Alternity's fine (and the settings were great) but I'm not sure it'd sell to more folks than Star Frontiers and it would be facing off against more modern designs like Cepheus without as much nostalgia power behind it as older games that lasted longer. OTOH, it would be cheaper to do reprints of without the (relatively) complex components shoved in all the TSR boxed set games. Something to be said for simple hardcovers and a few modules.
I have to completely disagree with this. Alternity was very successful during it initial run and was only cancelled because it wasn’t ridiculously successful by WotC’s inflated standards. The Cepheus system is a retroclone of Traveller 2d6 from the 80s, so it’s not more modern or somehow superior.
Here’s a thought: maybe ditch the Alternity rules and convert the settings to use 5e or Cepheus or whatever system Exodus is using? I don’t really care about the rules. Anyone can write rules for anything. It’s the settings that draw me in. Those are way harder to replace.
I’ve looked for years for something to replace Star*Drive, and nothing made for Cepheus has caught my interest. It must have over a thousand settings by now and not one of them interests me like Star*Drive does.
The Dark•Matter setting has zero competition at the moment. All other cryptid and conspiracy games I can remember have gone extinct, which is strange considering how popular cryptids are online. Monster of the Week exists, but none of its settings compare.
Sure, both settings have their flaws, but they were made by Bill Slavicsek. Who can compete with that? I’ve yet to find any other settings so charming and still supported by a publisher.
Unfortunately, I fully expect modern Hasbro would completely screw things up. God, I hate copyright law. Star*Drive and Dark•Matter won’t enter public domain until 2095.
Not impossible to imagine a fan doing something like that but leaving it system-agnostic - distill the essentials of a setting down to the fluff alone, change some names so you don't get a C&D letter, and then sell pdfs or even POD through DTRPG. There are certainly stranger labors of love on there already, and less sellable ones.
If it hasn’t already happened in the decades since their cancellation, then it’s probably not happening ever.
Speaking from experience, this is fairly easy to do for Dark•Matter because it draws from public domain cryptozoology, ufology, and conspiracy theory, but trying to retroclone Star*Drive is a lot harder because the setting is just so detailed, verbose and not tied into public domain stuff except for Roswell greys.
It’s really hard to compete with 90s era TSR. Those production values are something else.
Perhaps most importantly, I don’t want to write a legal substitute to avoid being sued, I want the original back. Two years of books is way too short for me to have gotten tired of the setting’s limitations and interested in writing a new one.