Essential ingredients and special sauce to make it Star Wars

[Yora]

I know I am being heretical with this, but when I read those old sourcebooks from the 90s, I often kind of forget that I am doing it to prepare for a Star Wars campaign. Credit where credit is due, and many of these books actually created the foundations for the Expanded Universe at a time when there still wasn't much material to draw from. But it happens with other works too. When I read the Black Fleet books, I was thinking "this is nice, but this doesn't feel like Star Wars". And the same thing had me run away from the Yuzan Vong the first time I saw them described, and more or less shut myself off from any Star Wars outside the classic era. The Force Unleashed had the benefit of being a primary visual medium and putting stormtroopers and Darth Vader on the screen, but I still felt I'm playing a texture replacement mod for God of War.

When it comes to preparing and running your own adventures and games, what do you think are elements and methods that help evoking the original spirit of Star Wars?
How do you make your campaigns speak the language of Star Wars and not simply use its props?

(All answers valid of course, but my own focus when trying to figure this out is as a grumpy old traditionalist who can't quite decide if Revenge of the Sith went too far in trying new things. )
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"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[griff]

I always enjoyed the lines like:

"We'll be sent to the spice mines of Kessel,"

"That bounty hunted we ran into on Ord Mantel,"

These lines made The galaxy a larger place then just what was on the screen. And I try to put lines like this in my games and try to use those people or places in later adventures.
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"EXECUTE ORDER 67. Wait a minute, that doesn't sound like order 67..... No, wait. Yes, yes it does. EXECUTE ORDER 68" Palpatine's last moments - robot chicken.

[ThrorII]

No matter the game, if I'm emulating a genre I try to distill tropes of the original source material and integrate them in to the story.

For a Star Wars game, to me, that means 1) Scale - the bad guys are always in a mile-long ship, or the space station is the size of a moon, etc. Star Wars is BIG. 2) Chases - pod races, speeder bikes through a forest, asteroid fields. Being chased through a unique set piece. 3) Pacing - The adventure needs to be fast, like a Flash-Gordon serial. 4) Single Terrain Worlds. 5) Small Universe - Everyone knows about Jabba, Always a friend in that system, etc.
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"The internet is a pathway to many abilities, some considered to be unnatural." - Sheev Zuckerberg

[Leona Makk]

One person gets to use the word "Hell," once per adventure.

[Leona Makk]

You need some cranky/stern adults telling kids to do their chores.

[Raven Redstar]

Pretty sure at least once per mission or adventure someone needs to say: "I've got a bad feeling about this..."
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RR
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[garhkal]

In sparks, that is almost a requirement, for EVERY SCRIPT we write for the modules we make..
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[MrNexx]

[garhkal]

Some f the best games i've had, were ones where the force wasn't even there (ie no jedi pcs, no dark jedi enemies)..
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[ThrorII]

[Naaman]

What sets star wars apart are a few things, for me;

Rugged technology - everything seems clunky or unfinished or "bolted on." Star Destroyers are a good example: they (like other ships) appear to have been built out of giant Legos. Speeder bikes look like a frame/chassis with barely the essentials installed, and the underbody/frame exposed in many places.

Scale "On Screen" - everywhere is big in Star Wars. There are bridges and chutes and all kinds of idle hazards that noone seems to care to do anything about:

The catwalks in Theed Palace during the final duel (of which Obi-Wan and Maul fell from a couple times). The emperor was dumped over the edge into a seemingly bottomless pit. Cloud City. Mustafar.

Few settings at a time - as many places as there are in the greater Star Wars universe, not many should be visited in a short space of time.
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SpecForce Combat Elements
All About Lightsabers: Designing, Building, and Fighting

[ThrorII]