There may, in fact, be such a thing as too much backstory. I know, I know, it's a scandalous thing to suggest, and certainly something that I, a died-in-the-wool "MOAR BACKSTORY" guy would ordinarily be ashamed to express, but I read Alien Anthology (Steve Miller and Owen K.C. Stephens) and I was forced to conclude that it was possible to know too much about Max Rebo, the dumb-looking felt elephant alien that played keyboard in Jabba's palace.
He's an Ortolon, which means he's part of a people who "take great joy in music," and not that eating him is a shameful act you must hide from God, as I originally assumed. And it's like, I get it. Over the years, people freeze-framed the cantina scene and told stories about each and every one of the weird creatures, even the one that was very clearly a guy in a werewolf mask (He's a Shistavanen and "Many take advantage of their superior speed and reflexes and become bodyguards, soldiers, bounty hunters, or even big-game hunters"). Honestly, that's kind of beautiful. No irony. I love that. The Star Wars expanded universe is a big, patchwork quilt of stories, sewn by a hundred hands
However, when you're trying to rebuild the setting into a single thing, as you might do for an rpg campaign (or even just a new work in the expanded universe), the hundred streams of information can work at cross purposes. I think back to the cantina scene and what I liked about it, what it said about Star Wars as a science-fiction world. And it was something that had a singular purpose in a singular work - whoa! All these creatures are just hanging out with each other! This universe has so many weird-ass creatures!
And so, if I'm trying to capture an authentic Star Wars feel for my table, maybe the best alien to use is the one no one's ever seen before. Or better yet, a half-dozen aliens no one has ever seen before. You walk into the Space Post Office and ahead of you in line are a three-eyed bat creature, a long-armed guy with four elbows on each arm, a lizard person who snaps up a fly that wafted in behind you, two identical moppets that are hot-pink from head-to-toe, a chain-smoking letter carrier with a perfectly rectangular head, and a single token human who looks like he rolled straight out of bed and into a garbage can. One of these people is the Jedi Master you were looking for.
Alien Anthology attempts to deliver this fantasy by giving us dozens of alien species to choose from, and that sort of works, but I think the overall effect is diminished by work that went into giving each of them a distinct identity. Not that I'm ungrateful, and of course if the PCs get a wild hair and decide to follow the Squib merchant back to their homeworld, the cultural and historical details could be pretty useful. But I kind of feel like if you're doing a Star Wars game right, most of the information is going to be irrelevant.
Because the galaxy far, far away is kind of presented, at least in the strongest works of the series, as this impossibly diverse monoculture. Chewie and Han Solo can talk to each other in their respective languages and it's not that big a deal, because they're two bros in the same line of work who frequent the same social circles. Obi-wan learned about the Millenium Falcon by chatting up Chewbacca in a bar!
So, like, I didn't need to know that Pomda Baba (the guy whose arm Obi-wan chopped off in A New Hope) was one of the Aqualish, aliens who "admire strength and are openly contemptuous and hostile to the weak," nor that "It is customary and accepted social behavior for an Aqualish to be pushy or belligerent to people he or she is interacting with for the first time."
Yeah, that perfectly explains his behavior in the cantina scene, but you know what else would explain it? Mos Eisley being a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and Pondo Baba just kind of being like that. Maybe the gentle Aqualish matriarch, Mama Baba, cries herself to sleep every night, wondering how her son could have gone so wrong, to get the death penalty in 12 systems.
On the other hand, an undeniable part of the series is also Landing on a Planet and Learning the Folkways of the Colorful Locals. The Ewok village on Endor, the Gungan city on Naboo, even the Jawa sandcrawler on Tatooine - these interludes contribute to the adventure serial feel that is such a core part of what makes the movies enjoyable.
So I don't know, I guess I'm chickening out and taking the position that a balance is necessary. Maybe there are all these countless planets with their indigenous aliens and their fascinating customs, but when you're out and about in the more cosmopolitan systems, any aliens you meet are probably assimilated natives of the galactic metaculture. Ask Greedo where he's from and he'll say "Tatooine," rather than the Rodian homeworld of Rodia. He has more in common culturally with Annakin Skywalker than he does the jungle hunters of "his people," despite becoming a bounty hunter, in line with the "Rodian idealization of hunting" (source: wookiepedia, and yeah, Star Wars lore is frequently that on the nose).
What the game really needs is some kind of "just folk" generation system for aliens, where completely ordinary galactic citizens can have any wild collection of physical traits, with only the bare minimum of mechanical modifications (just enough to give the decision weight, really). Or perhaps the individual entries could do what modern Lineage systems do and break the modifications down between Physical and Cultural traits, allowing characters to mix and match to their hearts' content.
But I'm once again doing the thing where I wish technology existed before it was invented, so I'll just take the foot out of my mouth and say Alien Anthology was a bit of a workhorse of a supplement, but a worthwhile read.
Ukss Contribution: On Dagobah, there's a tree whose seeds resemble "knobby white spiders" and spend the early part of their lifecycle as mobile predators, devouring prey to grow progressively larger until they become the size of elephant, whereupon they plant themselves in the ground and become massive, sinister trees.
That's some pretty cool imagery and some pretty cool speculative biology. I can find a place for it.
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