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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rodrigo Istalindir" data-source="post: 4780885" data-attributes="member: 2810">The recent Green Ronin announcement and subsuquent reaction (mine and others) got me wondering.What's the appeal of a licensed property?I completely understand what the publisher gets out of the deal -- built-in customer base, free PR, cross-promotion, etc.  And I understand what they give up, and the hassles that can be involved in having to toe someone else's line creatively.But I'm not sure I get the attraction for gamers.I game because it's fun, and it's fun for me for a whole lot of reasons.  One of them is that it's a creative outlet.  As a GM, creating adventures, fleshing out worlds, writing plot outlines, all scratch that itch.  Not to mention the joy of improvising on the spot when the players do something unexpected, and having that off-the-cuff adjustment become part of the lore of the game.   And as a player, obviously, the roleplaying itself, as well as the chance to help 'write the story' of the world we're playing in.But licensed properties rob me of that, to some degree.  I'm no longer in control.  I'm playing in someone else's sandbox.  I have to worry about contradicting canon; not that I can't, but that it'll lead to confusion among the players.    I have tons of history already hemming me in before I start.  And it only gets worse as the product line grows.  I have to ignore new material, or retcon it.  I'm not immune.  I've run games in the popular settings.  I've used settings from fiction, like the Camber novels, or movies like Star Wars.  But for me the original source material was just a springboard, a common touchstone but nothing more.  But my interest in a settting has been inversely proportional to the amount of material for it.  It waxes, I wane.So as players and GMs, what do you all get out of a licensed property?</blockquote>

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