Hisham
Member since: 2007Location
Kangar, Malaysia
Forums
"After a lengthy evaluation, Wizards of the Coast has decided not to renew the Star Wars license with Lucasfilm. We’ve had a long and fantastic run, but with the economic downturn, we have made the tough decision to discontinue our Star Wars lines."
The Official Announcement.
Boshuda
Sad news, but we don't really need a company selling books to enable us to roleplay in the Star Wars universe... just our imaginations!
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Star Wars: Tapestry - a play-by-post roleplaying game for everyone... good OR evil!
Quite true I. J.
SWSE had its fair share of annoying shortcomings - no vehicle creation rules for starters. And theres still 2 former and still capable versions of the roleplaying game - RCR and D6. At least in those systems, there was the rules provided to create whatever you wanted.
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Core to the Quad baby!!!
If your going to complement me, don't tell me my work is neat, cool or awesome. If you really like it, tell me why you like it and what you like about it. Only then I'll take it as a complement.
Forget RCR - I hate that convoluted piece of trash. It's all about the Original Core Rulebook!
Boshuda
I'm spoiled on Saga Ed. True, no vehicle creation rules, but my group always seems to steal starships anyway, so easy enough to master craft and mod them out.
I'm still having fun with D6 after 22 years. As long as there is fan support, the game will go on.
Starwars.com announcement also stated:
Lucas Licensing continues to see miniatures, roleplaying games and card games as viable and important elements in its Star Wars licensing program, both in digital form (like the recently launched trading card game within Star Wars Galaxies), and in physical products like figures, books and cards. Keep checking StarWars.com for announcements regarding future products in this area in the coming months.
"...continues to see miniatures, roleplaying games and card games as viable and important elements"? Sounds like there will still be an RPG and they might be doing stuff in-house from now on.
I kind of took that to mean that they may have a 'handshake deal' with some other company, that they can't announce until their license with WotC ends. Still, I bought everything WEG, everything OCR, lots of RCR, and everything Saga.
So in a nutshell... I'm done. I've spent the last two years playing in a diceless campaign anyway, which has been rewarding on so many levels, so I don't feel any burning desire to buy into any new ruleset. Star Wars RPG to me is really about three things: the movies, my brain, and my fellow players' brains! :)
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Star Wars: Tapestry - a play-by-post roleplaying game for everyone... good OR evil!
"EH? Wizards of the Coast? Those Magic Card people? They had something to do with Star Wars?
Hhmmph. Strange old world."
*Goes back to rolling D6s with West End Games Star Wars...*
I have liked somethings and hated some things about every version of the SW RPG yet.
West End got shafted when the license was pulled out from underneath them, and WotC never had their talent for original creations.
West End pretty much single-handedly kept the Star Wars universe from stagnating until Lucas decided to start licensing it out for new novel sets with the Zahn trilogy. A tremendous amount of the ships, worlds, backstory etc in the expanded universe was actually conceived and created by West End games authors.
Heck, they even published a fair amount of Star Wars fiction, with only loose game tie-ins.
That said, as much as I enjoyed the products they put out, the rules of the d6 system were pretty awful.
WotC had a much stronger set of rules, but much weaker support for the line in general. They didn't grok Star Wars the way that West End did.
I only hope that the license does get picked up by someone who will do it justice.
What does 'grok' mean?
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Star Wars: Tapestry - a play-by-post roleplaying game for everyone... good OR evil!
It's from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Wikipedia writes:
"The Oxford English Dictionary defines grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment." Other forms of the word include "groks" (present third person singular), "grokked" (past participle) and "grokking" (present participle)."
In related news, Drig and I are starting a project to create a fan-made online SW Gamer magazine, to provide all the neat RPG content that WotC should have been providing all these years. We're planning on including scenarios, NPCs, downloadable maps and galaxy tiles, bounty postings, sample skill challenges, planet hoppers, university of sambra guide to alien life, etc. If you have any cool ideas for valuable SW RPG resources, we want anyone and everyone's submissions!
Boshuda
Sounds super cool! I look forward to seeing it. I also wondered why WotC did not do Qui-Gon Jinn or other jedi character stats for the Saga Edition.
Kia kaha
That's exciting news, Asok! If you need anyone to write 'sidebar fiction' to go with some of these elements, hit me up!
Also, you guys might want to connect with these guys (http://community.wizards.com/swawguild), if you haven't already. They're focusing on writing adventure modules for the game.
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Star Wars: Tapestry - a play-by-post roleplaying game for everyone... good OR evil!
Noticed today that wizards has removed everything star wars except the forum from their site.
Hopefully the license will get picked up by someone who cares about the material more than hasbro ever did.
I don't know if anyone ever will, the license fee is supposed to be astronomical. Looking at how RPG publishers are operating now, I don't think most of them can afford it.
That said I can see two publishers with the resources to take in the license: Cubicle 7 (who has the Doctor Who and LOTR license) and Margaret Weis Productions (Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, Leverage and Smallville). Both companies produce books with good production values, but those licenses might be minuscule compared to Star Wars.
That's what I thought when they discontinued it. They probably didn't renew because lucasfilm wanted an enormous payout from them for the license, and since there's no more movies coming out (crosses fingers) they saw the market presumably shrinking a bit. Which makes sense. Sad, cuz I love se and the minis wizards made, but understandable from their standpoint.
The GM knows the will of the force.