No more Star Wars RPG - It's Official

[StupidSmurf]

I don't recall a series of movie that had a great long term success that was tied in with an RPG.



Or it could just be because licensed products are less good than products intended from the beginning to work for their associated medium.

I'll say this....I've worked on enough licensed products from various sources (Star Wars, Star Trek, Indy, DC heroes), to say that it's a beee-yatch to deal with. All of the editors/acquisitions editors lamented the same thing- when you work with a license, you have to make sure you do it the way the licensee wants you to, and that's when the creative head-butting happens.

Do you know that, at one time, FASA and Paramount had a meeting about the Star Trek RPG game, and Paramount came right out and said that not a shred of the FASA products were true Star Trek, not canon, not anything at all? From what I heard, a fistfight almost broke out about it. Paramount is the WORST to deal with in terms of licensed products. The Trek RPG game was done with virtually NO help from them whatsoever...no source materials provided. So then they turn around and say that FASA got it all wrong? Well duh, geniuses.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

off note. While the system for the FASA Star Trek game wasn't all that good, the background material they came up with was amazing. Reading the timelines in the varous sourcebooks was always a blast. They had the Star Trek feel down pat IMO. I loved the Klingon & Romulan sourcebooks, and the Triangle set. I wish I still had all my old FASA stuff. Got pitched unfortunately....

 

[StupidSmurf]

off note. While the system for the FASA Star Trek game wasn't all that good, the background material they came up with was amazing. Reading the timelines in the varous sourcebooks was always a blast. They had the Star Trek feel down pat IMO. I loved the Klingon & Romulan sourcebooks, and the Triangle set. I wish I still had all my old FASA stuff. Got pitched unfortunately....

Oh believe me, I love it too! Hell, we actually put our D&D campaign on indefinite hold at the time, and we ran a ST:RPG campaign (with the USS Valiant, NCC-1718, from the Federation ship manual as our campaign vessel). I loved the sourcebooks too, which is why I always considered Paramount to be the bad guy in the matter, certainly not FASA.

I still have my books, gathering dust in my attic.

 

[PatEllis15]

Wizards recently put up the SWM releases for 2006. Where are they? Oh, here:

Attack on Endor - Febuary, 2006
Champions of the Force - May, 2006
Bounty Hunters - September, 2006
Galactic Conquest - November, 2006

Four releases, no missions books. (I'm unsure as to how successful they were).

Cheers!QUOTE]

There are also several rumors floating about that if the AT-AT sells out quickly (I'm pretty sure it will), that we can expect to see an AT-TE release next fall. That's 5 releases....



Pat E

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Oh believe me, I love it too! Hell, we actually put our D&D campaign on indefinite hold at the time, and we ran a ST:RPG campaign (with the USS Valiant, NCC-1718, from the Federation ship manual as our campaign vessel). I loved the sourcebooks too, which is why I always considered Paramount to be the bad guy in the matter, certainly not FASA.

I still have my books, gathering dust in my attic.

We played a ton of the Starship Combat Simulator game. In the sourcebooks there were tons of little adventure hooks in the timeline expansions, entries about this ship going missing here, then five years later another ship goes missing in similar circumstances. This ship went on patrol on this stardate, left the convoy to investigate an sensor reading and when it came back it was missing the crew, etc. All great stuff to get the imagination running for new adventures. The newer versions of the game never really hooked me so I skipped them.

The Four Years War! Was it even in the offical timeline of the show or totally madeup? Great sourcebook.

 

[Ranger REG]

off note. While the system for the FASA Star Trek game wasn't all that good, the background material they came up with was amazing. Reading the timelines in the varous sourcebooks was always a blast. They had the Star Trek feel down pat IMO. I loved the Klingon & Romulan sourcebooks, and the Triangle set. I wish I still had all my old FASA stuff. Got pitched unfortunately....

Meh. FASA got the 23rd-century Trek right. Of course its premise is too militaristic. Great for guys like me, but there are other fans who know there are other aspects of Trek. The only hang-up I have of FASA-Trek is there starship simulator combat. I absolutely hate, abhor, dread the three-phases-per-turn sequence. You'd think that after designing the BattleTech line (which includes AeroTech) they would offer their expertise to their Star Trek line.

Anyhoo, I personally prefer LUGTrek.

 

[Scribe Ineti]

Now, arguably, the latest LotR and Star Wars games actually did fail, since in both cases the company is still going strong.

And while we're cataloguing failed RPGs that should've been a license to print money: Decipher has just killed at least the 3rd Star Trek RPG.

Eh? The LOTR RPG and Star Trek RPG each had a new release in October, and more are on the way. Granted, it's been a 2 year lull while Decipher got stuff sorted out, but calling these two lines dead is premature, methinks.

Back on topic, I'm also disappointed that WOTC has largely dropped the RPG. I'd have liked to have seen an ROTS sourcebook or the like.

 

[Ranger REG]

Eh? The LOTR RPG and Star Trek RPG each had a new release in October, and more are on the way. Granted, it's been a 2 year lull while Decipher got stuff sorted out, but calling these two lines dead is premature, methinks.

AFAIC, as a print customer and not a PDF buyer, if I don't see new products in my FLGS shelves, I think they're done for.

 

[seankreynolds]

As I understand it, WotC's RPG license (which the minis also fall under) requires them to produce at least three, but no more than six, releases per year. It looks like they're releasing three minis expansions, plus a scenario book for each release, per year, which accounts for the maximum of 6.
A good guess is that even the least-profitable Minis release is more profitable than the most-profitable RPG release; thus, swapping out even a single Minis release for an RPG release would be less profitable for WotC.

That's pretty much it.

 

[jdrakeh]

<deleted> D'oh!