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Description
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are you a Star Wars table-top Role Playing Gamer, or perhaps even a SW fan-fiction writer?
Do you nerd out about rank, insignia, org charts, etc., et al?
Like I did with my Rebel Sourcebook Addendum (www.deviantart.com/baronneutro… ), here is my take on an Imperial Sourcebook Addendum.

I think the original WEG Imperial Sourcebook, which has informed books, games, and even some of the new shows and movies, is excellent and detailed. So much of it cannot be improved on. My goal here is to make some of the Imperial structure easier to access, create some visuals, and have a guide for you to use for your story.

This should be a reasonably presentable first draft. No doubt there are some silly spelling errors and grammatical errors; it happens.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PDF Location: www.deviantart.com/baronneutro…
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The intention here is to simplify or clarify some aspects of the Galactic Empire.  It is meant as a quick reference chart to add some background flavor to the bad guys, the Imperials your group is facing in your campaign.  Perhaps your players would like to see enlisted rank insignia to add to their “theater of the mind” or maybe this will demystify some military structure; this sort of thing.
Don’t misunderstand me. All due credit and respect must be given to the authors, editors, and artists of the original Imperial Sourcebook by WEG. This also goes for the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook, but I didn’t write something like this as I should have for my Rebel Sourcebook Addendum.
When I started playing SWars in the early ‘90s, I was a military brat who was as nerdy about militaries as I was about Star Wars. I LOVED reading through both the Rebel and Imp Sourcebooks for hours. A few long years later, I was in the military myself. It was clear at that point someone involved with the Imperial Sourcebook was either a veteran themselves or an astute student of the military. Look at their Army Order of Battle charts for just one example! There is no WAY I’m going to try and recreate all those, and I love working on this kind or stuff, my limited talents aside.
Hit up your favorite store where RPG books are sold and get these original WEG sourcebooks. They really are great, and can be found if you look. Certainly, if you also look hard enough, you will find digital copies in PDF form; still, nothing beats a real book.
Another goal is to have this be general, to be used for any SW RPG you choose to use; the exception just being some vehicle stats. WEG was my first love, played D20 briefly, and lately have come to really enjoy the FFG/Edge system. I might reference them, but even if you play “5e” for some reason, I hope this brings fun to your game.

Credit where credit is due: George Lucas, everyone who worked on the Original Trilogy, Rebels, Rogue One, Andor, Ahsoka, The Mandalorian, the folks who edit Wookieepedia, the writers and artists of all the SW RPG books and other SW reference books, my friends and acquaintances I’ve gamed with who gave feedback, the fan-made Andor Sourcebook, and more. I have a bad habit of doing google image searches and saving photos without really noting where I got them; I’ve been doing this since before google. If I use an image that needs to be credited, I apologize, and will correct it.
On the topic of rank, much and more can be said. In the original WEG books, Imperial ranks are shown to be a uni-ranks system (see photo to the left; “can be considered interim insignia” has always bothered me); there can be Colonels in the Navy and Commanders in the Army, etc. It seems strange to those familiar with modern western ranks, but in a “galaxy far, far away” it may not be strange.  Later rank charts/descriptions in other reference books also are inconsistent or unnecessarily complicated.
Trying to make sense of Imperial Ranks in just The Trilogy will cause anyone to willingly run to a Sanatorium.  Trying to justify or retcon all of it is equally as maddening. Yes, I know all about the work of David Crossman released by Glyn Dillon. If you like that chart, cool. I know what experts like Pablo Hidalgo have said; Pablo is a professional SWarspert, feel free to take what he says over anything I say.
Bottom line, none of it matches up 100%; none of it is consistent. My mind has been to work on this since…I don’t know…the 80s?  I started working on my own rank charts and organization in the late 90s. There are reasons for every rank change, every rank applied, and every change to the OOB. If you don’t like what I did, that’s cool, but it is all deliberate and thought out. I don’t want to liter this document with explanations and examples ad nauseam, but none of what I did was accidental. Instead, I am "steering into the skid". Most probably would want to see a progression in red/blue/orange tiles, one after another. However, if you throw all the movies and shows together you will see no such progression, so I had a little fun with it.
If you were in the Imperial Military, you would be able to learn these ranks just like any recruit in the real world does in basic training. These may seem confusing or different because you are used to CountryX. Trust me, look around at ALL the 1000s military and police ranks and insignia all over the world; someone from CountryX thinks CountryY's insignia looks weird and confusing and vice versa, but it is just because it is unfamiliar.
By all means, use the original rank system or one in one of the other SW reference books. Again, it may seem strange to have a Major in the Navy, etc.…but that is just because it’s different than the real world. Keep in mind that the real world has no bearing on the SW universe or your game.
Just a heads up: I reject the concept that code cylinders have anything to do with rank.
Some of this comes from a game I ran. I wanted to create a consistent Imperial rank structure, have a less complicated OOB, and even work out some story details like having some Grand Moffs and Grand Admirals that are not complete doofuses other than Thrawn and Tarkin. Speaking of Tarkin, when discussing the organization of the Empire, I will routinely reference the Holy Trilogy:
"How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?"
"The Regional Governors now have direct control over their territories"
... "Star Wars", 1977, dir. George Lucas
Likewise, I was uninterested in creating 20 non-dork Grand Moffs for each Oversector.  Instead, I suggest merging the concept of Oversectors with the Regions.  Now, you just need 6 Grand Moffs.   Much the same with Grand Admirals; there might be 12 positions, but perhaps the posts are not always constantly filled.
Also, I have stuck with the classic view that the Empire is biased towards women and non-humans. Since the game revolves around chance, I always rolled dice to see if the character I was creating was anything other than a human male.   Likewise, when I write the following Imperial “narrative”, I will use masculine words even if there are examples of women filling these roles in the movies or shows.
Additionally, my long-time gaming group tended to use what we called “templates”, a photo of someone to show what a character looked like, someone could easily use for our “theater of the mind”.
Finally, I wrote this with the perspective that the Empire doesn’t have a Professional Enlisted Corps.   They do not trust their enlisted in the way they should, they are used only as a tool that must be controlled.  To that end, their rank structure is less robust. Conversely, the officer side is a little inflated.
There are examples to fit characters into the structure of this Addendum; some are changes to what is on screen. These examples throughout the Addendum are not in any particular order, and represent a variety of time periods; but the target here is the Rebellion Era.
This was written to add some quick structure to the bad guys in your game. If you are reading this and playing Imperials as the heroes, unless it’s a starting point of your game for your players to realize the evil of the Empire and rebel, then stop reading and block me.

Description
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are you a Star Wars table-top Role Playing Gamer, or perhaps even a SW fan-fiction writer?
Do you nerd out about rank, insignia, org charts, etc., et al?
Like I did with my Rebel Sourcebook Addendum (www.deviantart.com/baronneutro… ), here is my take on an Imperial Sourcebook Addendum.

I think the original WEG Imperial Sourcebook, which has informed books, games, and even some of the new shows and movies, is excellent and detailed. So much of it cannot be improved on. My goal here is to make some of the Imperial structure easier to access, create some visuals, and have a guide for you to use for your story.

This should be a reasonably presentable first draft. No doubt there are some silly spelling errors and grammatical errors; it happens.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PDF Location: www.deviantart.com/baronneutro…
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The intention here is to simplify or clarify some aspects of the Galactic Empire.  It is meant as a quick reference chart to add some background flavor to the bad guys, the Imperials your group is facing in your campaign.  Perhaps your players would like to see enlisted rank insignia to add to their “theater of the mind” or maybe this will demystify some military structure; this sort of thing.
Don’t misunderstand me. All due credit and respect must be given to the authors, editors, and artists of the original Imperial Sourcebook by WEG. This also goes for the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook, but I didn’t write something like this as I should have for my Rebel Sourcebook Addendum.
When I started playing SWars in the early ‘90s, I was a military brat who was as nerdy about militaries as I was about Star Wars. I LOVED reading through both the Rebel and Imp Sourcebooks for hours. A few long years later, I was in the military myself. It was clear at that point someone involved with the Imperial Sourcebook was either a veteran themselves or an astute student of the military. Look at their Army Order of Battle charts for just one example! There is no WAY I’m going to try and recreate all those, and I love working on this kind or stuff, my limited talents aside.
Hit up your favorite store where RPG books are sold and get these original WEG sourcebooks. They really are great, and can be found if you look. Certainly, if you also look hard enough, you will find digital copies in PDF form; still, nothing beats a real book.
Another goal is to have this be general, to be used for any SW RPG you choose to use; the exception just being some vehicle stats. WEG was my first love, played D20 briefly, and lately have come to really enjoy the FFG/Edge system. I might reference them, but even if you play “5e” for some reason, I hope this brings fun to your game.

Credit where credit is due: George Lucas, everyone who worked on the Original Trilogy, Rebels, Rogue One, Andor, Ahsoka, The Mandalorian, the folks who edit Wookieepedia, the writers and artists of all the SW RPG books and other SW reference books, my friends and acquaintances I’ve gamed with who gave feedback, the fan-made Andor Sourcebook, and more. I have a bad habit of doing google image searches and saving photos without really noting where I got them; I’ve been doing this since before google. If I use an image that needs to be credited, I apologize, and will correct it.
On the topic of rank, much and more can be said. In the original WEG books, Imperial ranks are shown to be a uni-ranks system (see photo to the left; “can be considered interim insignia” has always bothered me); there can be Colonels in the Navy and Commanders in the Army, etc. It seems strange to those familiar with modern western ranks, but in a “galaxy far, far away” it may not be strange.  Later rank charts/descriptions in other reference books also are inconsistent or unnecessarily complicated.
Trying to make sense of Imperial Ranks in just The Trilogy will cause anyone to willingly run to a Sanatorium.  Trying to justify or retcon all of it is equally as maddening. Yes, I know all about the work of David Crossman released by Glyn Dillon. If you like that chart, cool. I know what experts like Pablo Hidalgo have said; Pablo is a professional SWarspert, feel free to take what he says over anything I say.
Bottom line, none of it matches up 100%; none of it is consistent. My mind has been to work on this since…I don’t know…the 80s?  I started working on my own rank charts and organization in the late 90s. There are reasons for every rank change, every rank applied, and every change to the OOB. If you don’t like what I did, that’s cool, but it is all deliberate and thought out. I don’t want to liter this document with explanations and examples ad nauseam, but none of what I did was accidental. Instead, I am "steering into the skid". Most probably would want to see a progression in red/blue/orange tiles, one after another. However, if you throw all the movies and shows together you will see no such progression, so I had a little fun with it.
If you were in the Imperial Military, you would be able to learn these ranks just like any recruit in the real world does in basic training. These may seem confusing or different because you are used to CountryX. Trust me, look around at ALL the 1000s military and police ranks and insignia all over the world; someone from CountryX thinks CountryY's insignia looks weird and confusing and vice versa, but it is just because it is unfamiliar.
By all means, use the original rank system or one in one of the other SW reference books. Again, it may seem strange to have a Major in the Navy, etc.…but that is just because it’s different than the real world. Keep in mind that the real world has no bearing on the SW universe or your game.
Just a heads up: I reject the concept that code cylinders have anything to do with rank.
Some of this comes from a game I ran. I wanted to create a consistent Imperial rank structure, have a less complicated OOB, and even work out some story details like having some Grand Moffs and Grand Admirals that are not complete doofuses other than Thrawn and Tarkin. Speaking of Tarkin, when discussing the organization of the Empire, I will routinely reference the Holy Trilogy:
"How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?"
"The Regional Governors now have direct control over their territories"
... "Star Wars", 1977, dir. George Lucas
Likewise, I was uninterested in creating 20 non-dork Grand Moffs for each Oversector.  Instead, I suggest merging the concept of Oversectors with the Regions.  Now, you just need 6 Grand Moffs.   Much the same with Grand Admirals; there might be 12 positions, but perhaps the posts are not always constantly filled.
Also, I have stuck with the classic view that the Empire is biased towards women and non-humans. Since the game revolves around chance, I always rolled dice to see if the character I was creating was anything other than a human male.   Likewise, when I write the following Imperial “narrative”, I will use masculine words even if there are examples of women filling these roles in the movies or shows.
Additionally, my long-time gaming group tended to use what we called “templates”, a photo of someone to show what a character looked like, someone could easily use for our “theater of the mind”.
Finally, I wrote this with the perspective that the Empire doesn’t have a Professional Enlisted Corps.   They do not trust their enlisted in the way they should, they are used only as a tool that must be controlled.  To that end, their rank structure is less robust. Conversely, the officer side is a little inflated.
There are examples to fit characters into the structure of this Addendum; some are changes to what is on screen. These examples throughout the Addendum are not in any particular order, and represent a variety of time periods; but the target here is the Rebellion Era.
This was written to add some quick structure to the bad guys in your game. If you are reading this and playing Imperials as the heroes, unless it’s a starting point of your game for your players to realize the evil of the Empire and rebel, then stop reading and block me.