Hey all, does anyone know if the Core Rulebook will be available on drivethrurpg.com for sale? I am going to buy the book, but I don't want to be the only person in our group that ponies up the money for it and have everyone else use, like they have for the past several years…but one of my players said he would only buy it in PDF form so he can use it with his iPad. Thanks for any news!!

Raistlinrox said:

It almost certainly will not be released in PDF or other digital format. FFG has announced no plans and word has it previous LucasArts pen-and-paper RPG Licensing agreements did not extend to digital publications for sale (but free supplements could be offered, e.g. beta updates, free adventure, etc.).

This topic has been discussed on these forums several times.

-WJL

Yeah, this should probably be a sticked topic alongside 'Sorry, but no Jedi until 2015'

LethalDose said:

Several WotC staff that worked on their various Star Wars RPG lines, such as JD Wiker and Rodney Thompson, came right out and said that their license was only with Lucasfiml Licensing for books, and that to sell PDFs required a separate license agreement with LucasArts. Rodney mentioned this on at least one episode of the Order 66 podcast in response to a question about when folks could hope to see (legally available) PDFs of their Saga Edition line.

That said, with LucasArts pretty much being dismantled and scaled back to an idea farm, maybe the ability to create for-sale PDFs for the RPG will be something that FFG can get rolled into their licensing agreement with Lucasfilm Publishing… but that's not likely to be an option until the license comes up for reneweal/renegotiation, ostensibly in 2015 if the speculation that FFG landed the license in 2010 and it only being for 5 years is correct.

It's certainly something to hope for, but I wouldn't recommend holding one's breath in the meantime.

Agreements can almost always be renegotiated or a new license could likely be reached. Waiting for the end of this license almost certainly has nothing to do with it.

cparadis said:

Depends on the terms of the contract. Some contracts include stipulations that the terms agreed upon are "locked in" until such time as the contract expires. Could be that just becuase Lucasfilm is owned by Disney doesn't mean their going to change the way licensing of Lucasfilm properties works, and FFG could still wind up facing a separate licensing deal for electronic media that they did when negotiating the original contract. Or could be that FFG wants to prove this game is a fiscal success and that allowing for PDF sales will only increase the revenue generated. Could be a whole slew of other factors that nobody outside of the legal departments of those companies are aware of.

Just saying it's not as cut and dry an issue as a lot of people tend to think it is.

Possible, as I acknowledge in my original post, but HIGHLY unlikely. More likely, the ability to modify the agreement is independent of this issue.

Just curious, as I honestly don't know the question to this, but has FFG released any of their RPGs in PDF format?

The 40k Ones I know for a fact are in PDF forum. Its simply a Star wars issue with Lucusfilm or whoever its under. Wotc had the same issue.

Hunterindarkness said:

Yeah, the "no PDFs" issue is largely unique to Star Wars, due to PDFs and books falling under two different corporate aspects of Lucasfilm as a parent company, those being LucasArts and Lucasfilm Licensing respectively.

Then again, from what I've heard Cubicle 7 is having similar issues regarding PDF sales with the Tolkien estate for their One Ring RPG line; there were PDFs for sale of their products at one point in time, but I believe that the PDFs got taken down due to said issues. I've not checked to see if they're back up for sale, mostly as Cubicle 7 hasn't released any new products for One Ring in quite some time. Which is a shame, as it's a pretty neat system and one of the more faithful attempts to bring the professor's world into the realm of pencil&paper gaming.