A TSR Announces a Star Frontiers Reboot

One of the new TSRs (yes there are now two TSRs!) has announced a reboot of Star Frontiers, the sci-fi game made by the original TSR back in the 1980s. Star Frontiers was a percentile dice roleplaying game set in a galaxy with four races (Human, Dralasite, Vrusk, and Yazirian) which were re-used by WotC in d20 Future in 2004.

Happy to announce that in addition to our flagship new world and game system by James M. Ward & Dinehart, GiantLands, and Justin LaNasa's children's RPG Tales & Tots, our next internal project "Star Frontiers", a reboot of the original, is currently in preproduction and has Larry Elmore attached. Stay tuned for more details!

It appears that one of the new TSRs registered the trademark in April. More if I hear it!

You can currently buy the game from WotC on DriveThruRpg, so I'm not sure how that works. When asked about this on Facebook, one of the TSRs answered:

Of course, Evil Hat Productions registered the Star Frontiers trademark, too, back in July 2017.

Is Evil Hat Republishing TSR's Star Frontiers?

Last year, Sasquatch Game Studio announced that it had acquired the trademark for TSR's old Alternity science-fiction game. At the time, it was mentioned that they did not have the Star*Drive, Dark*Matter, Gamma World, StarCraft Adventures, or Star Frontiers, properties owned by WotC. This may...

www.enworld.org

 

[Farenn]

Very cool news. As far as the trademark/copyright concerns go. I would not be surprised if there is some kind of agreement behind the scenes between TSR and Wizards of the Coast. Some of the people behind the new TSR still have a good relationship with the people at Wizards of the Coast. And I am pretty confident that Wizards probably has no interest in ever doing something with the Star Frontiers franchise.

 

[darjr]

Very cool news. As far as the trademark/copyright concerns go. I would not be surprised if there is some kind of agreement behind the scenes between TSR and Wizards of the Coast. Some of the people behind the new TSR still have a good relationship with the people at Wizards of the Coast. And I am pretty confident that Wizards probably has no interest in ever doing something with the Star Frontiers franchise.

Not entirely true. WotC has had a skunkworks version of Star Frontiers for a while now.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

If they can't use any of the existing Star Frontiers IP, what will make it "Star Frontiers?"

Sasquatch Games released a new Alternity RPG that is not an update of the original one, so I guess this company could try to put out a new game using the name Star Frontiers and it not be anything like the original either.

 

[dragoner]

Hope they have some agreement with Wizards over the trademark, or TSR is going to get "acquired" by WotC again!

Or maybe this and TSR is their way of expanding w/o doing it through WotC.

 

[Nilonym]

Hope they have some agreement with Wizards over the trademark, or TSR is going to get "acquired" by WotC again!

You don’t acquire companies who steal your IP; you sue them. That’s what will happen here if there is not some undisclosed licensing deal.

 

[SilentJay]

Very cool news. As far as the trademark/copyright concerns go. I would not be surprised if there is some kind of agreement behind the scenes between TSR and Wizards of the Coast. Some of the people behind the new TSR still have a good relationship with the people at Wizards of the Coast. And I am pretty confident that Wizards probably has no interest in ever doing something with the Star Frontiers franchise.

Better inform whomever is doing TSR's social media who pretty much said they're going to fight Hasbro over the rights by saying that it's up to the lawyers now.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Judging by how efficiently the folks behind the new TSR have run their business(s) in the past, and especially by the flippant comment by them about lawyers, and it seems obvious that they did not get a licensing or pre agreement with WoTC, and are headed straight toward disaster.

Again.

James Ward is the only one on that team with any real experience managing projects or helping run a business, and he's in very poor health. (He has had health issues for a long time and always kept fighting through it and creating good stuff, but we can't deny those issues are getting much worse, and it's not fair to him to be ensuring everyone else is doing the right thing.)

Which sucks, because I'd love for them to see success. But good lord, you can't be doing stuff like this and expect to run a successful business. Unless they had permission to use that image, which is owned by Hasbro now, that's a huge rookie mistake.

 

[jacleg05]

Maybe I missed, it but I am wondering what system it will use? Will it be another 5th edition adaption, the original d100, or something new?

 

[MGibster]

I never played Star Frontiers but I do remember seeing this ad for it in various comic books circa 1983.

 

[SilentJay]

James Ward is the only one on that team with any real experience managing projects or helping run a business, and he's in very poor health.

I'm not even certain Ward's involved beyond using his ruleset, as the wording's a bit fuzzy there. All I know is that this is Ernie Gygax's gig, and he still hasn't delivered on a KS yet, after 5 or so years.