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

[dm4hire]

I'm beginning to think that the real issue of this debate is we are diverse in our appreciation of not just Star Wars, but what constitutes a RPG for it. FFG and C7 have chosen to take an approach to the venue that unfortunately doesn't appeal to some of us, mainly I think because not only do we have the movies to compare material to but actual game systems as well. If FFG were releasing this with no previous system out there I think we would not be discussing this, at least to this extent, as to what should and shouldn't be included.

As for C7, they have finally hit the nail on the head in most people’s eyes as far as defining a system that works with ME and all of Tolkien. More often than not most people weren't satisfied with the past incarnations of systems used to portray the world Tolkien created which is why those games never saw wide spread success in my opinion. C7's success is also having available some remarkably talented artists who have captured the look and feel of ME that, while in the past was good, has never been so evocative. It simply beats the last incarnation that relied heavily on movie stills. The anguish around The One Ring is people want to play characters of races they can't, but should be able to play.

 

[Crothian]

I have, in earlier posts. Hutts, smugglers, bounty hunters, rancor monsters, stormtroopers, clones, podracers, speeder bikes, etc. A vivid and colourful setting full of adventure. All wonderful stuff!

I never said the setting and the details were not great. But Space opera has always had monsters, and bounty hunters, and evil empires and races. I'm not asking what is great about Star Wars I'm asking what sets it apart from other Space Opera.

I'm not saying Jedi define Star Wars or are the most important element. I'm saying that they are part of Star Wars and I want it to be up to me to have them or not. I don't want FFG to decide what happens in my Star Wars games.

 

[Crothian]

Now here's the thing I don't get. FFG isn't cutting out the Jedi. They are merely taking the time and page space necessary to do the job right.

All I know is that Jedi are coming in the third game. I've seen nothing from FFG that says the reason they are delaying Jedi is to take the time and do it right. So, I'd love to see your source for that.

With the way licenses work it is possible that FFG might not get a chance to make that game. I've talked to people at Wizards and West End Games about working with the Star Wars license and they said it could be very difficult. There is no guarantee or promise that we will ever get Jedi. All we have is an internet statement that for all we know could be quite optimistic. In the RPG market there are plenty of games and books that are announced that either never happen or get changed or just drastically delayed.

 

[Morrus]

I never said the setting and the details were not great. But Space opera has always had monsters, and bounty hunters, and evil empires and races. I'm not asking what is great about Star Wars I'm asking what sets it apart from other Space Opera.

Well Jedi aren't it! They're the most derivative thing about the whole setting. They're boring.

I don't want FFG to decide what happens in my Star Wars games.

I can't really engage with that statement. That's not what they're doing. I can't even muster the energy to try to argue it, man!

Let's just leave it at that. I like the book, you don't. That's cool. I win, I guess!

 

[Crothian]

I can't really engage with that statement. That's not what they're doing. I can't even muster the energy to try to argue it, man!

Let's just leave it at that. I like the book, you don't. That's cool. I win, I guess!

I never said I didn't like the game. And it what they are doing. As a game designer you should know that what you decide to put into a game or not impacts the options that gamers have when using the game at their own gaming table.

 

[Scars Unseen]

All I know is that Jedi are coming in the third game. I've seen nothing from FFG that says the reason they are delaying Jedi is to take the time and do it right. So, I'd love to see your source for that.

With the way licenses work it is possible that FFG might not get a chance to make that game. I've talked to people at Wizards and West End Games about working with the Star Wars license and they said it could be very difficult. There is no guarantee or promise that we will ever get Jedi. All we have is an internet statement that for all we know could be quite optimistic. In the RPG market there are plenty of games and books that are announced that either never happen or get changed or just drastically delayed.

My source is EotE. The game is well designed and is very good at the specific thing it is designed for. There are plenty of interviews and dev journals describing the process that FFG went through to make sure that EotE came out the way they wanted it to. Are you trying to say that they would go through all that trouble for the first game only to slack off for the following two? That doesn't stand to any sort of reason.

As for the licensing thing... well yeah, there is always the possibility that FFG could lose the license. However, that has no bearing on how a company should go about designing their game. Those are two unrelated issues.

 

[TrippyHippy]

That's an unusual statement! I haven't heard that one before; could you share your source? From everything I heard in news articles and the like, Star Wars merchandise skyrocketted after the prequels, and has done since. It had a dry patch (in as much as Star Wars can have a dry patch) in the decade preceding The Phantom Menace.

While I have many criticisms of the prequels, a lack of mechandise sales isn't one of them.

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.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Statements like this make me so very sad.

I'm sorry to make you sad, Morrus, but again, everything you seem to like about Star Wars has been done at least as well (and often better) by some other setting, going back decades before Star Wars.

And once more, on topic, I have no problem with you wanting to play a game without Jedi. I just don't see why FF decided to make a game called Star Wars that you could play, and I couldn't.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I never said the setting and the details were not great. But Space opera has always had monsters, and bounty hunters, and evil empires and races. I'm not asking what is great about Star Wars I'm asking what sets it apart from other Space Opera.

I'm not saying Jedi define Star Wars or are the most important element. I'm saying that they are part of Star Wars and I want it to be up to me to have them or not. I don't want FFG to decide what happens in my Star Wars games.

I'm not sure that Space Opera, prior to Star Wars, was all that popular. If you look at most of the notable 70s sci-fi movies before Star Wars, they were mainly existential or dystopian in theme. Older pulp staples, like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were generally scorned in favour of high brow stories like 2001: A Space Odyssey and so on - and which Star Trek at least aspired towards too. Star Wars release in 1977 created quite a seismic shift in cinema and sci-fi tastes. To compare Star wars to generic sci-fi misses the point. Star Wars was the prototype generic sci-fi that everybody else copied after.

 

[Morrus]

what you decide to put into a game or not impacts the options that gamers have when using the game at their own gaming table.

EXACTLY! Thank you!