Why has this IP never been expanded to an updated RPG, card game, books, etc?

If it has can someone point me in the direction?

This documentary should help explain this. Basically, three quarters of it is in Christian Peterson's head.

There has been the 4 editions of TI itself,

the game Rex: Final Days of an Empire , which is a reskin of the old Dune board game for the TI universe

there was a TI disc wars game briefly, don't know how long it was available

back in the Cretaceous period there was a RPG with 2 books that was absolutely dreadful and which that video above confirms is not considered canon

think that is about it.

We we all have high hopes that FFGs new generic RPG system Genesys will feature the TI universe as a setting, but we just have to wait and see.

Plus MagBlast

MagBlast... Second ed, I believe. Sadly not the edition I have.

I have the RPG, and yes, it's bad.

Wasn't the Necro Virus and the other 2 races from Shards of the Throne expanding the IP?

They did expand the IP, but only relatively little. There is a lot of potential for expansion of the TI IP with other types of games. I could potentially see Twilight Imperium reskins of games such as Carcassonne (Build up the Imperial City of Mecatol), Galaxy Truckers (more or less lucky Hacan Traders) and even X-Wing (Squad based dogfighting with fighters and possibly larger ships based on race and techs and possibly also using the mercenaries from one of the TI3 expansions). And those three are just off the top of my head.

My guess is that between the license to print money that is the Star Wars IP and their own Terrinoth IP (not to mention the now-defunct GW license) there hasn't exactly been a lot of resources or design space to expand TI.

And on the computer game front it would be competing with a lot of other established brands, some of which probably served as inspiration for TI as a board game.

Its really not surprising, despite a mass explosion in the board game hobby we are enjoying today even the most successful board games in print today are dedicated to a very tiny, almost insignificant consumer size. If you went online with the intent to buy 100 copies of the game you would probably not find that many available and if you did actually find and buy 100 copies you would create a global shortage. If there are 2,000 copies of TI3 in circulation I would be surprised and thats a 10 year old game with multiple reprints.

I think the reason they haven't really expanded it is because the audience is just too small.

While your point is valid, I think you are radically under-estimating the actual numbers. 2000 copies of 3rd ed would be just 40 copies per state in the US alone. In the gaming black hole of Akron Ohio where I used to live I can think of almost 10 individual copies. At gencon FFG had probably between 500 and 1000 copies of 4th edition and sold out on Friday. I doubt they sold 5 years of product in 2 days.

True, but the point remains solid: a "great IP" in boardgaming is something else than one in comics or video games.

There is some hope going forward. There is the new Generic RPG which could potentially recieve a TI3 source book. There is the whole FFG interactive thing, perhaps a Ti3 PC game. There is always the dream that at some point, someone will create an online TI3 client, I don't think there is a TI3 player out there who wouldn't throw himself in traffic for that one.

My hope is that 4e is more approachable and helps to grow our community. From the previews so far TI4 is looking like a pretty good edition of the game, I'm sure it will have its issues, but I haven't seen anything so far that jumped out at me as a major flaw or problem like we had in TI3 with the Imperial card or Yssaril Tribes for example.

I would love to see a movie or TV show set in this universe. I think there's SO MUCH potential for storytelling in this IP, provided that Hollywood doesn't screw it up like they do with so many other things. I doubt that Petersen would ever sign off on it, though. But who knows? Maybe we could finally get a great movie based on a board game (besides Clue, of course).

Again, the IP is just too small. Everyone would take up any SciFi novel first, because the base for it will be much larger.

You grow an IP by releasing stuff for it. Everything your saying was even more true of 40K when it first started, and now it’s a fairly large franchise with loads of novels multiple games set in its universe, most of them with several editions, a couple of direct to video films, comic books, assorted collector memorabilia....

D&D was a pariah of popularity for more than a decade, now hundreds of novels, comic books, actual major motion picture, etc...

Licensing an existing franchise has its own set of problems. It’s way more expensive, you cede creative control, it is, by definition, a temporary arrangement. A license can be more profitable in the short term, if you get lucky and your game doesn’t tank because you blew your budget getting the license and couldn’t afford proper development, but developing your own IP has greater potential for long term sustainability and growth.

If they did a L.C.G for this I would be in like a shot. I think there is a lot of potential in the TI universe. It would take a heck of an effort from CTP to get all that out of his noggin though.

Yeah a L.C.G would be great. The racial quirks and differences would allow for a ton of play styles.

I'd just as happily read a novel set in the TI universe than play another board game in the setting. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the flavor text in TI3, and it really engaged me with the universe. Would I want to play more TI games that are less thematic and more superficial in their ties to the flagship game? I don't think so.

A game like Werewolf can be reskinned into any setting, and lose nothing, nor gain anything. A TI version of Werewolf, or some other game like Coup would simultaneously be judged against competing products and (perhaps unfairly) against the almost stubborn design decisions of the TI IP so far. While I'd like to imagine myself in the TI setting more, and explore more content, I don't think superficial efforts or a quantity versus quality approach would benefit anyone.

On 5.11.2017 at 11:30 PM, Forgottenlore said:

You grow an IP by releasing stuff for it. Everything your saying was even more true of 40K when it first started, and now it’s a fairly large franchise with loads of novels multiple games set in its universe, most of them with several editions, a couple of direct to video films, comic books, assorted collector memorabilia....

D&D was a pariah of popularity for more than a decade, now hundreds of novels, comic books, actual major motion picture, etc...

Licensing an existing franchise has its own set of problems. It’s way more expensive, you cede creative control, it is, by definition, a temporary arrangement. A license can be more profitable in the short term, if you get lucky and your game doesn’t tank because you blew your budget getting the license and couldn’t afford proper development, but developing your own IP has greater potential for long term sustainability and growth.

That's true, of course.

Now that Spartan Games had gone under , I'd like to see a TI reskin of Firestorm Armada. It was a really cool miniatures game that did a good job capturing the feel of large space Naval battles.

It also ran a little too long for comfort, and it wouldn't hurt to get a talented designer like Corey Koneizca to tighten up the rules a little.

I was pretty unimpressed with Spartan's rules. Their miniatures were great, and their setting certainly had potential, but their ruleset (really, all their games were variations on one mechanic) was way to random and swingy, with little real strategy, just maximize your dice and hope you keep rolling 6's.

Besides, FFG has their capital starship game. If we see an expansion of the TI universe into miniature wargames, I would fully expect something resembling Star Wars Armada. Now that would be pretty awesome.

As would twilight imperium x-wing and twilight imperium legion.

And, of course, we are all hopeful that we'll see twilight imperium genesys soon (within 12 months, probably).

56 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

And, of course, we are all hopeful that we'll see twilight imperium genesys soon (within 12 months, probably).

Is that the one where Matt Smith plays the Nekro Virus and Emelia Clarke is the ruler of the Naalu Collective?

______

Maybe I just couldn't get past the theme, but Star Wars Armada never appealed to me. Perhaps the setting is just too well-trod for me to feel like there's a chance to explore, but I never even looked at it mechanically. Does it feel similar to X-Wing, or does it feel more like devastating behemoths fighting than nimble fighters?

It doesn’t feel anything at all like x-wing, although it obviously was done by people from the same school of design (custom dice, upgrade cards, tokens, etc...). In x-wing (and most wargames) you’re really only thinking one turn in advance. For Armada, they made a lot of design decisions based on making you think several turns ahead. The most obvious is the command stack. Each round you issue an order to each of your ships (sort of like a strategy card, gives a big benefit to a single facet of play, maneuver, shooting, repair, or directing squadrons), but only the smallest ships can execute that order right away, bigger ships have to put the dial that shows the order on the bottom of a stack, then when the ship activates the top dial on the stack is revealed and executed. So a star destroyer sets an order for what it wants to do in 3 rounds, then executes the order it was issued 3 rounds ago.

They also reversed movement and shooting order compared to most games. In Armada, when you activate a ship, you shoot then move. That doesn’t sound like a huge change, but it really forces you to try and predict what the board is going to look like NEXT round.

Every game is based around missions with set objectives as well, so it’s not necessarily just about killing the other side.

All that said, it’s far from a perfect game. Games are almost always limited to 6 rounds, so the impact of the command dial mechanic is lessened. Once you get to round 3 there is little point in the big ships setting new dials, the game will end before they are revealed. It uses alternating activations, and there is a pretty strong motivation to have more activations than the opponent, leading to lots of small ships instead of the battleships we all want to fly. The range/LoS/firing arc rules seem needlessly complex (though with an interesting mechanic), it uses upgrade cards like x-wing, which we are seeing in x-wing has its own problems, and it doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of releases, it feels like they don’t know what to do the with the game next.

But it really does play like no other game out there, and I would say, yes, it captures the feel of devastating behemoths. With a few tweaks, and a universe that isn’t constrained by only 2 factions, one of which is supposed to be an underdog without resources, with the freedom to invent new ships as they need to, I think it could really take off.

Sorry everyone for the long post, but it really isn’t an easy game to briefly explain.

12 hours ago, JorduSpeaks said:

o well-trod for me to feel like there's a chance to explore, but I never even looked at it mechanically. Does it feel similar to X-Wing, or does it feel more like devastating behemoths fighting than nimble fighters?

Armada is more deliberative than X-Wing, more on the strategic side of things, where X-Wing is fast and more tactical.