New SW Products?

Vexed · Jun 7, 2005

Has anyone (heard) if any Star Wars products will be put out, now that the Third movie has been released?

humble minion · Jun 7, 2005

Vexed said:
Has anyone (heard) if any Star Wars products will be put out, now that the Third movie has been released?

Deafening silence from the d20 Star wars department on that front. Word is that Hasbro/WotC is 'evaluating the future of the line', whatever that means. There's another miniatures set `due in a couple of months, but to the best of my knowledge nobody's even working on any new RPG material. There is a draft for and Ultimate Battlestations book that's been completed quite some time ago, but it doesn't look like ever seeing print.

Personally my feeling is that the line is dead. It'd be kinda nice to be wrong, though.

kenobi65 · Jun 7, 2005

Indeed, there are no new SWRPG products on WotC's release calendar through the end of the year. Unfortunate, but true.

Ankh-Morpork Guard · Jun 7, 2005

Thankfully, we've got hope in the fact that its not TECHNICALLY a dead line. There's also been a jump in support at the WotC page...not great, but I'm willing to take what I can get at this point.

DnDChick · Jun 7, 2005

Hmm .. this does not bode well for those of us who came late to SDd20 ... better start working harder to get the things on my WishList before they all go OOP and are impossible to find!

humble minion · Jun 8, 2005

DnDChick said:
Hmm .. this does not bode well for those of us who came late to SDd20 ... better start working harder to get the things on my WishList before they all go OOP and are impossible to find!

Indeed. Though my personal hope is that the next release is (and lots of people will spit at me for this) a thoroughly revised and rethought core rulebook, with fewer glaring problems, more emphasis on making the system reflect 'Star Wars logic', and much, much more playtesting. I've been GMing a Star Wars campaign for a long time now, and as the PCs get higher in level it's getting harder and harder to run a functional game, especially one that stays true to the spirit of the movies.

But I'd settle for an updated Starships book. Or anything, really...

wingsandsword · Jun 8, 2005

They've actually been turning out web material at a decent rate:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/article/sw20050428kotor Two new prestige classes inspired by KOTOR (Jedi Watchman and Dark Side Assassin), and the entire Dark Forces Saga series of web articles with characters from the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series written up, and the Byss and the Deep Core series of articles.

My suspicion is that internally WotC wants to make SWRPG materials (they're certainly spending money to have people write web articles, and presumably have them cleared by Lucas Licensing), but some licensing/financial reason is preventing them. Either they think the books won't be profitable enough, or there is too much hassle with Lucas Licensing, or one arm of WotC is fighting another about the future of the line. As long as they haven't cancelled it, I still think there is hope. Even if for some odd reason WotC cancels the line and maybe some other company picks it up, that doesn't mean you can't play d20SW anymore, plenty of people still play d6 even. Setting and system are independent.

The pragmatic part of me just sees d20 SWRPG as a RPG I can "complete" and have everything published for. I do really wish they would announce a Clone Wars sourcebook especially, as the only thing I don't at least have an existing book of (d20 or d6), I can convert source material from d6.

DnDChick, if you can find any of them for sale used at a FLGS or on eBay at any reasonable price, I recommend you pick up just about any of the sourcebooks West End Games made for their Star Wars RPG between 1988 and 1998. Conversion rules from d6 to d20 are published in the Original Core Rules or online at the WotC site (http://www.wizards.com/starwars/article.asp?rpg_conversion,2,rpg), and it has a lot of good source material.

bubbalin · Jun 8, 2005

Gencon

Maybe they'll say something there...

That's what I'm waiting for...

Angel Tarragon · Jun 8, 2005

bubbalin said:
Maybe they'll say something there...

That's what I'm waiting for...

God, I hope so......

kenobi65 · Jun 8, 2005

wingsandsword said:
My suspicion is that internally WotC wants to make SWRPG materials (they're certainly spending money to have people write web articles, and presumably have them cleared by Lucas Licensing), but some licensing/financial reason is preventing them. Either they think the books won't be profitable enough, or there is too much hassle with Lucas Licensing, or one arm of WotC is fighting another about the future of the line.

I suspect this is the case. I also suspect that WotC is trying to renegotiate the RPG license with LFL, now that RotS has hit the theaters (and, thus, in theory, with less "core" support of the franchise from Lucasfilm going forward, WotC may be reasoning that the license shouldn't cost so much.)

As another data point, the RPGA's Living Force campaign hasn't released any new modules since the beginning of the year (in the past, modules have been released at a more-or-less once-a-month rate). According to RPGA officials, the modules have been hung up at Lucasfilm Licensing for a very long time. This may be consistent with a renegotiation being "in-process."