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

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It wasn't a coincidence. There are thinly disguised Dralasites ("Degleash plasmoid"), Sathar ("syllix"), and Vrusk ("rastipede") in the same Monstrous Compendium appendix that introduced the hadozee. I don't know why they did this, but it clearly was intentional.

What a weird, baffling thing to do. Were they worried about losing control of Star Frontiers and coming up with Baatzu-style backup names for all the player character species?

 

[Davies]

What a weird, baffling thing to do. Were they worried about losing control of Star Frontiers and coming up with Baatzu-style backup names for all the player character species?

I doubt anyone involved remembers their motivation, but I suspect that they were just being funny and/or silly.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I doubt anyone involved remembers their motivation, but I suspect that they were just being funny and/or silly.

"Oh, you want four more monsters? I'll give you four more monsters!"

 

[pemerton]

Someone on face book shared this. I’m posting it just for more info and/or view. I dint necessarily agree or disagree with it.

Thanks for posting that. It answers my question upthread about what new TSR's use consists in - there isn't any yet!

The only point where I felt I disagreed was where it says no owns the Star Frontiers trademarks. I don't think that's quite right, because that is treating it as a system of title by registration rather than registration of title. I'm also no IP expert, but my understanding is that in a common law jurisdiction trademarks are the latter, not the former. So I think WotC does own the Star Frontiers trademark - it is engaging in trade and commerce (via DriveThruRPG) using that distinctive mark for its goods and services - but does not have the benefits of registration (which include proof and, as per my discussion with Maxperson, geographical reach).

This really does seem like a fiasco on the new TSR side, unless there is some further dimension to this that we're all missing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It sounds like the best case scenario, absent a licensing agreement, is they produce a game called Star Frontiers with the not-particularly-remembered rules system, but none of the original worlds or aliens. And they have to do it by December.

I would bet against this ever occurring.

That said, for people looking for a fun space game that can do a lot of what people did with Star Frontiers, I recommend Scum & Villainy.

 

[aramis erak]

What a weird, baffling thing to do. Were they worried about losing control of Star Frontiers and coming up with Baatzu-style backup names for all the player character species?

There were fan requests for crossovers once spelljammer was out. TSR was working on D&D 3E, and had implied it would be the universal core for all their other worlds.

Star Frontiers would have been one of those. I'm not at all surprised they'd port them over with different names, and then later have an AD&D 3 settingbook for Star Frontiers, making use of the Buck Rogers rules (which are a close variant on AD&D 2E)... After all, it is canonical that the Beagle crashed on Mystara, and it was read by many as being from The Frontier. Many fans would have been thrilled to have the stats for using with Buck Rogers and/or Spelljammer. At the time, I would have.

 

[darjr]

It sounds like the best case scenario, absent a licensing agreement, is they produce a game called Star Frontiers with the not-particularly-remembered rules system, but none of the original worlds or aliens. And they have to do it by December.

I would bet against this ever occurring.

That said, for people looking for a fun space game that can do a lot of what people did with Star Frontiers, I recommend Scum & Villainy.

Well? How apropos!

 

[aramis erak]

That said, for people looking for a fun space game that can do a lot of what people did with Star Frontiers, I recommend Scum & Villainy.

The default mode assumed in rules is that players are essentially contractors doing troubleshooting for Star Law or one of the Corps. The implied assumption is that the PC's aren't the scum/villains, but hired help for often legal but dangerous actions, especially when the Sathar War heats up. (There is a metaplot hidden in there.)
Many groups ran it more as D&D in space... but that doesn't seem to be the intended mode, where it's private contractors for a variety of mission types. Now, I've not read any adventures other than the ones in the boxed set and the movie tie-ins for 2001 and 2010, so I can't speak to later adventures, but the first one is PC's vs Environment with animal combat a possibility.

I'll note that, for Players willing to use the Fate Engine, Diaspora can be hacked very easily to do that kind of feel, or the Fate Core can be used with the same assumption as core SFAD - ships just take you where the mission is and drop you off.

Traveller can also cover that space, as can it's spinoff, Cepheus Engine. I don't know whether the guy with the Traveller Conversions of the races has taken his page down or not.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The default mode assumed in rules is that players are essentially contractors doing troubleshooting for Star Law or one of the Corps.

One of S&V's three modes is bounty hunters, which can get handwaved to Star Law pretty easily. (The other two are Firefly or Han Solo-as-rebel modes.)

 

[aramis erak]

One of S&V's three modes is bounty hunters, which can get handwaved to Star Law pretty easily. (The other two are Firefly or Han Solo-as-rebel modes.)

Firefly and the Rebel Transport modes are not ones that are open to starting characters in Star Frontiers RAW. This is largely because the ship operations skills have high prerequisites per SFKH.