Why Doesn't Star Wars Hold More Mind Share in the RPG Market?

[Zardnaar]

When I run Star Wars basically give players what they want.

These 6 books tend to be popular.

Jedi, spaceships can't go to far wrong.

 

[MGibster]

I never understood the Skywalker effect. Especially back in the old WEG days, the universe was so big and undefined that the DM could largely do what they wanted. Who cares if they’re not defeating Vader or Tarkin? That story was already told so let’s do something different.

 

[Zardnaar]

I never understood the Skywalker effect. Especially back in the old WEG days, the universe was so big and undefined that the DM could largely do what they wanted. Who cares if they’re not defeating Vader or Tarkin? That story was already told so let’s do something different.

Skywalker effect saved Star Wars.

The revival really started with Heir to the Empire.

Doesn't mean you can't tell other stories but for mass market yeah. Force Awakens 2 billion dollars, sure it had nothing to do with Han/Luke/Leia returning same as 1991 with Heir to the Empire.

That's the Skywalker effect. The only other characters outside the movies that gained much traction were Thrawn (hence back in Disney), Mara Jade and Revan.

They did polling in the 90s and from memory on a good day Thrawn beat Vader or was just right under him in terms of popularity.

These days maybe Baby Yoda.

 

[Weiley31]

There are plenty of ways you can avoid the Skywalker effect or even "Well I already know how the story ends, so how is my knock off Han Solo smuggler supposed to beat that?"

Example? I had an idea where it was basically, what was it First Order or Imperials...can't remember, but anywho the story would be basically the PCs being a squad of Elite Stormtroopers called in to resolves a situation where a Galactic Barge or some ship has been taken hostage by the Yevetha for trespassing in their territory. (They are basically nasty beings who pretty much feed blood to their egg sacks to birth their young and extremely xenophobic.)

The squad leader of the Elite Stormtrooper unit wants to ensure that they are able to breach the barge and rescue the civilians, despite a number of them being possibly rebels. He doesn't care as he job is to make sure the civilians are safe. The problem? They unexpectedly get a Sith Inquisitor assigned to them as their Handler, who only cares about capturing a Jedi who is hiding among the civilians on said barge. To the Inquisitor, the civilians are expendable and anybody that tries to ignore that or the "mission" will be personally executed by the Inquisitor on behalf of the Emperor/Supreme Leader. So the idea is trying to "survive" both the aggressive alien forces and the Inquisitor, while trying to save people, and not get branded as Traitors by the Imperials.

Sometimes, flipping the script is great: What if you play an Imperial game where your Imperials just trying to do their job and not because they are evil? What happens if your villain is a Rebel terrorist, who takes the hero worship of Luke Skywalker's destruction of the Death Star to an unhealthy level, and basically bombs/destroys imperial facilities where there are higher levels of civilians there?

The Yevetha are from the WoTC Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Alien Anthology splat book. Basically tells ya about all the various alien species in the Legends Expanded Universe.

 

[aramis erak]

Skywalker effect saved Star Wars.

The revival really started with Heir to the Empire.

And Timothy Zahn has stated that the continuity source he was pointed to by LFL was the RPG line by WEG.
The RPG was also several years old, and a top 10 RPG seller, available not just in the hobby market, but also in mainstream toy stores and book stores. By 1989, when Timothy Zahn was writing, Star Wars had more shelf space than any non-D&D game. Second edition was in the works, and was informed a lot by Zahn's novels, too, advancing the setting to the post-rebellion New Republic.
WEG also had a lot of buyers in those book stores who weren't playing the game. Not a majority, but enough to be notable.

 

[Zardnaar]

And Timothy Zahn has stated that the continuity source he was pointed to by LFL was the RPG line by WEG.
The RPG was also several years old, and a top 10 RPG seller, available not just in the hobby market, but also in mainstream toy stores and book stores. By 1989, when Timothy Zahn was writing, Star Wars had more shelf space than any non-D&D game. Second edition was in the works, and was informed a lot by Zahn's novels, too, advancing the setting to the post-rebellion New Republic.
WEG also had a lot of buyers in those book stores who weren't playing the game. Not a majority, but enough to be notable.

I know about Zahn getting the RPG material.

Pre HttE though Star Wars was functionally dead. The RPG was the only thing producing content.

It was still smaller than D&D and the entire RPG market in the grand scheme of things doesn't matter even now.

Fun story I got a large chunk of my collection from one of the WEG authors. I asked an eBay seller if he posted to NZ.

Turns out he had just been here and loved it so he sent it to me postage free costing him slightly more than I paid for it. Signed some of the books and aquired a lot of the Saga books from him for the price of All Black Jerseys.

Picked up a lot of books for $1-$8 around 2004. The only ones worth much were the rarities and Jedi/space ship stuff.

Grabbed KoToR and Starships of the Galaxy asap due to this for SWSE and they are a bit pricey now.

 

[aramis erak]

I know about Zahn getting the RPG material.

Pre HttE though Star Wars was functionally dead. The RPG was the only thing producing content.

It was still smaller than D&D and the entire RPG market in the grand scheme of things doesn't matter even now.

Fun story I got a large chunk of my collection from one of the WEG authors. I asked an eBay seller if he posted to NZ.

Turns out he had just been here and loved it so he sent it to me postage free costing him slightly more than I paid for it. Signed some of the books and aquired a lot of the Saga books from him for the price of All Black Jerseys.

Picked up a lot of books for $1-$8 around 2004. The only ones worth much were the rarities and Jedi/space ship stuff.

Grabbed KoToR and Starships of the Galaxy asap due to this for SWSE and they are a bit pricey now.

I'm half expecting FFG née Asmodee to get permission to rerelease more of the WEG materials; all the IP belongs to Disney either way. I like FFG's characters and dice better, but WEG's much better with the vehicle rules and ease of initiating play.

I'd lay odds that a well handled rerelease would do a fair bit of sales.

OTOH, if one wants just the rules mechanics, d6 Space is still available.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm half expecting FFG née Asmodee to get permission to rerelease more of the WEG materials; all the IP belongs to Disney either way. I like FFG's characters and dice better, but WEG's much better with the vehicle rules and ease of initiating play.

I'd lay odds that a well handled rerelease would do a fair bit of sales.

OTOH, if one wants just the rules mechanics, d6 Space is still available.

If a other company picks up the licence I wonder if just redoing SWSE via the OGL or D6 which is now open source would make sense.

Skips the whole we need to design an RPG from the ground up phase.

 

[MGibster]

Skywalker effect saved Star Wars.

The revival really started with Heir to the Empire.

Doesn't mean you can't tell other stories but for mass market yeah. Force Awakens 2 billion dollars, sure it had nothing to do with Han/Luke/Leia returning same as 1991 with Heir to the Empire.

We're not talking about mass market here we're talking about role playing games. And as Luiscarlo14f pointed out, some people don't want to play Star Wars because they're characters aren't the big damn heroes who get to blow up the Death Star and cut off Vader's hand. There were plenty of great stories to tell in the Star Wars universe for characters who aren't Luke, Leia, or Han.

 

[Retreater]

I remember as a child being intrigued by roleplaying games, and I think the first one I saw was WEG's Star Wars game. It wasn't in a hobby store or book store. It was in the gift shop at the end of the Star Tours ride at Disney World! (So I can attest to how widespread it was to mainstream audiences.) I was a huge fan of Star Wars, even though the movie franchise had long ended and the brand was basically dormant for an eternity (at least in my child mind - in actuality, probably about 4 years).
Even though my parents didn't buy it for me at Disney, it was something I wanted to get, so I picked it up after I got TMNT and Other Strangeness and AD&D 2nd edition. We played it a few times, but it never supplanted AD&D as our system of choice throughout middle school, high school, and college.
I bought (but never used) the d20 Star Wars systems. I did run a campaign using the FFG system, which I admit took a LOT of getting used to with weird dice, degrees of success, narrative tokens, etc., and even for people who knew the system, we found it to have major balance issues in long term campaigning.
It did serve as our go-to system for sci-fi for years whenever that urge (rarely) came up. Nowadays we are more likely to play Savage Rifts.