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Chaosium Releases Basic Role Playing SRD
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<blockquote data-quote="TrippyHippy" data-source="post: 7961526" data-attributes="member: 27252"><p>Pretty good summation, although Modiphius’ Star Trek isn’t Top 5. In recent times, Shadowrun, Alien, Vampire: The Masquerade and Legends of the 5 Rings have been making out the top 5 retail games. I think it mainly has to do with distribution channels. My understanding is that Call of Cthulhu is by far the best selling Chaosium game, and their biggest market, apparently is in Japan. Neither BRP or Legend (which is mostly dormant) really has any impact on the top sales, although games like RuneQuest and Pendragon are considered historically significant, landmark roleplaying games and so there will always be some sort of market for them. Moreover, you don’t need to have a Top 5 game in order for a RPG to be worthwhile and profitable. A game can still be a ‘hit’ within its own market and fanbase, without challenging the sales of D&D.</p><p></p><p>Where Traveller fits in to all of this is not well understood, because data is not publicly available. Classic Traveller, back in the 1970s and 1980s sold hundreds of thousands of units and was a major hit. I think they lost their mass market share when West End Games released the D6 Star Wars game in 1987 and became a bit less fashionable as a style of sci-fi when Cyberpunk and Shadowrun were also released in the late 80s. They still maintained a long time loyalty from fans through T4/T5/T20, GURPS and Classic Traveller reprints before reaching an agreement in the late 2000s to publish with Mongoose under licence. Mongoose had about 10 years of this licence with MGT1, which was pretty much OGL and had a number of third party publishers. They renegotiated a license for MGT2, released a few years ago, which had a more restrictive licence in terms of IP ownership, so some 3rd party companies decided to go it alone with the Cepheus engine, which is a MGT1 clone and is about 95% compatible with the current edition of Mongoose Traveller.</p><p></p><p>I think the difference between the BRP license suggested here and the MGT1/MGT2 and Legend licences pertaining to third parties, is that Mongoose doesn’t really seem to care. I think Marc Miller cares about the Traveller IP and probably sought to tighten the licence arrangements for MGT2. Chaosium do seem to care enough about BRP that it seems important that they stick a flag into the sand about what third parties can publish or not. Personally, I just don’t see the point of the BRP licence though - it’s not really ‘open’ and third parties already make their own games regardless now.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TrippyHippy, post: 7961526, member: 27252"] Pretty good summation, although Modiphius’ Star Trek isn’t Top 5. In recent times, Shadowrun, Alien, Vampire: The Masquerade and Legends of the 5 Rings have been making out the top 5 retail games. I think it mainly has to do with distribution channels. My understanding is that Call of Cthulhu is by far the best selling Chaosium game, and their biggest market, apparently is in Japan. Neither BRP or Legend (which is mostly dormant) really has any impact on the top sales, although games like RuneQuest and Pendragon are considered historically significant, landmark roleplaying games and so there will always be some sort of market for them. Moreover, you don’t need to have a Top 5 game in order for a RPG to be worthwhile and profitable. A game can still be a ‘hit’ within its own market and fanbase, without challenging the sales of D&D. Where Traveller fits in to all of this is not well understood, because data is not publicly available. Classic Traveller, back in the 1970s and 1980s sold hundreds of thousands of units and was a major hit. I think they lost their mass market share when West End Games released the D6 Star Wars game in 1987 and became a bit less fashionable as a style of sci-fi when Cyberpunk and Shadowrun were also released in the late 80s. They still maintained a long time loyalty from fans through T4/T5/T20, GURPS and Classic Traveller reprints before reaching an agreement in the late 2000s to publish with Mongoose under licence. Mongoose had about 10 years of this licence with MGT1, which was pretty much OGL and had a number of third party publishers. They renegotiated a license for MGT2, released a few years ago, which had a more restrictive licence in terms of IP ownership, so some 3rd party companies decided to go it alone with the Cepheus engine, which is a MGT1 clone and is about 95% compatible with the current edition of Mongoose Traveller. I think the difference between the BRP license suggested here and the MGT1/MGT2 and Legend licences pertaining to third parties, is that Mongoose doesn’t really seem to care. I think Marc Miller cares about the Traveller IP and probably sought to tighten the licence arrangements for MGT2. Chaosium do seem to care enough about BRP that it seems important that they stick a flag into the sand about what third parties can publish or not. Personally, I just don’t see the point of the BRP licence though - it’s not really ‘open’ and third parties already make their own games regardless now. [/QUOTE]
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