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Star Frontiers and WotC? Is something in the works?

Yea it wasn’t, that’s tru. I didn’t know about it until after d20 Modern was no longer being published.
D20 Modern was kind of a missed opportunity all around: not really 100% compatible with 3.x, and not correctly marketed as "Dungeons & Dragons" itself...
 

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Hate if you have to but I find that kind bile is poisonous.
I prefer to think of it as lessons learned, or even a lack of faith. Once bitten, and all that. But it has been proven through experience, and it is my own viewpoint. Please feel free to continue your own perspectives. I shall keep mine.
 



"Suspended permissions to post materials", "remove any products that contain rules, modules, or republished articles", and "request that all issues of both magazines come down"...

Yup! Business as usual for WotC; knocking down the people who look after their discarded properties (and fans!) until they're good and ready to deal with any of it for another buck. I don't mind admitting that I have not thought highly of this company in a very long time. And any speculation or news concerning them is anything but inspiring, much less hopeful.

Those people were lucky they were allowed to republish any of that to begin with.
 

Couldn't speak to the latter two, but it was pretty different than standard D&D, making crossing the streams improbable: wasted opportunity.

D20 Modern is a lot less complicated than Starfinder. What Starfinder does is make optional rules seen in Pathfinder Mandatory and integral to the character creation process. Starfinder is bringing Pathfinder in the direction of 4th Edition D&D I believe. The Game designers just can't help themselves. Instead of creating a Space Game that is compatible with Pathfinder, they made a bunch of "improvements" to the basic game that is Pathfinder, when Pathfinder
s main selling point was that it retains much of the simplicity of D&D 3.5, streamlining the skills, and basically improving the hit dice of the character classes. Archtypes were an optional rule of Pathfinder, but an integral part of Starfinder. Two types of hit points adds complexity. In many game designers minds, a science fiction setting lives in an entirely different universe of "hit and miss" than medieval fantasy. Also the names of the Starfinder character classes lack the Generic quality of Pathfinder character classes. For some reason, science fiction role playing games almost always get a setting assigned to them, I don't know why. D&D has no specific setting, and neither does Pathfinder, I mean its publishers have their own settings which they publish, but they are one among many, the core rules are not geared toward any particular setting, but Starfinder is. Star Frontiers manages to be more generic, it has an official setting, but it was also used to create modules for "2001 A Space Odyssey" and "2010 Odyssey Two".
 

Those people were lucky they were allowed to republish any of that to begin with.

Yup, I considered good fortune that stuff was out there. And it was also by the good will of WotC. It isn’t as if they didn’t know. They may have not known about the dragon articles in the mag but the grey area for sf never covered those so I’m surprised they were in the frontiersman mags. Some folks just gotta justify their hate.
 

Hiya!

"Suspended p
emissions to post materials", "remove any products that contain rules, modules, or republished articles", and "request that all issues of both magazines come down"...

Yup! Business as usual for WotC; knocking down the people who look after their discarded properties (and fans!) until they're good and ready to deal with any of it for another buck. I don't mind admitting that I have not thought highly of this company in a very long time. And any speculation or news concerning them is anything but inspiring, much less hopeful.

I have no problem (well, I'm disappointed and annoyed...but I don't have any feelings of "You're WRONG!") with WotC rescinding permission to put out/publish IP's that they own.

That said, what DOES tick me off is when a company is so short-sighted as to not realize that they, right now, have a bunch of "free advertisement and almost guaranteed sales" from people that have been supporting the game for years. What WotC should have done is added in a reason for rescinding the permission. If they are going to do a new version, for example, they should say so. Get the fans excited about a new version! Keep them playing the game. Keep them talking about it on forums and to their friends. Hell, even if it was 'just' releasing the original stuff as PDF's (which they have) on RPGNow.com they should have mentioned it as the reason.

But they didn't. They just came in and said "Stop it". WotC dropped the ball in regards to their fans. :( No skin off my teeth, as I said, I bought hard-copy versions of everything released for "Star Frontiers Remastered" and that includes every Star Frontiersman mag up to #25 (so, uh, all of them I think...).

^_^

Paul L. Ming
 


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