Edge gets Star Wars license

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The continuation of FFG's Star Wars?

Dark times indeed...

Oh, who am I kidding? I've got D6, I don't even faintly care. I only want to play in the Rebellion era anyway.
 
To me it looks like they had some licensing stuff to straighten up. Now that it's been handled, they're looking at an entirely new game, but it isn't like starting now will have it ready for convention season of 2022, and no sense in announcing a game that won't be out until 2023. Better to just reprint the existing product and get some revenue off that. Plus, explicitly announcing their plans for a new game now would probably damage sales of those reprints, so best to keep mum on it for now.
 
Voros said:
I kinda get the complaints about proprietary dice but people seem to forget that when D&D was first released polyhedral dice were as rare as hen's teeth and didn't come with the game, so there's some historical irony in those complaints.
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I disagree.

The situation was much different back then:

1: 5 die polyhedral sets were already being made for some wargames before D&D was published. A bit obscure; but they were already out there, and being made.

2: D&D was the First mover in RPG land and thus set the standard.
It reigned supreme for many years with nothing resembling credible competition to challenge it. So if you want to play the RPG? You got the dice.

(And D&D did start giving away dice with the b/x sets.)


FFG Star wars:

The funky dice are exclusive to one game. Strike one.

They do not even use numbers either but a proprietary symbol system. Strike two.

FFG Star wars was not the first RPG, nor even the first Star Wars RPG.
IP licenses cost money, and if your goal is to maximize the ROI; why would you unnecessarily make your game less accessible to your target audience by using proprietary dice that no one in the now much bigger RPG hobby has ever seen before? Strike three.


The genesys system will be a footnote in RPG history once it no longer has a popular IP to prop it up.
 
All evidence on sales I've ever seen imply that FFG Star Wars has sold quite well. It also seems to have quite a lot of fans still.

I just think the whole thing of treating the designers like they are idiots and don't know what they are doing for a game that is, by all metrics, a success seems weird.

If it was doing so bad, why would Asmodee have kept the RPG license and transferred it to a new subsidiary rather than just drop it?
 
Jaeger said:
The funky dice are exclusive to one game. Strike one.

They do not even use numbers either but a proprietary symbol system. Strike two.

FFG Star wars was not the first RPG, nor even the first Star Wars RPG.
IP licenses cost money, and if your goal is to maximize the ROI; why would you unnecessarily make your game less accessible to your target audience by using proprietary dice that no one in the now much bigger RPG hobby has ever seen before? Strike three.


The genesys system will be a footnote in RPG history once it no longer has a popular IP to prop it up.
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I think their goal was to foil piracy since you had to buy dice (or a much cheaper phone app.) Unfortunately, freebie dice rollers hit the online field pretty quickly spoiling their pathetic anti-piracy idea (and overpriced dice) That goes for most of Genesys, and the reasons why Star Wars uses different dice than core Genesys, I'm not sure but I suspect their Legend of the Five Rings game-used another set of marked dice.

The problem is of course that, fundamentally pirates will FIND A WAY.
 
The test of proprietary dice is whether people will pay for them.

It seems people did pay for them, so to that degree it wasn't an issue.

I suspect that it was part of an effort to combat piracy, but I suspect that it was also an attempt to charge more by offering more, to make paying for a licence and just selling rpgs in general viable. Clearly FFG seemed to have been influenced by board games and all the widgets that come with them and to have made the calculation that if people will pay for those, they'll pay the same for a rpg.

No one has to pay for them. Ultimately it seems unimportant to me if Genesys has a legacy without the license, the ability of generic games to succeed is pretty questionable generally.

I don't particularly like the Genesys system, but it's not the worst designed game out there. It's certainly a better designed game than D&D 5e. (An extremely lazy design that seems to get a pass due to general familiarity).
 
TJS said:
The test of proprietary dice is whether people will pay for them.

It seems people did pay for them, so to that degree it wasn't an issue.
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But what also matters is why they paid for them.

Without the SW and L5R IP - no one cares about the special dice genesys system.

And people have rejected the game out of hand because of those dice.

In L5R it was completely unnecessary, as they largely kept the roll and keep concept. The two different die types d6 & d12 was an elegant solution to the attribute vs. skill issue that old L5R had.

There was just no reason to overcomplicate things by throwing the symbol dice mechanics into the mix, and adding an additional complication to playing and learning the system.



TJS said:
I don't particularly like the Genesys system, but it's not the worst designed game out there.
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The merits of the system are almost irrelevant in that no amount of "innovation" would overcome the dice hurdle for many people.
 
Silverlion said:
I think their goal was to foil piracy since you had to buy dice (or a much cheaper phone app.) Unfortunately, freebie dice rollers hit the online field pretty quickly spoiling their pathetic anti-piracy idea (and overpriced dice).
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I mean, FFG released a freebie dice roller app themselves like... pretty much on release. So I think this may be missing the mark a bit.

I think the things people are missing about the special dice is that FFG has primarily been a board game company. I think it was a combination of 3 things:
  1. FFG uses tons of special dice in a lot of their board games already
  2. They know that it is a good upsell for their games.
  3. The system actually does work well for what it intends to do (multi-axis information on one roll).
Like, I'm not saying it was entirely altruistic or anything. My guess is that someone was like "everyone buys dice, we already have a pipeline for that from our doing board games, let's make some custom dice for the game", and then Dave Allen, Shawn Carman, Jay Little, and co went "hey how could we make a system that makes that cool".

All honesty when I first heard about the custom dice I thought it was silly, and I wasn't even going to play the game, but my brother bought the beginner game, I played it, and found that most of the problems I thought would happen just... didn't. I get that it is a system that is not for everyone, and that not everyone's brain works the same.

I find the 3 CRB complaint way more valid though. It could have been one core game with the extra stuff in expansion books to flesh out each part rather than three separate lines of games.
 
I bought the first two core books but when Force and Destiny was going to cost me another $50 for what probably amounted to twenty pages of new rules, I had finally reached my limit and sold off my books soon after.
 
Also on the "once Star Wars license is over, Genesys disappears" I'd say that while yes, it helps to be as big as Star Wars... this happens to a LOT of systems that start as specialized systems and then release a generic system based on it. Even in situations where the IP didn't even exist before the system and was made for it.

Look at Numenera compared to the popularity of the generic Cypher system.

Silhouette Core compared to the popularity of Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles
 
Also on the subject of cost of the dice: I'll be honest I have so many FFG Star Wars dice because I'm a board gamer and I generally ordered my board games from a store that had free shipping at $100. A $10 pack of FFG Star Wars dice bumped tons of orders over a hundred...
 
Endless Flight said:
One of the other issues is that the same ruleset was basically cut and pasted in three different volumes. You’d pay $150 for 70% of the same content.
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Yeah that was the initial reason why I didn't buy FFG Star Wars.
I love the look of the books, but I ended up with a few pdfs for content only.
Just think the 3-book buy-in for Classes/Career Backgrounds was a ridiculous way to go with Star Wars
 
Mankcam said:
Yeah that was the initial reason why I didn't buy FFG Star Wars.
I love the look of the books, but I ended up with a few pdfs for content only.
Just think the 3-book buy-in for Classes/Career Backgrounds was a ridiculous way to go with Star Wars
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Yeah that strikes me as a bigger complaint than the dice.
 
I just hated the FFG SW books. I understand there are people who think it's the best SW system, and 'hate' is a strong word for some who owns quite an number of games he doesn't think are worth playing. But I feel like there is something about this series that embodies what i least like about modern game publishing: incredibly long winded tomes filled with dense blocks of text that are basically useless as an at-table rules resource; multiple expensive books that 'shingle' content for no obvious reason other than getting money out of you; and a vision that feels miles away from the original source material in look and tone. One of the few game lines that make me shudder when I see them on my shelf.
 
EmperorNorton said:
All evidence on sales I've ever seen imply that FFG Star Wars has sold quite well. It also seems to have quite a lot of fans still.

I just think the whole thing of treating the designers like they are idiots and don't know what they are doing for a game that is, by all metrics, a success seems weird.

If it was doing so bad, why would Asmodee have kept the RPG license and transferred it to a new subsidiary rather than just drop it?
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I do not doubt that FFG SW has sold relatively well.

There are three evergreen RPG IP that always do well virtually irregardless of what system is used:

Lord of the Rings, Conan, and Star Wars.

Only 80's TSR and SJG were somehow able to not make a relatively popular Conan RPG.

RPG gamers seem to just love their favorite fantasy and space opera IP.

So yes FFG SW sold quite well, but if they didn't have the funky dice they would have done better.

Obviously the numbers are good enough that they do not want to rock the boat and change things - RPG fans can be very fickle when RPGs get new editions that change rules...


EmperorNorton said:
I think the things people are missing about the special dice is that FFG has primarily been a board game company. I think it was a combination of 3 things:
  1. FFG uses tons of special dice in a lot of their board games already
  2. They know that it is a good upsell for their games.
  3. The system actually does work well for what it intends to do (multi-axis information on one roll).
Like, I'm not saying it was entirely altruistic or anything. My guess is that someone was like "everyone buys dice, we already have a pipeline for that from our doing board games, let's make some custom dice for the game", and then Dave Allen, Shawn Carman, Jay Little, and co went "hey how could we make a system that makes that cool".
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That makes sense. And certainly explains their thinking.

But it also shows their disconnect with the larger RPG hobby.

"Special Dice" are not an upsell for RPGs. D&D did it once already. And the nature of the hobby works against that kind of thing now.

Non d20 based RPGs have enough hurdles already. No need to add additional accessibility barriers to get people to take a look at your game.

Securing a popular IP like SW is one way around that.

But no company has held a license forever. What do you do when you inevitably lose the license?

IMHO - Asmodee will likely shelve their 'genesys' RPG game when that happens.
 
EmperorNorton said:
And you know this because?
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In agreement, we can't know stuff like this. Playing amateur corporate financial analyst online is pointless. Asmodee could have, probably do have, some internal Bayesian model incorporating how much stuff like this matters, how to absorb it into the book costs etc. In fact for all we know any drop in player numbers was covered several times over by the sales of the dice themselves, reselling the same material for each setting era, etc

I know plenty of people who bought each era and probably would have bought a Ewan McGregor special edition. Also people who bought it because of the dice, i.e. had no interest in Star Wars but were interested in the dice mechanics.
 
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Séadna said:
In agreement, we can't know stuff like this. Playing amateur corporate financial analyst online is pointless. Asmodee could have, probably do, have some internal Bayesian model incorporating how much stuff like this matters, how to absorb it into the book costs etc. In fact for all we know any drop in player numbers was covered several times over by the sales of the dice themselves, reselling the same material for each setting era, etc

I know plenty of people who bought each era and probably would have bought a Ewan McGregor edition special edition. Also people who bought it because of the dice, i.e. had no interest in Star Wars but were interested in the dice mechanics.
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This is the point I'm making. He is making definitive statements about hypotheticals.

Maybe it would have sold more. Maybe it wouldn't have. I personally don't know.

I do know that it was a successful game by all evidence we have available to us.
 
EmperorNorton said:
And you know this because?
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Simple Common sense and deduction.

All else being equal; the game with less accessibility issues will sell better. For FFG SW -Proprietary dice are an accessibility issue.

Given the negative reaction since release of FFG SW & Proprietary dice, I don't view this as a particularly outlandish or controversial statement.

We see a version of this in action with the current D&D 5e boom of companies converting their game settings to 5e mechanics.
 
Jaeger said:
Simple Common sense and deduction.

All else being equal; the game with less accessibility issues will sell better. For FFG SW -Proprietary dice are an accessibility issue.

Given the negative reaction since release of FFG SW & Proprietary dice, I don't view this as a particularly outlandish or controversial statement.

We see a version of this in action with the current D&D 5e boom of companies converting their game settings to 5e mechanics.
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So all games should be: flip a coin, heads you succeed, tails you fail.

There you go. The most accessible RPG possible.
 
Jaeger said:
Simple Common sense and deduction.

All else being equal; the game with less accessibility issues will sell better. For FFG SW -Proprietary dice are an accessibility issue.

Given the negative reaction since release of FFG SW & Proprietary dice, I don't view this as a particularly outlandish or controversial statement.

We see a version of this in action with the current D&D 5e boom of companies converting their game settings to 5e mechanics.
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So by that logic D&D would have made more money and been more successful if it didn't require the at-the-time hard-to-find and expensive polyhedral dice?
 
Jaeger said:
Simple Common sense and deduction.
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But we don't know the relative figures of how many were more attracted to the game because of the "cool" dice or the system vs those lost by not having the usual dice selection.

Also both effects could be insignificant compared to the basic Star Wars name. For all we know even if you were right it might only have increased sales 2-3% and have no real effect on the line's longevity etc.
 
Voros said:
So by that logic D&D would have made more money and been more successful if it didn't require the at-the-time hard-to-find and expensive polyhedral dice?
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At the time of its release, yes.

If a d6 fantasy game was the first RPG, of course it would have had wider initial adoption.

It would not need somewhat obscure polyhedral dice to play. And d6's were ubiquitous game dice.

Not a controversial notion.

But Gygax liked the polyhedrals. And being the first ever RPG, D&D could get away with it.

D&D literally created the RPG market. It was not coming into an already established hobby decades later.
 
EmperorNorton said:
So all games should be: flip a coin, heads you succeed, tails you fail.

There you go. The most accessible RPG possible.
Click to expand...

That reductio ad absurdum only holds if you purposefully discount the contexts of the RPG market and hobby.

D&D created the RPG market, and D&D has been the market leader ever since with one or two bobbles...

First mover status is huge in the RPG hobby.

Any new RPG is just not going to get the same level of forbearance that the first mover did. Or the market leader does.


Séadna said:
But we don't know the relative figures of how many were more attracted to the game because of the "cool" dice or the system vs those lost by not having the usual dice selection.

Also both effects could be insignificant compared to the basic Star Wars name. For all we know even if you were right it might only have increased sales 2-3% and have no real effect on the line's longevity etc.
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We don't need to know all the variables to know that such a logical deduction is essentially correct.

Like I said; We can currently see a version of this in action with the current D&D 5e boom of companies converting their game settings from their house systems to 5e mechanics.

Even the current special dice edition of L5R is getting the 5e treatment. And I doubt that they are going to all that trouble for only a 2-3% bump on the bottom line.
 
Jaeger said:
And I doubt that they are going to all that trouble for only a 2-3% bump on the bottom line.
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Yes but the thing that makes it worthwhile there is the conversion to 5E not the conversion to a typical dice system. Plenty of games whose native systems use conventional dice are also being converted to 5E.

This might support "FFG would have had more success writing Star Wars as a 5E supplement", it doesn't support the case that some the use of conventional dice alone would have made much difference.
 
Séadna said:
...

This might support "FFG would have had more success writing Star Wars as a 5E supplement", it doesn't support the case that some the use of conventional dice alone would have made much difference.
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IMHO the Proprietary dice are an obviously unnecessary obstacle to the systems accessibility.

I believe a lot more people would have been willing to give the game a try without them.

We obviously disagree.
 
I think the proprietary dice would have been a much bigger issue if it wasn't Star Wars.

But it is Star Wars, so people will overlook things they might not otherwise because they get the warm fuzzies.

I'm not convinced the mere fact of using special dice would really be all that much of an issue (although it's the sort of thing a few people will make a lot of noise about on the internet.)

Not liking how the dice work in practice is another issue, but that's generally true of all mechanics.
 
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EmperorNorton said:
I mean, I get that some people think that it is harder to parse the FFGSW dice. Personally I find that after a session or so you get the hang of it.

On the other side I pointed out that I thought ThAC0 and descending AC was unnecessarily complicated on here a while back, and tons of people came out of the woodwork to talk about how it was all preference and there is no more "correct" way to design a mechanic, etc etc etc.

I wonder what the difference is in the two rules and why one seems fair game to blast and the other one is sacrosanct...
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Come on, man...are you really comparing apples to oranges here:grin:?

The difference between THAC0 and BAB is different ways to calculate a pass-fail which basically amount to the same math. Yes, 1d20+attribute+skill bonuses>[AC including attribute and magical bonuses]+10 is the exact same thing as 1d20+attribute+skill bonuses+{10-[AC including attribute and magical bonuses]}>20. Like "you can get from one to the other by simple arithmetics" kind of the same thing:thumbsup:.

The difference between D6 Star Wars and FFG Star Wars is the difference between a system that is pass-fail and a system where interpreting the results can include at once a pass/fail and a basically unrelated complication and/or advantage. Of course one of them would take longer to interpret, and we all know which one, too...:shade:

So yes, different reactions are warranted IMO:devil:. And that's despite me being usually the first guy to say D&D gets a free pass on many issues where other games don't.

A better comparison would be between StarORE and FFG Star Wars. But then I'm the only one who recommended StarORE, I believe...and I'd agree those two are closer. Still, interpreting numbers remains faster than intepreting different symbols, I'd suspect, though experience with both might make the difference pretty much negligible.
Which leaves just my distaste for special dice and, if FFG SW is like WH3e, my equal distaste for "combat cards you need to spread on a table":tongue:. Call it prejudice, but I don't like that.



Endless Flight said:
I don’t like Traveller
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:shock:


Endless Flight said:
I don’t like Traveller
Click to expand...
:shock:


Endless Flight said:
I don’t like Traveller
Click to expand...
:shock:

...What kind of a person could write such blasphemy:skeleton:?!?
 
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Honestly like many others it was a combo of the dice and the 3 overlapping "core" books that killed it for me.

While I would have no real issue getting the dice convincing my players to get them for only one game would be a hard sell (especially when we already loved the D6 version).

Personally the 3 separate but almost the same lines were the nail in the coffin. This seems to have been a real issue with FFG rpgs. The Warhammer 40K line was the same. The rules changed a bit between each book but really it could have been done with a single core book, hence why I jumped at Wrath and Glory. What really got my goat was the way everything was spread out between the various systems. You want to use Tau, well that is in Deathwatch (and a tiny bit at the end of the Rogue Trader run). Same with various bits of gear. Looking over Starwars it seemed to do the same thing.

I am the first to admit I like more compact complete systems but even WEG D6 with all its books still had most of it in one book by 2nd ed Revised one. Hell you grab that, the Special Ed Movie sourcebook and Tales of the Jedi and you have all the force powers and all the aliens and vehicles/starships you see in the movies. Even the booklet with the GM screen had summaries of most of the EU vehicles/starships.

From what I could see this never happened with FFG.

If I love a line I will buy it all (I have everything Goodman Games has put out for DCC plus a huge amount of 3rd party product, often bought from DriveThruRPG but with a good chunk physical) but the idea of buying 3 lines with overlap - nah that is just not going to cut it. How many people would only play one of the FFG Star Wars lines? I have run D6 with no Jedi, lots of Jedi and everything in between.
 
Séadna said:
How are you liking it so far?
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Not bad. I have not had a chance to run it yet (a combo of Covid and being also deep into DCC) but it looks like what I have wanted in a 40K RPG for a while.

Especially the revised rulebook - a lot of room to build with that. The true test will be how good Church of Steel is. Hopefully it plugs the last gap in the rules that were yanked from the original book.

I also like to play around with backgrounds (one of teh reasons I had issues with Vamp 5th ed) so having the basic tools to work with will make me happy. I think it was over on the big purple years ago that someone mentioned the idea of mixing the backgrounds of the original Rogue Trader (ie the 1st ed wargame rules) with the modern 40K background. So the core systems have a tight least but as you go further out you realize it is all propaganda with weird aliens' slumming it in bars with former Space Marines. Throw in some Blackadder and it could be a fun Rogue Trader game. Plus I can bring back Squats :smile:
 
Halda said:
Not bad. I have not had a chance to run it yet (a combo of Covid and being also deep into DCC) but it looks like what I have wanted in a 40K RPG for a while.

Especially the revised rulebook - a lot of room to build with that. The true test will be how good Church of Steel is. Hopefully it plugs the last gap in the rules that were yanked from the original book.
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Yanked? Gaps? Tell us more:shock:!

No way they did that just to make you purchase more rulebooks...:grin:

Halda said:
I also like to play around with backgrounds (one of teh reasons I had issues with Vamp 5th ed) so having the basic tools to work with will make me happy. I think it was over on the big purple years ago that someone mentioned the idea of mixing the backgrounds of the original Rogue Trader (ie the 1st ed wargame rules) with the modern 40K background. So the core systems have a tight least but as you go further out you realize it is all propaganda with weird aliens' slumming it in bars with former Space Marines. Throw in some Blackadder and it could be a fun Rogue Trader game. Plus I can bring back Squats :smile:
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Sounds like more fun than many 40k games I've heard of:thumbsup:. But then I'm not really a fan of the setting as written, so take that with a huge salt crystal (about 0,5 kg recommended:shade:)!
 
AsenRG said:
Yanked? Gaps? Tell us more:shock:!

No way they did that just to make you purchase more rulebooks...:grin:
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Basically the revised rulebook cleaned up lots of stuff BUT dropped the section on vehicles and some animals in the bestiary. That said it was really cleaned up.

That said it was a limited list. There were a few ground vehicles but only three voidships, one each of Imperium Ork and Eldar. Hopefully the new book will have a nice selection. I have no problems with stuff in books, just don't drip-feed me :smile:
 
AsenRG said:
Sounds like more fun than many 40k games I've heard of:thumbsup:. But then I'm not really a fan of the setting as written, so take that with a huge salt crystal (about 0,5 kg recommended:shade:)!
Click to expand...

Yeah I am the same. I especially like that period of British sci-fi - 2000AD had an amazing run then. Bleak with a strong streak of dark humor.
 
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