An Open Letter to Fantasy Flight and Cubicle 7 -- Cut the "Foreplay" and Give Us the Good Stuff

[billd91]

I haven't got a link to provide, but I was working at the time in the industry where these things were tracked. The stock market value of the Star Wars brand dropped significantly after The Phantom Menace came out around the 2000-2001 period, then slowly started to recover after about 2002 or so - but never quite to the level that it used to be. Other brands, like Harry Potter for example, started to compete with the market in the 2000s onward.

It's hard to explain to younger people today, but the Star Wars brand from the late 70s to the end of the 90s was largely unimpeachable. Various 'Greatest Movies of all Time" charts and lists (ubiquitous in the late 90s) frequently had Star Wars as the best movie ever by a country mile. A whole generation was brought up on the movies, and would not brook any criticism of the original trilogy whatever. It created, arguably, a totally unrealistic set of expectations and hype by the time The Phantom Menace was eventually released, and led to an unprecedented level of criticism when people discovered that it - ahem - wasn't very good.

The Prequels essentially popped the Star Wars bubble.

Pretty much. A lot of that bubble was based on over-inflated expectations. Toy makers like Hasbro assumed that Lucas could do no wrong with Star Wars (or at least not much wrong) and paid high licensing fees for the rights to crank out lots of toys, many of which never sold well. Had Phantom Menace been a better film, maybe their results would have been better - it's hard to tell because it's still possible they would have over-saturated the market anyway. But in the end they took a battering.

 

[billd91]

Allow me a different word: Complete. Something RPG makers in the new century seems to be getting away from.

If someone is cranking out a revised edition to a game and cuts out chunks, I'd say you have something there (4e, I'm looking at you). But in this case, we're looking at a new game system, from a company new to the IP license. So I can't really complain about the game being incomplete. I'm willing to consider their slate clean, and I'm willing to judge them on the merits of their system and the aspect of the Star Wars setting they are focusing on.

 

[billd91]

The problems with the prequels typically come down to acting (Anakin/Padme's non-chemistry) or divergence from established canon (midichlorians). I can't even fault them for the childish humor because there is horrible moments of that in the OT. However, it did establish some awesome elements as well: Jedi in their prime. podracing. the Separatists. the Clone Wars. Battle Droids. Dozens of amazing new alien species. The fleshing out of the Sith (and hell, even that name having real meaning in the movies). Order 66. Wookiee land battles. There are a lot of things in the PT I'd hate to lose.

I'd sacrifice every single one of them to have had a good set of prequels. Particularly the pod racing, Jedi in their super-hero, short-sighted, swaggering prime, and the battle droids.

 

[JZavoda]

Is there any reason that you can't just make your own rules for Jedi in this game system from FFG or Men of Rohan, etc... from the system from Cubicle 7? There is tons of source material, there are the base mechanics in both systems, why worry about anything 'official' if they aren't doing what you like and just do it yourself?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Somewhere earlier in this thread, someone commented that Firefly was basically Star Wars without the Jedi. While that may we'll be true, Star Wars came first. Firefly was cool because it picked up on the scum and villainy vibe of Star Wars, amped up the western elements that were already there, and made something equally good.

One could just as easily say that Firefly was a Western set in space, and that Star Wars was just a samurai movie set in space ... which it was. There's nothing fundamentally original in the elements of Star Wars; credit is due to the originality of the combination of elements plus the special effects and cinematography the movie achieved. (Incidentally: if the folks posting in this thread have not read The Secret History of Star Wars, they should run out right now and do so, before even considering buying EotE. You'll find the evolution of Jedi and the Force most interesting.)

In any case I'm still struggling to understand what all the huffing and puffing is about -- or not, if this is just the usual tasteful understated nerdrage every Star Wars discussion seems to turn in to. EotE provides sufficient tools to play samurai (nee Jedi) for the period in question, if that's what you want. If you consider the game incomplete because you can't play a full-on Old Republic uber-Jedi, your taste is just different -- and the game is incomplete per your taste.

 

[Crothian]

Is there any reason that you can't just make your own rules for Jedi in this game system from FFG or Men of Rohan, etc... from the system from Cubicle 7? There is tons of source material, there are the base mechanics in both systems, why worry about anything 'official' if they aren't doing what you like and just do it yourself?

I don't want to pay $60 for a book and then sit down and do the designers job for them. If I had that kind of time and talent I'd publish an RPG myself. I don't so I want to pay other people to do it for me.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I don't want to pay $60 for a book and then sit down and do the designers job for them. If I had that kind of time and talent I'd publish an RPG myself. I don't so I want to pay other people to do it for me.

The designers job was to create a viable and polished roleplaying game that allowed you to create a specifically authentic type of Star Wars game that captured the feel of the original Star Wars Trilogy. They have done precisely that - and it's well worth the asking price.

If YOU feel the need to play a power fantasy superheroes-in-spaace game, then choose whatever game system you like to do that with - there are tons out there already - and stop irritating other gamers with unabashed whinging because you don't appreciate a classy game when you see one.

 

[Scars Unseen]

I don't want to pay $60 for a book and then sit down and do the designers job for them. If I had that kind of time and talent I'd publish an RPG myself. I don't so I want to pay other people to do it for me.

Reading EotE has made me never want to touch Saga Edition again, so I'd say that the designers did their job quite well.

 

[Remus Lupin]

The problem I had with all of the D20 Star Wars games was that there was no incentive to play non-Jedi at all. Almost every game I ever tried to run had players scrambling over themselves to play Jedi, and hardly any of them played them in spiritual/ascetic ways which was how I perceived Jedi to be in the Original Trilogy. They played them like superheroes. In this respect, the D20 games were highly reflective of the Prequel movies, but poor mediums for playing tales from the Original Trilogy.

And I'll say it again, in the Original Trilogy, Jedi were so rare that most people didn't think that they existed anymore and that The Force was just hokey religion. The manner that the Edge of Empire is presenting the game world is entirely appropriate to canon - and that is not to say playing Force sensitive characters is not doable, as they are.

See this wasn't my experience as a player. As I said, I like playing Jedi as I like playing Wizards, because I dig the magical/mystical aspect of it, or in this case, the warrior-monk ethos. But in my group we had soldiers and fringers too. I guess the problem is that there are a lot of people out there who treat any system as a means of power gaming and finding ways to break the system, and I can totally see how Jedi can be viewed that way. But if your goal in playing is "realize a character concept," then if your character concept is "like Han, but with a darker back story" or "Transdoshian Bounty Hunger" or "Wookie Fringer" then that's very easily done. You can't do anything about munchkins though in any system. FFG isn't going to eliminate the munchkin problem by delaying the jedi for three years, and I'm sure that the muchkins will find ways to exploit FFGs non-jedi system as well.

 

[TrippyHippy]

See this wasn't my experience as a player. As I said, I like playing Jedi as I like playing Wizards, because I dig the magical/mystical aspect of it, or in this case, the warrior-monk ethos. But in my group we had soldiers and fringers too. I guess the problem is that there are a lot of people out there who treat any system as a means of power gaming and finding ways to break the system, and I can totally see how Jedi can be viewed that way. But if your goal in playing is "realize a character concept," then if your character concept is "like Han, but with a darker back story" or "Transdoshian Bounty Hunger" or "Wookie Fringer" then that's very easily done. You can't do anything about munchkins though in any system. FFG isn't going to eliminate the munchkin problem by delaying the jedi for three years, and I'm sure that the muchkins will find ways to exploit FFGs non-jedi system as well.

Well, we've yet to see that eventuate. All we've seen on this thread is a handful of disgruntled fans complaining that they can't play Jedi - demanding that they should be given what they want - even though that is what the setting being emulated actually was like. That smacks of munchkinism more than anything else.