Why aren't Star Wars and Star Trek dominating the RPG market?

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I have to agree about gaming quality. I don't think I've ever seen a good Star Trek game. Apparently a computer game magazine gave one of the Star Trek games a good rating recently, but that's after many failures. The same thing goes for a lot of Star Trek RPGs.

Star Wars has a bit better luck in this area, if only because it's canon is strictly defined.

I think D20 Future might help out quite a bit, especially when it comes to Star Trek. A Jedic Advanced Class or three might help Star Wars, but it won't be put out by WotC since they're already selling D20 Star Wars.

And that's just the material in the book; I can tell you out of all the sci-fi programs I have an "encyclopedic" knowledge of, I'd only feel comfortable playing StarCraft. (Not that StarCraft Alternity junk, though.) And if the StarCraft franchise ever comes to an end (when the heck will StarCraft 2 be released anyhow?) I doubt I could run it either.

I'm a big fan of Babylon 5 but I'd be totally stumped as to what kind of adventure to set up and run. I'd probably need big book of plot hooks to be able to actually run it. The franchise is done, and much as I liked Crusade there's not enough plot to run a game with.

Running a game when the whole storyline is known and all the important stuff has already been done is hard. It's one of the problems LotR RPGs have run into.

 

[Crothian]

I'm a big fan of Babylon 5 but I'd be totally stumped as to what kind of adventure to set up and run. I'd probably need big book of plot hooks to be able to actually run it. The franchise is done, and much as I liked Crusade there's not enough plot to run a game with.

The B5 book addresses this and I think it does a good job. There's a lot from the series and I think it would be very easy to run a B5 campaign even for people who have seen the whole show.

 

[jmucchiello]

Quite simply "Fan of X" (where X is some form of pop science fiction) and "Player of RPGs" has no correlation. You may as well ask why aren't lots of soap opera RPGs since so many people like daytime soap operas. Or why hasn't Law and Order: The RPG come out yet?

Just because SW and ST are popular doesn't mean they are avenues into RPGs.

 

[Ottergame]

I think the real "problem" is that 99% of the Star Wars and Star Trek fans don't even know what RPGs are, and that they exist for these licenses.

 

[DonaldRumsfeldsTofu]

"Or why hasn't Law and Order: The RPG come out yet?"

That's a really really good question, actually.

I sincerely doubt that the Star Wars/Trek cultist demographic and the table-top role-playing gamer demographic do not overlap sincerely. The problem I see it, is that D20 Star Wars is relatively inane. I think we should come to terms with the fact that D20 was designed for Dungeons and Dragons.

As for Star Trek RPGs, I never knew such a thing existed until reading this thread.

If will be the day when I am fortunate enough to be blessed with a DM that will let me make a Wookie or Vulcan character in D&D. That would be fecking awesome.

 

[Tumbler]

I am probably one of 4 people in the world who would buy a d20 soap opera game, and I know 2 of the others.

I think it would be great, especially if it came with a big deck of cards that tossed out random events, and included lots of charts for character creation that the GM would roll on in order to generate secrets about the characters that even the don't know.

What do you think, d20 Soap anyone?

 

[MerakSpielman]

I've been playing Knights of the Old Republic, and it's made me think that running a d20 Star Wars game might be kind of fun.

The advantage of d20 is that casual and newbie gamers (like most of my group) don't have a ton of new rules to figure out if we switch games.

 

[scourger]

I've never played Star Trek, but I can speak from personal experience that anyone who wants to play a Jedi (in any version of the RPG) after seeing the Star Wars movies will be sorely dissappointed.

Ditto. Playing a jedi in SW d20 is like being a spellcaster in D&D with spells powered by expending your hit points and costing skill points to develop. If I were ever to run it, I'd make it the all-Jedi campaign with extra skill points and vitality for the jedi to use just on force powers.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

The bigest has already been said, fans may not be gamers.

Also while I never looked at star trek games the star wars games have sucked. I think the d6 game was better than the amazingly crappy d20 and d20 revised but it wasn't good. Both sucked butt at the force though the d6 variation pulled off original movie force fairly well. Weak ass beginings, slow growing, eventual mad power. d6 did nothing in the main book at least to cover expanded universe stuff, and of course did not cover movie 1&2 style stuff which didn't exist at the time. d20 at least has movie 1&2 powers in existence though they really suck at doing them, and way too many of there powers just are really poorly done. A half decently done power is the exception and a pleasant surprise in the d20 game, its just mainly pages of crap.

 

[Dark Psion]

Part of the problem may be that these games were designed for people who are not hardcore gamers. I took one look at Decipher's Star Trek and knew I wouldn't like playing it, you cannot multiclass. This does not "fit" my definition of either Star Trek or RPG.

Another problem is that the characters from these shows are well, ultra muchkins!
Capt Sisko is a Star Fleet Officer, an Engineer, a Diplomat, a Mystic, a Soldier, a Special Forces: Tactical Specialist (Fleet Operations), An Envoy, and an Inventor. And he is Half Extra-dimensional alien on top of that.

You get to be an ensign.