern but largely inferior sequels. Did we mention you had to use a flight stick controller basically made for these games to really do well at these?

* ''' The Force Unleashed''': A hack n slash game featuring Starkiller, Vader's secret apprentice. (Note the reference to the first draft's protagonist.) Starkiller is very [[skub]] in his [[awesome]] (he literally pulls down a Star Destroyer from orbit with the Force), so has been called a [[Mary Sue|Gary Stu]]. But if you're a ''gamer'' all that just makes it a complete power fantasy so, not exactly a minus. Physics are pretty good for its time and enemies can have particularly realistic moments, such as briefly grabbing onto whatever's at hand, including each other, when lifted with the Force. Disregard the wii version which is hilariously inferior in level design and gameplay

* '''Revenge of the Sith''': One of the best movie license games of all time, though does that say more about the game or movie license games, I'll let you decide. The storymode is basically a hack n slash but the real star is the versus mode (and boss fights in the story mode) as this is basically the best Star Wars fighting game there is (not that there's much competition).

* '''Star Wars Battlefront II (2005)''': Not to be confused with the one released by EA in 2017. Solid Battlefield-clone with a Star Wars paintjob from the new-defunct Pandemic studio (fuck you, EA) in 2005 told from the perspective of a clone trooper that survived all the way up to the battle of Hoth, with a very down to earth boots on the ground approach. Also, just being thrown into random matches as a soldier because fun. Despite some issues, it remains the high point of the Battlefront series as well as the entire PS2 era, and on PC still has fans via an active modding community to this day. There is of course also the original one but the second one pretty much completely overshadowed it.

* '''Star Wars Battlefront II (2017)''': The one by EA. You've probably heard everything important. An absolute mess at launch due to its lootbox-heavy progression system, so much so that it started discussion even on government level about lootboxes that continues to this day. A comment by EA that became the most downvoted comment in Reddit history. Yet despite all this, two years later, the game is arguably one of the best Star Wars experiences one can have and an Anakin-level redemption story. Like the previous Battlefront II, it completely overshadowed its predecessor.

* '''Jedi: Fallen Order''': It took them years but finally, EA managed to deliver a Star Wars game that is great on launch without cramming it with e-transactions. Its plot focuses on an unfortunate Jedi renegade between ''Revenge'' and ''A New Hope'' who's on the hunt for a hidden database that might document all the Force-sensitive individuals in the galaxy. A game inspired primarily by games such as Dark Souls and Uncharted, its a great action-adventure game in its own right and a must-play for any Star Wars fan. Also notable for making Darth Vader '''''really FUCKING SCARY'''''. As he should be.

* '''Monopoly Star Wars''': Its Star Wars Monopoly. With 90's FMV that plays for every square you land on. On floppy disks. Considered fucking amazing at the time, its too strange and tabletop to not mention. Also one of the last pre-Prequel things released.

* '''Super Star Wars''': A heavily modified retelling of the original trilogy (what, you don't remember how Luke chased down the Sandcrawler and murdered all the Jawas as well as their giant rat god in order to rescue R2-D2?) that was one of the ways to say "hard as fuck" by namedropping a game prior to Dark Souls existing. Amusing for the insanity of the added content in order to make a platformer sidescrolling beat'em'up as well as how neckbeardy you have to be to punish yourself trying to beat it without cheating. Sequels were made for Empire and Jedi, which slightly dialed back the difficulty.

* '''Star Wars: Yoda Stories''': A game geared for kids, released the same year as Monopoly above. Players play as Luke sometime after Empire Strikes Back, although an odd alternate version where Han sometimes is free from carbonite and Boba Fett and sometimes is not. They are assigned a quest by Yoda which requires them to traverse one or more procedurally generated planets doing whatever odd crap Yoda felt was necessary, including sometimes fighting Vader. Recieved middling scores as a PC release, with some individuals HATING the game and using it as a benchmark for how much they hate something when comparing the two, although to be fair that is because distributors tried to sell it like a full game when in reality its supposed to just be freebie software that came with other purchases and was meant to go with Solitaire and space pinball as default games on a computer to waste time with. It has lapsed into obscurity thanks to even those reviewers largely being forgotten on the modern internet. Noteworthy for being played on a grid with simultaneous turn-based movement with all enemies and NPCs on a screen, feeling very much like a desktop game at times, since it uses the Win32 API (like Minesweeper and Solitare) and was almost certainly written in visual basic. A simple puzzle game, where getting blocked in a corner without enough space to pass the time by an idiot NPC is more dangerous than any foe.

*'''Shadows of the Empire''': Made on the Nintendo 64 and Windows PC, this was the game part of the massive Everything But The Movie multimedia of that name. Here you play as Dash Rendar, a scoundrel in a ship like Han Solo working for the Rebellion. Starts during Episode V as a side story; moves on to bridge V and VI. Despite a fanbase that stayed loyal for several years, this game has sadly not aged well at all thanks to the rather peculiar control scheme of the N64 and the graphics having aged like cheap cheese in the sun. Main enemy of the game is a xeno named Xisor who is just a real uppity crime boss (and apparently a prince). The game has an absolute great opening (at least for its time) where you're flying in a Snowspeeder on Hoth killing Imperials left and right while trying to use the cables to crash the AT-ATs like in the movie. After that the game begins to kinda just carry on with awkward controls. Notable for having a soundtrack (we DID say, "Everything But The Movie") not by Williams but equally as good.

*'''Star Wars : Racers''' : The defining podracing game and the only thing done on Episode I that no one can complain about.

==Assorted list of Awesome From Star Wars==
* X-Wing starfighters = spaceborne sex
* Fucking ''[[Lightsaber|Lightsabers!]]''
* The fucking [[Approved music|OST]]
* What is likely the greatest duel in cinematic history, that takes place on a [[Death World|lava planet.]]
* Deathly Stormtroopers, heroic Clonetroopers or sinister First Order troopers; whatever they're called, stormtroopers are awesome! Contrary to popular belief, shot counts have proven they have ridiculously good aim.
* Darth Vader whenever he gets a speaking line or to murder rebel scum - that is to say, all the time.
* Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, TCW and Rebels.
* Lightsaber Rifles
* The entirety of the Umbara campaign, where <s>Imperial Guardsmen</s> Clone Troopers die in the dozens attempting to win some godforsaken planet, earning them balls of titanium that make the guard look ba- {{BLAM| '''*BLAM*''' Heresy!}}, all while serving under a <s>Commissar</s> different Jedi, one who sees the Clone Troopers as cannon fodder.
* 97% of the Creatures.
* 98% of the Starfighter designs.
* Costumes that mix about every possible inspiration, Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese, Ancient Greece and Rome, Elizabethan, Moebius or Pulp Sci-Fi from the 60's, giving the whole series a distinctive style and gives Padme Amidala an excuse to show off with all her dresses.
* Boba and Jango Fett and the rest of the Mandalorians.
* KOTOR (both games) plot making you think this shit is actually logical and has so much philosophical background. One of the creepiest depictions of the Universe. Everything is brutal, with big vibrating knives, blood, those machines for Sith snuff movies, more blood, bastards, badass bastards and so on. Everything while somebody is talking with you about existence.
* Our saviour Lord Revan. He's like if [[Horus|fucking Horus]] just became [[Big Bad Evil Guy|fucking bad]] (but not that [[Erebus|bad]]) to fucking destroy the [[Chaos Gods|Dark Gods]] so he can solve his daddy issues.
**but he's more virile, deadly, powerful, charismatic and cool.
* Double-bladed Lightsabers.
* Lando Calrissian.
* [https://youtu.be/YJEUAe-dcGo Obi-Wan Kenobi.]
* The High Ground.
* TIE fighters. They have the most distinctive scream of any fighter in cinematic history that just yells "I'm evil!". Tell me I'm wrong. I'll wait.
** The fact that they managed to do that using what is essentially a shitty visual pun.
* Most of Episode 3.
* The entirety of Anakin's story, especially when you add the Clone Wars and prequels. While you're at it, watch CinemaWins' perspective on it the series.
* Admiral Ackbar the Memeable!
* Palpatine getting into some Tzeentchian-level scheming and backstabbing in order to overthrow the Jedi and the Republic.
* Battle of Yavin.
* Battle of Hoth.
* Battle of Endor.
* Battle of Scariff.
* Grand Admiral Thrawn: So awesome that he rose to a high rank in the anthropocentric Empire despite being an alien and was one of the first things to be imported straight from Legends to Disney.
* Imperial Pilots get a mention, seeing as they fly literal garbage fighters against superior rebel fighters. Yes, we are talking about the the same TIE Fighters we mentioned before. By garbage, we mean despite how cool looking and sounding TIE Fighters are, they are actually a ridiculously impractical design and the standard TIE Fighters are mass produced extremely cheaply even if they don't look like it (except Darth Vader's, which is custom made and modified by Vader himself). Even 40k's Imperium has better fighter designs. At least the Imperium's fighters conserve the life of the fucking pilot. Also, clearly super skilled since they have roughly an equal kill-death ratio with the Rebels in the movie battles.
* [https://youtu.be/T9j7kLG7VK8 Obi-Wan Kenobi. Again.]
* The Millennium Falcon has a 3D chess board, secret compartments for smuggling space cocaine and a walk in closet specifically for capes.
* Princess, later Senator Leia Organa; the original badass-yet-hot boss lady in space. Ends up leading two separate, successful underground freedom movements against impossible odds. Did we mention she's a Jedi in both canons?
*The trench run.
* Han Solo, who is so badass that hot Leia falls in love. He has the smuggler's best friend, a Wookie, who is also the worst opponent you can face in a [[Chess|Dejarik match]].
* Just... Star Destroyers. When you see a huge, imposing warship from an evil Empire, this is the granddaddy they all look up to.
* The moon sized space stations that zap other planets to bits? They’re pretty neat.
* Werner Herzog, asking if he can look at your baby and assuring you that he will be quiet.
* Oh, did we mention the lightsabers?
* Tyber Zann

== See Also: ==

* ''[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/ Darths & Droids]'': A webcomic, made using photo-stills of the ''Star Wars'' movies to tell a story about gamers blundering through each of the six movies in sequence... though not quite exactly how you might expect. Think ''DM of the Rings'' in overall visual style, though unlike ''DM of the Rings'', ''Darths & Droids'' features several heavy twists on the actual events of the films, subplots about the players and their lives outside the game alongside the campaign, and a better overall quality of gamer. Whereas ''DM of the Rings'' features a railroading DM and players who are therefore somewhat antagonistic to him, ''Darths & Droids'' has a GM who adjusts his game to his players' actions and players who generally get along with both him and each other. The plot of ''DMotR'' is very similar to that of the movies (but avoids a few plot elements), but the plot (and, indeed, the universe) of ''Darths & Droids'' is only very loosely based on the ''Star Wars'' films. (For a somewhat spoilery example: "Darth" is a courtesy title for retired Jedi, such as Chancellor Palpatine.)

* "[https://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html Endor Holocaust]": An excellent example of the [[skub]] Star Wars can create. Rebuttal: " [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/fanart/endortruth20040810.pdf Endor Rebuttal]"

* [[Timothy Zahn]]

{{Star Wars}}

[[Category: Television]]

[[Category: Star Wars]]

Star Wars

2021-02-28T14:13:05Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:BD4E:3A95:12FF:4067: /* Disney Canon */

[[File:Star-Wars-Logo (1).jpg|center|500px|]]

{{Topquote|A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....|Star Wars opening text}}
'''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D0ZQPqeJkk/ Star Wars]''' is one of, if not ''the'', most influential media franchises of modern times, let alone its effect on science-fiction and fantasy. Indeed, among [[/tg/|nerddom]], it is challenged by only a few others, like [[Star Trek]] and [[The Lord of the Rings]].

The incredibly ardent fandom is spread worldwide and has a strong presence in popular culture. Many of the characters, like Darth Vader and Yoda, are iconic even to the general public. John Williams' score for the original trilogy is one of the best-known film scores of all time, right up there with greats like Jaws, Jurassic Park (also composed by John Williams), Indiana Jones (John Williams again!), Shrek, Harry Potter (there's a reason Hollywood often relies on John Williams for their soundtracks) and the Avengers. The universe has spawned numerous video games, hundreds of novels, multiple TV shows, one of the largest merchandising franchises ever, and, relevant to /tg/, a whole bunch of board, card, and roleplaying games.

It is also the current leading world source of [[Skub]].

==The Basic Concept==
Star Wars was originally a series of epic science-fantasy "space operas" that roughly followed the mythic cycle that's been around since Homer. They're set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," [Note: this makes the entire series a fairy tale] where a mysterious life force called (reasonably enough) the Force permeates everything. This, in turn, can be wielded by certain people, giving them pseudo-magical abilities; thank the Emperor ([[Emperor|no, the other one]]) there were no Commissars in that universe. Those who use it for good become mystical, selfless warrior monks called Jedi, whereas those who use it for evil are ruthless, self-serving bastards called Sith. However, the Force must always be in balance, so any time the Sith arise to cause imbalance, the Jedi have to pull together and take them out to restore the natural order (so we are told in the prequels).

A financial, critical, popular and cultural H-bomb, these movies are basically the filter through which Generation X perceives the world... for better or worse.

The so-called Original Trilogy (made up of films IV through VI, released from 1977 to 1983) follows a young man named Luke Skywalker as he learns the ways of the Jedi. Meanwhile, the Rebel Alliance is fighting to end the oppressive Galactic Empire which Darth Vader, a Lord of the Sith, serves. The first movie tagged (in 1978) ''Episode IV: A New Hope'' posits that the military imperium holds the Emperor as figurehead leader of a Senate, soon to be abolished; as the movies continue, we learn that the emprah is secretly Vader's master. Luke's Rebel companions in Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi defeat the evil Emperor, but along the way Luke discovers who's his daddy - ME! Darth Vader! I'm yo daddy because I did this to yo mama. The third movie's novelisation, at last, names the emperor: "Palpatine".

In between we got an "Extended Universe", which LucasArts commissioned, and some leaks of variants of the movies' scripts. We learnt from the early drafts that "Starkiller" was the first floated name for Luke, that a "padawan" is an apprentice, and so on. We learnt from a ''RotJ'' leak that the Empire's base is <strike>Trantor</strike>Coruscant, a city over an entire planet. The canonical 1996 All-But-The-Movie multimedia ''Shadows of the Empire'' - which was naff despite being canon, you totally don't have to deal with it yourself, excepting Joel McNeely's soundtrack which was awesome - has scenes on Coruscant.

The so-called Prequel Trilogy (made up of films I through III, released from 1999 to 2005) explained how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader and how the Galactic Empire was established. This involves a lot of convoluted politicking in the Republic, which is then torn apart in the Clone Wars, where the Republic (with an army of clones led by the Jedi) fights against the Confederacy (with an army of robots led by [[Necrons|General Grievous]] and secretly controlled by the Sith). It was not as well received as the first trilogy, for reasons we'll talk about below.

There's also a so-called Sequel Trilogy (made up of films VII, VIII, and IX), which started in 2015 and picked up the story some three decades after the Emperor's defeat with a new generation of heroes taking on the remains of the evil Empire, which is a group of extremist former Imperials calling themselves the First Order. However, Episode VII aka ''The Force Awakens'', was directed by J.J. Abrams, who's mostly known for the [[skub|skubtastic]] [[Star Trek]] reboot and was widely criticized for ripping off Episode IV (the whole trilogy apes the original trilogy a lot but none as much as VII) and a [[Mary Sue]] protagonist. Meanwhile Episode VIII was written and directed by Rian Johnson who was a young director known for plot twists and genre experimentation on a handful of movies and television episodes that openly said he wanted to "subvert expectations" and make half of viewers dislike his work, then got pissed when half of them disliked his work. The result managed to fracture the Star Wars fanbase over issues of dull rehashing for VII and a whole laundry list of reasons for VIII (ranging from small ones such as it being too different, to major issues like half the movie being filler and the plot not even making basic sense), as well as those who still enjoyed them and very little common ground between the three groups. Abrams returned for Episode IX which got a mixed reception from both those who liked VIII and those who didn't.
General issue with the sequels is that there was no plan on what to do in each part of the trilogy and they came up with everything as they went along and it really shows. Thus it really feels like the whole trilogy lacks direction, as it was directed by two guys with conflicting visions, yet almost complete freedom to do what they wanted, including [[derp|undoing stuff done in the other guys movie]].

Finally, there are the so-called Anthology movies, standalone one-shots involving characters and plotlines that aren't a part of the main "Saga" films, except they kind of are. The first, Rogue One (2016), is an immediate prequel to Episode IV that follows those Rebel spies who stole the Death Star plans. The second film follows a young Han Solo and pals Chewie and Lando. <s>A third rumored one follows Boba Fett</s> Became a series.

There are also four separate TV series. The first one, ''Clone Wars'', was based on traditional animation, whereas the later one, '''''The''' Clone Wars'', was a weird 3D animation. They're both pretty good. There was also a terrible theatrical release that was basically just an advertisement for ''The Clone Wars'', but, since it's quite bad(hint: babysitting Jabba the Hutt's kid), nobody talks about it much. The third series is Disney's ''"Rebels"'' which is set between Episodes III-IV and it takes itself far less seriously than Clone Wars did, and is more of a homage to the original trilogy since not every character in the series is the owner of a lightsaber nor are they constantly talking about grown-up politics, senators and trade embargoes, which played a large role in the prequel trilogy and found their way to The Clone Wars as well. Finally there is Resistance, which only lasted two seasons (for comparison, Clone Wars lasted 7 and Rebels lasted 4) and wasn't particularly well received by the fans, largely due to general lack of interest in the [[fluff]] of the sequel trilogy.

And so, after voicing a Mandalorian character one time in an episode of Clone Wars, Jon Favreau’s ego boner couldn’t contain itself any longer and gave birth to the first live action Star Wars TV series, The Mandalorian - building on the Disney version of Mandalorians as a sort of [[Eldar Corsairs|weedy, neo space Viking]], which seems feeble when compared to the old EU version of Mandalorians, who were more like space [[Orks|Maoris]]. Still, it ended up being pretty good; good enough for Disney to go ahead with another <s>two</s> four live action series (because if there is anyone who loves to rub skub into their pores, they are Star Wars fans). The first is a prequel to the Rogue One film, y’know, to build on the backstories of people you never needed to know about in the first place. The second series will focus on Obi Wan Kenobi’s time in exile after the saddling Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru with a kid they never asked for, nor wanted. This is what passes for entertainment in this day and age. A one season serieson Ahsoka (from 3d Clone Wars) and one on Boba Fett.

And then there's the whole Expanded Universe, which covers pretty much everything not covered by the films, like the Old Republic (set thousands of years before the prequel trilogy, when there were a hell of a lot more Sith and Jedi around) and the New Republic (set immediately after the original trilogy, explaining what became of all the characters. It could also reach 40k levels of grimdark with races like the [[Dark Eldar|Yuuzhan]] [[Tyranids|Vong]] characters like [[Vampire|Darth Nihilus]] and beings like [[Old Ones|Abeloth]]...and of course Ewoks.

The EU is no longer considered in the main canon of the films and TV series, due to the new sequel trilogy which does not follow EU, the reason for this being, according to Disney, that following EU would restrict their creative freedom. The reaction to this was, well, [[skub|mixed, for lack of a better word, especially considering how a lot of the so-called creative freedom in the sequels consists of aping the Original Trilogy]], and because so much of EU ''was'' canon, like that whole ''Shadows of the Empire'' mess. The Rats have since noted that they'll slot ''some'' of it in on a case-by-case basis, but the canon is in a highly fluid state at the moment. EU is now officially called Star Wars Legends, though most fans still refer to it as EU.

==Why is it so popular?==

Star Wars is as accessible as science fiction gets. It doesn't require extensive knowledge of a fictional world (a la ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' or ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'') or cultural background (as ''[[Star Trek]]'' sometimes does) to make sense. Those elements are present for those who want them, but they largely stay in the (very rich and vibrant) background. It has well-shot action and good ''enough'' dialogue to make it interesting for both kids and adults (as well as allowing parents who grew up with it to watch it with their children, thereby hooking the next generation of viewers). It has simple, good-vs.-evil themes that resonate with almost anyone, anywhere, at any time. The science fiction elements are generally handled well if you don't obsess over making science fiction realistic and hard (or at least they WERE handled well until Episode VII). It's a prime gateway drug for sci-fi which still holds up to the experienced eye, [[Isaac Asimov]] saw and rather enjoyed the films. All in Fourteen hours of cinema, plus optional sides for those who want it.

There's a ton of merchandise that is, of course, really cool. Also, given it's crossed over into the mainstream, many people feel comfortable being part of the community without feeling judged as "nerds" (as they might with ''Lord of the Rings'', ''D&D'', ''Star Trek'', ''Warhammer'', etc.).

Again, they roughly follow the mythic cycle that's been around since Homer. If you think about it, 6 of the 9 films can be summarized as: hero begins his journey under the tutelage of a wise (more or less) man, they encounter a threat which has captured/enslaved a princess/girl, who was in one way or another connected to an important secret (usually a superweapon but could be the identity of a political figure or the location of someone); the heroes save the princess/girl but someone dies tragically in a battle against the villain while someone else is blowing up a space station or a spaceship afterwards they are happy, they celebrate and mourn the loss of the poor bloke who died.

Additionally, the first film can be summarized as a samurai and a gunslinger team up to save a princess from Nazis in space. That is multiple cinematic genres at once, following the style of the epic myth.

==Setting==
Due to article bloat, [[Star Wars Setting]] is now its own page.

==Movies==
Also due to article bloat, [[Star Wars Movies]] are also their own page.

==Expanded Universe==

It can be said what makes a franchise into a long term lasting thing is when a wealth of extra story and background is created that expands on the original story far beyond what there was. It could be argued Star Wars leads the race in this, as the sheer amount of extra novels, graphic novels and games based on Star Wars can and does overwhelm the ordinary fan.

===The original EU/Star Wars "Legends"===

[[Image: Choices_of_One_PB_art.jpg|right|200px|thumb|The waifu was so strong with Mara Jade, Luke Skywalker himself decided to wife her up]]
The background has expanded into the distant past before the founding of the current Jedi and Sith orders and into the (not-quite-so) far future looking at the descendants of Luke Skywalker and other popular characters. Uniquely, especially considering [[Warhammer 40K|other]] [[Star Trek|franchises']] track records, the Star Wars Expanded Universe is <strike>remarkably</strike> <strike>sorta</strike> sometimes internally consistent, both with other sources within the universe and with the films themselves, at least in comparison to other comparable settings. Of course, it's got plenty of its own [[C. S. Goto|problem children]] that slipped through, and the [[skub]] mine of it all isn't much shallower than that of 40K. Good portions of it do hold up well, largely due to the efforts of Lucas' company's continuity department leaning on everyone to hold it together. One thing that greatly helps is continuity books and articles aren't afraid to make small retcons to make even the most obscure and shitty sources (like that terrible PS1 fighting game) seem like part of an organized plot. Particularly well-loved parts include characters like Grand Admiral Thrawn (a rare alien officer in the Empire and popular enough that Disney brought him back to the canon from the EU) and Mara Jade (pictured right, a Force-using former agent of Emperor Palpatine who later turned good, became a Jedi Master, married Luke and had a son with him) - interestingly both were created by the same author [[Timothy Zahn]].

Upon their acquisition, Disney said "fuck it" and threw out everything but the films and the Clone Wars cartoons. Some popular old stuff got mentions or appearances (and Thrawn got to be a major character), but the overall quality is even lower than the old EU. What was set up as a major book contains phrases like "The TIE wibbles and wobbles through the air" and random virtue signalling. As though to top the previous, Disney literally published a book with an entire chapter about mass wedding farts (Yes. Really.). The only good stuff is from established EU authors writing stuff far away from era of the Disney films.

The [[rage]] over the EU's scrapping was major among many fans of it, but for all Disney's shortcomings, they were in a tight spot. Towards the end all that continuity and consistency got thrown out the airlock for increasingly dumb and disjointed narratives and garbled plot threads to the point that the Star Wars logo was just about as much a sign of quality as the Nintendo approval stamp on shitty SNES games.

Another problem was that Disney is mostly family-friendly, and some of the Star Wars EU could get really dark. As in Warhammer 40k levels of grimdark. Examples of this are the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong - forcenull space-Druchii (no no, not Comorrites though they have the pain and body modification fetishes for it, space-'''Druchii''', riding enslaved tyranid bioships) from another galaxy, Mnggal-Mnggal - mindraping gelatin lost on its way to Star Trek, and Abeloth - an ancient (she predates the Jedi and the Sith) yandere Force entity more like something from the Cthulhu Mythos and is so dangerous the Jedi and the Sith '''joined forces''' to fight her. It's difficult to envision how Disney could have kept the EU when even before all that it was struggling to find a market beyond the most [[neckbeards|dedicated fans]].

===The Books===

'''The Good EU'''
[[Image: Heir-to-the-empire-cover.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Heir to the Empire (1991): The book that started it all]]
* '''The Thrawn Trilogy''': The origination point for the EU despite not being the first Star Wars books published, and focuses on the conflict with the Imperial remnants left over after RotJ. Named for the main villain, Grand Admiral Thrawn, who went on to become one of Star Wars most well-loved characters. Basically the story "The Force Awakens" wishes it was (also introduced the character Mara Jade, a sexy redhead that's everything Disney wishes Rey was and more). Oh, and also gave us the Republic capital planet Coruscant.
* '''The Han Solo Adventures''': Star's End was the second spinoff book written and the first good one. Hit store shelves before Empire Strikes Back was even in theaters. Han and Chewie are trying to get some work done on the Falcon and get volun-told to bust out some political prisoners to pay for it. The Z-95 Headhunter fighter comes from this one. Would have made for a better film than ''Solo'' did.
* '''Shadows of the Empire''': Shadows is set between ESB and RotJ and fills in the details of getting the Death Star II's plans, finding out where Han was taken, Luke building his own saber, etc by the introduction of a bounty hunter by the name of Dash Rendar who is just another Han Solo. It was a Major Multimedia Event at the time, including a soundtrack and an uneven video game which we'll get to. The game was why Rendar, that fill-in for Han, even exists: he's your avatar. The Special Edition rerelease of ''A New Hope'' added the Outrider to the background of one scene. As for Steve Perry's book, it's notable for Xizor the ultra sexy crime boss; he comes close to porking Leia, but she evades his wiles. We guess that's why they didn't pick Crispin to write it.
*'''The Darth Bane Trilogy''': The origin of the Rule of Two for the Sith, along with a compelling protagonist and his apprentice.
* '''Cloak of Deception''': Luceno's prequel to the prequels, a political thriller, much more focused than ''The Phantom Menace''. Foreshadows ''Clones'' characters.
* '''Shatterpoint''': The Mace Windu spinoff, ''Heart of Darkness'' style with Samuel Jackson playing the Charles Marlow role. Windu cracks off lines like "we're going to beat him like a rented gong".
* '''Revenge of the Sith''': The novelization is actually considered a serious improvement over the movie itself.
* '''Darth Plagueis''': Shows how Palpatine becomes a Sith Lord under his mentor. Less Star Wars than Star Politics, which is a good thing for this particular story.
* '''Jedi Apprentice''': That Qui-Gon / Obi-Wan series for kids, started by Dave Wolverton and continued by Jude Watson over a near-flawless run of eight books, until Xanatos bites it and there's no focused villain anymore. What a waste we barely got to see this relationship in the movie.

'''The Bad EU'''
* '''Jedi Academy Trilogy''': Luke sets up his academy on Yavin IV and tries to teach [[Rage|Kyp Durron]]. Imperial remnant superweapons hit ludicrous territory with the sun crusher. This was the beginning of Kevin J Anderson hammering out a couple dozen Star Wars books over about four years.
* '''Young Jedi Knights Series''': Set between Jedi Academy and New Jedi Order, mostly follows Han & Leia's kids.
* '''I, Jedi''': A retelling of the Jedi Academy Trilogy (see above) with more of Corran Horn from the first set of X-Wing books. Less derp in general but significantly more [[Mary Sue]]age of Horn.
* '''Legacy of the Force''': The survivors of the Yuuzhan Vong War are trying to rebuild the galaxy, but Jacen Solo turns Sith and becomes the main villain. The book series is infamous for nearly killing the Star Wars brand and issues between various writers years before Disney went down the same road (Jacen Solo was also a major influence for Kylo Ren). The biggest complaints were Jacen killing off Mara Jade, the villains having plot armor through bouts of incompetence from the heroes, poor dialogue, long-winded writing and the story being overstuffed with allusions to post 9/11 US culture and politics.

'''The [[Skub]] EU'''
[[Image: Yuuzhan-vong-eu2_bg.jpg|right|200px|thumb|The Yuuzhan Vong, [[Skub|either badass and interesting or grimderp canon-defiling villains]]]]
* '''New Jedi Order''': The longest-running Star Wars book series (19 books long) being about an extragalactic invasion and the Jedi's role in fighting it. Luke and his wife Mara are training new Jedi including Han and Leia's kids while Han and Leia build bridges between the New Republic and Imperial Remnants. Until the extragalactic invaders arrive; the Yuuzhan Vong - [[Culexus|Force-null]] [[Imperium of Man|religious fanatics]] with [[Tyranids|organic technology]] and a fixation on [[Dark Eldar|pain and body modification]]. The resulting war sees a body count that rivals anything in Warhammer 40k, including Chewie's death Majora's Mask style plus the deaths of Han and Leia's youngest son and Admiral Ackbar. Mara gives birth to Ben Skywalker and overcomes a terminal illness. The Vong take over and [[Tyranids|terraform]] part of the galaxy, including Coruscant, and lots is learned about the Force. A real love-it-or-hate-it series, some parts are good, some are bad and some are weird.
* '''Dark Empire''': Palpatine's back to save a dying franchise decades before Disney tried it. He even uses clone bodies to do so (but unlike Disney, Dark Horse didn't flip-flop on the lore), wrecks a fleet of enemy ships using the Force and at some point has his power reflected back at him. Starts off good, falls apart fast. Known for its love-it-or-hate-it artstyle and dialogue. Original version of Episode 9.
* '''Courtship of Princess Leia''': Deals with another Imperial remnant, where a Queen who could be potential ally against the Imperials offers a deal which hinges on Leia marrying her prince son. In response, Han sorta-kinda (totally) kidnaps Leia. Luke teams up with the prince in question (who's a bit of a Jedi fanboy but basically a competent officer) to find them. This one introduced the planet Dathomir and the force witches the Nightsisters, which were ultimately adapted to be Maul's homeworld.
* '''X-Wing''': A long running series that passed between several authors that followed Wedge and his squad post RotJ. Initially focused on the liberation of Coruscant and was solid if formulaic, but eventually spiraled off into skub territory. cv
* '''Fate of the Jedi''': Want some Cthulhu with your Star Wars? Luke, his son Ben, Leia and the remaining Jedi work to counter anti-Jedi backlash following the events of LotF while Han takes a bigger role in politics. Things go from bad to worse when several Jedi suffer mysterious shared bouts of psychosis and an ancient Sith tribe emerges from hiding. Things then go from worse to cosmic horror when both sides encounter Abeloth, a yandere, Lovecraftian Force entity so dangerous the Jedi and the Sith have to ''team up'' to fight her (yes really!). But Abeloth escapes her prison, and both sides have to stop her before she plunges the Force and the galaxy into chaos. During these events, Ben Skywalker finds himself in a Batman/Catwoman situation with the Sith apprentice Vestara Khai. While being an OoM better than the preceding book series, FotJ has a very divided opinion among SW fans.
* '''The Paradise Snare''': AC Crispin's first book (1997) in a new Han trilogy, an ANH prequel this time. Han escapes his Oliver Twist youth ("F8GAN", LOL). He ends up in a "spice" (LOL) operation because it was the late 1990s and we were all reciting "D.A.R.E., Drugs Are Bad Mmkay" in school before heading off to raves at night. Young Harrison Ford shuts down this particular hacienda; with the help of Crispin's self-insert, who then gets to bounce on his lap. Those readers who could ignore the cringe, and we admit there was a ''lot'' of cringe from several directions, were generally entertained. It was all a bit episodic for a film but, again, that didn't stop the Rat House from scrapping it and filming what they filmed instead... which was ''also'' episodic and full of cringe.

'''The Not EU'''
* '''Splinter of the Mind's Eye''': Alan Dean Foster's sequel to ''Star Wars'' before anyone, perhaps even Georgie himself, knew what was coming in ''Empire Strikes Back''. Much [[Incest Smith|chemistry]] between Luke and Leia.
* '''Dark Forces''': The novelisation of the games, starring Kyle Katarn. Pretty good writing except for the action scenes, which are rote accounts of the missions in-game. At the time Katarn wasn't considered a canon character and the first game, proposing yet another heist of the Death Star Plans, was explicitly ''disavowed'' as canon. As time went on LucasArts warmed up at least to Katarn who, unlike Dash Rendar, acquired a personality.

== Disney Canon ==
[[Image:Star_Wars_Disney_Princesses.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Love it or hate it, they are now official ''Disney Princesses''.]]
It's still [[skub|debatable]] whether or not the new Canon holds up to the old EU, or learns to fix the problems that plagued it. We probably won't see what comes of it for decades to come. Disney Canon, as of 2020, seems to largely be built around the nine main movies though there have been growing rumors of a shakeup that may render the Disney triology non-canon due to severe backlash and financial losses. There's also shows like Rebels and Clone Wars alongside anthology movies fleshing out stories that had been told in comics and books back before the Disney buy-up, but can now be seen on film.

A curious thing that has begun happening: Certain elements of the old EU are slipping into the Disney Canon. Plotlines like the Emperor returning, the Death Star plans heist and Han's path to become the smuggler we know him as all have bits and pieces from EU canon in them. In some cases, whole characters are ported in; the best example is Admiral Thrawn, who appears in Rebels. Other times, popular characters has their traits or stories ported into new ones (Finn and Cassian are both expies of Kyle Katarn, for example). This gives some credence to the argument that Lucasfilms and Disney wanted to wipe the slate with all the stories that had been told in the EU, so they could create their own, fully realized canon Star Wars setting that one could make movies - ''many'' movies - from. Considering the amount of shitty fan-fiction-esque stories the EU had, this may be for the best, but of course, storylines that people have loved for ages are also thrown out with the bathwater.

Detractors of Disney-era Star Wars often talk loads about how the sequel trilogy invalidates the original trilogy. Other complaints raised are how Disney screwed over Luke and how many cool characters are either cannibalized for story elements (like Kyle Katarn) or completely removed from canon (like Mara Jade). These are semi-valid arguments of course, but they ignore some of the biggest issues with the EU originally - it wasn't sponsored by George Lucas and Lucasfilms. They were sponsored fan-fiction in a sense, semi-canon from the outset and not really something that could be considered a part of the Star Wars setting, though George Lucas did work with the writers to a point, such as with the New Jedi Order book series (he gave them permission to kill off Chewbacca in the story). In fact, George never really considered them real stories; more like a parallel universe of his own Star Wars works. He accepted it because they bring in the big bucks when people would beg to have the official Star Wars logo on anything they produced.

That, and the sequel trilogy, underwhelming as it may be, was George's idea in broad strokes. The series was always going to have a sequel trilogy, and while the outcome isn't exactly what he (or we) wanted, quite a lot of it is. Luke being an exile on a far-away planet, who has to be roused to fight by a new, female Jedi? George's idea, not Disney's. A son of Han and Leia struggling with the Dark Side? Also George's idea (though Disney lifted a lot form the original version - Jacen Solo - for Kylo Ren). If anything, much of the direction comes from Lucasfilms; Disney just wants the movie to sell well. It's similar with Marvel nowadays.

So for better or worse, the Disney Canon is the first time the wider setting of Star Wars beyond the series and movies have become irrevocably canon, rather than "kinda-sorta-canon". Much of what we've gotten that is new is based roughly on George's own work as well. Remember this when discussing EU vs Disney in Star Wars - Either setting is cool for their own reasons, but the Mouse got little to do with it - and if you don't like it, bring it up with big man Lucas. Whatever the case, CEO Big Iger briefly resigned in 2019... before being brought back in 2020 following severe financial and PR losses for Disney due to comparatively poor reception of the Disney canon, controversial statements from Disney staff against fans and shutdowns related to the global coronavirus pandemic. Disney preceded to rebuild that goodwill and hope with The Mandalorian... only to undermine it with the [[SJW|politically-motivated]] firing of Cara Dune's actress, Gina Carano. There have been rumblings of change and even a civil war in Disney Star Wars between staff supporting producers/directors Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau on one side and people supporting Lucasfilm president/film producer Kathleen Kennedy on the other side.

It should be noted that the TV shows below are either now part of the Disney canon (such as the 2008 Clone Wars series), or made by Disney. There is also a major Star Wars project in the works called Star Wars: The High Republic. It's an upcoming multimedia project spanning books and comics worked on by various writers including Claudia Gray and Cavan Scott ([[Warhammer Adventures|yes, ''that'' Cavan Scott]]). The stated goal is to tell one cohesive story set in the High Republic Era, two centuries prior to Phantom Menace. It was slated for a 2020 release but was pushed back to 2021, purportedly due to the COVID-19 pandemic (purportedly because they could still work on the story from home in this day and age but have chosen to extend the deadline).

December 2020 gave us a major announcement of several new films and TV series, as well as further information about already announced things. These include:

* '''[[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]]''': Live-action series that started in 2019. Unsurprisingly, Season 3 is on it's way and will release in 2022.
* '''Ahsoka''': Live-action series by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni (the chads responsible for The Mandalorian, the latter also responsible for [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]], [[Star Wars:Rebels|Rebels]] and the character of Ahsoka (and [[Star Wars:Resistance|Resistance]] but [[heresy|let's not talk about that]])) featuring the titular fan favorite character who made her live-action debut in The Mandalorian Season 2, starring Rosario Dawson and is a spin-off of The Mandalorian and will have cross-overs with it. Though not officially confirmed, is highly likely to feature the live-action debut of [[tactical genius|Thrawn]], who was name-dropped by Ahsoka in The Mandalorian as her quarry. Release date unknown but is confirmed to run only for one season.
* '''Rangers of the New Republic''': Live-action series and another spin-off of The Mandalorian, again by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni and is said to have cross-overs with The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. Not much is known at the moment but the name tells us at that it would focus on the titular galactic government, something we still don't know much about due to the world-building fuck-up of the sequel trilogy. Release date unknown.
* '''The Bad Batch''': Animated series and a spin-off of The Clone Wars. Focuses on the titular clone commando unit that was introduced in the last season of The Clone Wars, seemingly set during Republics transition into the Empire. [[Awesome|Dee Bradley Baker is back playing all the main characters]]. Release in 2021.
* '''Andor''': Live-action series and a spy-thriller focusing on the titular character who was introduced in Rogue One. Release in 2022.
* '''The Acolyte''': Live-action series set during the High Republic-era, a thus-far unexplored era 100-300 years before the original movie during which the Republic was at it's peak. Release date unknown.
* '''Obi-Wan Kenobi''': Live-action series featuring the return of Ewan McGregor as the titular character set 10 years after Revenge of the Sith. Hayden Christensen is also confirmed to be returning, though how it will work is unknown as Anakin was Vader at this time and thus he would be in his armor and have his voiced dubbed over by someone, likely/hopefully James Earl Jones. Release in 2022 and is confirmed to only run for one season.
* '''A Droid Story''': Animated series featuring R2-D2 and C-3PO and a new character, possibly a droid as well. That is all we know for now but will likely be targeted towards kids, just like the animated series Droids from the 80s. Release date unknown.
* '''Lando''': Live-action series focusing on the titular character. Not much known aside from that at the moment, not even will it feature Billy-Dee Williams or Donald Glover. Release date unknown.
* '''Visions''': [[Anime]] anthology-series made by different anime studios across Japan. Will run for 10 episodes, with each episode likely produced by a different studio. It's unknown which studios are involved but considering their track record, Production IG, Sunrise and Trigger are likely involved. Release date unknown.
* '''Rogue Squadron''': Live-action film, the first one after the sequels. Will feature the titular elite starfighter squadron and is directed by Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman (but also [[RAGE|writer and director of Wonder Woman 1984]]). Will it focus on the Rogue Squadron from EU led by Wedge Antilles or will it be completely different remains to seen. Release in 2023.
* '''Film by Taika Waititi''': Nothing about it is known at the moment except that it is happening, it is live-action and will be directed by Taika Waititi of Thor: Ragnarök-fame who also played IG-11 in The Mandalorian and directed the last episode of the first season. Release likely in either 2024 or 2025.
* '''The Book of Boba Fett''': Live-action series, revealed post-credits in the last episode of The Mandalorian Season 2, which had Boba Fett returning to Jabba's palace, kill everyone inside and then sit on his old bosses throne. Release in 2021.

==Wookieepedia==
One of the largest fan wikis ever created, this bad boy is extensively cited, has enormous variety, and has page upon page of talk. It was if Lexicanum, the 40k fan wiki, and our own glorious site were fused into a terrible beast.

==Impact on 1d4chan and associated games etc==

Star Wars has had subtle and clear impacts on a number of other franchises and genres and it can be ''incredibly'' hard to gauge the extent of it all. Certainly it didn't create the concepts of sci-fi, space battles, sweeping storylines, and a blending of mystical and scientific ideas, but it certainly popularized them during the years of the original trilogy and influenced many people that would go on to have interests in sci-fi, fantasy and epic adventure today.

Hell, look me in the eye and tell me that the lightsaber didn't give us the [[power weapon]]. But then again, magic weapons.
==Sabacc and Pazaak==
A rather unusual entry here but it's well in line, Sabacc is an actual tabletop card game from the Star Wars universe which is basically a hybrid of Poker and Blackjack. A Sabacc Deck has 80 cards, most of which in four suits of 16 cards numbered one to 16 (two suits positive, two suits negative), plus 16 wildcards that could be positive/negative or (in the case of the Idiot) Zero. The goal of the game is to have a set of three cards who's total as close as possible to, but not over, 23 or -23. If you got 23/-23 (Pure Sabacc) which could only be beaten by an Idiot's Array (the Idiot, a Two and a Three, thus 23). The stakes are raised every cycle until the cards go down or one player is left standing who gets the pot. Like most card games there are variations, such as a single suit hand beating a mixed hand of equal value, light beating dark, dark beating light, instant tiebreaker with new hands in the case of a tie; one variation even uses dice (presumably to set a handicap the hand has to overcome).

The notable thing about Sabacc that sets it apart from real world card games is that the Cards can change value every turn. A Pure Sabacc can easily become an instant lose 25 and an absolutely lousy hand can become an Idiot's Array. They can be stabilized to fix their value, but everyone knows when you do so. This feature has so far prevented Sabacc from being released in tabletop form as of yet. ''(Of course, there are ways to deal with this, such as simply re-dealing unfixed cards, but never let it be said that nerds will choose practicality over purity.)''

In universe, Han Solo won the Millenium Falcon off Lando in a game of Sabacc.

Pazaak is an older game from an in-universe perspective, similar to Blackjack but its player versus player rather than player versus dealer and also has some aspects of a collectible card game. Goal of the game is to raise cards from the main deck until their total value is 20 or they can also choose to stand if they get close but don't want to risk it. Best out of five wins.

CCG-aspect of Pazaak comes from the sidedeck: both players collect ten cards for their side deck and then randomly take four cards from their side deck to their hand in the beginning of the game. Hand cards are used to either lower or raise the total value: so if the player raises cards from the main deck to the total value of 25, they can prevent dropping out if they have a -5 card or higher in their hand.
Cards which only either raise or lower the value are the most common of the side cards.
More rarer are cards which can be used to both raise and lower the value.
Then there are flip cards, which change certain main deck cards on the table to negative ones. So if the player plays a 2&4 flip card, all 2:s and 4:s on the table become -2:s and -4:s. Flip cards exist in 2&4:s and 3&6:s.
Then there is the double card, which doubles the value of the last played card. So if the player raises a 5 from the main deck, playing the double card would turn it into a 10.
Finally, the rarest side deck card is the tiebreaker, which grants the player a win if the game would otherwise end in a tie.

==Tabletop games for Star Wars==

=== Role-playing Games ===

[[West End Games]] made a Star Wars [[role-playing game]] called [[Star Wars RPG|Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game]] AKA '''Star Wars D6'''. Like many West End products, it's a good game with the great misfortune of being published by West End Games.

[[Wizards of the Coast]] picked up the license later and made two distinct RPGs based on their [[d20 System]], called [[Star Wars D20]] (imaginatively). Could be fun, but generally broken as hell, much like [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition|its parent game]]. It was then utterly revised that into what they called the '''Saga Edition''', which is relatively balanced and pretty good.

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] is presently selling [[Star Wars Roleplaying Game|a whole line of Star Wars-themed RPGs]], each one focusing on a specific style of play. You want to play a bunch of scruffy space outlaws (Edge of the Empire), members of the nascent Rebellion (Age of Rebellion), or exiled Jedi Knights (Force and Destiny), then they got you covered. Unlike their [[Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay]] games, which are all ''juuuuust'' different enough from one another to completely buttfuck any attempts at blending, all three gamelines use identical mechanics and are fully cross-compatible. Uses symbol-counting [[dice pool]]s with ludicrously overpriced custom dice.
Like the other RPGs they decided with the retardedly similar name, and thus this one is sometimes called '''Star Wars FFG''' to avoid confusion.

FFG have kept milking the franchise and in summer 2017, decided to [[Necromancer | reanimate]] the [[Star Wars RPG|Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game]] with a "30th Year Anniversary Edition" print of the original game. It '''''finally''''' shipped in July 2018 after spending a year in limbo.

=== Card Games ===

The big [[card game]] set in the Star Wars universe is the [[Star Wars Customizable Card Game]]. It's no longer produced by Decipher, but there is still a sufficiently large player community to organize annual tournaments, rule on cards, and so on. SWCCG was radically different from the norm of card games, being divided into light and dark side cards with different backings, with light and dark always playing against each other. For tournament play a player would need both a light and dark deck. The gameplay was also radically different from most CCGs; in Magic terms the closest analog would be that every SWCCG deck was fundamentally a mill deck, with some hard to assemble insta-win combos themed to the plots of the movies.

[[Wizards of the Coast]] made the [[Star Wars Trading Card Game]]. It is now dead.

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] made [[Star Wars: Destiny CCG]]. It is also now dead.

Obviously, nobody is capable of creating a Star Wars card game with an interesting name.

Aside from the real, physical, games there was also ''Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game''. It was a real, functioning, card game within the MMO that used all virtual cards. Unfortunately no server emulators have implemented it yet.

=== Miniature Games ===

The first Star Wars miniatures game was ''Star Wars Miniature Battles'' released by West End Games in 1989. It and the minis were readily available through the early half of the 1990's, although the line was never particularly diverse. Even accounting for vehicles the whole line was only a couple dozen products and you could get all the rebel heroes in a single box if you just wanted them for the RPG, plus a another box for Vader and a mix of imperials.

Concurrent to this, Galoob managed to get their hands on Star Wars for their Micro Machines toy line, and released an '''enormous''' line of minis which conformed to no consistent scale but were at least cheap, durable, and prepainted. Homebrew adaptations of other systems to use them were a thing in the 90's but vanished as they became scarce.

[[Wizards of the Coast]] did a tabletop battles game imaginatively called Star Wars: Miniatures, based on an extremely dumbed down version of the D&D ruleset. The figures were meant to tie in with the Saga edition RPG, it wasn't terrible on its own, just impossible to collect for competitive play since figures came in random booster packs so you never know what you were getting for what faction. Who could possibly stand for that?

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] is producing the [[X-Wing]] miniatures game based on individual starfighter combat (because, let's be honest, that's what ''Star'' Wars is all about). They have also released [[Star Wars: Armada]] which is a larger scale "fleet" combat simulator, using capital ships and squadrons of starfighters.

'''Star Wars: Imperial Assault'''

The latest [[Fantasy Flight Games]] addition to its Star Wars related games is a mix between a miniature board game and a skirmish wargame. It has two play modes:

One for campaign play where 1-4 players control a team of Rebel heroes and another player has the role of the DM, who controls the Imperial forces. The campaign, as the name suggests, focuses on character personalization, xp gain and the like, which you can find in any light RPG-esque (board)game. The main goal is to get a few friends together and casually play through the missions. Think of it as a Star Wars version of the original [[Hero Quest]].

The other play mode is skirmish play, where two players each get to assemble a team of miniatures plus a command deck (cards that have specific effects when played) and play against each other in an open-play scenario. The play area is still very limited to a few game tiles (as in a campaign mission) but players are free to bring whatever they want (with a few limitations of course). The skirmish part of Imperial assault is as close as you can get to an actual Star Wars skirmish wargame, but it is a missed opportunity from Fantasy Flight to create a true skirmish wargame (ala [[Infinity (wargame)|Infinity]]), not based on tiles and so confined spaces. Who knows what they have plans for though...

'''Star Wars Legion'''

And Fantasy Flight have now given us a fully fledged wargame, complete with AT-ST in the first wave. (They're 32mm scale, which means [[Games Workshop|no reusing your Imperial Assault miniatures]].) Legion has an integrated turn system, and the usual FF custom dice and forest worth of dead trees in cards and tokens that will be familiar to X-Wing and Armada players. The miniatures are PVC, reasonably detailed, easy to assemble pieces. A standard battle is 800 points, which could be anywhere from half a dozen to 16 units on the field, with an average army fielding 8-12 units comprising 30-ish models.

=== Board Games ===

The most famous and arguably best one is [[Star Wars: Rebellion]], an asymmetric two-player game that plays through the Original Trilogy in a wargame/worker placement-esque game. The Empire player must expand their already huge military base over the galaxy to build more ships and huge superweapons while searching for the Rebel Base, while the Rebels do their best to bite them in their heel, obscuring their movements and annoying the Empire until they have enough support to overthrow the Empire. As a [[Fantasy Flight Games|FFG]] boardgame, it's filled with a ludicrous amount of bits and pieces (including sweet models of Star Destroyers, Death Stars and Calamari Cruisers), as well as the trademark filled-with-small-exceptions ruleset. It's pretty sweet and still considered one of the best board games of its kind.

=== Card Miniature Games ===

In the late 00's, WizKids produced a short lived construct-able miniatures Star Wars game based on their styrene card system for Pirates of the Spanish Main. Although the game sold well, when NECA bought WizKids from Topps the rights did not transfer and it went out of print.

==Video Games for Star Wars==

To put it bluntly, every game which could possibly have ''Star Wars'' slapped onto it, exists. Flight simulators. Racers. Rail shooters. Doom clones. MMOs. Age of Empires reskins. An official expansion for ''The Sims 4''. Hell, there's even a Kinect variety game. Here's a few standouts...

* '''Knights of the Old Republic''': A pair of single player RPGs depicting a Sith war several thousand years before ''A New Hope''. KotOR is widely regarded as the best Star Wars video game ever, and was the framework for BioWare's ''Mass Effect'' series. Of all the Legends stuff, KotOR appears to still be in good standing with Disney since they continue to borrow from it. The sequel by Obsidian was the original subversive take on the franchise TLJ wanted to be but failed miserably; this sequel, also, failed, less because it was Different, more because those assholes didn't let its devs finish it before dumping it in game-stores. Much much later came a skubtastic MMO simply called "Old Republic" (since you can play as things other than Jedi and Sith) that is the sequel, which had a very rough start but stabilized enough to still survive to this day somehow. Though the gameplay is pretty meh due to being an MMO, the storylines are mostly good, with the best of them being some of the best Star Wars stories out there. Possibly still canon in the Disney continuity since a lot of things get borrowed or referenced from it. Also the only thing in the EU to still receive new content. Fans often treat these games as canon even if they are technically not, due to being set so long before the films that there aren't many contradictions between canon and legends.

* '''Jedi Knight''': A series that started of as an early FPS named Dark Forces (so early that it was the time when FPS games were still known as [[Doom]]-clones) but Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight had the protagonist become a Jedi. The Dark Forces name was dropped in favor of Jedi Knight after this. The series combines surprisingly deep lightsaber combat with standard shooting, though the levels can get very mazy at times. Introduced Kyle Katarn, who despite starting out in a non-EU game ended up so beloved that he entered canon. There was a Mara Jade expansion, "Mysteries of the Sith", amounting to a new game. The replayability is off the charts thanks to LucasArts' decision to open all three of these games to mods, resulting in fan-made missions several of which were as good as the original (for them, see The Massassi Temple site, still active in all its late-1990s glory). Unfortunately, there has not been a new game since 2003's (Dark Forces 4 : Jedi Knight 3 : ) ''Jedi Academy'' and likely will never be thanks to Disney. They were recently re-released on modern consoles so at least their existence is acknowledged; between such releases, and the modding community on PC, more people have that chance to play them.

* '''Republic Commando''': An FPS that has the player command a squad of commandos. Its a great shooter but unfortunately, it never received a sequel and to make things worse, ended on a cliffhanger. The second act of the game, set entirely on a drifting Acclamator-class assault ship is particularly memorable and highly atmospheric. If one can look past outdated graphics, it is one of the best Star Wars games ever made and holds it's own in the FPS-genre as a whole. It is also notably more violent and [[grimdark]] than Star Wars usually is. The soundtrack is also quite noteworthy, while it does make great use of John Williams music as most Star Wars games do, it also has it's own original and rather unique soundtrack consisting of Mandalorian warchants which you should seriously go and listen to.

* '''Empire at War''': Made by the original developers of [[Command and Conquer]], it is the most notable strategy game to have come out of Star Wars. Notable for featuring three different modes of play: ground battles, space battles and galactic conquest map. Though ground battles are a bit meh, the space battles are great and the galactic conquest is certainly more interesting than only playing random skirmish matches. Even though its over 10 years old, it has a very active modding community. Republic at War, which changes the games Galactic Civil War setting to Clone Wars and Thrawns Revenge, set much further into the Galactic Civil War than portrayed in the films, are particularly great. There is also a remake mod in the works, aiming to bring the game up to modern standards in terms of visuals, sound and UI and the results do look good. Unfortunately, no great 40k mod.

* '''Bounty Hunter''': Featuring Jango Fett as the protagonist and tells the story of he ended up being the clone template. A third person action adventure game that makes the player [[meme|FEEL like a Mandalorian]]. Particular highlight is the first level of the second chapter set on Coruscant as no other game before or since has allowed the player to explore Coruscant to this extent. 1313 was meant to do that even better but fuck Disney.

* '''Star Wars Galaxies''': An early MMO, launched after ''Everquest'' but before ''WoW''. Galaxies is noteworthy for making force powers a prestige achievement requiring enormous in-game effort to unlock. The first expansion pack added a subgame that's a pretty solid flight game in its own right and the game eventually added an original, fully playable, trading card game that sadly has not yet been implemented in any simulator. Then ''World of Warcraft'' hit, Sony panicked and made Jedi a starting class and replaced the skill system with massive level grind, and offered refunds to the raging army of neckbeards. Subscription numbers tanked and never recovered. It would effectively be replaced by ''The Old Republic'', an MMO using the acclaimed KotOR setting. Like most "dead" MMOs that people loved it still lives on through illegal private servers (don't worry, the guys providing it would get busted, not people playing on it).

* '''X-Wing (and TIE Fighter)''': A series of ''Wing Commander'' clones released in the 90's. While badly dated today, they were the best fighter sims of their time, and if you can get past the highly primitive graphics some people still consider them to be the best to this day. Why? The mission scripting and AI are top notch for the genre and absolutely brutal to fight against; on all but the simplest missions you're almost guaranteed to fail the first time and eventually develop a sixth sense about the fighters threatening your objective vs the fighters just there to kill you (ignore those, learn to be hard to hit). Interestingly, TIE Fighter is largely seen as the best of the series while the N64 era Rogue Squadron and Shadows Of The Empire games are seen as being far more visually modern but largely inferior sequels. Did we mention you had to use a flight stick controller basically made for these games to really do well at these?

* ''' The Force Unleashed''': A hack n slash game featuring Starkiller, Vader's secret apprentice. (Note the reference to the first draft's protagonist.) Starkiller is very [[skub]] in his [[awesome]] (he literally pulls down a Star Destroyer from orbit with the Force), so has been called a [[Mary Sue|Gary Stu]]. But if you're a ''gamer'' all that just makes it a complete power fantasy so, not exactly a minus. Physics are pretty good for its time and enemies can have particularly realistic moments, such as briefly grabbing onto whatever's at hand, including each other, when lifted with the Force. Disregard the wii version which is hilariously inferior in level design and gameplay

* '''Revenge of the Sith''': One of the best movie license games of all time, though does that say more about the game or movie license games, I'll let you decide. The storymode is basically a hack n slash but the real star is the versus mode (and boss fights in the story mode) as this is basically the best Star Wars fighting game there is (not that there's much competition).

* '''Star Wars Battlefront II (2005)''': Not to be confused with the one released by EA in 2017. Solid Battlefield-clone with a Star Wars paintjob from the new-defunct Pandemic studio (fuck you, EA) in 2005 told from the perspective of a clone trooper that survived all the way up to the battle of Hoth, with a very down to earth boots on the ground approach. Also, just being thrown into random matches as a soldier because fun. Despite some issues, it remains the high point of the Battlefront series as well as the entire PS2 era, and on PC still has fans via an active modding community to this day. There is of course also the original one but the second one pretty much completely overshadowed it.

* '''Star Wars Battlefront II (2017)''': The one by EA. You've probably heard everything important. An absolute mess at launch due to its lootbox-heavy progression system, so much so that it started discussion even on government level about lootboxes that continues to this day. A comment by EA that became the most downvoted comment in Reddit history. Yet despite all this, two years later, the game is arguably one of the best Star Wars experiences one can have and an Anakin-level redemption story. Like the previous Battlefront II, it completely overshadowed its predecessor.

* '''Jedi: Fallen Order''': It took them years but finally, EA managed to deliver a Star Wars game that is great on launch without cramming it with e-transactions. Its plot focuses on an unfortunate Jedi renegade between ''Revenge'' and ''A New Hope'' who's on the hunt for a hidden database that might document all the Force-sensitive individuals in the galaxy. A game inspired primarily by games such as Dark Souls and Uncharted, its a great action-adventure game in its own right and a must-play for any Star Wars fan. Also notable for making Darth Vader '''''really FUCKING SCARY'''''. As he should be.

* '''Monopoly Star Wars''': Its Star Wars Monopoly. With 90's FMV that plays for every square you land on. On floppy disks. Considered fucking amazing at the time, its too strange and tabletop to not mention. Also one of the last pre-Prequel things released.

* '''Super Star Wars''': A heavily modified retelling of the original trilogy (what, you don't remember how Luke chased down the Sandcrawler and murdered all the Jawas as well as their giant rat god in order to rescue R2-D2?) that was one of the ways to say "hard as fuck" by namedropping a game prior to Dark Souls existing. Amusing for the insanity of the added content in order to make a platformer sidescrolling beat'em'up as well as how neckbeardy you have to be to punish yourself trying to beat it without cheating. Sequels were made for Empire and Jedi, which slightly dialed back the difficulty.

* '''Star Wars: Yoda Stories''': A game geared for kids, released the same year as Monopoly above. Players play as Luke sometime after Empire Strikes Back, although an odd alternate version where Han sometimes is free from carbonite and Boba Fett and sometimes is not. They are assigned a quest by Yoda which requires them to traverse one or more procedurally generated planets doing whatever odd crap Yoda felt was necessary, including sometimes fighting Vader. Recieved middling scores as a PC release, with some individuals HATING the game and using it as a benchmark for how much they hate something when comparing the two, although to be fair that is because distributors tried to sell it like a full game when in reality its supposed to just be freebie software that came with other purchases and was meant to go with Solitaire and space pinball as default games on a computer to waste time with. It has lapsed into obscurity thanks to even those reviewers largely being forgotten on the modern internet. Noteworthy for being played on a grid with simultaneous turn-based movement with all enemies and NPCs on a screen, feeling very much like a desktop game at times, since it uses the Win32 API (like Minesweeper and Solitare) and was almost certainly written in visual basic. A simple puzzle game, where getting blocked in a corner without enough space to pass the time by an idiot NPC is more dangerous than any foe.

*'''Shadows of the Empire''': Made on the Nintendo 64 and Windows PC, this was the game part of the massive Everything But The Movie multimedia of that name. Here you play as Dash Rendar, a scoundrel in a ship like Han Solo working for the Rebellion. Starts during Episode V as a side story; moves on to bridge V and VI. Despite a fanbase that stayed loyal for several years, this game has sadly not aged well at all thanks to the rather peculiar control scheme of the N64 and the graphics having aged like cheap cheese in the sun. Main enemy of the game is a xeno named Xisor who is just a real uppity crime boss (and apparently a prince). The game has an absolute great opening (at least for its time) where you're flying in a Snowspeeder on Hoth killing Imperials left and right while trying to use the cables to crash the AT-ATs like in the movie. After that the game begins to kinda just carry on with awkward controls. Notable for having a soundtrack (we DID say, "Everything But The Movie") not by Williams but equally as good.

*'''Star Wars : Racers''' : The defining podracing game and the only thing done on Episode I that no one can complain about.

==Assorted list of Awesome From Star Wars==
* X-Wing starfighters = spaceborne sex
* Fucking ''[[Lightsaber|Lightsabers!]]''
* The fucking [[Approved music|OST]]
* What is likely the greatest duel in cinematic history, that takes place on a [[Death World|lava planet.]]
* Deathly Stormtroopers, heroic Clonetroopers or sinister First Order troopers; whatever they're called, stormtroopers are awesome! Contrary to popular belief, shot counts have proven they have ridiculously good aim.
* Darth Vader whenever he gets a speaking line or to murder rebel scum - that is to say, all the time.
* Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, TCW and Rebels.
* Lightsaber Rifles
* The entirety of the Umbara campaign, where <s>Imperial Guardsmen</s> Clone Troopers die in the dozens attempting to win some godforsaken planet, earning them balls of titanium that make the guard look ba- {{BLAM| '''*BLAM*''' Heresy!}}, all while serving under a <s>Commissar</s> different Jedi, one who sees the Clone Troopers as cannon fodder.
* 97% of the Creatures.
* 98% of the Starfighter designs.
* Costumes that mix about every possible inspiration, Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese, Ancient Greece and Rome, Elizabethan, Moebius or Pulp Sci-Fi from the 60's, giving the whole series a distinctive style and gives Padme Amidala an excuse to show off with all her dresses.
* Boba and Jango Fett and the rest of the Mandalorians.
* KOTOR (both games) plot making you think this shit is actually logical and has so much philosophical background. One of the creepiest depictions of the Universe. Everything is brutal, with big vibrating knives, blood, those machines for Sith snuff movies, more blood, bastards, badass bastards and so on. Everything while somebody is talking with you about existence.
* Our saviour Lord Revan. He's like if [[Horus|fucking Horus]] just became [[Big Bad Evil Guy|fucking bad]] (but not that [[Erebus|bad]]) to fucking destroy the [[Chaos Gods|Dark Gods]] so he can solve his daddy issues.
**but he's more virile, deadly, powerful, charismatic and cool.
* Double-bladed Lightsabers.
* Lando Calrissian.
* [https://youtu.be/YJEUAe-dcGo Obi-Wan Kenobi.]
* The High Ground.
* TIE fighters. They have the most distinctive scream of any fighter in cinematic history that just yells "I'm evil!". Tell me I'm wrong. I'll wait.
** The fact that they managed to do that using what is essentially a shitty visual pun.
* Most of Episode 3.
* The entirety of Anakin's story, especially when you add the Clone Wars and prequels. While you're at it, watch CinemaWins' perspective on it the series.
* Admiral Ackbar the Memeable!
* Palpatine getting into some Tzeentchian-level scheming and backstabbing in order to overthrow the Jedi and the Republic.
* Battle of Yavin.
* Battle of Hoth.
* Battle of Endor.
* Battle of Scariff.
* Grand Admiral Thrawn: So awesome that he rose to a high rank in the anthropocentric Empire despite being an alien and was one of the first things to be imported straight from Legends to Disney.
* Imperial Pilots get a mention, seeing as they fly literal garbage fighters against superior rebel fighters. Yes, we are talking about the the same TIE Fighters we mentioned before. By garbage, we mean despite how cool looking and sounding TIE Fighters are, they are actually a ridiculously impractical design and the standard TIE Fighters are mass produced extremely cheaply even if they don't look like it (except Darth Vader's, which is custom made and modified by Vader himself). Even 40k's Imperium has better fighter designs. At least the Imperium's fighters conserve the life of the fucking pilot. Also, clearly super skilled since they have roughly an equal kill-death ratio with the Rebels in the movie battles.
* [https://youtu.be/T9j7kLG7VK8 Obi-Wan Kenobi. Again.]
* The Millennium Falcon has a 3D chess board, secret compartments for smuggling space cocaine and a walk in closet specifically for capes.
* Princess, later Senator Leia Organa; the original badass-yet-hot boss lady in space. Ends up leading two separate, successful underground freedom movements against impossible odds. Did we mention she's a Jedi in both canons?
*The trench run.
* Han Solo, who is so badass that hot Leia falls in love. He has the smuggler's best friend, a Wookie, who is also the worst opponent you can face in a [[Chess|Dejarik match]].
* Just... Star Destroyers. When you see a huge, imposing warship from an evil Empire, this is the granddaddy they all look up to.
* The moon sized space stations that zap other planets to bits? They’re pretty neat.
* Werner Herzog, asking if he can look at your baby and assuring you that he will be quiet.
* Oh, did we mention the lightsabers?
* Tyber Zann

== See Also: ==

* ''[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/ Darths & Droids]'': A webcomic, made using photo-stills of the ''Star Wars'' movies to tell a story about gamers blundering through each of the six movies in sequence... though not quite exactly how you might expect. Think ''DM of the Rings'' in overall visual style, though unlike ''DM of the Rings'', ''Darths & Droids'' features several heavy twists on the actual events of the films, subplots about the players and their lives outside the game alongside the campaign, and a better overall quality of gamer. Whereas ''DM of the Rings'' features a railroading DM and players who are therefore somewhat antagonistic to him, ''Darths & Droids'' has a GM who adjusts his game to his players' actions and players who generally get along with both him and each other. The plot of ''DMotR'' is very similar to that of the movies (but avoids a few plot elements), but the plot (and, indeed, the universe) of ''Darths & Droids'' is only very loosely based on the ''Star Wars'' films. (For a somewhat spoilery example: "Darth" is a courtesy title for retired Jedi, such as Chancellor Palpatine.)

* "[https://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html Endor Holocaust]": An excellent example of the [[skub]] Star Wars can create. Rebuttal: " [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/fanart/endortruth20040810.pdf Endor Rebuttal]"

* [[Timothy Zahn]]

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[[Category: Television]]

[[Category: Star Wars]]