Thoughts on the Failure of Licensed IP in the Hobby: The Lack of Disney-fication is a Feature, not a Bug

[MGibster]

But, Trek still hasn't taken off as a major RPG player.

In my experience, one of the most difficult things about running a Star Trek game was getting the players to treat it like a Star Trek game. i.e. Just acting like their characters were Starfleet officers rather than doing some of the things PCs are famous for doing. One thing every Trek game I've played lacked is the violence treadmill. D&D revolves around a never ending cycle of fighting, killing, looting in order to become more powerful so your character can continue fighting, killing, and looting stronger foes in a cycle that ends when the campaign is over or the character is dead. The violence treadmill just doesn't work very well for Trek.

Maybe the violence and rewards treadmill is one of the things that makes D&D so successful?

 

[Yora]

The main thing that always made me doubt that Star Trek could even be viable as an RPG is that all works revolve primarily around Starfleet officers, and as such PCs wouldn't decide their actions as equals, but instead have one player have the final say on everything with everyone else expected to do it without much resistence.

That's what makes Star Wars much more playable, and probably hugely more popular for RPGs.Scoundrels take orders only from one person ("Me!") and everything has to be decided by bargaining with other PCs, and even when the party consists of Rebel fighters, hierarchy is more a suggestion than a hard rule that is being enforced.

 

[aramis erak]

The main thing that always made me doubt that Star Trek could even be viable as an RPG is that all works revolve primarily around Starfleet officers, and as such PCs wouldn't decide their actions as equals, but instead have one player have the final say on everything with everyone else expected to do it without much resistence.

That's not how they usually wind up playing out. It's a theorycrafting issue that seldom happens in actual play by Star Trek fans. Especially TNG, DS9, or Voyager fans - where staff meetings are collaborative, and the captain's usually rubberstamping a group concensus.

The few times it's not, it's generally good drama to come out of it.

I've run a lot of Trek; I've run more Star Wars. (Over the last 40 years, about 4 years worth of Trek across FASA/Decipher/Modiphius; another 4 years worth of TFG Prime Directive; I've run 3 years worth of WEG 1E SW and 3 of WEG 2e, and about 8 years worth of FFG - several points running two campaigns at once.) I've seen the rank issue as often in Star Wars as in Star Trek - as about 1/2 of my SW games were active duty Rebellion based. Not Very often. Not zero, either.

 

[Staffan]

That's what makes Star Wars much more playable, and probably hugely more popular for RPGs.Scoundrels take orders only from one person ("Me!") and everything has to be decided by bargaining with other PCs, and even when the party consists of Rebel fighters, hierarchy is more a suggestion than a hard rule that is being enforced.

The Age of Rebellion game has some notes on this and it basically boils down to "Yes, the Rebel Alliance is a military hierarchy, but the PCs form a special ops team that are usually given a task and then have wide latitude in how to carry that task out." And if you don't care for playing rebel scum, well, there's always the regular scum in Edge of the Empire and jedi scum in Force & Destiny.

Generally speaking, Star Wars has always worked fairly well as a RPG setting, because there's a sense of scale to it that leaves a lot of room for the PCs. Even if the movies are The Skywalker Saga, it's a big galaxy out there, and it's a galaxy that's well suited for adventuring. Many licensed settings have a stronger focus on the exploits of a particular person or group, with the rest of the setting only being background detail, but Star Wars has always seemed like a very lived-in universe where there's a lot of stuff going on off-screen.

As for the business side of things, licenses are usually temporary things. RPGs in general are pretty front-loaded, and this applies even more to licensed ones. Once you've sold the core book and the low-hanging supplement fruit, you're probably not making as much money off the license as you did, but the licensor probably wants just as much money for renewing the license as they did for the original period, but for the publisher that probably doesn't make as much economic sense, and so the license easily gets cancelled. A long-running license like Chaosium's with Call of Cthulhu is very much the exception.

 

[Aldarc]

@Snarf Zagyg's point #4 is a much larger issue than I think gets credit. Publishers and designers often have a limited amount of time to gain any traction with their "IP the TTRPG" because their rights to make material for that IP will likely come and go.

This brings us back around to the Cheesecake Factory metaphor. A successful media property has focus, and therefore can't really be the Cheesecake Factory it needs to be in order to take a dominant position in the market.

YOMV, but it seems as if Star Wars is as much of a Cheesecake Factory in the scope of its focus as D&D. D&D's focus of its fantasy is great for playing D&D-style fantasy, but I have found that it resists the ability to play fantasy outside of that scope, which is far more than people think.

 

[aco175]

I think there is also a circular problem for small publishers. A little fish may want to write books and adventures for non-D&D lines, but they feel they need to make D&D to make money. Then everyone sees all this stuff for D&D so they play that. There may also be enough variants within D&D to keep people interested. How many people on these boards were always asking for D&D Dark Sun or Planescape, Spelljammer, or even Mystera. All these are slightly different, but you can still find people to play- which is another circular problem.

Barbie's Magical Mansion? James Bond's World of Drinkin' and Killin'?

Are these two games compatible? Asking for a friend.

 

[Blue Orange]

I think there is also a circular problem for small publishers. A little fish may want to write books and adventures for non-D&D lines, but they feel they need to make D&D to make money. Then everyone sees all this stuff for D&D so they play that. There may also be enough variants within D&D to keep people interested. How many people on these boards were always asking for D&D Dark Sun or Planescape, Spelljammer, or even Mystera. All these are slightly different, but you can still find people to play- which is another circular problem.

'Network effects' I think is the business term.

 

[Alzrius]

But why did I write that it is the exception that proves the rule? So here's the thing- first, unlike more mainstream IPs like Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek, Cthulhu and the Lovecraftian universe wasn't very character driven. It was always more of a genre- cosmic horror.

Leaving aside genre elements for a moment, I think that from a standpoint of...I don't want to say "branding" or "intellectual property," because those are more marketing/legal concerns than anything else; perhaps "recognition" is the better term...the Cthulhu Mythos has something that a lot of other series (for lack of a better term) lack, which is an iconic antagonist (who leads a suite of antagonists) that aren't bound up to any particular narrative, aren't tied to any particular hero, and have no canonical defeat.

For a lot of licensed properties, the stories involved are what drives them, and those stories are often intrinsically tied to the characters. To that end, we know that a lot of PCs don't like to be tied down to the idea of playing an established character; in my experience, most see it as a straitjacket that infringes on how they'd prefer to play (even as they ruthlessly exploit those characters' abilities). But villains are characters that the heroes love to struggle against, often even when they should be rightfully scared of them. Put Darth Vader in your Star Wars game and, if the players aren't properly intimidated, they'll start dreaming up all sorts of creative ways to manipulate the game rules in order to bump him off. Everyone wants that badge of honor on their character sheet.

Naturally, that can be a bit of a problem for the GM, since it disrupts the established narrative to the point of turning the setting into a mess, leaving them floundering to put things back together and figure out what happens next. For many GMs, this is the reason to keep the PCs far away from the rebellion, either in terms of setting them on the Outer Rim, in the past or future, etc.

Cthulhu doesn't have that problem. Not only is there no established narrative beyond a few short stories, but the villain isn't anyone they can ever truly fight (at least, not fight and win; Cthulhu eats 1d4 investigators each turn). There's minions aplenty to foil, but you can't kill Cthulhu, and there's no heroic narrative that says otherwise. As such, Cthulhu becomes an enduring symbol for the entire franchise, a Sauron with no One Ring to tear him down. It allows the limits of an established IP to be transcended, because there's no hard-and-fast narrative to set the framework.

Of course, that works against establishing such an IP in terms of "Disneyfication" as well. There've been plenty of Cthulhu-themed movies and TV series, but none that have truly put the Mythos front-and-center while also becoming an enduring staple of popular culture (i.e. to the point of being a media universe in-and-of themselves). Though it would have been interesting if Universal's Monster Universe (or whatever it was going to be called) could have pulled this off.

All of which goes back to the point in the OP, which is that what makes an engaging bit of media fiction, and particularly an entire media universe, doesn't necessarily lend itself to a very good tabletop role-playing game.

 

[payn]

In my experience, one of the most difficult things about running a Star Trek game was getting the players to treat it like a Star Trek game. i.e. Just acting like their characters were Starfleet officers rather than doing some of the things PCs are famous for doing. One thing every Trek game I've played lacked is the violence treadmill. D&D revolves around a never ending cycle of fighting, killing, looting in order to become more powerful so your character can continue fighting, killing, and looting stronger foes in a cycle that ends when the campaign is over or the character is dead. The violence treadmill just doesn't work very well for Trek.

Maybe the violence and rewards treadmill is one of the things that makes D&D so successful?

The D&D Murderhobo template is hard to get past. Just the other day I had a talk with a friend about Blade Runner the RPG. He was complaining about how the hovercars and flak jackets dont provide enough defense for the numerous gun fights you will be getting into. I asked him why he thought that was important to play? "Thats RPG" was the reply. He expects to go around ventilating skin jobs and getting promotions and govt checks to buy stuff for his gun and car. Nothing in the film promotes this. In fact, Dekkard gets his ass kicked in nearly every fight and gets by on luck. The mechanics are actually designed to push and pull you between these things to aim for an experience like the one Dekkard has. Folks are totally blind to it and will start review bombing because the game doesnt murderhobo enough.

 

[Jer]

The D&D Murderhobo template is hard to get past. Just the other day I had a talk with a friend about Blade Runner the RPG. He was complaining about how the hovercars and flak jackets dont provide enough defense for the numerous gun fights you will be getting into. I asked him why he thought that was important to play? "Thats RPG" was the reply.

Yup. Player expectations are a big deal.

I actually think that's why D&D does so well while other games only have their niche success. D&D is versatile in how you play it but the core game was originally built around beating up monsters and taking their stuff. I can run a table with someone who really gets into their character, someone who is focused on the narrative, one person who is just interested in min-maxing the heck out of their choices, and someone who just wants to blow off steam by beating up bad guys and taking their stuff and otherwise isn't all that interested but the game works anyway.

Trying to get a group that diverse to play a more tactical game or a narrative game or an investigative game is hard. Some will be along for the ride for each of those choices, but some will jump off for each of those choices. D&D threads that needle in a way no other game I've run does. It may not be the first choice for any one of those players, but it's a game they can all make work.