White Box doesn't limit itself to a single intellectual product (I.P.). Hobbits (in the original printings) elves and dwarves can all be found as player characters in the original Little Brown Books, but the game isn't labeled role-playing in Middle Earth. In his Foreword to the White Box, Gary Gygax refers to Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and John Carter of Mars, but he doesn't make it a game about any one of those I.P.s. Part of the genius and appeal of Gary's decision is that White Box is all of those and so much more. By not being tied to a specific I.P., those who play the game are encouraged to make it their own game, to personalize the setting and thereby to own it. In Gary's words, "...decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way!"
Scum and Villainy (its title is a reference to a line in the original Star Wars movie) could be set in the SW universe, but it isn't and it is a much better game partly because of that simple fact. Creative freedom is thus granted to those who play S&V to make it their own game; to explore the stories each of us wants to without the implicit limits of an I.P. canon getting in the way. Any aspects you want to bring into S&V are viable because there are no limiting preconceptions. Each referee (and player) is free to borrow ideas from any source and incorporate it into the S&V setting.
Folks who lack imagination (are there any of those?) may prefer to have others do their imagining for them. Most of us prefer to think for ourselves and will enjoy the freedom to explore our own creations. Why not imagine the space game you would like to play and use a system such as S&V to do just that.
Mechanically S&V shares the Forged in the Dark system used in Blades in the Dark (and is similar in some ways to Powered By the Apocalypse). In short it is a d6 dice pool mechanic where you roll a number of d6s determined by your attribute and skill (if any) and rolling a single six gives you a complete success (multiple sixes yielding a critical success). If the highest roll is a 4-5 the result is a partial success (1-3 is a failure). Only the highest score rolled really matters. The dice mechanic has many of the same problems as the NDS mechanic of the current I.P. holding game. The system encourages over specialization and "bargaining" both to use the skills you are best at and to negotiate how the dice roll will be interpreted in terms of story. It is probably safe to say that if the SW dice system doesn't bother you, neither will the one used in S&V. Personally I find the system detracts from my immersion as a player (and frustrating as I don't enjoy negotiating as a game mechanic).
A feature of both S&V and Blades in the Dark which I am greatly impressed with (and find worthy of imitation) is the ship/crew mechanic. In S&V the players decide which of three ships they will crew and this determines what kind of missions they will pursue - smuggling, bounty hunting or rebelling against the evil empire. (In Blades... players are members of a gang that specializes in a certain aspect of crime and this choice determines how they earn their experience points.)
The Forged in the Dark system is designed around several narrative features. Dice rolls use Position, which the player can state as being controlled, risky or desperate with each Position helping to define possible consequences. Progress Clocks are used to track things which the players seek to accomplish and threats which may be mounting. Stress and Harm is the way characters take damage. Players can choose to take character Stress rather than injury (Harm) in most situations. Stress is then relieved (cured) during Downtime by the character recreating and indulging. Players can also choose to give their characters Stress in order to create a Flashback, which means the action is rolled back to play out how an Obstacle was dealt with in the past so that it doesn't pose a problem currently. In other words, the ship's drive system breaks down during a chase, but the crew just happens to have the part needed for repairs because of a Flashback...
The default setting is where S&V shines. It is set out among the far, far away reaches of space where every star system has unique and interesting features to explore and become entangled with. Certain jobs are more likely to be found in certain systems and each has its own power players, politics and legal codes. Factions abound and the crew never knows when an unwelcome NPC may appear.
So if SW is your thing, or Firefly or even Cowboy Bebop, S&V can handle it all, even though it isn't officially any of those things. Its strength is that by being influenced by a number of I.P.s, but not directly connected to any of them, players can incorporate ideas of their own along with those borrowed from almost any published source and it's all good and useful for game play. And S&V doesn't use proprietary dice!
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