Here are some more of my thoughts and opinions on Star Wars and TTRPGs, in no particular order:
There's a pattern running through a lot of the expanded universe canon where some particular alien species will only show up in the background of one movie for two seconds as some weird-looking dude selling a cheeseburger, and then in the canon somewhere that species will be described as "coming from a planet with refined tastes in grilled cuisine, with most individuals who leave their homeworld making a living by selling food, especially cheeseburgers."
Additionally, there's also this pattern where you'll look up the background cheeseburger guy and his name ends up being Cheeseburgerton Blorp and it turns out that (according to some shitty EU novel from 2003) the real reason he was in the background in that scene was because he was actually an assassin hired to kill one of the movie's main characters, and he nearly succeeded too except his plan was foiled by some other character you've never heard of, who is actually Max Rebo's ex-wife.
Both of these tropes are absolutely hilarious to me. As fun as it would be if the EU canon threw a curveball every now and then (something like "oh actually Chewbacca just has a really bad speech impediment and every other Wookiee can speak Basic just fine"), it wouldn't have that particular brand of goofiness that I've come to associate with the expanded universe. Just like with one-liner planets (as I talk about in "Storytelling and the Science of Star Wars"), I don't think it is necessary or desirable for Star Wars TTRPGs to push back on the above tropes or to lampshade them too much; lean into them and have fun with it when building characters and developing the game world.
I have some issues with the concept of character classes. In Dungeons & Dragons, the different character classes are a hugely prominent aspect of the game. Not only do they almost entirely determine the players' playstyle and character build, in a lot of cases they also have a pretty big impact on a player's personality and the party's dynamic. To the extent that players do get to choose things about their playstyle and build, it's often a choice between a handful of preselected archetypes within the selected class rather than actually creating an original character (e.g. "Which school of magic does your spellcaster specialize in?" "Is your Ranger character a ranged-weapons Ranger, or a two-weapon-fighting Ranger?"). This is fine for games that are mostly focused on things like strategy or campaign plot, where it can be convenient to have standardized slots to drop player characters into, but in terms of roleplaying and player creativity these overbearing character classes are at best a crutch and at worst an impediment to good gaming.
TTRPG settings that are adapted from other media sources have an additional problem when it comes to character classes. In D&D the classes are a core foundational aspect of the setting and the way the game world works, but in most other fictional settings, unless there truly are real divisions between different types of characters (such as the different types of element bending in Avatar: The Last Airbender, for example), there isn't anything to correspond to character classes and the classes for a TTRPG adaptation thus need to be created from scratch. This usually involves modeling each class after a prominent character, and/or slotting prominent characters into artificial divisions that don't necessarily fit them all that well. The first method can make it difficult for players to strike off on their own and make something that feels unique when creating a character, and the second method can make it feel like the available character classes don't actually line up with the game's setting all that well.
Implementation of the character class concept in TTRPGs falls along a continuum, with D&D on one end (with the most extreme possible version being a hypothetical game that involves no actual character creation, just a choice between premade character builds), and completely classless games on the other end. Both ends of the continuum have advantages and disadvantages, and my personal preference (for Star Wars games matching the overall style described on this website, in any case) is for somewhere in the middle.
On the class-heavy end of the spectrum, the advantage is having premade archetypes for players to slide into, which simplifies and streamlines both the technical aspects of character creation and also the roleplay aspects of TTRPGs. This is convenient for things like quickly putting together a robust party dynamic for a short-form game such as a one-shot, or for onboarding new party members or introducing new people to TTRPGs. To this last point, I suspect D&D's heavy use of character classes has helped a lot with popularizing it with new gamers, and I've seen a lot of the newer narrativist-style games that market themselves as being more newbie-friendly leaning pretty heavily into character classes as well.
The disadvantage of the class-heavy end of the spectrum, as discussed above, is that it's restricting. It shrinks character creation (and, to a lesser extent, roleplay and party interaction) down to just selecting from premade lists and then filling in the blanks for some of the minor details. I personally think games with heavy-handed character classes ought to be used like "training wheels" for TTRPGs; once players understand TTRPG gaming well enough, they can "graduate" to the less class-heavy end of the spectrum and create truly original characters and social dynamics for themselves. (Unfortunately, this doesn't typically seem to be the case, and in fact it seems more common for players of class-heavy games to regress into more and more dependence on classes, with many longtime D&D players stagnating within their favorite class or classes which they continually try to further optimize, or else they just comfortably do the same things over and over again, in what feels to me like a rejection of the very spirit of roleplaying games.)
Completely classless systems, while avoiding the shortcomings of class-heavy systems described above, can still come with their own disadvantages, at least in my experience. Without classes to delineate party roles, a party of classless characters often requires some degree of coordination or curation by the players and/or GM in order to not feel too homogeneous. With no classes to push players in specific directions during character creation, players may gravitate towards well-rounded jack-of-all-trade characters, which can make for boring party dynamics. Parties have to be more careful to avoid having redundant PCs, or having needed party roles that are left vacant. Balance can also be an issue for classless systems, since such systems may be more open to abuse and min-maxing by players who know what they're doing, while simultaneously making it easier for inexperienced players to wind up with characters that are very badly optimized. Classless game systems can also, paradoxically, lead to character creation and advancement feeling more constrained. If all character options are available to all characters all the time, it can make it feel like there isn't actually much to differentiate one character build from another. A game with no character classes can feel, in a sense, like it's actually a game with just one big character class. A light use of character classes can provide a game with the sort of enforced variety necessary to let players see the fundamental differences between different PCs.
The five core classes in the vanilla Star Wars Saga Edition Roleplaying Game, to its credit, don't determine a character's build and party role to the extent that D&D's classes do. Classes determine HP, BAB, class skills, and bonus feats, but (other than for Jedi characters) there aren't any real class-specific features, and the only thing that concretely differentiates the SWSE classes from each other are the lists of talents.
My homebrewed tweaks to the SWSE class system are intended to bring it closer to the classless end of the spectrum; I've removed class-specific bonus feats, and starting skill trainings are no longer limited to class skills. Additionally, I've reworked the rules for Multiclassing in order to make multiclassing less about straddling two different archetypes and more about players choosing what sort of benefits they want to gain at each individual level-up. Ideally, in my homebrew, classes provide players with a loose direction without going so far as to provide them with a character concept.
(Note that nothing discussed here pertains to prestige classes. The prestige classes in the vanilla SWSE ruleset are honestly kind of a mess and all of them, if not the entire concept of prestige classes, would probably need to be reworked to some extent before I'd really feel happy with them in my games.)
The Star Wars movies are about Jedi. Star Wars is the story of the Jedi Order, and how it (and Anakin and Luke Skywalker in particular) were instrumental in two different wars and in saving the galaxy from an evil empire. It's hinted at a few times throughout the movies that the Jedi are not in fact central to the lives of everyone else in the galaxy, but for the most part the entire rest of the galaxy is treated in the movies as being just the backdrop for the story of how the Jedi saved the world.
Most sources converge on a number of around 10,000 Jedi in the galaxy altogether at the time of the Clone Wars, with around 100 (or about 1%) surviving the Great Jedi Purge in 19 BBY. Sources tend to vary much more with regard to the total population of the galaxy, but with billions of habitable star systems and millions of known species, it feels reasonable to estimate the total population of the Galactic Republic as being at least a quadrillion. That gives us a ratio of one Jedi per 100 billion people.
Not only are the Jedi not central to all life in the galaxy, it feels safe to assume that the average galactic citizen will have never heard of the Jedi, would likely not believe in their magic powers if they had, and would probably not particularly care much either way. Beyond just their statistical insignificance, unless a person had a strong reason to know and care they would have no way of knowing someone was a Jedi even if they saw one. Jedi robes and lightsabers don't actually stand out much, especially when you think of the galaxy as being a mixture of billions of different cultures and fashions and technology styles. Almost nobody is putting much effort into keeping track of all the millions of different weird religions out there.
My preferred interpretation on the role of the Jedi in the galaxy as a whole is that the galaxy is enormous, it's full of all kinds of different weird groups and funny aliens and bizarre miracles and confusing technologies and strange traditions, of which the Jedi are just one of many, and not a particularly big one. The Jedi stand out due to their strong ties to the government and leadership of the Republic, but the vast majority of people wouldn't have much reason to care about that.
As for the Force more generally, the percentage of the population with force sensitivity is larger than the percentage that become Jedi, but not by that much. The galaxy is huge, and there are tons of different kinds of magicians and monks and sorcerers out there, practicing all different types of magic, and some of it is real and some of it isn't, and most people have as little reason to care about the Force as they do about any other religion.
In the Star Wars Saga Edition Roleplaying Game, like in the movies, Jedi are treated as being a core component of any Star Wars story. "Jedi" is one of the five base character classes, and significant chunks of the rules plus one entire supplemental rulebook are devoted entirely to Jedi and other Force users.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of making Jedi and force sensitivity central to Star Wars TTRPGs (to the point where in the past I've not allowed force-sensitive characters in my games), for a number of reasons:
In Star Wars canon, being trained in the Force is just too overpowered for a balanced TTRPG. When video games or roleplaying games incorporate Force-users as one type of player character among many, they tend to balance the game by reducing the effectiveness of the Force compared to how it's portrayed elsewhere in the canon. In SWSE, the Jedi class is structured to be somewhat analogous to the spellcaster classes of D&D, with Jedi characters limited in the number and power of force-based abilities they can use, and even then the character class still winds up being overpowered. I've tried to rebalance things further in my own houserules by removing Jedi as a class and having force sensitivity come with a level penalty, but I think it's also worth asking whether a Star Wars TTRPG actually needs a wizard/sorcerer analog, especially since the Tech Specialist archetype covers many of the aspects of a sci-fi game that would be covered by magic-users in a fantasy game.
Roleplaying as a Jedi is restrictive. More than any other aspect of Star Wars, the lifestyles, beliefs, etc. of Jedi have been thoroughly described. The number of named Jedi in the entire expanded universe canon is probably not too much lower than the 10,000 number given above; the whole thing just feels played out at this point. Creating a Jedi character as your player character means having a ton of things about your character already dictated for you, much more so than for any other character class, archetype, profession, species, etc. Part of what I like about Star Wars as a TTRPG setting is the fact that it's such a big setting, and that pretty much no matter what sort of character a player chooses to play, they will be able to invent new things about the setting to fill in a lot of the details. The Jedi are the one exception to this, which makes Jedi characters just not a great fit for what I personally feel to be the spirit of a Star Wars roleplaying game.
Jedi, as mentioned above, aren't very common in the galaxy at large. TTRPG campaigns about Jedi tend to lean much more heavily into the heroic/exceptional/epic aspects of roleplaying games. In contrast, I much prefer games that tell stories about somewhat-more-average people having interesting and exciting, but not fate-of-the-galaxy-changing, adventures.
Beyond my personal preferences, using Star Wars as a setting does pose a bit of a problem for those who prefer the epic saving-the-world style of TTRPG campaigns, since the fate of the Star Wars galaxy is already written. Unless a game is set hundreds of years either before or after written canon (in which case it won't benefit as much from having Star Wars canon there to pull from), or is willing to fork the canon should the players do something too history-altering, an epic Star Wars campaign is forced to stay just below the level of where it could actually affect anything important, which is a difficult line to walk and arguably less fun for the players. For example, maybe the players get to encounter General Grievous ("Cool! Epic!"), but there's no possibility of him being killed (since that would make things non-canon). Or the players get to help out at the Battle of Endor ("Wow! Epic!"), but there's no possibility that they don't win.
Coming back to the topic of Jedi as player characters, a Jedi character has to be able to answer questions about how they came to be part of the party and why the Jedi Order condones them participating in the campaign, and those questions will tend to either strain the plausibility of the character being a Jedi, or will push the campaign into being something more epic.
Despite all the above, I do think there is room for force-sensitive characters in a good Star Wars TTRPG. I would encourage players to choose some other, less well known Force-Using Tradition from the Star Wars canon, or else to make up their own, or to play as a force user who doesn't belong to any organization or tradition, rather than playing a Jedi (or Sith) character. I also think it's important for force-sensitive characters to have more going on with their character than just force sensitivity, both in terms of the story and their background, and also in terms of game mechanics. There are several Force feats and talents that boil down to "Substitute your Use the Force skill for [other skill] checks" and I think those are some of the most boring ones. Try to make characters that are well-rounded, multi-dimensional, and who have force sensitivity as just one aspect of their character and just one tool in their arsenal.
Part of this has to do with actual trends I've seen from other people playing TTRPGs, but also a lot of it probably comes from my own personal hangups being projected onto others. I know that I'm an extreme case when it comes to this issue, so I'll start with self-description and then walk it back to talking about how it applies to TTRPGs more generally.
When I play CRPGs (or other applicable video games), I hoard. If I have a non-infinite number of healing items, I don't ever use any unless I'm absolutely not able to progress otherwise. If a weapon has limited ammo, I will avoid using it. I would say I'm pretty frugal in real life, but when it comes to currency in a video game I take it to an extreme level. None of this is 'necessary' to the games, and sometimes I'll continue to irrationally hoard even after I know that further hoarding will no longer be of any benefit to me. For me, this is simply how I tend to enjoy playing video games.
At the other extreme, there's another type of player that uses up expendable items as soon as they get them and never has any desire to save up anything. Video game designers have to make their games able to accommodate both of these extremes simultaneously, to make sure that I don't ruin my game experience due to my hoarding and to make sure that the other type of player doesn't ruin their experience due to having spent items that ought to have been saved for later.
With TTRPGs, I think things like currency and expendable items are usually much less of a problem for GMs than they are in video games, since it's so much easier to fudge and handwave things on the fly and to reroute campaign details in order to better suit the playstyle of the players. There is, however, a specific type of game resource that often shows up in TTRPGs and is vulnerable to the sort of problem given above. In the Star Wars Saga Edition Roleplaying Game, the mechanic is called "Force Points". (For those more familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, the analogous mechanic in that system is Inspiration.) In vanilla SWSE, a player character gets 5 FP to use every level. Spending an FP allows a character to add a bonus to a certain roll, or to avert character death, or to improve some other game actions in specific ways. (In D&D, Inspiration is awarded to players by the DM, a player can only have one Inspiration at a time, and spending Inspiration gives a player advantage on a roll—that is, they roll two d20s and take the higher result.)
The fact that this style of game mechanic is so widespread in TTRPGs means that it must work out well for some groups. Personally, though, I've never really seen it function well. Different playstyles mean that some players will use their FP/Inspiration/etc the first opportunity they get, while others (e.g. me) will never ever use them unless doing so is necessary for survival. Even beyond the playstyles issue, these resources always seem to just get forgotten about, with GMs constantly having to nag players about it ("Remember that you have Inspiration/FP, this might be a good time to use it!") or else forgetting about the resources themselves. It's yet one more thing players need to be keeping track of, it doesn't have any real connection to the world of the game or (in most systems anyway) to the narrative, and in spite of all the hype these resources aren't usually powerful enough to actually sway the course of an encounter anyway. The fact that FP in particular can be used explicitly to avert an impending character death means that there's a huge incentive to save FP for this purpose, rather than wasting them trying to add a few bonus points to a d20 attack roll or skill check.
To make sure that these resources actually get used, any game system that employs them has to incentivize their use in some way. In SWSE it's done by having any unspent FP be lost at level-up. In D&D, a character can't gain more Inspiration until they spend the Inspiration they already have. In my experience, though, neither of these methods are enough to actually make the mechanic work smoothly. FP are stockpiled as get-out-of-death-free tokens, and Inspiration (assuming a DM even remembers to award it when relevant) is either spent immediately rather than at a climactic moment, or else is saved until it gets forgotten about.
Generally speaking, I don't think this style of game resource is actually worth including in a TTRPG, unless it's a more specialized sort of game where the resource is woven more intimately into the fabric of the gameplay or the setting. If you as the GM think it would be good for the story for a player to have a boost on a roll, just give them a boost on the roll. Don't give them a boost token that they then have to carry around with them and figure out where best to spend it. For my SWSE homebrew rules, I've removed Force Points from the game, with the exception of a few limited feats and talents that grant a character a temporary FP to be used before the end of the current encounter. To keep the game from becoming more deadly due to having taken away the get-out-of-death-free tokens, I've added Limb Loss rules in place of using FP to avert character death. I've also added GM-discretionary XP Rewards and rolling with advantage/disadvantage, to hopefully allow for the sort of interplay between story beats and game mechanics that FP were intended to facilitate. I can appreciate the desire by TTRPG designers to have some sort of give-it-an-extra-push or reward-for-going-above-and-beyond mechanic, but the paradigm I see in so many games just doesn't seem to me to be the right way of doing it.