Strange Machine Games Announce New Robotech RPG

Jester David said:

I think that had more to do with the failed Kickstarter. By "losing" the licence, they wouldn't be expected to ever deliver on their promises. It was the firm break they needed to just move forward.
That, or Harmony Gold pulled their licence as they didn't want to be associated with Palladium and Siembieda. Which would be far more depressing...

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The other option is that Siembieda knew when the liscence was expiring and deliberately made the decision to not do anything. This makes him a thief and a liar.

Either way, Palladium has further hurt their reputation, and was harming that of Robotech as well. Many were likely put off anythjng with the name Robotech.

This is not a situation that I think harmony gold would want for the last few years they hold the liscence - it expires in, I think, 2020.

The fact that another company has purchased the rights, and is already releasing a game (at gencon), with another on the way soon, and working on an RPG, makes me realize how little palladium cared about the license and the fans. The giving of the game if you order the RPG directly (if you were waiting on wave 2 of palladiums kickstarter) is surprising, un-called for, and extending an olive branch to the fans who were turned away.

Dragonblade said:

I'm not a Kevin Siembieda fan, but he made the smart play here by walking away.

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Who walked away, Harmony Gold or Palladium Books? Nobody has said; Siembieda's announcement is in the passive:

Kevin Siembieda said:

Moreover, after proudly carrying the legacy of Robotech® in the role-playing games medium for 30 years, our license has expired and is not being renewed.

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Neither option is good for Palladium Books. If Harmony Gold chose not to renew the license, it means that it felt Palladium Books was an overall black mark on a property it's apparently going to lose itself in about three years. If Palladium Books walked away, it means it deliberately chose not to fulfill its Kickstarter, which is downright disgusting, even for Siembieda. I'm going with Harmony Gold making the choice myself.

As for Strange Machine Games, I wonder if it is trying to get an inside track on Harmony Gold losing the rights to Super Dimension Fortress Macross in three years. (Does anyone know if Harmony Gold will also lose the rights to Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross or Genesis Climber Mospeada? Studio Nue owns the first property as well as Macross, though frankly I doubt it cares a whit about Southern Cross.) Come 2021, it can put out a new version with the names changed ("Hikaru Ichijo" for "Rick Hunter," "Valkyrie" for "Veritech," "Super Dimension Fortress Macross" for "Robotech," and so on) if it gets the Macross license from Studio Nue.

And the giving of a game to the spurned Kickstarter backers is just a downright sweet gesture by a company that has no reason to do so. It makes me wonder of Harmony Gold gave Strange Machine Games some money for doing so, which again makes me think that Harmony Gold, not Palladium Books, walked away.

Blame game aside, I have always been a big fan of Robotech, but Palladium never really did anything with the property to do it justice. I'm not completely convinced that the kickstarter wasn't an attempt to get HG to renew the license when Palladium was worried about losing it ("you wouldn't pull the license right now and screw over people who support your IP, would you?") due to inactivity. I've played the Palladium Robotech role playing game (including back when it first came out), and I felt it was poorly implemented. Palladium forced the setting into their already existing mechanics (also used for TMNT and Beyond the Supernatural), which I never felt was a good fit for the feel of the anime. Opposed rolls and "rolling with the punch" for five attacks in a round slowed the pace to a crawl, which is the exact opposite of the anime' space. Hopefully the new mechanics will capture the pacing of the anime better...

Eirikrautha said:

Opposed rolls and "rolling with the punch" for five attacks in a round slowed the pace to a crawl, which is the exact opposite of the anime' space. Hopefully the new mechanics will capture the pacing of the anime better...

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Just wait till you have to roll to hit for each missile in that Macross Missile Massacre you just launched.....

I am happy for this and hopeful that the new system is a good fit for the property. I had the Palladium books for each of the three series way back in the olden times, but really...the Palladium system is terrible. It sucks. As in, "it will waste your time and leave you frustrated." And it's really horrible for vehicle combat. They tried to use it as a generic house system for any world they could make or property they could get their hands on, and it was not a good fit for anything outside of their fantasy game...and even there it was a clunky, derivative neighbor to DnD.

Three decades of game design evolution later and we've got plenty of systems that are cinematic, handle social conflict well, and allow for high-action vehicle combat without being tied to a grid (check out Elite: Dangerous RPG for a simple, elegant starship combat system that fits very well alongside the character-to-character game for an example).

Who wouldn't want to play overly-dramatic characters with blue rooster hair? Fingers crossed that it's a good one.

That was what bothered me about the Palladium system. There were tweaks here and there, but it's core never changed. It always stayed rooted in the era of high-complexity 80s RPG design theory.

I ran a fair bit of the Robotech RPG back in the day, so I’m curious where the new licensee will go with it.

lyle.spade said:

I am happy for this and hopeful that the new system is a good fit for the property. I had the Palladium books for each of the three series way back in the olden times, but really...the Palladium system is terrible. It sucks....

Three decades of game design evolution later and we've got plenty of systems that are cinematic, handle social conflict well, and allow for high-action vehicle combat without being tied to a grid (check out Elite: Dangerous RPG for a simple, elegant starship combat system that fits very well alongside the character-to-character game for an example).

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Jester David said:

I think that had more to do with the failed Kickstarter. By "losing" the licence, they wouldn't be expected to ever deliver on their promises. It was the firm break they needed to just move forward.
That, or Harmony Gold pulled their licence as they didn't want to be associated with Palladium and Siembieda. Which would be far more depressing...

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Ok let me get things clear here, Palladium did not Walk away from Robotech, they were kicked and screaming from it, since doing so forced them to admit they could not complete the Robotech Kickstarter which was going on 5 years now, even HG said they cancelled Palladium's license which HG gave them for free for a year.

In the end what it came down to was money, Palladium had no money to give HG and HG already gave them a free year, and yes that means if PB had no money they were not going to send out wave 2 of the Robotech RPG Tactics game, all they were doing was stalling.

This is promising

I'm curious about how the system will play out.

Anyone heard anything?