[Idea] Lets Do Our Own Con Campaign

Worse than not changing Decipher's mind, I'm worried they might take the discussed actions to mean that we don't want them doing the game, in which case they drop the license and it either sits in limbo (who wants a Star Trek license when the major players are saying it's "dead pr dying"?) or gets picked up by yet ANOTHER company with a whole new set of rules/ideas that again makes the stuff we have and love obsolete. Maybe I'm taking more of a Next Gen view than a DS9 view, but I think there should be a showing at the convention that tells the Decipher guys that "Hey, we are not happy with being dangled around by the nose. We have not seen or heard of any RPG products or even what you plan to do with them for over a year. We are very frustrated." Again, this is just me, but I don't want Decipher to take their ball and go home, I want them to pick up a bat and start swinging at pitches...

(From another thread...)

Apparently release dates for the Decipher product lines were given at GAMA/GTS (annual trade show).

Note the lack of any Star Trek products. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Don Mappin

Ultimately I think we all know that this idea is something of a long shot. It would take a large effort to get something like this going plus a large commitment on our part. For example, more than five guys saying "good idea" and a sole person actually attending one of the major conventions. :)

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Ineti said he was attending Gen Con Indy. Rayaru said he was attending Origins. So there is more than one that have stated that they will attend one of the major convention.

Having demos of the system to get people interested in playing in our campaign would be a good idea. Find a retail vendor to cosponsor or split revenue for all sales of the Trek Coda RPG that we send their way. There were some earlier ideas I threw out with no coments made:

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Originally Posted by spshu

But talk about t-shirts, those would not be a bad idea if they had the TrekRPGnet logo on them. The t-shirts would be a good consolation or subsititute prize. Another idea would be for fan made netbooks (the ESO comes to mind) to be print at say cafepress.com or burned onto CD-ROM and offered as prizes.

Should we go for a multiple round event? Living campaign type? Probably pregenerated characters. Make how Enterprise the series should have been??

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As I pointed out earlier for Origins, we have an April 10 deadline to make their on site registration book, so work on the adventure should be paramount ;) . Even if the adventure is not used this year it can be used for the next year. No adventure no moving this plan forward.

The executives at Decipher, are they primary businessmen working with card-games or Card gamers/designers doing business? I guess it is the former. But if it is the later I would be lost, as I have never touched a CCG ot TCG in my life. I don't even know what they are about (well, I watched two of my friends play Magic almost a decade ago, but I got bored after 15 seconds :rolleyes: ).

Assuming we are talking about businessmen, the mindset probably is risk - effort - reward.

Why publish only LotR and not Trek.
* Only publishing one product insted of two gives a lesser risk.
* Enterprise got canceled. They are talking about making Bilbo. Free marketing, lesser risk.
* How many have you heard bashing the LotR movies?!? Lesser risk.
* If they don't look beyond their own forums, LotR has about twice as many posts. Using that information as base to calculate the possible market, lesser risk and higher reward.

Another possible point. My guess is that there are a higher precentage of old MERP player who are ready to change to CODA, than there is ICON player who are ready to change. As the already published material are mainly core books, they might not have the same sale figures.

Assuming any of my rambeling is at least remotely close, what can we do that persuades Decipher to resume Trek as well?

One idea that bounces around in my head is why try to get lure people away from Deciphers tables. If we could help Doug to fill the Decipher table, and fill one of our own. Sending a clear message that there is a market (a success would also include a subtle message that they don't have a clue how to read the market. But that would probably be to subtle :p )

I don't think there is any plan at Decipher to produce any new material, as that would raise the effort bar to much. As I don't think that a "give us material for free, and we will publish it for profit" is a viable business strategy, there has to be some other business model that both Decipher and writers will accept. Having some solid ideas to present if we can get their attention...

Where my opinion changes from the bulk of you (or maybe not) is that Coda Trek is already dead. Enterprise is on the way out, apparently the approval process at VCP is all messed up, and Trek -- as a whole -- just isn't in the mindset of consumers like it used to be. I've no doubt that the Trek books would recoup their production costs but I've seen nothing to say that Decipher thinks that way. They want to see CCG revenue numbers from their RPG lines. That just isn't going to happen. (And if it were, LotR is the only one to have a shot.)

All this adds up to a big tease on Decipher's part, shopping the line for the past year, and missed deadline after missed deadline. I'm not so much putting this idea forward in an effort to demonstrate to Decipher that there's a legitimate market for Coda Trek; I think that ship has already sailed.

People (the fan community) like a good drama. We're the little guys who've been sitting around for the better part of a year for some news. We've been lied to, mislead at best, and ignored at least. Casting Decipher as the villain is a handy way of rallying the troops for the Good Life After Decipher (GLAD). :)

Are we going to convince Decipher to ramp up production with a full crew and resume the schedule? Oh hell no. We'd be lucky to get them to even take notice. But it'd be a hell of a send off. :p

On the flip side, you could just as easily work with Decipher to try to boost attendance. The sad thing is (and I've seen this firsthand) if you don't get in the convention booklet schedule your game, for all intents and purposes, does not exist. This includes Decipher. Then there's the whole mindset of running conventions: running 10 games with 5 people on average is 50 potential customers. Do 50 people really make a difference? (Now we're headed into a whole other discussion on RPG marketting.)

I've rambled a bit but in closing, I don't think anything is going to cause Trek to return. Certainly nothing that we can do. Not unless any of us have about 10,000 close friends ready to place orders for the Core Books tonight. :)

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Originally posted by Don Mappin
Where my opinion changes from the bulk of you (or maybe not) is that Coda Trek is already dead. Enterprise is on the way out, apparently the approval process at VCP is all messed up, and Trek -- as a whole -- just isn't in the mindset of consumers like it used to be. I've no doubt that the Trek books would recoup their production costs but I've seen nothing to say that Decipher thinks that way. They want to see CCG revenue numbers from their RPG lines. That just isn't going to happen. (And if it were, LotR is the only one to have a shot.)

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It's very late and I've stayed up way past my bedtime (as usual) whiling away the hours with City of Heroes, but I have to say that this pretty much encapsulates my own take on the whole sordid mess. Star Trek - largely due to the actions of a couple of individuals whom I will not name here - has fallen into a doldrum period in the public's - and therefore the business community's - eyes. Too much of it? No; the market was triple-saturated with TNG, DS9, and VOY for a while, and nobody seemed to feel that the sky was falling back then. Of course, the overall quality level was considerably higher for a couple of those series than the one currently being nailed in the coffin, but we won't go there.

A similar situation that comes to mind is the movie industry back in '85; the Western, at that time, was popularly touted as an obsolete artform - you couldn't tell interesting stories with it anymore, and even if you could, no one would come to watch it. The conventional wisdom on this issue held firm...until a certain Mr. C. Eastwood came out that summer with Pale Rider, and block-long lineups were the result. Since then, the Western has had its good days and its bad...but it's never fallen into obscurity the way the studio executives were predicting it would. I have a feeling that a similar fate awaits Star Trek, including televised/cinema and RPG versions: after ENT's demise and B & B move on to greener pastures, it'll go underground for a while, and the pundits will cluck their tongues, stroke their beards, and wonder "Whither Star Trek?", and finally someone will take it into their head to actually take a chance on telling a good story with this format, and the Phoenix will rise again. It may take several years, but as for the final result, I'd bet the farm on it.

It's very easy (or easier than for some) for me to write, since my gaming group and I only used DecipherTrek to fill in the blanks on what LUGTrek left unaddressed, but I believe that Don is pretty much right on the money with this: Creatures was the last hardcopy work we'll ever see from Decipher, and the poor scattering of on-line adventures the last, shoddy attempt made to maintain faith with the fans. If there are to be any other Trek RPG works - like another movie, or televised series - it'll be handled by people we've never heard of before, and given a treatment that differs about as strongly from Coda as Coda did from Icon.

That's it. Nighty-night. :)

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Originally Posted by Don Mappin

People (the fan community) like a good drama. We're the little guys who've been sitting around for the better part of a year for some news. We've been lied to, mislead at best, and ignored at least. Casting Decipher as the villain is a handy way of rallying the troops for the Good Life After Decipher (GLAD). :)

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And we need to cast Decipher as the villain among the fan community? I thought they already had that role ;)
But who would we rally with drama, and would we want the drama to continue here?

If nothing else, a good run at the convention would assure the fan base that no matter if Decipher abandon Trek RPG or not, it will not die. We might also manage to increase the fan base. After all, there is a lot of roleplayers who like to watch Trek.

Is there any chance that Decipher picks up the ball? Maybe, maybe not. But if not, it is the same work to increase the chance that someone else will pick it up, when Decipher no longer hold the license. As long prestige don't enter the equation, there will be more boats.

As I have never been to a gaming convention as the ones we are talking about here (this sounds like a trade fair, but about gaming?). What would we need, except the booth fee, to pull anything off?

On the Decipher boards they announced the Trek adventures:

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Trek RPG:

"Perdition's Flames" by Doug Burke and Don Mappin. The discovery of a rogue planet, a missing Federation starship, and an unstoppable creature that feeds on hatred and violence is the background for a roleplaying adventure that will challenge even the most experienced gamer!

"Pieces of You" by Dave Biggins. A maverick scientist conducts mysterious experiments while at Deep Space Nine, opening a dangerous portal into another realm. Can the players undo the damage before it's too late, or is something more sinister going on?

"The Crusoe Effect" by Dave Biggins. The crew of the U.S.S. Hood must rescue the castaways of an ill-fated runabout that crashed on a planet. Unfortunately, a primitive civilization lives on the planet, posing special restrictions on the crew. Can the crew locate and rescue the survivors while preserving the Prime Directive?

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Yes, these are the same adventures from two and three years ago when I was running the Con demos!

To give you an idea of how old "The Crusoe Effect" is: it was a LUG adventure and was used during playtesting of Coda. It's over five years old. :rolleyes: Is it that hard to write a Con adventure?

Sad.

I remember the Crusoe Effect, it was... an ICON link (or whatever those "i" thingies were called)!!!

Don't YOU have the rights over these adventures?

Decipher sure boldly goes where noone has gone before. :mad:

I'm planning on going to Origins...I'd love to do some Trek RPG there, time constraints notwithstanding. I had gotten a bunch of ICON stuff a while ago, but haven't gotten around to playing yet (no time or other players :( )

Well the deadlines have come and gone for Orgins (4/10) & GenCon Indy (4/11). I take it that we have not going forward with this for 2005. Unless we go to GenCon SoCal in November or try to use open gaming space (if any is available), we might as well start planning for 2006. On another note, I do not see any Trek RPG events run by Decipher yet.