Who owns SPI games?

[RPG_Tweaker]

SPI was bought by TSR in '82, who then proceded to kill it over the next two years.

Eventually a wargame company picked up some of those type titles.

But I'm curious about SPI's science fiction and fantasy RPGs... specifically DragonQuest and Universe.

Following the fishes up the food chain, I assume Hasbro now owns these titles.

Is this so?

I own DQ, but I'd sure like to get a PDF of Universe.

 

[Glyfair]

I believe WotC holds the rights (and thus Hasbro). However, I imagine the trademarks are open.

Hasbro decided not to actively hold onto the Runequest trademark, so Greg Stafford was able to regain it (and then license it to Mongoose). That was used more recently than Dragonquest, and certainly Universe, so I imagine the trademarks there are open season.

Hasbro and WotC certainly hold (or have held) a lot of great RPG systems under their belt. I would love to see a new edition of the James Bond RPG, even though that would never happen except maybe as a licensed d20 Modern game.

 

[MerricB]

I own Universe, although I unfortunately don't own Delta Vee, the space wargame that you needed for space combat.

Never got to play it, but I loved the character generation system and XP system.

Cheers!

 

[grodog]

I thought I remembered Paul Jaquays saying something not-that-long-ago about the rights to DQ having reverted to the creators, or somesuch; I may be misremembering though, so I pinged Paul to see if he knows anything about the rights (though asking Eric Goldberg may be a quicker solution...).

 

[Andre]

I own Universe, although I unfortunately don't own Delta Vee, the space wargame that you needed for space combat.

Never got to play it, but I loved the character generation system and XP system.

Cheers!

Delta Vee is interesting - it's one of the few space combat games that tries to model newtonian physics (once you start moving, you have to apply force to slow down).

That said, it has one critical flaw in the sequence of play. Basically, you move, then fire, the other player moves, then fires. If your ship is following another, you'll shoot when the two ships are closest, but the leading ship shoots when they are farthest apart. It makes such a big difference in combat results that my friends and I kept trying to tweak the rules, then gave up. A shame, as otherwise the game was a blast to play.

That was years ago and I still have the rules. Maybe I should take another look at them - might still be a way to fix that one issue...

 

[BlackMoria]

Wow. There is still a few of us out there.

I've got most of the old SPI games, including all the ones that came out in Strategy and Tactics magazine. I don't have a count but I think my collection is over 100 games printed by them.

And I do have the Dragonquest game, the Dragonquest adventure by Paul Jaquays, Universe and Delta Vee.

Ah, old memories.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Funny, my box copy of Universe was bundled with Delta Vee...

Good stuff, too.

 

[Warren Okuma]

Hmm... let me search, Avalon Hill, no... GMT, no... Let's see... Metagaming... no... Task Force Games... no... Victory Games... no... Huh, Imperium, what's that doing in this stack... err...

Oh, Far Trader, Stainless Steel Rat, World Killer... There! I know I had some.

 

[Plane Sailing]

My SPI games are:

Air War
Outreach
Sorcerer
War in the Ice
Freedom in the Galaxy <--- just marvellous!
Starsoldier
Firefight

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I was a big SPI fan back in the day. We moved from D&D to DragonQuest, and I logged more hours in that than any other single RPG. Universe was our SciFi game of choice as well. I still have those two plus the AH edition of Freedom in the Galaxy. Alas, most of the rest got traded off or lost years ago.