Core Talk, Part 2

By Ray and Val Vallese

Coruscant and the Core Worlds is such a comprehensive tour of important Star Wars planets that it took six designers -- Craig Carey, Chris Doyle, Jason Fry, Paul Sudlow, John Terra, and Daniel Wallace -- to write it. We gathered them all for an interview behind the scenes of the latest hardcover accessory for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. In January, we posted the first part of our meaty discussion. Now, here's the conclusion.

Wizards of the Coast: Of the worlds you wrote, was most of the material brand-new or was it established information that you had to amass, digest, and spin in a new way?

Jason Fry: Depends on the world. Sticking with the three Corellian planets I did, Centerpoint Station was well-described -- parts of Roger MacBride Allen's Corellian trilogy take place there -- while there was basically nothing about Talus and Tralus. New Plympto was pretty well-documented; in fact, one of the magazine articles Dan Wallace, Craig Carey, and I worked on together was a write-up for the native Nosaurians. And while Anaxes was my own invention, I had to do a lot of hunting to track down information about the Imperial Navy and officer training.

A Nosaurian on New Plympto

I had a leg up on the detective work in being a major geek about Star Wars geography. Years ago, I made an Excel database of all the star systems established in the Star Wars universe so far, with key references, so I used that as a starting point. Dan's Essential Guide to Planets and Moons was a huge resource, of course, as was the "Holocron" of references that Lucasfilm gave all of us. The Web was helpful, too -- there are a lot of fans out there who've created their own labors of love by summarizing plots, writing up characters, and doing other things that'll point you in the right direction to make sure you don't miss anything. And, of course, there are your fellow authors and editors to back you up.

Nobody's perfect, so in your research you do find some established continuity flubs and goofs that you have to account for and explain away, if you can. But that's okay -- heck, crafting a neat workaround for an apparent discrepancy can be a lot of fun.

Basically, it's going through novel after novel, comic after comic, video-game guide after video-game guide, roleplaying book after roleplaying book and taking endless notes. And each reference breeds more references to track down. It can be pretty exhausting. But man, is it fun when it all comes together.

Chris Doyle: Most of my planets were new, except for Caamas, which was mentioned (but not visited) in Timothy Zahn's novels. Drall was detailed in another planet guide, so I had to remain consistent. The editors were a big help here, providing a bibliography of references and giving suggestions on how to flesh out each world. For example, Caamas was destroyed by the Empire, and I needed to decide which version to present. I decided to detail it after it was ravaged by the Empire and became a dead wasteland. I feel that sets it apart from other "living" worlds.

John Terra: My answer is "Yes!" Heh, heh. If memory serves correctly, my entries ran about fifty-fifty in new material and established info. And as Jason said, there's a lot of established info out there! My experience in writing for the old Star Wars game by West End Games served me well, too. Basically, I had a combination of source material sent to me by Wizards, stuff I'd gleaned from the various movies, comics, and novels, and stuff from theforce.net.

Paul Sudlow: Partly by chance and partly by negotiation, I wound up with some of the more obscure Core Worlds. I've done hardcore research on other projects, but this time, I decided that I'd rather play in a less congested corner of Uncle George's sandbox. For most of the planets I developed for Coruscant and the Core Worlds, I'd written up material on them years ago for West End Games, so what research there was mostly consisted of reviewing what I'd written back in 1995.

Wizards: When working on a more prominent world like Alderaan or Corellia, did you feel the eyes of millions of Star Wars fans upon you, making sure you got everything exactly right?

Dan Wallace: Writing in Star Wars has become almost like writing historical fiction, due to the breadth and depth of its source material. If we were all writing a roleplaying guidebook centered around famous Civil War battlefields, we'd probably start by reading books about the Civil War, then study photos of the battlefields or research encyclopedia entries, or visit fan websites about the conflict. Star Wars has some of that same vibe. Fans will notice if you get the details wrong.

John Terra: Whenever you work on a licensed product, you have to be very careful to make sure nothing gets left out. That's why some writers I know refuse to work on licensed game stuff. I've had one fantastic experience in licensed game work and one completely nightmarish experience, so I tend to tread carefully and keep looking over my shoulder -- especially with a beloved setting like the Star Wars galaxy. Still, the amount of material on Star Wars is staggering. I haven't read every single thing that's been put out about the game -- and I'm the one who wrote Alderaan and Corellia! I don't know, every once in a while I picture Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons logging on to the Internet and posting something like, "Terra hasn't devoted his life to reading and watching every single Star Wars-based thing in existence, and thus is woefully unequipped to do the game justice. Worst roleplaying game product ever!"

Of course, it helped that Alderaan eventually blew up. I mean, what else can you write about a planet that's been turned into chunks of rock, floating in space? I had to slap restraints on my imagination and not create stuff blatantly contradictory to Star Wars canon. Working on high-profile worlds like Alderaan and Corellia was a case of "Take what's there and present it in an interesting, creative way," as opposed working on lesser-known worlds, which were more "Flesh these out, fill up the many gaps in their descriptions."

Paul Sudlow: There's more freedom, I think, in putting your mark on a world like Corulag or Brentaal than on Alderaan or Corellia. You can relax and have fun, and not worry so much about missing an important continuity point or putting a spin on a world that a reader might take issue with. I'm sure there are fans who have defined ideas of what Corellia is like, but I doubt Corulag has such loyal supporters.

A scene from the planet Ralltiir.

Jason Fry: Loyal supporters or no, rest assured that if you do make a mistake that gets all the way through to print, fans will catch you. As they should. The first thing Dan and I ever worked on together came about because of a continuity goof we found -- the planet Duro is described in one book as being in the Corellian Sector, but in another book there's a reference to the Duro Sector. We came up with a fix that we thought was pretty cool and planned to tackle it together for the old Star Wars Adventure Journal -- then edited by Craig Carey. The Journal folded before we could get it done, but the good news is Dan got a chance to make that fix in the new book.

Wizards: Let's say you were assigned a particular world about which little (or nothing) had been written in the past. Where would you begin in creating a dynamic, living planet?

Paul Sudlow: There's got to be a great hook, something to anchor the world in the players' minds as a unique place. Think New York City and the Statue of Liberty, or Cairo and the Pyramids, or San Antonio and the Alamo. They're not only unique features but also ones that tell a story about the people who live or lived in these places, revealing something about their characters and cultures.

When I'm inventing a new world, I try to build into it hooks and cool features that will stick in players' minds and set the world apart from all the others they visit in their adventures. Some of these hooks are architectural -- a world where the locals live in huge, hollowed-out cacti, one with a giant gladiator arena, or one where the spaceport hovers and drifts over the landscape on a series of huge repulsorlifted pads. Other times it's cultural or conceptual: a world with a creepy dark side assassin's guild, or one where tribal decisions are made randomly because the locals worship a luck god. Sometimes it's a unique Gamemaster character, cult, or alien species. Often, I work in a variety of different hooks, because you never know which one will lodge in a player's memory.

Beyond all that, of course, there has to be something to do on the planet, apart from whatever adventure plot requirements are in play. I try to give each world at least one conflict -- a civil war, a feud between species or crime bosses, fanatical factions that support opposing sports teams, and so on. Whatever it is, the heroes can be drawn into it at some level, either on their own or because the GM sets it up that way.

I also try to build in at least one cool setting for a major combat or chase on each world, giving each a distinctive angle, like a raceway in an extinct volcano, or a flooded and abandoned factory town filled with underworld types.

Chris Doyle: This is where my background as a biologist and ecologist were an asset. It helps to have an understanding of how ecological processes function and their application on a planet-wide scale. It's cool that science fiction lets you break those rules often, but it helps to understand them first.

Dan Wallace: My interpretation of Star Wars' underlying design principle is "form first, function second." Unless your starship looks cool, it doesn't matter what kind of fuel it burns or what rate of acceleration you give it. A friend of mine once encapsulated this for me by asking, "How does a blaster work?" Then he headed off the myriad technical explanations by answering, "You pull the trigger and it goes zap." Planets in Star Wars always follow a "one environment" rule akin to Flash Gordon's Moons of Mongo, so you have an ice world, a swamp world, and a water world.

For Coruscant and the Core Worlds, I created the planet Metellos, which had been mentioned offhandedly in the old Dark Empire Sourcebook but never explored. I began by thinking of environments that we hadn't really seen to date in the Star Wars universe and became intrigued by the idea of a shantytown that never ends but just extends shack-against-shack past the horizon. I dressed this up with wealthy megacities scattered here and there like islands and Bespin-style floating communities drifting above the sea of people, then came up with the history and economic conditions that would create such a place. Is such a setting realistic? Probably not. But it's a fun location for an adventure.

A scene from the planet Metellos.

John Terra: I take a different approach. The very first thing I do is define a new planet's role in the galaxy. It's the "who cares?" test. In other words, what makes this world so special that anyone would want to visit it? Who cares about it? Once I've defined the role, I create the environment best suited for the world to fit into that great plan. After all, if the planet is the armpit of the galaxy, where people scrape and struggle to eke out an existence, it can't be a lush, resource-rich world in the heart of the Republic, now can it?

When I wrote the entry for New Plympto, I'd been reading about the plight of elephants in Africa and how elephants, for all their majesty, can destroy farmers' livelihoods. Based on that, I came up with a Nosaurian character who's a poacher, and an adventure in which the characters are sent to capture him -- only to find out that the politics of the issue aren't exactly black-and-white. When I wrote the Talus entry, I was dealing with various bureaucracies in a struggle to get auto insurance and took out my frustrations by imagining a spaceport basically run by gangs. Tralus was an homage to Moby Dick, which is such a great adventure. And for Anaxes, I wanted to play with an officer-and-gentleman-style setting that would portray a galactic institution that hadn't changed much between the Republic and the Empire -- -- think of it as Star Wars' version of Annapolis. In each case, I found a starting point in what I was reading, doing, or thinking about and ran with it.

Wizards: A genie appears before you and gives you ten seconds to name a planet from Coruscant and the Core Worlds to which you will be immediately transported and on which you will spend the rest of your life. Which world would be your first choice? How about your last?

Jason Fry: Hey, genie, send me to Coruscant. I live in New York City, so I already know all about strange lifeforms and dangerous areas of town, and I've had to learn to drive like Anakin in Episode II. Give me a blaster, and I'd do just fine. As for where not to go, well, I'd avoid Selonia. The thought of walking in a crouch all the time just isn't appealing.

John Terra: Corellia is my top pick, since it seems to be the breeding ground for galactic hero types and doesn't seem like a boring place at all. Last choice? Either Alderaan (because, hey, it blows up) or Belgaroth (because it's such an inhospitable pit).

Chris Doyle: Naboo seems to be a quaint, idyllic world with varying geography -- a pleasant place to reside. [Editor's note: Naboo is not described in Coruscant and the Core Worlds - but it does have its own book!] Coruscant would be my last choice. I'm not a fan of big crowded cities. Too many people in a small area unnerves me and tends to put a strain on the local ecology. In that light, an urban planet is as close to a nightmare as I can imagine.

Dan Wallace: Sorry, Chris, but I agree with Jason -- I'll take Coruscant, the planet that never sleeps. I'd love to explore one of those neon-lit alleyways seen in Attack of the Clones. However, I'd bet that the cost of living there is killer. As for my last choice, I'd say it's Caamas. Sharing a planet with an alien species who are unfailingly kind, gentle, and wise would very quickly get on my last nerve.

A neon-lit alleyway on Coruscant.

Paul Sudlow: Basketball, because it's a peaceful planet. (Note: "Basketball" was the stand-in for Alderaan in the Star Wars spoof, Hardware Wars.)

Wizards: What's your take on the importance of a well-constructed world to the integrity, enjoyment, etc. of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game?

Chris Doyle: Unlike most roleplaying campaigns that are set on a single world, the Star Wars galaxy is composed of thousands of inhabited planets. Great detail must be taken to present these worlds as believable, or else it detracts from the enjoyment of the game. It's quite a challenge, as a single adventure can span several worlds in one session.

John Terra: Regardless of the gaming system, you need people, places, and things that make sense in order to foster an atmosphere of a realistic, believable setting. A well-constructed world has those people, places, and things. Thus, the world makes sense and is consistent, making it seem all the more genuine, which, of course, makes people wish they could actually go there.

Jason Fry: Roleplaying works on so many levels. There's the fun of rolling dice and hacking and slashing -- or in this case, sabering and blasting -- your way through enemies and seeing eight or ten hours go by in a blink. But even more, I always loved feeling totally enmeshed in an imaginary place and a made-up situation. The more deep and well-constructed that setting is, the more you can just sink into it and let your imagination take over. A well-constructed world with its own unique "feel" is a great starting point for that.

Wizards: Did anything about working on this project surprise you?

Chris Doyle: Yes, the detailed template sent from the editors. It was a huge help, and put all six of us on the same page regarding content and style.

Jason Fry: When I got the galleys, like most any author I immediately flipped to my stuff to get that "pinch me" feeling of seeing the simple e-mailed manuscript I sent in transformed into something polished and finished. But after doing that, I just settled in and read. Coruscant and the Core Worlds is so entertaining in its own right -- it's a combination of travelogue, history, and encyclopedia. I got sucked in. I think other people will too.

Wizards: What's your favorite thing in the book?

Jason Fry: Definitely the artwork. For the Centerpoint Station entry, I thought up the Dark Side Devotee Zyne Kinahay, but since I was pressed for space, I didn't offer much of a description besides that he was a tall, pale guy in a black robe who carried a Selonian glaive. But man, there's Jon Foster's drawing of him, and he just totally comes to life. I wouldn't mess with him -- would you?

Zyne Kinahay

Chris Doyle: I'd pick the Gamemaster characters! I enjoyed developing several for my planets and can't wait to see the offerings from the rest of the authors. All solid adventures have well-detailed, memorable GM characters. When I designed mine, I tried to make them generic enough to be used in any campaign. So even if the planet is not used, an NPC can be dropped into a GM's own campaign with minor tweaking.

John Terra: I like the format. You have your GM information, and you have your player information. Players should get just enough to make them curious. Then, they'll amble over, eventually, to check it out. Even if the little bit of information they get seems to indicate danger, that's okay. For some, that's precisely the reason that the planet/site/whatever needs to be investigated. So, for instance, someone may see an entry saying "The planet Belgaroth is an absolute pit." I guarantee that at least one player in four will say "Neat! Let's check it out!" Right then and there, the GM's got 'em. The format of Coruscant and the Core Worlds lends itself perfectly to this.

Craig Carey: This may sound . . . I don't know, conceited, but I was very happy with the crew Wizards of the Coast tapped to develop the book. Dan and Jason are without question the most informed of the freelance stable, especially when it comes to the planets in the universe. A book without their names wouldn't be anywhere near as good. And Paul, John, and Chris are all long-time writers for the license, known, among other things, for their work in detailing various worlds and regions. So Wizards didn't just hand the project to new guys who would stumble through the worlds. This was an elite crew, and I think the world entries bear that out.

Wizards: Let's just leave it at that. Thanks to all of you for taking time for this interview.

Want more details on Star Wars worlds? Check out our new monthly "Planet Hoppers" feature, which spotlights Ralltiir in January and Arkania in February!