"Other" Sourcebooks for DecTrek

I was reading over my Star Wars books and was wondering something...

WEG did a lot of their Star Wars sourcebooks based on novels: The Thrawn Trilogy, The Tales of the Jedi series, etc.

Any chance that we could see some sourcebooks of novel series from DecTrek? Such as a New Frontiers Sourcebook (I haven't read it and PLEASE no "I hate NF" comments - its just an example) or even a "New Worlds" sourcebook?

It would be cool to get books based on novels, especially if they are based on places and people not normally covered in the Trek Series.

Comments?

I think the problem with that is that SW considers its novels canon, while the Trek franchise does not - only what you see on the screen is Trek Canon.

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Anomaly

Anomaly TrekMUX: http://anomaly.mybis.com

Not necessarily - Star Wars books et al. are "provisional canon". Lucas has said that only whats on screen is canon and that he will not be held to any of his licensed works.

So the books are canon until countermanded by the films.

As for Trek. Half of RPGs are extrapolated and made up anyway. Look at "Way of the Clans" in which the author had like one TOS episode to work with and a few slight mentions in a dozen or so TNG/DS9/Voyager episodes. All of it risks being invalidated anyway.

I'd rather my DecTrek info be canon or extrapolated from Canon, But if we take novels and make a contained sourcebook on them you can either use the info contained within or not. It does even need to be in offical DecTrek continuity. And it would be a good way of showing some other areas of the UFP (and might get sales from fans of the series).

[This message has been edited by prophetsteve (edited 08-03-2001).]

I don't fully understand why people want the RPG to stick to canon. If everything in the books was on the show, why buy the books? The Trek RPG books I'm most interested in are the ones with the most new material.

I think there's normally a rule that one Trek licensed product cannot have any connection to the others, but Christian said there's a possibility for a "crossover".

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Games. The Final Product. These are the books of the Star Trek RPG. Their five year license. To explore strange new roles. To breathe new life into get togethers. To boldly play what no fan has played before!

The ban on cross-referencing was banned but Paramount has seen the sucess of it in other licenses (primarily Star Wars) and AFAIK, they are relaxing their position.

Thinking about this, since paramount doesn't like ST novels about other crews (New Frontier notwithstanding) how many of these things could DecTrek make?

Paramount/Viacom does not allow cross media referencing in their licenses.

If you have a license to make a game about the show and movies, you cannot use books and comics and video games, and vice versa.

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Captain Zymmer
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Visit Star Trek:Strange New Worlds at;
http://www.geocities.com/aslan_collas
=-=-=-=-=-=

Yet there's a Captain Calhoun action figure, and a CCG card of a ship from a video game.

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Games. The Final Product. These are the books of the Star Trek RPG. Their five year license. To explore strange new roles. To breathe new life into get togethers. To boldly play what no fan has played before!

As I understand it, the folks at Decipher (just as they were when they were LUG), are limited by what will pass Paramount approvals. Rather than open a really ugly can of worms by citing extremely contradictory and sometimes confusing sources like the novels (and thus risk Paramount's refusal to approve), IIRC they decided to just stick to what's on screen as their baseline. Anything new they come up with is theirs.

TPTB can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this one (Don, Steve, anybody?). http://www.trekrpg.net/Board/ubb/smile.gif

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Doug Burke

http://www.trekrpg.net/Board/ubb/sig_editor.gif

McCoy: "You're taking me to the promised land?"
Kirk: "That's what you get for missing staff meetings, Doctor."

The DecipherTrek products will not use, refer to, or have any connection with any ST novels.

First of all, AFAIK, separate licenses are still required for them -- there's been no "relaxing" of standards of which I'm aware. Even if there has been, "relaxed" doesn't mean "open season." http://www.trekrpg.net/Board/ubb/smile.gif

Second, none of us here in the Decipher RPG division have read the novels (or at least, only a couple, years ago). More importantly, none of us want to.

Third, as long as we're all making up Trek stuff, we'd prefer to use our own made-up stuff -- over which we have control -- than someone else's. http://www.trekrpg.net/Board/ubb/wink.gif

Steve Long

OK,

Onscreen mtaerial only, any chance Paramount will relax and allow Decipher to make an Animated Series Sourcebook? I realize the Kzinti may have to be exised or at least renamed, but what about it? Any chance at all?

I was writing lots of material for the LUG version, but have decided to wait for Decipher Trek to finish, as I will be using it for the most part. If something official came up, cool, if they were allowed to print it, I'd write it. ^_^

Just missing my lost series,
Richard

Quote:

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Originally posted by prophetsteve:
[B]Not necessarily - Star Wars books et al. are "provisional canon". Lucas has said that only whats on screen is canon and that he will not be held to any of his licensed works.

So the books are canon until countermanded by the films.
B]

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Yes and No, Lucas forbids any wrting on topics which he feels are the domian of the Movies hence for years nobody could write about the Clone wars or the events leading to the founding of the Empire. Thus very little well every be conterdicted. Now that the sequals are being made this has loosen a bit. Another positive factor has been that Lucas has allowed other minor and totally new character to be introduced by the novels thus widening their appeal and subject matter.

Paramount on the other hand limited writers from the start by insisting on only fiction dealing with the shows characters. In a way a kinda of reverse situation as its your main characters who you want to exercise the most control over. This has limited the canon capability of all the novels plus paramounts own lackdasical attitude in the early years toward them.

New Frontier broke the line as while as Voyager Elite force all have appeared in cross overs from comics to action figures to CCG. Ontop of all this is the popularity of Starfleet Command added to this is the undying general positive fan attitude toward the aniamted series. People don't like it when your Marketing strategy is proven wrong. http://www.trekrpg.net/Board/ubb/wink.gif Sometime it almost seems like the marketeers at Paramount are little brats who are mad that they have been proven wrong time and time again and refuse to change.

A TAS sourcebook would be very nice. Not that it will ever happen with the whole canonity issue, etc. Nevermind that TAS is listed with it's episodes at Startrek.com. But I digress.