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

[Faraer]

Genre emulation is difficult, and I suspect that few people who try to roleplay any setting get all that close to what they like about that setting in the first place. So they often give up. Making a game feel like Star Wars, for instance, requires you to actually understand the mythical underpinnings of how Star Wars works, which neither SWRPG gets far in setting out, and which most Star Wars fans surely don't; witness the bizarre trees-for-wood discussion of literal continuity rather than meaning on Star Wars forums.

Whereas a big part of the continued success of D&D is that it plays to the ways people have come to play D&D -- some of which I think are great accomplishments, others at cross-purposes with what the players want to achieve, and in any case they cast a big shadow over how people approach other RPGs.

 

[Nisarg]

Brilliant piece Nisarg, thanks - I can feel myself becoming a Nisarg fanboy.

I should have started posting here earlier.. writing the exact same kind of thing on RPG net I got badly attacked and insulted, here I get "fanboys" of my very own.

Of course part of it is that RPGnet is a haven of non-d20 fanboys, a place with specifically that disproportionate number of people who are into the "cool elite" factor of hating D20 for being the biggest.

Nisarg

P.S: I too thought Sorceror was brilliant; sadly, I too saw the cult of Ron and decided it wasn't worth it.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

I feel a lot less freedom to act when there is a stronger canon out there.

You nailed it on the head for me. I've enjoyed playing in my friend's d20 SW game, but I would never run one with him. Why? Because he knows the universe inside-out and I do not feel I would have the freedom to take liberties with the universe and create something fresh and unique. He can't stand it when George Lucas contradicts Star Wars. I can't imagine if I did.

So I turn to DnD and other generic genre RPGs, because I can create the same feel as Lord of the Rings or Star Wars without being constrained by the canon of fiction and movies.

 

[Villano]

Personally, I'd like to see a Flash Gordon RPG. Seriously. You've got a good selection of worlds and races, super science as well as magic, and even melee combat. The only problem I can see is the Hawkpeople due to their wings, and you could probably work around that.

Getting back on topic, I have both the SW d20 and the Trek game. I haven't gotten a chance to play SW, so I can't comment on that. I did play two games of Trek. I didn't really care for the rules on this one. Granted, the games were rather short-lived, so, maybe if I had more time, I could have gotten used to it.

One thing I did notice while searching for on-line Trek games is that the vast majority were freeform. You don't really see that too often with other RPGs. Trek fans may be more interested in a storytelling "game", like being actor in an episode, rather than actually playing a game with strict rules and a chance of losing. Just a thought.

 

[dinsdale]

I think a large portion of the problem is the scope required for a full SW or ST game, disagreements about what the games should include, and the difficulty of doing all of them right in an RPG vs. in a movie/show.

Saying you are making a Star Trek or Star Wars game is great. However is the focus on inter-personal plots, career/skill advancement, ship mechanics/science, the force, space exploration, planet exploration, ship to ship combat or fleet combat? There are few enough games that successfully handle 1-2 of these... try handling all of them in a fashion that doesn't feel like 5 different systems slapped together. Star Fleet Battles was successful because it tackled only one aspect of the Star Trek universe... combat between "small" numbers of ships, with other pieces dashed in for flavor or handled somewhat independently (e.g. Federation and Empire for fleet combat).

Some people look at Star Trek and think Tribbles.. others Borg. Its not easy to handle both well. If you work on a Star Trek game, is it set in Enterprise, TOS, Next Gen, DS9, or Voyager? Each of those is going to have significant differences in the races/ships/etc involved which complicate game design, make for large volumes of similar info (most of which isn't interesting to any given gamer), and will subdivide the fan base, as many "Star Trek" fans wouldn't be interested in a game in at least one of those settings.

People have strong ideas about what "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" means. As these ideas are very different from person to person, it makes it very hard to write a game that satisfies a large portion of that population.

 

[d4]

You nailed it on the head for me. I've enjoyed playing in my friend's d20 SW game, but I would never run one with him. Why? Because he knows the universe inside-out and I do not feel I would have the freedom to take liberties with the universe and create something fresh and unique. He can't stand it when George Lucas contradicts Star Wars. I can't imagine if I did.

one thing i always tried to make perfectly clear when i ran Star Wars games in the past was that this wasn't George Lucas' Star Wars universe, it wasn't Mike Stackpole's Star Wars universe, it was MY Star Wars universe. i reserve the right to change things and go against "canon" whenever it suits my purposes as a GM.

i am, however, fully aware that such an attitude can drive some other people batty.

 

[The_Universe]

Lots of good reasons for why these RPGs aren't the most popular are listed here, already. I'd just like to chime in and add that the reason they are less popular than say, D&D, is that they weren't created for gaming....they were created for television or film. Although you can use some of the conventions from TV/Movies for RPGs, a great many just feel awkward, no matter how much effort goes into the translation.

 

[orchid blossom]

Lots of good reasons for why these RPGs aren't the most popular are listed here, already. I'd just like to chime in and add that the reason they are less popular than say, D&D, is that they weren't created for gaming....they were created for television or film. Although you can use some of the conventions from TV/Movies for RPGs, a great many just feel awkward, no matter how much effort goes into the translation.

I have found Star Trek especially suffers from the fact that it just wasn't designed for RPG's. In Star Trek, the characters are very often acting independently from one another. Whatever system I've been playing in, everything felt wrong because we kept trying to keep as many people involved as possible. Trek wasn't designed for every or even most characters to be involved in every scene. Some people may be active most of the session, and others only hit and miss. It can be frustrating and very challenging for a GM to work well.

Star Trek does seem to lend itself well to PBEM or SIMMS. I used to write in a Trek SIMM, which was basically combined storytelling. You can let your imagination go crazy, and the party can be in five different places.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

As video games go I hear Warcraft and Everquest are pretty popular, yet they don't sell that well as an RPG. stargate right now is the most popular sci fi show on TV, and Its not a big one either. Farscape had thousands of highly devoted fans but that RPG did not sale well I believe.

I've heard of people wanting to play a Stargate LARP..... and a few Stargate fans bought the new(?) RPG book back in March. Other than that, I have no idea about how well the gaming aspect of the show is doing.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

Another factor is that being a fan of a movie does not make you into a player of RPGs, even if it is a sci-fi/fantasty movie. The only ones you'd expect to run out and play the RPGs are those people who are both gamers and rabid fans of the movies. That's a smaller subset than you'd think.

True. I may be both a Star Wars and Star Trek fan but that doesn't mean I play either RPG. I know some who play the SW one but not the Trek one. And noone I know play the LOTR one.