Regarding LFL re-negotiating with EA, I should point out the license EA has is for ten years, starting in 2013. Any re-negotiation won't occur until then. Even in 2013, PDFs were widely used to distribute content. It's obvious to me that LFL (not even going to bring Disney into this) either didn't see the utility PDFs have and didn't redefine "electronic media" or LFL just didn't care to redefine "electronic media" so long as money was made. This is the kind of detail that only a low to mid level staffer would think of and it would get lost or ignored on the way up the food chain.

I've always seen the situation being depicted as being older than 2013 with EA gaining the rights before then. From how I've seen the situation talked about this no pdf thing applied even during the WotC days of Star Wars. Which date further back than 2013.

Regarding LFL re-negotiating with EA, I should point out the license EA has is for ten years, starting in 2013. Any re-negotiation won't occur until then. Even in 2013, PDFs were widely used to distribute content. It's obvious to me that LFL (not even going to bring Disney into this) either didn't see the utility PDFs have and didn't redefine "electronic media" or LFL just didn't care to redefine "electronic media" so long as money was made. This is the kind of detail that only a low to mid level staffer would think of and it would get lost or ignored on the way up the food chain.

I've always seen the situation being depicted as being older than 2013 with EA gaining the rights before then. From how I've seen the situation talked about this no pdf thing applied even during the WotC days of Star Wars. Which date further back than 2013.

Pretty sure he means that they re-negotiated in 2013 and EA retained the pdf as part of the license.

Well, let's kickstart it

Exactly what the folks making Star Trek: Axanar said. And we've seen how that ended up working out for the entire Trek fan-film community.

So, not sure a Kickstarter built around funding a change to the status quo of a large, lucrative licensed property is such a great idea right now.

Well, in the case of Star Trek, it's more a case of the suits at Paramount having their heads lodged squarely up their ventral exhaust ports.

Lucasfilm was a lot more understanding, and even encouraged fan films to the point of having an annual contest to determine the best of a year's offerings... provided the filmmakers weren't trying to make money. Not sure about Disney's attitude, but given there's still Star Wars fan-films being circulated, seems that the House of Mouse doesn't mind so long as there's no profit being made from said fan-films.

Well the Anaxar thing had some greebly bits that tended to get left out of ranting articles. Namely the guys honchoing it were using the kickstarter to draw an annual salary and construct sound stages. The Salary thing was just kind eyebrow raising, since they were paying themselves no matter the amount of time or effort they put in. The Sound Stages is what really got paramount upset though. While they are being "built for Anaxar" they could then be rented out to anyone afterward (So essentially the Star Trek name was being used to start a separate for-profit business).

Combined that with the fact that this is the event that likely made Paramount come to the realization that in 2016 anyone with enough knowledge and talent can kick out a fan-film that's equal to or better than an actual studio production and there's really no surprise they went bonkers. If Anaxar were good, and made a series, and released at the same time as Paramount was trying to release a new Trek Series of it's own (that might not be as good, be it by actual quality, or because they want to make it a direct stream exclusive that not everyone wants to pay for these days) there's a very real possibility the fans will get their fix from the freebie fan-film, and not the revenue generating studio job. Which also explains why the Paramount fan-film rules require you to make a max of two 30min episodes and then be done.

Lucasfilm is pretty chill because the number of media products they've produced is pretty low at the moment and the "threat" fan films present still small by comparison. And as long as people continue to make FanFilms in their garage it's probably not an issue.

If the dude that made that sweet TIE Fighter Anime short had kickstarted enough for a series, used the capital to start up his own animation studio, and then dropped 10 episodes of TIE Fighter: The Animated Series at the exact same time as Rebels was trying to get off the ground, there's a very real possibility he'd have been able to generate a considerable viewerbase of older Clone Wars fans who found Rebels to be too childish, damaging Rebels ratings.

On a related note: I would watch the solar panels off a serious TIE Fighter series.

Ghostofman,

Fair enough about the Axanar series. Frankly, I stopped caring about Star Trek as a franchise quite some time ago, so I'll admit to not knowing all the salient details about what got Paramount's legal team all in a tizzy this time around.

If you're in the UK and don't have a LFGS (like most of UK) then look at Wayland games.co.uk

Nexus of Power... none left in the UK a couple of weeks back, still an absolute F****** shedload available from Amazon US or Ebay US.

This. Special Modifications sold out almost instantly, and nobody here has Nexus of Power (which, personally, I think has the coolest cover art of anything in the line so far). I was looking at some US gaming shop and they had >20 available... The best bet appears to be ordering from US Amazon, which when shipping is added turns out at ~£26. So you can't buy locally, and get the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that it would be substantially less than RRP if you lived in the USA.

Special Modifications and Nexus of Power are at the printer as of today, so maybe we'll see some more in the UK soon!

Here's a thought. Would it be worth our while to contact the Disney legal department to make them aware of this issue so they could untangle this mess during the next contact renegotiation?

My biggest problem atm is actually getting hold of old/obsolete systems. I am currently in preparation for a Warcraft rpg while on a SW break. I have 90% of the books but could not get a couple @ time of release as they were really underproduced.

even the common stuff now is £60+.

Pdfs of this old stuff would now not penalise the company (white Wolf) as they don't exist any more. But would really help me.

They (sorta) became Onyx Path. And they are still doing WoD.

But yeah tracking down physical copies of old RPGs can get very difficult/expensive. But plenty of PDF scans about if you know where to look. Altough even you might not get 100% completionist heaven. I mean try finding scan of The quick and the dead for Deadlands...

Here's a thought. Would it be worth our while to contact the Disney legal department to make them aware of this issue so they could untangle this mess during the next contact renegotiation?

Not Disney. You would need to contact Lucasflim Ltd.

Here's a thought. Would it be worth our while to contact the Disney legal department to make them aware of this issue so they could untangle this mess during the next contact renegotiation?

You could but I doubt they will. It is cheaper to renew a contract than it is to renegotiate one. So long as EA is on good terms with Disney and Lucasfilm when the contract comes up again odds are strong that it will just be a renewal and not a renegotiation. And it's worth pointing out even if it was untangled it wouldn't mean we'd still get pdfs. The cost of doing that would be passed onto us the consumer. So Disney would pass the cost of it onto FFG, who will then in turn pass those cost down onto us. FFG may not even want them depending on how much Disney wants to add it to their current contracts.

And to be frank .... I'm not sure I want the price of the rpg products to go up just because of pdfs. Like there is no way this can be done in which we would see the current price level for the game line. Any change that cost FFG more money is going to be passed onto us. I can't possibly imagine this game line maintaining healthy growth if the CRB gets more expensive, let alone whether or not the supplements would continue to fly off the shelf if prices went up.

Star Wars is one of the more expensive games I currently play. I have no real interest in paying more for 96 page supplements.

Keep an eye out on Ebay too. Ive seen several sales go up for good prices. I got my F&D core for $25 from Ebay as well as a $38ish copy of Empire core. The F&D was perfect so no idea there why the dude sold them that low... he had like 10 of em. The Empire had a defect and just didnt have the obligation chapter from printing. FFG has killer customer service and they just replaced the book for me. Sadly I havent seen deals for the source books so Ive bought them all from a local game store. Regardless with a bit of patience and some luck you can find some pretty good stuff out there. All that said I think the biggest thing with the PDFs spreading is that they are way easier to use in groups. I love my physical copies but Im also very anal about how they are used. I dont like people passing them around roughly or spilling things on them etc. They are $60 books. PDFs are a bit easier to navigate with search functions and my groups are a bit more careful with electronics. I used to do D&D and we had physical copies and PDFs that we pirated of those same books because it was easier to play that way. Still bought the books just not 5 of em.