Alien & Fate Join ICv2's Top 5 RPGs

Alien and Fate join ICv2's tabletop RPG sales chart, while Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder maintain 1st and 2nd places as usual, positions 3-5 always change. Cyberpunk, from R. Talsorian, has climbed from 5th place last time, to 3rd place. This chart is for September-December 2020, based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers.

Position​	Game	Publisher
1​	Dungeons & Dragons	Wizards of the Coast
2​	Pathfinder	Paizo
3​	Cyberpunk	R. Talsorian
4​	Alien	Free League
5​	Fate	Evil Hat Productions

As always you can see all the historical charts here.

 

[Sunsword]

Nothing happened. It is that Fate is a game you can play, but it is an engine used for games as well - Fate of Cthulhu, Atomic Robo, The Dresden Files, Tachyon Squadron - and then there's Fate Accelerated and a few titles under it, and Fate Condensed just came out...

So, it may be hard to say what, exactly, they are counting under that title.

Okay, I can see that. Was FATE of Cthulhu the last release?

 

[Sunsword]

Most every game store I've ever been to is mostly made up of older stock that never sold when it was first ordered, including previous editions...

While that is definitely true, I can still order PF1 stuff and have several groups that shop with me that didn't want to change to PF2 because of the investment they made in PF1 but didn't have quite everything.

 

[Aldarc]

Okay, I can see that. Was FATE of Cthulhu the last release?

Fate of Cthulhu was in Jan 2020. Fate Condensed was in Nov 2020.

 

[Fredrix]

Great to see a game I worked on in the top five

 

[aramis erak]

I'd put Starfinder in line with Star Wars RPGs and others in that it is Space Opera vs. something like Traveller which is trying more to be Science Fiction.

It's sort of like the difference between Shadowrun and Cyberpunk. One invests in mystical powers and abilities while the other tries to have something of how they guess a future of mankind may be.

Except that Traveller isn't trying to be SF; it's intended to be Space Opera, or at least, that was and is Marc's intent. Inertial but reactionless drives, habitable worlds everywhere, psionics, easy superluminal travel, gravitics, naturally occuring animatter systems, age-of-sail inspired combat, age of sail inspired trade... (Exception: T:TNE was trying to be hard SF. It failed. It also failed to appeal to the vast majority of CT and MT players, while drawing a much smaller, largely new to Traveller, audience.)

Star Trek is right on that same slope of Space Opera with occasional attempts to make it less SO and more SF.
Both wind up in the slippery slope betwixt and waggling back and forth. Trek has easy superluminal, psionics, loads of earthlike worlds, multiple "look human except for one feature" humanoid species, gravitics, zapguns.

Star Wars is fully into techno-fantasy in space, every bit as unrealistic as Starfinder, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Lensman;/ all three of which are fun but highly unrealistic. All of which are settings with a strong magic elements as major plot points, improbably fast accelerations,

Alien's actually harder than all but traveller of those mentioned. But it's still on the SF edge of Space Opera: Hyperdrive, multiple habitable worlds, gravitics.

 

[Aldarc]

You know, science fantasy (or "techno-fantasy in space") and space opera are not mutually exclusive categories. And considering that the heart of Star Wars is melodramatic adventure, chivalric romance, and large stakes interstellar wars, it's pretty clearly Space Opera too, even featuring operatic leitmotifs.

 

[aramis erak]

You know, science fantasy (or "techno-fantasy in space") and space opera are not mutually exclusive categories. And considering that the heart of Star Wars is melodramatic adventure, chivalric romance, and large stakes interstellar wars, it's pretty clearly Space Opera too, even featuring operatic leitmotifs.

the SWEU, yes. The Movies? no. Campbellian monomyth that happens to have WW II dogfights in space, and knights with laser swords in the prequels. Wizards with laser swords in the OT and animated series (CW, TCW, Rebels).

There's very little relationship at all to the chivalric romances (and Solo is anything BUT chivalrous), but there is a way too large bunch of "space has atmosphere"/Phlogiston/Luminiferous_Ether maneuvering.

Ep IV is literally a cross-breed of The Dam Busters and a slight dash of Errol Flynn, and the start of the Campbellian monomyth. That it's in space is almost irrelevant to the plot, and mostly cosmetic, Make the ships wet navy, and the death star a floating island...

 

[Aldarc]

the SWEU, yes. The Movies? no.

The movies? Yes. "Space Opera" has commonly been used to describe Star Wars before there was a notion of the EU, and Star Wars has been attributed to a rebirth of the genre. You have to reconcile everything that you wrote below with the fact that Star Wars IS widely regarded as a space opera, if not the most definitive one of pop culture.

Campbellian monomyth that happens to have WW II dogfights in space, and knights with laser swords in the prequels. Wizards with laser swords in the OT and animated series (CW, TCW, Rebels).

There's very little relationship at all to the chivalric romances (and Solo is anything BUT chivalrous), but there is a way too large bunch of "space has atmosphere"/Phlogiston/Luminiferous_Ether maneuvering.

Ep IV is literally a cross-breed of The Dam Busters and a slight dash of Errol Flynn, and the start of the Campbellian monomyth. That it's in space is almost irrelevant to the plot, and mostly cosmetic, Make the ships wet navy, and the death star a floating island...

Good day, sir.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You know, science fantasy (or "techno-fantasy in space") and space opera are not mutually exclusive categories. And considering that the heart of Star Wars is melodramatic adventure, chivalric romance, and large stakes interstellar wars, it's pretty clearly Space Opera too, even featuring operatic leitmotifs.

This is true. Space Opera is more about the general style and can certainly incorporate both science fantasy and sci-fi, though I don't actually think the OT Star Wars is a very good example of it. It is definitely true that it gets called that a lot, but that merely means it's one of a long list of "distressed" terms. Like many of those terms, the majority of the usage is correct - it's just one random thing that's seen as an examplar when it's kind of more towards the edge. I would say the the more recent sequel trilogy, especially TFA and TLJ (TROS is such a mess it barely has a genre) is much more on-beam for solidly "Space Opera". Obviously one can go further too - I mean in Farscape I think there's actual operatic singing at one particularly dramatic point.

 

[Aldarc]

though I don't actually think the OT Star Wars is a very good example of it.

Definitely don't agree with that.

From TV Tropes:

The ideal space opera, as described by Brian Aldiss, contains most if not all of the following criteria:

1. The world must be in peril.
2. There must be a quest,
3. And a man or woman to meet the mighty hour.
4. That man or woman must confront aliens and exotic creatures.
5. Space must flow past the ports like wine from a pitcher.
6. Blood must rain down the palace steps,
7. And ships launch out into the louring dark.
8. There must be a woman or man fairer than the skies,
9. And a villain darker than a Black Hole.
10. And all must come right in the end.

And Wikipedia:

Hartwell and Cramer define space opera as:

... colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.[4]:10–18

It seems difficult to argue, even if one is simply naysaying for the sake of naysaying, that either of these workable definitions for 'Space Opera' don't readily apply to the OT Star Wars.