I'm not gonna lie. It's getting increasingly frustrating to invest in Fantasy Flight properties to have them either randomly canceled out of nowhere or dying early and just failing. Netrunner being canceled immediately after 2.0 launched, every Games Workshop property getting axed in one swipe including their Warhammer 40k RPG that they JUST released, Runewars having no way to build community so it died on the vine, and so on. It's one thing when Descent doesn't get any expansions for years since the game is old and feels like it was fully supported even if they aren't admitting it's dead but the constant cancellations that come immediately after a release (or in the case of the Keyforge splat book BEFORE them) is becoming a trend.

Like why should I even take the risk on the new Marvel card game when who the heck knows if the licence won't be revoked in a month or the team working on it is all fired because some holding company didn't like they were making 6% profit instead of 7%?

14 hours ago, Sturn said:

Isn't Asmodee French?

Yes, it is. But the company expended outside France.

20 hours ago, Shirys said:

There's a thing though, why would they feature the release of a new Genesys Keyforge setting if they plan on dropping the whole system, makes no sense.

That is, unless they learned about layoffs soon after the news, which i still find unlikely - they would have put down the banner, or made a new announcement of some kind (perhaps). My guess is in knowledge of such news, FFG wouldn't even have announced that source book in the first place.

Leads into thinking they might still support Genesys

I think you might find that is exactly what happened. It was a shock to the FFG RPG Team as it was to everyone else.

4 hours ago, GM Hooly said:

I think you might find that is exactly what happened. It was a shock to the FFG RPG Team as it was to everyone else.

Hmm, i see.

Quite the shocker indeed =|

Yea, y'all have never worked in an industry characterized by equity ownership and sales/acquisitions, and it shows.

The "boots on the ground" are not warned when something big like a restructuring or sale is coming down the pipeline. Even for upper level management it can be hard-to-impossible to discern when something like this is coming, because very often it's all above their pay-grade even, and highly speculative and not acted upon/actionable at the highest level, until the moment when it is.

Broadcasting this type of thing, by, say, mysteriously cancelling projects that have been planned for months, can cause extreme amount of chaos (people leaving, low morale, etc.) and depending on the type of transition, that can completely defeat a large party of the purpose of the transition. Chaos costs money.

Your corporate/the board want things to proceed as normal, because if the thing they're working on doesn't go through they probably want to proceed with the plans that were laid a year ago because that's at least how far out they plan even though a different deal may come up in the mean time, and that's how it goes until that mean time-something is finalized, and then it drops. And when it drops, everything can change, if that's what the deal calls for.

Well, something has dropped.

Now, I agree, there seems to be no reason since they own it all - the IP, the system - not to continue on with it. But that may not be a significant part of the math they're doing. There's overhead/cost associated with these things, even if you convert all employees in the department to contract. You still gotta do payroll, marketing, materials, logistics for those products...

And if they decided they don't want to do rpgs anymore, that those costs/resources are able to be directed to something with a higher margin... well, then it's probably done.

Doesn't matter what the plans were, what was just announced, cuz plans can change.

All of FFI's stuff is still up and out there right now, so... Don't clutch to the fact that nothing's been taken down yet as some sort of comfort.

Expect the worst, hope for the best is where I'm at here.

I would not expect them to go freelance. Sounds like there is a restructuring going on. I would not expect the RPG division to make a comeback.

https://knighterrantjr.blogspot.com/2020/01/fantasy-flight-games-rpg-products-still.html

I’m gonna go broke completing my Star Wars collection!

If the RPG line ends, would it not be smart for whomever ends up owning Genesys to keep it up on the Foundry? They could continue selling PDF's of Genesys, Terrinoth, Keyforge, and Android. Then, fans could keep new stuff coming out which gets some more money for the owner without any work at all. The only hiccup I see is the dice. BUT, the boardgame line has not been dumped. The game company will still be spitting out loads of dice. So, they keep churning those out. So, maybe one person on staff, who possibly has other duties, who promotes the Foundry and keeps an eye on violations in new materials.

This seems like a win, win for everyone? Something I'm not considering?

They could even go so far as to hire a freelancer from time to time to put out official PDF stuff they already have rights to (Tannhauser, etc). Or to someday go through Genesys and put out a 1.2 PDF edition.

The only problem there...dice. With games with proprietary dice (FFG has three of them), you run the risk that if things go belly up, that your product becomes unusable if only sold in PDF format.

Online play will be possible, but pen and paper RPG play may in the long term, a thing of the past for these systems.

2 hours ago, GM Hooly said:

The only problem there...dice. With games with proprietary dice (FFG has three of them), you run the risk that if things go belly up, that your product becomes unusable if only sold in PDF format.

Online play will be possible, but pen and paper RPG play may in the long term, a thing of the past for these systems.

If the Foundry is kept up and running and the PDF's are at Drivethru or can be ordered directly from FFG/Asmodee/FutureCompanyName, I don't see a problem. The boardgame division has not been sunk. They make tons of dice. Most FFG boardgames I own have their own special dice. So, the company should be able to churn out new packages of dice if they intend to keep selling PDF's of the Genesys line.

We just need to make them see the light to do this. As I said above, win-win for us and them. Small profit, but it's nearly a 100% profit and it's hardly any work on their part.. The Foundry's work will be done by others and the game company gets their cut while doing nothing except promotional adds from time to time? The official Genesys products already have PDF's and if you aren't printing books, they are nearly 100% profit. The company will continue to make custom dice for boardgames, so spitting out the Genesys dice should be easy enough and not require any new overhead or staff that aren't already on hand.

6 hours ago, GM Hooly said:

The only problem there...dice. With games with proprietary dice (FFG has three of them), you run the risk that if things go belly up, that your product becomes unusable if only sold in PDF format.

Online play will be possible, but pen and paper RPG play may in the long term, a thing of the past for these systems.

Will there still be the interview with Sam Stewart on your podcast?

2 hours ago, DarthDude said:

Will there still be the interview with Sam Stewart on your podcast?

@GM Hooly I had this same question.

Check their Facebook says the show is still in. So should still happen

Is definitely still happening.

5 hours ago, GM Hooly said:

Is definitely still happening.

Can you double subscribe to a podcast? Asking for a friend.

While I too am just getting into Genesys (as a system, have long been into Terrinoth, as a setting), I'm not that disheartened. It is still a good system, and I still look forward to playing it with my players and teaching them.

None of this will change that.

As for what it WILL change....as mentioned, we simply don't know yet. My "speculation" is that we aren't going to see any further RoT materials come out from FFG. (Though there still may be Terrinoth lore in future developments of Runebound or Descent, but even that is pretty skeptical).

The good news though, is that there is still a wealth of pre RoT Terrinoth content and there are still authors who love the system, and who love making content for this setting and others in Genesys.

I truly can't see them shutting down the Foundry. As many mentioned, it's really just a profit generator for them, with little to no work needed on their part.

Quote

Online play will be possible, but pen and paper RPG play may in the long term, a thing of the past for these systems.

Hardly. They still use regular (shaped) dice, so you can print your own labels and make them. Heck, I did this to have extra terrain dice for Runebound.

Not to mention, you could just use the dice app for pen and paper play too.

Or of course, simply get the dice while you can.

1 hour ago, IamGazrok said:

I truly can't see them shutting down the Foundry. As many mentioned, it's really just a profit generator for them, with little to no work needed on their part.

I so hope so. I'm hoping many game systems will go this route. 1) Lots more content, fans can make some great stuff, 2) More profit for the IP holder since they get a cut, 3) Less to no overhead, 4) Continuing output for defunct systems, 5) I get to eventually put my campaign setting and magic system for Elemental Steam on the Foundry.

There goes my last glimmer of hope for a supplement for Shadow Of The Beanstalk. Sucks for the employees who were let go. I suspect Sam was one of them. I was really looking forward to more setting books for Genesys. They have so much more to mine. I guess the RPGs weren't profitable enough to keep around as it's own department. It is possible they will farm out RPG work to another company or they are just consolidating teams.

While it sucks that Genesys's future is uncertain at least it's kinda built on a platform of user created content. I'm more concerned about the future of the L5R RPG which is pretty much in the middle of it's content releases. It's no where near done supporting the new edition.

4 hours ago, phillos said:

There goes my last glimmer of hope for a supplement for Shadow Of The Beanstalk. Sucks for the employees who were let go. I suspect Sam was one of them. I was really looking forward to more setting books for Genesys. They have so much more to mine. I guess the RPGs weren't profitable enough to keep around as it's own department. It is possible they will farm out RPG work to another company or they are just consolidating teams.

While it sucks that Genesys's future is uncertain at least it's kinda built on a platform of user created content. I'm more concerned about the future of the L5R RPG which is pretty much in the middle of it's content releases. It's no where near done supporting the new edition.

I'm still hoping for more Android supplements. Since SotB is mainly NA, would be really cool to see some source books for other areas in the Android world, a mars book, even a book dedicated to life on the Net. All sorts of possibilities that I hope are still out there.

Would it be possible for one to create this sort of content for the Foundry? Like if someone wanted to create a setting book about life on Mars using stuff from Words of Android, the Identity Trilogy, and Netrunner Red Sand Cycle, could they? Or is that sort of stuff off limits?

1 hour ago, ACGalaga said:

I'm still hoping for more Android supplements. Since SotB is mainly NA, would be really cool to see some source books for other areas in the Android world, a mars book, even a book dedicated to life on the Net. All sorts of possibilities that I hope are still out there.

Would it be possible for one to create this sort of content for the Foundry? Like if someone wanted to create a setting book about life on Mars using stuff from Words of Android, the Identity Trilogy, and Netrunner Red Sand Cycle, could they? Or is that sort of stuff off limits?

From the Foundry Content Guidelines:

Quote

If you’re using our settings, you can only use the Terrinoth setting (from Realms of Terrinoth) and the Android setting (from Shadow of the Beanstalk). Note that creations for the Android setting cannot mention Netrunner; that is a separate Intellectual Property.

9 hours ago, ACGalaga said:

I'm still hoping for more Android supplements. Since SotB is mainly NA, would be really cool to see some source books for other areas in the Android world, a mars book, even a book dedicated to life on the Net. All sorts of possibilities that I hope are still out there.

Would it be possible for one to create this sort of content for the Foundry? Like if someone wanted to create a setting book about life on Mars using stuff from Words of Android, the Identity Trilogy, and Netrunner Red Sand Cycle, could they? Or is that sort of stuff off limits?

You can use the narrative content, the stuff that is firmly in the World of Android. What you can't do is use the word Netrunner anywhere or refer to its mechanics.

I recently saw an announcement made by the social media of a Russian RPG translation organization that they will be making the official Genesys translation into Russian. It's interesting that the system is basicly only getting steam while FFG lays off its entire RPG team.

@grisumbras Yeah, I've noticed a sharp uptick in new people joining all the other social platforms for Genesys. Genesys is really starting to get its stride. I really hope it isn't killed in its prime.

5 hours ago, drainsmith said:

I really hope it isn't killed in its prime.

maybe its time to release the genesys system as OGL ?