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]

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.

Right, I was saying that Firefly and Han Solo modes are the other two modes of S&V. The not-Cowboy Bebop mode is the S&V mode that can be hacked to play something similar to Star Frontiers.

 

[Dire Bare]

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.

They don't even need to adapt the original rules system, they might just use the name "Star Frontiers". TSR 2.0 published a "Top Secret" game that doesn't use or adapt the original game rules, doesn't use the IP or setting . . . it's just another spy game using the name "Top Secret" without any real connection to the original . . . other than the main designer, Merle Rasmussen.

 

[Marc_C]

They don't even need to adapt the original rules system, they might just use the name "Star Frontiers". TSR 2.0 published a "Top Secret" game that doesn't use or adapt the original game rules, doesn't use the IP or setting . . . it's just another spy game using the name "Top Secret" without any real connection to the original . . . other than the main designer, Merle Rasmussen.

Yep. The same thing happened with Alterity 2.0. The name Alternity was grabbed by Sasquatch. The system has nothing to do with the first version by OTSR.

 

[MGibster]

This is an excellent illustration of what kind of confusion customers can experience when trademarks are not clear.

 

[pemerton]

This is an excellent illustration of what kind of confusion customers can experience when trademarks are not clear.

Alternatively, it shows that the basic logic of trademarks works better for some products - eg food, cloths, perhaps cars - than for others like books and bands.

 

[Dguffey]

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

I am made of questions! where can I find this?

 

[darjr]

I am made of questions! where can I find this?

Mearls brought it to GaryCon and ran a few games. It’s not available generally.

 

[VelvetViolet]

I wish WotC would re-release the alternity ebooks they took down during their 2008 freakout.

 

[Ghost2020]

I wish WotC would re-release the alternity ebooks they took down during their 2008 freakout.

YES PLEASE!!!

 

[Umbran]

I wish WotC would re-release the alternity ebooks they took down during their 2008 freakout.

There is now another game of that name, which might complicate matters.