Has FFG disbanded their roleplaying line? It's been a long time since anything new has been announced. I'm just wondering if other products are doing better and therefore FFG has either slowed down the roleplaying line or disbanded it altogether.

Chronicles and Strongholds are on the way. And we have Keeping the Peace and Mask of the Pirate Queen.

Yes, I get that...but all three of those products are "on the boat" which tells me they are done and just need to reach us. What are they working on now?

They don't announce product they are still working on only stuff that is done and ready to go to printer etc.

Yes, I get that...but all three of those products are "on the boat" which tells me they are done and just need to reach us. What are they working on now?

Mask of the Pirate Queen isn't on the boat (is it?); that's not due until sometime next year I think.

If they are working on stuff, they can't tell us about it until it's officially announced. That's the rule. Nor can anyone who might be involved in playtesting it.

Have patience, padawan. Trust me.

So Mask is on the boat. That's interesting. Keeping the Peace, supposedly a 2015 Q4 release, isn't anywhere I could find.

My guess, after Chronicles and Strongholds hit the shelves (any day now, please), we'll get some more announcements.

Yes, I get that...but all three of those products are "on the boat" which tells me they are done and just need to reach us. What are they working on now?

FFG doesn't announce stuff that merely "being worked on" it's pretty common practice really. Imagine if they announced "Easy Money: The Bounty Hunter Career Book" today, and tomorrow they suffered a massive system crash and lost everything. Or the playtest found the ABC Scrambler rules to be totally nonfunctional. Or three of the writers died in a horrible dairy accident. Or EA decided to sue them for damages because "Battlefront 6:Totally not a Battlefield Reskin" crapped out and FFG seemed like an easy target. Any of those totally plausible possibilities could cause a delay or major change in the product, so you don't want to do any marketing until everything's pretty much in the can.

Just ask the gravity belt...

Easy Money: The Bounty Hunter Career Book

That's... actually a pretty good one.

Every month or so I see a tweet from Keith Kappel grumbling about another Star Wars RPG deadline coming up. I also saw a poster or two dropping hints that there has been some playtesting going on. So there's plenty coming down the pipe. We just won't see anything publicly announced until FFG is ready to move it to the printers.

and doing it this way also saves them from the Palladium problem of announcing stuff and it being years late. Or the manuscripts that are turned in are complete garbage so they have to start over etc. Less headaches all around if they don't announce till they are sure. Which probably means the in development phase is likely page layout.

and doing it this way also saves them from the Palladium problem of announcing stuff and it being years late. Or the manuscripts that are turned in are complete garbage so they have to start over etc. Less headaches all around if they don't announce till they are sure. Which probably means the in development phase is likely page layout.

I want to expand on this so much....but can't. I will say I'm glad FFG isn't putting out a press release for every idea that pops in their head.

Still looking for that Rifts: Scotland, Void Runners, Mechanoids Space.........must not rant.....

FFG products tend to be like buses- there's none for months and then several come along close together.

Having said that, their release estimates for the star wars RPG line this quarter have been way off.

Nor can anyone who might be involved in playtesting it.

Have patience, padawan. Trust me.

Must be nice to be a playtester, even if you can't say you are... and I'm not saying YOU are... but I doubt many of us would be surprised if you (or at least one of your crew that we don't listen to) happened to be one.

All 3 of the hosts we never listen to have openly said they have been testing things in the past, things they want to talk about sooooooooooo much! I would be very surprised if there were not a large number of play testers lurking here in the forums. This feeling of a lul has happened before and will again. I wish I was a play tester!

Easy Money: The Bounty Hunter Career Book

That's... actually a pretty good one.

My credits are on "No Disintegrations" but that seems a little obvious, so Easy Money seemed like a less expected, but still fun, title...

Watch it's actually going to be something like "Jango Bells: A bounty hunter Life Day adventure"

Which probably means the in development phase is likely page layout.

That's a very good point. It's easy to think that the first announcement of a product = "this morning, we decided we're going to do a book about X", which is crazy.

I'd bet you're exactly right.

3 to 4 books are due out by the end of the year. All things considered this is good and it's a strong showing. If we look at some other games on the market they are all producing books slowly. I think only Pathfinder and Shadowrun are cranking out a lot of books. But I hear a lot of problems about the quality of Shadowrun books, especially the editing soooooo

Overall .... I wouldn't take the lack of announcements to mean anything. The RPG industry as a whole seems to be moving slower.

Nor can anyone who might be involved in playtesting it.

Have patience, padawan. Trust me.

Must be nice to be a playtester, even if you can't say you are... and I'm not saying YOU are... but I doubt many of us would be surprised if you (or at least one of your crew that we don't listen to) happened to be one.

It's not necessarily "nice" all the time but it can be challenging (in a positive way). One of the hardest things can be remembering to play it by RAW rather than by even the most minute of home table variations that a group may have adopted to make the game suit them better. "You must unlearn what you have learned" and all that.

Oh, and then there's deadlines... If only work, school, and family would understand that they need to back off a bit and let me get down to the important act of playing some games!

Not to mention the lovely artwork included with the anouncement articles. They have to commission that, and it might take some time, and it can't be random artwork, it has to share some relevence to the book at hand.

FFG is using a very slow boat ATM. Strongholds of Resistance has been on the Boat for two months and one week now.

FFG is using a very slow boat ATM. Strongholds of Resistance has been on the Boat for two months and one week now.

The captain took a wrong turn and found he couldn't sail across solid ground. Instead of just turning around, he figured to go the old fashioned way and sail around Africa. Halfway across the Atlantic, seeing as he's already off the rails, he might as well take on Cape Horn. I mean, why not?

FFG products tend to be like buses- there's none for months and then several come along close together.

Having said that, their release estimates for the star wars RPG line this quarter have been way off.

Given that his real name is in one of the F&D products as a playtester. Yes he is a play tester At least at one time he was.

It amazes me how people keep panicking. We have 3 products on a boat and one more announced. Sure we don't have new products announced yet. But the pattern i tend to see is products arrive in stores then we get news of new stuff coming fairly soon. Can we stop with the panicky threads? They have the license for a few more years. I expect to see them at least complete the career books for each line. I don't see a need to panic every time we fail to see new announcements for a couple months.

Books take time. Good adventures and stories take time to refine. The more crunch, the longer it takes to balance new crunch and look for bugs or things that are broken (especially if you have lots of books or don't have a design doc for the mechanics).

Having done stuff for a number of other companies, it usually goes something like:

• Idea for book
• Hire writer(s)
• Writer creates an Outline/treatment
• Send off Outline/treatment for approval (For something based on some else's IP you may or may not need approval at various stages before and/or after this. If so that takes more time.)
• Outine is approved
• Writer starts writing
• Comission Art and graphics (this can take a while, have seen books delayed for months waiting on delivery of art)
• Playtest chapters as they are written
• Compile feedback
• Write revisions
• Playtest revisions
• Repeat revisions and playtesting as needed or until you hit the deadline
• Move out of playtest. Getting here can take months, even years. Splat books and adventures usually take less time. The crunchier the system the longer it takes (and this system is not creamy)
• Edit the book (clarify language and fix speeling and gramar errors, remove or add sections, reorder chapters, etc)
• Have final locked manuscript
• Assemble Art and graphical elements, creating new elements as needed
• Edit Art and graphics (resize, crop, adjust color tint shading, convert files, etc.)
• Layout the book (this can take upto a week or more depending on size and complexity of the book, those doing layout, quality of the art, etc)
• Edit the book again. Lots of little bookkeeping tasks like making sure page numbers match or index is correct.
• In-house approval of layout and edit (or make changes until approved)
• Send off for any outside approvals
• Wait for approvals
• Make changes and repeat process if applicable.
• Send off approved files to printer for a proof
• Wait for the printer to print the proof
• Wait for proof to arrive from Asia (odds are they are printing in Asia [probably China], hence the phrase "On the boat")
• Ok proof or make changes based on the proof (like an image is too dark or text is hard to read on one page) and repeat if needed.
• Book goes to print (this can take a good while depending on who your printer is and where your book falls in line)
• Book ships (and hopefully isn't held up in customs or by a dock strike)
• Book goes to distributor then enters the retail chain.

It will also depend on how easy it is to work with the licensing people. Lucas licensing may respond quickly and not care what FFG does short of having Luke and Chewy make out, or they might be slow to respond and nit pick over every detail in the books.

So all in all there is a lot that needs to be done to get a book out and it takes time to do so, escpecially to do it right.

Has FFG disbanded their roleplaying line? It's been a long time since anything new has been announced. I'm just wondering if other products are doing better and therefore FFG has either slowed down the roleplaying line or disbanded it altogether.

Yup it's all done. Couple more books to come out then they are closing shop on the RPG. That what you were expecting to hear?

Also there is a big film coming up over Christmas so anything they are developing with regards to that could well be embargoad until the films release.

Disney may not want lots of character backstory or the plot of the film out in the wild until the film is out to spoil the plot.