5 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

Which tends to get news media on your side. You get a lot more slack from your fans if you tell them what is going on.

To be fair, this could be an Asmodee thing as well. So FFG might be blocked from saying anything, and have to differ to someone in France...

4 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

To be fair, this could be an Asmodee thing as well. So FFG might be blocked from saying anything, and have to differ to someone in France...

They were that way before Asmodee though sooo I think it just didnt change. It is possible that Asmodee has made it so they can't change the policy though...I have seen a lot of negativity here as a result of this policy though.

2 hours ago, Vondy said:

How long can you hold your breath?

I don't know about the other projects, but SWRPG seems like a basically completed product. If the other RPGs don't sell or are in a similar finished state … you can print old books without keeping an in house editor and writers.
I am more concerned for stuff like X-Wing and support, considering that Organized Play and the support team should have been hit hard as well.

Though it does not seem to be a good year for RPG players, considering what happens to "The One Ring" 2nd edition and now the FFG Team.

5 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

I don't know about the other projects, but SWRPG seems like a basically completed product.

There is room for era books, adventures, and regional expansions, but those are strictly optional products. I'm not sure what they could add in terms of careers, specs and general rules that would prove essential or fill a gaping hole.

We switched after the destruction of the second death star to save middle-earth from the shadow. Look how that turned out.
Still as we were playing a different setting for a while now, I did skip on the era books. But I never had the feeling that the adventures sold really well, nor was I fan of them outside of the great locations. If neither era books or adventures sold … nothing left to make money with on that RPG. And an era or regional expansion here and there can be done by freelancers. They did use them already anyway.

2 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

I don't know about the other projects, but SWRPG seems like a basically completed product. If the other RPGs don't sell or are in a similar finished state … you can print old books without keeping an in house editor and writers.
I am more concerned for stuff like X-Wing and support, considering that Organized Play and the support team should have been hit hard as well.

Though it does not seem to be a good year for RPG players, considering what happens to "The One Ring" 2nd edition and now the FFG Team.

I was looking forward to TOR 2E as well.

3 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

I don't know about the other projects, but SWRPG seems like a basically completed product. If the other RPGs don't sell or are in a similar finished state … you can print old books without keeping an in house editor and writers.
I am more concerned for stuff like X-Wing and support, considering that Organized Play and the support team should have been hit hard as well.

Though it does not seem to be a good year for RPG players, considering what happens to "The One Ring" 2nd edition and now the FFG Team.

Well x wing just got a bunch of announcements today. Genesys got an announcement on monday....so i am not sure. I agree the core of star wars is complete. I would like to see more era and region books. I would love to see Jedi fleshed out to the full six specs. Though i admit indont know what the other 2 specs would be. I could see it being nice to have universal specs for other force traditions. Like a findsman spec. Which i guess is pretty niche.

I disagree that Star Wars has been milked by FFG RPG at this point. They could easily churn out individual books for Solo , The Mandalorian , Resistance , and several books for the Sequel Trilogy (although most likely limited to a couple of "era" books like they did with Rise of the Separatists & Collapse of the Republic for the Prequel Trilogy), AND they could do a whole lot more Clone Wars splatbooks.

Moreover, there is A LOT of SW content coming over the next few years, with the Cassian & Kenobi shows, more Clone Wars , and the secret "Project Luminous" which will be revealed this year (probably at SW Celebrations Anaheim in April).

Project Luminous promises (from what's been suggested by pretty reliable leakers) to be a serious mulit-media push spanning films, games, and books (and very likely also TV shows) for an overarching story (or stories) taking place in a brand spanking new era for the chronology; there will be tons of stuff that could be milked for an RPG there, and they could even do a fourth SWRPG line for that if they wanted to, inserting the rewamp'ed Genesys rules into the SWRPG line as a sort of 2nd Edition (or 1,5th Edition, or whatever). My point here is not to suggest that FFG will make RPG books for all these settings and project, 'cause they probably will not, but any decision to not explore more SWRPG WON'T be down to a matter of the source material having run dry. 😎

Also, it is not true that FFG's license is limited to the SW New Canon only. Lots of Legends material has shown up in the RPG lines already, and also in Imperial Assault (and I assume other SW games as well). Any decision to not pursue a SW source will be down to financial reasons, not licensing limitations (the obvious exception here being the license eventually running out, of course). In all likelihood, FFG is scaling back its RPG department because it isn't profitable enough... which is blasted sad, but also very understandable.

Like many here have said already, I hope FFG continues to release a couple of freelanced books a year (and keep at least their core books and such in reprint) and I will certainly purchase whatever new stuff they throw at us

PS: I also hope they will make more adversary decks and the like, as I assume those are quite profitable and I sure as hellion cannot resist buying them

7 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Well x wing just got a bunch of announcements today.

I am not active anymore, but are stores still waiting for tournament kits from August?

1 hour ago, angelman2 said:

PS: I also hope they will make more adversary decks and the like, as I assume those are quite profitable and I sure as hellion cannot resist buying them

They are not, I pre-ordered from the distributor tons of them. And the basic answer was "yeah, we don't stock them and we don't order small amount of them, just not worth it."
I am sure they make a dollar with them in north america when they just print them on demand, but because they print them on demand they are not worth it globally. Though I have seen some recently in my flgs … maybe FFG changed their approach for those decks.

36 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

They are not, I pre-ordered from the distributor tons of them. And the basic answer was "yeah, we don't stock them and we don't order small amount of them, just not worth it."

I am sure they make a dollar with them in north america when they just print them on demand, but because they print them on demand they are not worth it globally. Though I have seen some recently in my flgs … maybe FFG changed their approach for those decks.

You are more than likely correct. I was referring to Adversary Decks (and similar extras, and dice blisters for that matter) are probably profitable for FFG from a production cost/revenue standpoint. They are, of course, much less profitable for game stores to stock... So yeah, online sales and print on demand is the way to make a buck on these things, I guess.

15 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

To be fair, this could be an Asmodee thing as well. So FFG might be blocked from saying anything, and have to differ to someone in France...

If they want to be heard in France the best move is going on strike while wearing yellow jersey. 🤣

The international distributors down stock them already and they are Asmodee owned. The stores just don't get them. The reasoning of the distributor was that ordering just double digit numbers of decks was not worth the shipping expense.

If you order them on demand from FFG directly, last time I checked the shipping was like 60 dollars for a 6 dollar deck. 😉
The new Asmodee Shop is much better in that regard … but I just found out about that when I checked current prices. 15 dollar shipping on a 7 dollar order. Oh and up to 8 weeks shipping. Still a lot better than $150 and 2-5 day shipping.

Total$21.20 + theoretical 20% Tax

Just stopping by to say goodbye to the RPG team. They were lovely folks, always helpful when contacted for questions or playtesting issues. I sincerely hope they land on their feet.

I'm definitely mourning what appears to be the de-facto end of the SWRPG line. I haven't been a big fan of the compilation books, but that hasn't stopped me from buying them and understanding why some people probably love them. If Starships and Speeders comes out (which by all appearances it will) I'll definitely get it. I was very much looking forward to at least one sequel-era sourcebook, and I hope beyond hope that it was in development and might still see the light of day.

Unfortunately, I always figured this day would come. RPGs are a niche market among gamers, no matter how popular D&D might be in a given news cycle. At least we got a fairly complete game line out of the deal, with enough material that I feel confident kitbashing or adapting the system to whatever I need. Combined with what we got from Genesys , I'm looking forward to many more years with this game. I doubt I'll follow the license to another publisher, if that happens.

So good luck, and may the Force be with you. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to spend my Christmas money to pick up the L5R books I'm missing...

So was discussing this turn of events with a couple friends last night, and the topic came up of "if FFG does drop the Star Wars license, who is most likely to pick it up?"

Given both the costs involved (long past are the days when a small company like West End Games could afford the license) and what are likely increased requirements on LFL's part about what can and can't be done, to say nothing of the general level of toxicity of the Star Wars fandom, about the only RPG publisher that would probably have a decent chance would be Wizards of the Coast. Chris Pramas of Green Ronin has pretty much said he wouldn't touch the Star Wars license with a 30 foot pole, and I suspect that'd be the case with a number of other smaller companies, many of whom are quite content with publishing their own IPs. Modiphus also came up as a possibility, but they're already neck deep in licensed properties (some of which, such as Fallout and Star Trek, can't be cheap). Paizo was another one, but they've already got Starfinder, and they'd just wind up making it a Pathfinder clone, which was a concept none of us liked.

To be honest, with how 5e resolved a number of the mechanical issues that plagued the 3.X version of d20 that OCR/RCR/Saga Edition was built upon, I'd be interested to see how WotC would approach a Star Wars RPG. I really do think that Saga Edition had a lot of great ideas, but was sadly hampered by flaws inherent to the 3.X game engine, flaws that even Pathfinder and it's fresh coats of paint couldn't hide. It also has the benefit of being attached to a gaming system that a wide number of people are familiar with (one of the recurring complaints about FFG's system is the need for propriety dice, which is only going to get worse should the new owners opt to stop reprinting said dice) and is fairly simple for most new gamers to pick up and enjoy; Critical Role's success in getting a number of non-gamer folks to try out D&D based upon their enjoyment of the show and find that they do like RPGs (or at least D&D 5e) speaks to that.

I've read up on a few different fan-made Star Wars 5e system hacks (the best of which is sadly too rooted in the MMO's setting to be of that much use for eras outside of that time frame, something the principal author even admitted), and I think a WotC-made 5e Star Wars game could be quite good and is certainly doable, especially if using elements of Saga Edition as a starting point; the Condition Track was a fantastic idea as it simplified the various condition types greatly and could speed up combat, but it could still use some refinement. And the way that 5e now handles cantrips (always available effects that scale with level) could make Force usage a good deal simpler to incorporate; Saga Edition had a bit of this with the minor effects that being trained in the Use the Force skill offered, but most of those were parlor tricks that quickly got forgotten or just plain overlooked.

Yeah, there'd be the issue of level caps, but I've seen and heard a lot of instances of folks (especially those who stick to EotE and AoR characters) simply running out of things to buy with their XP after a certain point, usually somewhere between the 500 to 600 mark, and either just accumulating XP and not spending it, or just buying stuff they have little intention of really using just to spend it. Although with the notion of levels, I have seen some very good D&D 5e house rules that cap class progression at anywhere from 6th to 10th level, and that each "level up" after that threshold allows the player to choose from a list of options (ability score increase, bonus feat, increased caster level) but keeping the numbers fairly contained so that the D&D characters avoid starting to feel like superheroes and instead still feel mortal and thus can go on regular adventures and still be in danger.

Of course not everyone's going to want to jump to yet another new Star Wars system; there are people that are still playing 1st edition d6 Star Wars to this day and will gladly tell you how FFG has just continued to bungle things since Day One if you give them half the chance to do so, just as there are folks still playing the WotC d20 versions (my experiences have been most of that crowd are playing Saga Edition, with RCR being next and OCR largely left in the dust). And I'm sure there'll by folks that stick with this system in spite of its flaws no matter who winds up getting the license down the road, should FFG opt to drop it when renewal time next comes around, which I'm guessing that's some time in either 2022 or 2023 (assuming a 5 year license and the initial agreement was signed in either 2012 or 2013), but also depends on how well the Armada and X-Wing product lines are doing; if those start flagging in the coming months then expect FFG to jump ship on the license and stop all production. After which, you're either at the mercy of secondary markets to buy the dice, or will have to explore other options if you hope to bring new players into the system, such as making your own copies of the old sticker sheets that came with the EotE beta book or 3D printing your own dice with the symbols on them.

9 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Yeah, there'd be the issue of level caps, but I've seen and heard a lot of instances of folks (especially those who stick to EotE and AoR characters) simply running out of things to buy with their XP after a certain point, usually somewhere between the 500 to 600 mark, and either just accumulating XP and not spending it, or just buying stuff they have little intention of really using just to spend it.

Now that is super odd, because I was still not even close to that even with a thousand xp. And I had not even started to dip into the force on top of my ace career.

edit: And to be more specific, I was so short on XP that my only weapon skill was gunnery. My pilot literally had not even even a single point for Pistol or Rifles. What that little Verpine had was 3 specs to build an ace pilot/hotshot/squad leader.

2 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Now that is super odd, because I was still not even close to that even with a thousand xp. And I had not even started to dip into the force on top of my ace career.

Indeed. Just for grins, I ported over many of the characters from our old WEG campaign that lasted a few years and its Short-lives follow-up NJO-era campaign with many of the same characters (I’ve still got the backups of our campaigns’ web site, so had access to everyone’s final or near-final stats), and even with the advanced NJO versions, was finding myself leaving appropriate talents and such out because they were crossing the 1200-1400 barrier. (They would probably have been lower if I’d just built them as NPCs, but they started as PCs, so that’s how I built them.)

It's not necessarily going to happen anytime soon, but I hope a leaner and hungrier RPG company gets the Star Wars license rather than it just limping along here. Those that want to stick with this system already have quite a bit, but this would provide a new point of access for players that are less interested in FFG's take.

I look at the volume and quality of materials Modiphius puts out on its licensed lines (e.g., Mutant Chronicles, Star Trek Adventures, and Conan) very quickly and I think they could probably do a very nice game of 2d20 Star Wars that blends narrative with traditional RPG mechanics.

On 1/8/2020 at 9:54 AM, Nytwyng said:

Hmmm...thinking I should maybe add forums to mySWRPG, so anyone so inclined has someplace to go.

Just in case.

Huh. Turns out I’d already installed the forum plugin, I just haven’t configured it. I didn’t even go in to do it. Coincidentally, I got a notification Yesterday to moderate a post that was pure spam.

25 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

It's not necessarily going to happen anytime soon, but I hope a leaner and hungrier RPG company gets the Star Wars license rather than it just liming along here. Those that want to stick with this system already have quite a bit, but this would provide a new point of access for players that are less interested in FFG's take

The license is ancient and did not get updated for ages. As long as X-Wing and legion are cash cows ... FFG needs the license.

Now if you know a team of freelancers willing to give away there awesomeness to corporate overlords for basically free ... I am sure Asmodee could be their publisher. Bad logistics and hate from FLGS almost on the level of GW included 😱 😁

Yeah! Not gonna happen anytime soon.

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Although with the notion of levels, I have seen some very good D&D 5e house rules that cap class progression at anywhere from 6th to 10th level, and that each "level up" after that threshold allows the player to choose from a list of options (ability score increase, bonus feat, increased caster level) but keeping the numbers fairly contained so that the D&D characters avoid starting to feel like superheroes and instead still feel mortal and thus can go on regular adventures and still be in danger.

Whoa, do you have links? Even though I do my best to drag my friends into this world, they prefer the fantasy genre...but they are turned off by the nutty post-human nature of D&D past level 10. This might be a welcome addition.

I got a notification that the forums were updating a minute ago... so it seems like maintenance is still happening...

1 hour ago, whafrog said:

Whoa, do you have links? Even though I do my best to drag my friends into this world, they prefer the fantasy genre...but they are turned off by the nutty post-human nature of D&D past level 10. This might be a welcome addition.

The One Ring First Edition should be an major sales right now the licence agreement is ending in something like march. Awesome setting, good and very thematic system.
There are rumors that the team is switching to the new rights owner and release the second edition rules with them ... but they can only bring over the rules and not the layout, etc so might take some time to recreate all those basically finished books for a new publisher.

1 hour ago, whafrog said:

Whoa, do you have links? Even though I do my best to drag my friends into this world, they prefer the fantasy genre...but they are turned off by the nutty post-human nature of D&D past level 10. This might be a welcome addition.

Nothing overly specific. Best I can point to for a quick summary is a YouTube clip by the Dungeon Dudes where the discuss the concept, with the cutoff point being 6th level:

https://youtu.be/mWd23aWugtI?t=21m10s

5 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

The One Ring First Edition should be an major sales right now the licence agreement is ending in something like march. Awesome setting, good and very thematic system.

The problem with One Ring is that it's very much geared towards a very specific feel. So if you've got players that aren't down with long treks and generally avoiding combat (with that system, half the time if you get into a fight, you've screwed up and are going to suffer), then One Ring (and even by extension Adventures in Middle Earth, their 5e adaptation) isn't going to be for those players.