Geonosis

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

article reference: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=750

(which is the RIGHT URL this time).
I dunno. Do we really need a guide to Geonosis? It just didnt' seem like that interesting a place. Sort of a rocky Tatooine. With bugs instead of Jawas. Good place to have a spectacular robot/clone fight, but not much else.

Any other opinions?

[Fellfrosch]

I thought the look and feel of Geonosis was fascinating, but the background they gave it in the book (which I thumbed through briefly) was pretty bland. It seems like a lot of their planets are falling into one-note generalizations these days. Even Tatooine, the planet with nothing, has several different factions, some interesting native races, and a complex political system. The new planets are just "this planet is controlled by this group, and no matter where you go your encounters are likely to be the same."

Of course, Tatooine has been visited more than any other planet, so maybe it's an unfair comparison, but even on the very first visit it was richer than most others.

[Nicadymus]

It does seem that their planetary descriptions aren't nearly as developed as Tatooine.  The only defense I could attempt to offer the authors is that they are just trying to give a brief synopsis of the planet and its history, thereby leaving it up to the GMs to flesh out the planets further, should they decide to use them.  I tried to look at it in the following sense: "If I was a person in the SW universe on board a starship headed toward one of these planets, and desired a rudimentary knowledge of what to expect when I arrived, would the descriptions given within this book offer me enough desired information?" OR "If I am a GM and my players decide that they want to visit one of these worlds, would I be able to take 5 min while they got more Dew and Chips, read the descriptions, and be able to carry on?"  In both situations I would answer "Yes."  Because it passed my "Character/GM" analysis, I don't feel the book is bad.  However, like Fell has stated, it certainly didn't offer me anything spectacular or as well-developed as Tatooine.

[Spriggan]

These type of books are allwayse hard to rate becacsue their value realy depends on your personal GMing style.  I perosnaly thought they crammed too many worlds in here and should have given more descriptions of each planet (ie split it into two books and dubble the description lenght).  But I allwayse compare setting books to Palladium World Books sicne I feel they lead the way on how detailed settings should be, especialy Palladium Fantasy wich just about every world book is amazeing since they don't offer all the clutter RIFT books have (ie new classes, races, eqipment).

[Nicadymus]

Agreed Spriggan.  Palladium does do the best job with their world books.  Hands down.  Wizards does ok with D&D, but SW is severely lacking.  I wonder why that is?

[Spriggan]

They (WoTC) might be restricted on what info they can actualy put in a setting book, being that lucasarts is just as protective with their Intellectual Property as WoTC is with their stuff.  Or it could just be WoTC dosen't care about SW since it donsen't bring in as much cash as D&D.

[Nicadymus]

Awww... The Almighty Dollar. Aint it great?  

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

They cant be all that stingy with intellectual property...

The Han Solo novels,
Lando Calrissian novels
WEG Star Wars
Heir to the Empire

and a few dozen more.

The first two literally make up whole swaths of information about planets while the second two take real liberties with the history and events.