d20 Sci-Fi: where is Babylon 5?

[Eosin the Red]

I shot you an email letting you know what I know - but hopefully Baraendur will give you the skinny.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Heh, I sign up for this message board this week, and people were already talking about me!

Well, for more conversation, congrats on being one of the final 3 in the setting search - best of luck in the next stage!

Cheers

 

[GiantInThePlayground]

So Baraendur, I just sent you an email about this project; let's discuss, and maybe we can finally bring B5d20 to life...

 

[Morgenstern]

Me too, me too!

I'm a long time B5 fan also. I would be interested in reading the new project over and commenting/contributing . I'd still offer Spycraft as a base to work from (our combat system anticipates firefights along with the occasional melee scuffle)... and because I have lots of practice writing base/prestige classes for that system. You can download the Spycraft Lite .pdf at the site to check out the system if you're interested, and I'll read through the older B5 conversion while I wait .

Congrats on thesetting search !

 

[Darrin Drader]

Giant,

I sent you a reply along with the current draft of the file.

BTW, if anyone would like to see the current state of the file, please shoot me an email at D_Drader@

att.net

That email should all be one word, but I broke it up in an attempt to avoid spambots.

I'm wading into a new book for the Oathbound setting, so I may not have a huge amount of time to work on B5 over the next couple months, but I am certainly willing to add anything anyone wants to contribute.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

I'd love to get involved in this... I think I'm the only remaining person still subscribed to the Babylon 5 d20 conversion yahoo group that never went anywhere....

 

[Winterthorn]

Congrats Giant!

Hey! Wow, I'm happy to see people enjoying my long-lost conversion. I'll admit the copyright issues are a bit dicey; it uses B5 info, plus non-OGL rules from Star Wars. Though I imagine it would be easy to swap in d20 Modern for the Star Wars stuff when that comes out... *snip*

T'was my pleasure to bring up your ol' thread over at Wizards--I was inspired due to my own enthusiasm for the upcoming d20 treatment of Traveller, T20. I hoped T20 material would lend itself well to a B5 campaign using your notes--typical homebrew scheming on my part

Hey man, if your good work on the d20 B5 brainstorm last March was any indicator, I'm not surprised you are one of the 3 finalists! Best of luck to ya, Rich

Btw: Giant, have you had a chance to peek at T20 yet? What do you think about it? A speculative question: do you think D20 Modern and/or T20 would help a d20 Babylon 5 homebrew--using your notes too?

Cheers, and again luck,
-W.

PS: I am also watching to see whether a d20 B5 will formally take off... not sure how I could help yet though?

PPS: My wild guess is that Mongoose might have received the rights from JMS... B5 has a very big Brit & Euro following... Would be interesting if true *shrug*

 

[Darrin Drader]

From what I've read, Mongoose did a good job on D20 Judge Dredd, so I could live with them being the ones to have acquired the license. I think they did a wonderful job on the city books they've put out, and the Slayer's Guide to Dragons by Gary Gygax is pretty awesome.

 

[Mongoose_Matt]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Darrin. As I have said elsewhere, we never intended all our books to be all things to all players, and many of them are highly specialised and targeted towards a certain section of the market. This is the principle behind our release schedule, as it allows us to support the less trodden-path (such as Cities books, Planes, Crusades, even Celtic fantasy, to an extent) without going down the tubes and shutting shop because of lower sales. It also keeps our lines fresh and, hopefully, means there will be at least something for everyone, whatever floats their boat.

To my mind, it is not flooding the market but ensuring a number of bases are covered - I don't expect our biggest fans to want every book we produce, and I know retailers are also selective about certain lines. This is fine too, and pretty much what we expected for our periphery series of books. On the other hand, making sure there was x amount of releases for the Judge Dredd RPG in y amount of months did the game no harm whatsoever, and sends a good signal to fans of the game that we are serious about supporting it, without leaving them high and dry after buying the main rulebook.

 

[Darrin Drader]

So Matthew, can you comment on the upcoming Babylon 5 RPG? Is Mongoose the company that picked up the license?

If it is in fact you guys that got the license, I think that this could turn out to be a very positive thing. Us Babylon 5 fans are used to being promised support, and then having the rug yanked out from under us at the last miunute. Crusade was cancelled before the network gave it a chance to succeed. The Babylon Project was cancelled after 2 of the original 5 books that were originally scheduled. Sierra cancelled the B5 flight sim within a couple months of its completion. The VHS format video releases were stopped just before the end of the 5th season.

If you can get some B5 RPG releases out there using the D20 system and keep them coming rapidly, then you will have gained a convert.