ErikB said:

I don't think I'm going to use a boardgame that isn't even set in the Star Wars universe as a source for information on number of systems.

I would agree with the above posters that you probably shouldn't try to quantify the size of the Empire. For the PCs, there will always be another planet to visit they've never yet heard of. That's all that is really needed.

If asked how big, I might respond the Empire is vast, but there are still countless unexplored planets and systems.

I use the map found in this:

Star Wars Essential Atlas

I do not own the physical book but my impression is this notes every planet ever mentioned in the Star Wars canon and maps it.  If you wanted to get real detailed (a n a l) you could cross-reference and read all their histories on Wookiepedia (if not detailed in the book) and note which planets at one time had an Imperial presence.

I've always had the impression that membership in the Empire was at the will of the Emperor.  A system may not be part of the Empire but the Empire sure as heck would/could invade and "have a presence" there thus making it part of the Empire (as far as Sidious would be concerned).  The point of the Empire is that it is too big to stop or fight.  If the Empire took interest in a planet there was little to stop them and nearly all resistance would be crushed, with the obvious exceptions of Mon Calamari and others.

The Essential Atlas is great.  I only just got a copy, but it lists a whole slew of planets and systems.  Many of them are undocumented (cross-reference with Wookieepedia for the win…) and thus make ripe ground for RPGing.  But the population of the galaxy is apparently in the order of quadrillions, with a number of different sections, Core, Inner Rim, Mid-Rim, Outer Rim, Hutt Space, etc.  I don't think it would be odd to expect the Empire to be huge, especially when its predecessor had been around for some 4,000 years…

Sturn said:

Oh aye, it has no significance other than that, in 1979 and hence before much exposure to Star Wars fluff or even The Empire Strikes Back, when someone wanted to duplicate the feel of Star Wars they made up an Empire of 24 systems.

And like I say, I don't think the Essential Atlas and related material tally with the movies. When the Empire searches for the Rebel Base on Hoth did they really go through millions of systems to find it? And if they had dispatched that many Probe Droids, why did they bring so few ship to make the assault?

ErikB said:

The direct quote is "Thousands", not millions.  Leading a reasonable assumption to there being at least thousands of systems that are home to planets that are safe to inhabit to some degree.

As for your second point, the Empire was needing to assault as quickly as possible before the Rebels fled the system, it takes time for ships to travel from system to system and there could conceivably only be a few within immediate response range, given that they have a whole Galaxy to police.  Furthermore, you're not considering the ultimate fallacy of the Empire.  That is their over-confidence and belief that their superior firepower and strength are more than enough to outmatch the rebel alliance (case in point, both death stars).

In the end this is all academic anyway.  My Empire will be as big as it needs to be to give my players the necessary scope and scale, and nothing says space like a lack of solid definition.

Leechman said:

Good point. I think these are the relevant lines:-

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I tend to use the Atlas, knowing that between even two of the most closely grouped named systems on those maps there is light-years of space.  The Empire didn't include most of the Outer Rim, and there were many other inter-stellar political entites co-existent:  Hutt Space, Hapes, etc.

When it comes to the size of the Republic, just pulling a number out of my dark zone gives me around 40,000.  First, the size of the Senate building demonstrates a limit.  Many (most) systems might have been represented by a Senator shared with others in their region, while only the Core Worlds could expect direct representation.  Also, from what I gather, membership in the Republic was simply an agreement to adhere to certain laws, principles, trade agreements, etc., some of which could be arbitrarily ignored.  The Republic sounds more like a beefed up UN, able to impose sanctions but possessing limited military capabilities.  A planet could ignore Republic proclamations and still be in the Republic (think Iran today).

Second, even though there might be billions of rocky planets in the galaxy, only a small few would fit the golden balance of having an atmosphere, gravity, water, and enough photosynthetic life to create an oxygen-rich environment.  Only a few species are shown needing special equipment to survive on "human-normal" worlds.  Even Tatooine, dry as it is, would be that tiny sliver of perfect environments.  So starting from 17 billion, cut in half because the Unknown Regions encompasses 1/2 the galaxy; round up to 10 billion for fun.

10B * 5% (rocky planets within 0.7 and 1.5 G) = 500 million

500M * 2% (enough water for life, and in a golden range from star) = 10 million

10M * 20% (life…as far as we can tell, life appeared on earth almost as soon as conditions were ripe) = 2 million

2M * 25% (photosynthesis…once life started, photosynthesis wasn't far behind, geologically speaking) = 500,000

500K * 10% (explored, colonized or native, and represented) = 50,000

So that's 40,000 for the Republic, and another 10,000 belonging to other political entities, or no one but themselves.

That's plenty for me, and if it's not enough, there are 450,000 other systems waiting to be discovered.

I'm personally happy with a mix of EU information and plot reasoning. It rarely matters, since the plot focus usually just sticks to a select few planets (usually related to the characters) in addition to some (or all) of the main ones from the movies.

However, in the game I periodically run I allow my players to roam rather freely. They have on occasion found interesting star systems using wookieepedia or other sources. With a proper Knowledge roll and Astrogation, they're free to explore.

And in the game I'm playing in, the GM uses the Essential Atlas which has thoroughly been mentioned here. It's a great source, and possibly a nice middle ground between the people claiming the whole EU being too much, or that the films don't offer much in terms of scale.

There are some things to remember, though: The Empire and Republic rarely only relates to planets. Instead they relate to systems (and in some cases even sectors). This lends a lot of support to the Senate having a rather finite size in that systems could include several inhabited planets, and sectors several systems. Also, interestingly enough, a comment by Lucas from a behind the scenes book about the first film indicates the senate represented 24,372 systems, making the 40-50 000 total planets estimate not so bad. This assumes not all systems having a senator, and possibly several systems having more than one inhabitable planet (which some Star Wars systems do). However, I could find no other mention of such number.

And about the probe droids I agree that one should remember that these droids are searching the far reaches of the Galaxy. For the Empire, hardly anything past the Colonies is considered civilized, and once you reach the Mid Rim (and especially the Outer Rim), you're really on the frontier. Republic and especially Imperial presence out there is diminishing. Also, the worlds or systems being searched by the probes would be known to be mostly uninhabited or at the very least sparingly inhabited (such as Dantooine, for instance). This would mean that past the civilized sections of the Galaxy, there are uncounted worlds as far as the Empire is concerned. (This would also make the Republic a much larger entity, which would mostly be true, due to the looser organization and the fact that the Clone Wars sort of split the Rimwards regions off from the rest of the Galaxy).

But I can see the point of there not being a lot of apparent evidence to the size of the Empire, or Republic for that matter, if you're only looking for evidence of such planets in the movies. I thought maybe there were some quotes about the Republic somewhere, but I couldn't find any, however there is one interesting tidbit about known systems in Episode II when Obi-Wan searches for Kamino. The Star Map he shows to the youngligs shows quite a bit of systems. I'm not going to make an argument on how many, or if it's all of them, but I will make an argument that the ones on a Jedi chart would likely all be inhabited for the purpose of keeping track of Force Sensitives. It's an assumption, and a vague one, but at least it provides a clear picture of the scope of planets in the Republic (and possibly beyond) - and one that's from the movies, too. Point being: There are movie evidence of a far greater Galaxy than can be seen or indicated by individual locations or references alone.

ErikB said:

Technically speaking, the Essential Atlas would fall under your 'EU Crap' umbrella.

Just a point to make on the size of the Empire (and the Republic before it).

Take a look at the sheer physical size of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.  Those long shots, where you see a big chunk of one side of the building, and a staircase leading up?  Those individual 'stairs' are actually the landings between flights of stairs.  (That becomes apparent when the clones attack the temple in Sith.)  The temple itself dwarfs any real structure on Earth, and likely has a footprint roughly equivalent to the Bronx.

Force-sensitives are a minute fraction of sapient beings in the Star Wars universe, the Jedi themselves are only a portion of those Force-sensitive beings, and those actively 'stationed' at the temple are only a portion of that.  For all of this to be true, the Jedi Order has to be 'supported' by a massive galaxy with tens of thousands of inhabited worlds at the very least, maybe hundreds of thousands.

by the time I saw ROTJ, I'd been running Traveller… and "knew" a 1000 world empire was reasonably compact - a few hundred worlds on a side. And that the galxy was many thousands of parsecs across. And that parsecs are a unit of distance, not time… (milky way is about ~110000LY, or ~34000 Pc, and ~300,000,000,000 stars.) 

I also had read Splinter, the Brian Daly Han Solo novels, and some other, old, pre-WEG EU materials. Including the daily comics.

But in ROTJ, we see Luke and Leia looking out upon a REALLY close spiral galaxy that's not distorted by near collision…

And my SW Universe was shifted from LY per day to thousands of LY per day.

I've presumed since that the empire controlled at least 50% of the Galaxy.

I also figured the SWG to be smaller than the Milky Way; Only about a billion stars. About in in a thousand being inhabited, and about 1 in a thousand of those in spacefaring society. Which leaves about 1000 worlds, and so about 500 in the Empire.

But I have no problem with multiplying it by 10 or 100 or 200 systems…

I'd put tatooine at the low end of stellar civ…

aramis said:

After nearly 24,000 years of FTL, why would so few worlds be spacefaring? Especially since the human worlds would have been populated from one planet of people (else they'd be humanoids and not actual humans).

Kallabecca said:

One could easily postulate that the limits on expansion are the charting of new hyperspace routes and the development of improved technology that allows explotation of new routes.

Narratively, I would suggest that the advantages of this approach include:-

If new routes can be charted, but doing so is difficult and dangerous, it can be a job for PCs to do.

New routes, when charted, can open up a frontier. With the development of hyperdrives that can safely traverse a route of less than 0.25% relative integrity, whole new systems and sectors are opened to expansion. Settler and prospectors flood to the region. Wagon Trains, Gold Rushes, Dark Continents, Polar Exporation all become possible.

Open Frontiers are very, very useful in adventure fiction.

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I guess, really though, Star Wars just doesn't have the epic feel I think a true Galactic war should have. Take, for instance, the Idiran-Culture war from Iain M. Banks Culture series:-

+++++

Course, that is kinda written as a respose to Star Wars, but still. I think it is good response.

If anything I think that it was a little underplayed in the movies just how much was controlled by the republic and the empire. Also as it is a delegate for the senate could actually be representing many star systems under their control. also not covered in the movies is the Tapani. which is a good chunk of the galaxy and was not under anyones control, the empire and the republic had no power there.