Do we even need Decipher anymore?

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Originally posted by jened
oops found it. trek rpg license agreement was for 5 years

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Indeed. Don alerted us to the fact that the Trek license was "purportedly" for five years back in Sept. '00, when the annoucement about the acquisition was first made. Working this out on a percent-per-month basis, I believe that as of now, Decipher is officially two-thirds of the way through their tenure.

Can't say they've distinguished themselves terribly much during that period.

I strongly suspect that once Decipher's official RPG death notice and obituary have been publicized and filed away, Paramount/Viacom will recind the rights and begin trolling for new prospects. Who knows - maybe this is what WotC was waiting for all along: give the hot new gun in town enough time to strut their stuff, screw up, self-destruct, and let the older, more experienced warhorse move in to pick up the pieces and start doing what they do best again. It may be total pipe-dream stuff, but...golly, it'd be nice to see all that LUG material (currently in suspended animation) unthawed and released on an unsuspecting world. Just imagine...:)

Trek...d20....*shudder*

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Originally posted by BouncyCaitian
Trek...d20....*shudder*

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I see that *shudder*, and raise you an *uunngghhh*

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Originally posted by aelius
I see that *shudder*, and raise you an *uunngghhh*

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Why? What makes you think that someone can't make a good d20/OGL Trek game? No one ever thought you could do it with superheroes, yet Green Ronin produced a phenomenal game.

No, I wouldn't want to run Trek using 3.5 straight out of the book. But d20 Trek isn't going to look very different from Coda Trek.

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Originally posted by D.S.McBride
It may be total pipe-dream stuff, but...golly, it'd be nice to see all that LUG material (currently in suspended animation) unthawed and released on an unsuspecting world. Just imagine. . . :)

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Amen brother!

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Originally posted by redwood973
Amen brother!

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Thank you. For those who experienced the Sideshow Bob "Geeyarrrahuh" at the thought of d20 Trek, please rest assured I am praying that - if LUGTrek Blood and Honor, Glass Darkly et al are ever released - Wizards does not see fit to put those works through the not-so-tender mercies of the conversion machine. Coda was hard enough a pill to swallow; as I've related (ad nauseum) in previous posts, my group and I never did take to it. A d20 Trek version would be, I think, a poor match at best.

Geeyarrahuh. :)

Sighs. And the d20/OGL skepticism continues...

Ah, well. At least for now, I'm getting a good laugh, that is until Decipher finally begins to wise up.

:devil's smiley:

I think Solo made an excellent suggestion earlier in the thread. Why don't we post a list of all the net books that are already available? As a fairly clueless member of this forum, I know that I would certainly benefit from such a list.

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Originally posted by Sea Tyger
Why? What makes you think that someone can't make a good d20/OGL Trek game? No one ever thought you could do it with superheroes, yet Green Ronin produced a phenomenal game.

No, I wouldn't want to run Trek using 3.5 straight out of the book. But d20 Trek isn't going to look very different from Coda Trek.

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I will agree that CODA and d20 have agreat deal in common. However, d20 gives you a schedule for the advancement of your character. Whether you want your character to acquire those abilities then or at all, you get them. CODA allows you to decide what sequence you get your abilities in. The only limits are a few prerequisites, and they make sense. While I will grant that CODA is not as flexable as, say, GURPS. It is also nowhere near as complex.
I feel that CODA is an excellent compromise between simplicity of play and "realism". So to speak.
d20, on the other hand, is extremely limiting. Whenever I have played a d20 game i have always felt hemmed in by the limits on when I get feats (edges for CODA folk) and the fact that class abilities (professional abilities to CODA folk) come only when your class progression chart says they do.
As to Mutants and Masterminds, I like it. It is much closer to CODA, you get points to spend at each level and can buy most anything you want. If that varient of d20 were used it would be okay, but you know it would not be.
And I think I have rambled on long enough, I didn't mean to go on a tirade. I know that d20 is popular with many, including a number of my friends. I will even play it, if the setting is compelling enough. Oh well, If they do a d20 version I already have the CODA conversion for d20.:D

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Originally posted by cerebrolator
I think Solo made an excellent suggestion earlier in the thread. Why don't we post a list of all the net books that are already available? As a fairly clueless member of this forum, I know that I would certainly benefit from such a list.

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I couldn't agree more :D And I don't think that just us clueless will benefit... :rolleyes:

Right now I just have the link for one netbook, but the greatest in my opinion...

Killerwhale's Expanded Spacecraft Operations: http://rpg.lionelkw.com/trek/eso.htm

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Originally posted by Solo
So what if we just create a list of all netbooks available with links to support fan created books? A sticky just like the erratas to give so publicity to the authors.

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Someone has already done this awhile ago. It was never made a sticky thread. It was where I downloaded all my copies of the fan made .pdf's that I have.

I was unable to find it just now, but I will search again latter when I have more time. However, if I remember right the last time I looked at that thread most of the links it had were dead.

If someone wanted to make a new thread. . .the old one would be a good place to start. . .it listed the title and author for each .pdf file it listed.

My "best case" (in my not-so-humble-opinion, of course!) situation would be the licence going to AEG or Mongoose.

Spycraft, SG-1 and Babylon 5 are all d20, and all sensational.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I am no fan of d20 but I really really wanted to see Star Trek d20.

Call me crazy :)

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Originally posted by D.S.McBride

Indeed. Don alerted us to the fact that the Trek license was "purportedly" for five years back in Sept. '00, when the annoucement about the acquisition was first made.

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Actually, the first announcement was made at GenCon 2000 in August, and it took me by surprise. The LUG's license (acquired by WotC) was good for up to December 2000.

Who knows? Another game company can make an announcement at GenCon 2005 (July) that they got the Trek license, despite that Decipher's license is still good for up to December 2005.

[size=0.5]Hehehehehe.[/size]

You mean GenCon 2004, not 2005, don't you?

Maybe Viacom will found its own RPG company. They are such a greedy bunch of people when it comes to selling Trek merchandise that they will produce at least one book a month. :D

is there actually a company out there who thinks they can make more money than decipher at this? maybe trek rpg just isn't profitable for a company to even want to produce.

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Originally posted by Ergi

You mean GenCon 2004, not 2005, don't you?

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I initially thought so while I was posting, but then I remembered if the LUG's license expired on December 31, 2000, then Decipher's license became effective on January 1, 2001. A five-year period would mean that it is expected to expire by either December 31, 2005 (less likely, IMO) or January 1, 2006 (more likely, IMO).

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Maybe Viacom will found its own RPG company. They are such a greedy bunch of people when it comes to selling Trek merchandise that they will produce at least one book a month. :D

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I think it is more cost-effective for them to license out the IP (with strict conditions such as reviewing and approving material), so they can just sit back and wait for their regularly scheduled royalty payments coming in, rather than invest their own money and resources running a RPG company and all the expenses.

If anything, they should at least learn the mistakes made with Marvel Entertainment who tried to publish their own Marvel Universe RPG (it was short-lived).

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Originally posted by jened

is there actually a company out there who thinks they can make more money than decipher at this? maybe trek rpg just isn't profitable for a company to even want to produce.

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If they are, they're not disclosing nor displaying such interest out in public ... yet.

btw,
does anyone know if there is a clause in the trek/lotr contract that decipher must make X products per year ?

Only Decipher management knows the specific details of each of the two contracts.

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Originally posted by Capt. Anderson
Question is: Who would want the cursed ST line? As a long time Trek fan and a bandwagon fan of LotR since 2001, I would venture a guess that WoC might want Star Trek line.

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Lucas won't allow WotC to make a Star Trek RPG and still keep a Star Wars RPG. (Apparently, it's personal). Given that, then, frankly, as a business, Star Wars makes more sense. Trek isn't nearly as popular as it once was.

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I couldn't bring myself to purchase ST in the D20 setting. Setting 16 on phaser doing 3D8 damage and crits on a 19-20. :rolleyes:

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I think that d20 would really only suffer because of the concept of character levels. Combat wise, it's pretty swift and clear, so that part wouldn't be a huge deal. But explaining how a 10th level Ensign has to take orders from a 2nd level Lieutenant may be a pisser. :)

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Originally posted by jened
is there actually a company out there who thinks they can make more money than decipher at this? maybe trek rpg just isn't profitable for a company to even want to produce.

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Well, considering that even the biggest RPG out there right now is on a shoe-string budget, as soon as you tack on the very large licensing fees to the Trek franchise, you can easily the hesistation to go for an official Trek RPG. Prime Directive skirts this for other, quite convoluted, reasons.

Personally, I think that the chances of a new and official Trek RPG coming out are pretty slim until ENT is off the air and the next movie is officially shelved. The license fees have to come down to this side of utterly-rediculous.

Particularly for the bad return they're getting right now.

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Originally posted by koraldon
btw,
does anyone know if there is a clause in the trek/lotr contract that decipher must make X products per year ?

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In general agreements of this type are pretty 'flat-fee' for 'so many uses'. There wouldn't be a 'you must make at least' clause, more than likely, but a 'you cannot make more than' clause with some stipulations onto what those pieces are.

Of course, additional material could have an 'extension' to the license, particularly if the license holder (Viacom/Paramount) wanted to push the license a little harder for some reason.

Has anyone from Lucasfilm, Viacom, WotC, Decipher, or someone similar ever confirmed that WotC can't have both the Trek and Star Wars licenses? I've heard it said many times but I can't recall hearing it from an official source...

d20 Trek would depend on how you implemented it. D&D Trek would kinda stink, as would Star Wars Trek... However, using something like Mongoose's Babylon 5 as a starting point would be pretty reasonable (10th level characters able to be killed from a single shot or a well-placed sword blow). I'd probably dial down the grittiness a little with something like Courage Points to protect heroes from dice (as Trek seems a bit more "swashbuckling" than B5, though far less so than Star Wars).

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Has anyone from Lucasfilm, Viacom, WotC, Decipher, or someone similar ever confirmed that WotC can't have both the Trek and Star Wars licenses? I've heard it said many times but I can't recall hearing it from an official source...

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I don't think that there's a specific letter or anything that's out, but I have heard it from WOTC and Hasbro's employees directly, and Lucas is pretty well known to dislike all things 'Trek'.

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d20 Trek would depend on how you implemented it. D&D Trek would kinda stink, as would Star Wars Trek...

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There is a fantasy game I was just looking at that handles it fairly well, since the emphasis is on ship-to-ship combat, exploration, and all. It is, of course, still fantasy, but it really showed that a 'Kirk-Style' Trek setting could be done.

So long as the mechanics are written and explained with Trek in mind, I really don't see a problem inherent in most of the rules, except...

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I'd probably dial down the grittiness a little with something like Courage Points to protect heroes from dice (as Trek seems a bit more "swashbuckling" than B5, though far less so than Star Wars). [/B]

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Well, if you look at Trek, there isn't a lot of prolonged firefights going on, for a reason. To mirror the 'feel' of Trek, you would have adventures and setting material that emphasized the use of skills over the use of phasers.

That said, the 'one-shot one-kill' mentality works for fiction and TV, but it's terrible for games. I mean, who wants to play a James T Kirk that gets killed by a collapsing brid... erm.. scratch that.

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Maybe Viacom will found its own RPG company. They are such a greedy bunch of people when it comes to selling Trek merchandise that they will produce at least one book a month. :D

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I dunno. Seems like these days that there's much less Star Trek material coming out than in the 1970's , 1980's and early 1990's... very few new books, very little licensed materials. It took ages just to get the Polar Lights model kids out.

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Originally posted by Dan Stack
Has anyone from Lucasfilm, Viacom, WotC, Decipher, or someone similar ever confirmed that WotC can't have both the Trek and Star Wars licenses? I've heard it said many times but I can't recall hearing it from an official source...

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It's absurd and ignorant speculation. Absurd because no-one at Lucas or Paramount cares about RPGs, and ignorant because both licenses have been under one roof before (Decipher, for Christ's sake, it's not like it's an obscure company we've never heard of).

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Originally posted by TFVanguard
I dunno. Seems like these days that there's much less Star Trek material coming out than in the 1970's , 1980's and early 1990's... very few new books, very little licensed materials. It took ages just to get the Polar Lights model kids out.

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I don't know about that. The recent Star Trek novels have been both plentiful and overall, well written.

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It's absurd and ignorant speculation. Absurd because no-one at Lucas or Paramount cares about RPGs, and ignorant because both licenses have been under one roof before (Decipher, for Christ's sake, it's not like it's an obscure company we've never heard of).

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Damn, I guess everyone involved is a bunch of liars then.

I don't know reasons behind it, but Lucasarts was explicit that they didn't want an RPG put out by the same company as a Star Trek RPG. This is pretty long-standing situation, dating back to WEG.

It's usually been attributed to Lucas's hostility to Star Trek (which is no big secret), but there hasn't been any specifics really given out about it.

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Originally posted by Ineti
I don't know about that. The recent Star Trek novels have been both plentiful and overall, well written.

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Plentiful? There's been a few, but it doesn't compare with the sheer number of stuff awhile back ago. I'm not saying that it's Viacom's fault - there are other factors (such as increased printing prices and decreased demand for print books overall), just that there seems to be less new out there than there used to be.

Which reminds me, is there an ongoing Star Trek comic still?

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Originally posted by TFVanguard
Damn, I guess everyone involved is a bunch of liars then.

I don't know reasons behind it, but Lucasarts was explicit that they didn't want an RPG put out by the same company as a Star Trek RPG. This is pretty long-standing situation, dating back to WEG.

It's usually been attributed to Lucas's hostility to Star Trek (which is no big secret), but there hasn't been any specifics really given out about it.

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Who do you think is "everyone involved?" Give me some names.

I don't know who you were listening to, but no-one at either Lucas or Paramount know or care about who has the other's RPG license. RPG licenses are roughly as significant to these companies as toothbrush licenses.

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Originally posted by TFVanguard
Plentiful? There's been a few, but it doesn't compare with the sheer number of stuff awhile back ago.

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Two to three novels a month isn't enough for you?

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Originally posted by TFVanguard
.....
It's usually been attributed to Lucas's hostility to Star Trek (which is no big secret), but there hasn't been any specifics really given out about it.

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Let's see.. Industrial Light and Magic did several Star Trek films. By the way, who owns that company? :rolleyes:

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Originally posted by TFVanguard
Damn, I guess everyone involved is a bunch of liars then.

I don't know reasons behind it, but Lucasarts was explicit that they didn't want an RPG put out by the same company as a Star Trek RPG. This is pretty long-standing situation, dating back to WEG.

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Re-ally? Name names. Give us citations. Who, officially, said what?

I call "Urban Legend."

BTW,
LOTSA books out there.

And I should know. I buy most of them.

The rate of publication of Star Trek books used to be one a month, back in the mid 90's or so when I started collecting (It seemed like more because I started collecting late). Now we're verging on triple that, or more.

There'll be sixteen NEW books between now and the end of the year, and that's not counting "non-fiction" books, game books, e-Books, paperback reprints of hardbacks, and the new omnibus editions.
(And yes, a collection of the Gold Key comics)

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just that there seems to be less new out there than there used to be.

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Perhaps your local distributor sucks.

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Originally posted by First of Two
Re-ally? Name names. Give us citations. Who, officially, said what?

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Two ex-employees of WOTC, now doing work for other companies for d20 work. Another person mentioned it is a lawyer for Hasbro, Inc. I can't cite more specific than that. This came to a head with LUG's acquisition.

I'm not really sure what the reason is, since the relationship has been acceptable with toys, other games, books, and - as pointed out - effects houses. Yet, for some reason, the RPG problem still remains.

I also doubt, seriously, that there's any legal paper stating such. It may have also been grossly overstated as to why. But WOTC said that they couldn't do a d20 Star Trek game because Lucas did not want it along with Star Wars.

It was a running joke tha the 'real' reason was that Lucas didn't want a big 'competition' with stats and rules between the Star Wars and Star Trek universe (according to this book, the Enterprise can kick a Star Destroyers ass!)... I could almost see this as a reason, though.. who wants to put up with that?

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The rate of publication of Star Trek books used to be one a month, back in the mid 90's or so when I started collecting (It seemed like more because I started collecting late). Now we're verging on triple that, or more.

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I'm probably thinking more of the 'golden years', when I was much more into collecting material. I'm not saying there's a derth, just an apparent slowdown.

Of course, I'm basing on this on what I see on shelves. It's possible that these things are almost handled like periodicals now, with limited shelf-life per book. Would explain much, and it's not all that unusual right now...

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Originally posted by TFVanguard
Two ex-employees of WOTC, now doing work for other companies for d20 work. Another person mentioned it is a lawyer for Hasbro, Inc. I can't cite more specific than that. This came to a head with LUG's acquisition.

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I can be very specific. My name's Matthew Colville. I worked, full time, at LUG, WotC, and Decipher and I've dealt directly with both Paramount and Lucas. What you're claiming you heard is absurdly wrong. Wrong on the order of "Lucas won't let Ken Hite work on the RPG because he once slammed Star Wars online." It's laughably absurd.

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Originally posted by mattcolville
I can be very specific. My name's Matthew Colville. I worked, full time, at LUG, WotC, and Decipher and I've dealt directly with both Paramount and Lucas. What you're claiming you heard is absurdly wrong. Wrong on the order of "Lucas won't let Ken Hite work on the RPG because he once slammed Star Wars online." It's laughably absurd.

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I hadn't heard the second bit. From what I can gather (and I never have pushed this), there was some tension involved with LUG's buyout. Was there just some comment passed about the matter not being worth the hassle?

I'm not saying that Lucas came down on high and said "Trek sucks, make it and I'm going home", and I would never believe that would be the jist of the conversation ... but that there may have been some extra cost or some other stipulations that WOTC wasn't willing to deal with? Maybe Lucas(insert company suffix here) just didn't want them to have the same system involved?

(Remember, the guys I talk to are largely lawyer-licensing types, and they generally just say things like 'It wasn't worth it' and then just let it drop. Unfortunately, they're also notorious for not plugging rumors when they should, either.)

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Originally posted by TFVanguard
I'm probably thinking more of the 'golden years', when I was much more into collecting material. I'm not saying there's a derth, just an apparent slowdown.

Of course, I'm basing on this on what I see on shelves. It's possible that these things are almost handled like periodicals now, with limited shelf-life per book. Would explain much, and it's not all that unusual right now... [/B]

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I guess your local bookstores don't carry a lot of the books, then. Five of the major chain stores I can think of off the top of my head near me (northern VA) are stocked with Trek books. All the latest ones, and much of the backlist as well. That's several shelves worth of Trek books, easily 80-100 titles or more. And at least 2-3 new ones every month. There's no shortage of Trek fiction hitting shelves. Sorry to hear your area seems to be missing out. They must be hoarding them here in VA. :)

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Originally posted by Ineti
There's no shortage of Trek fiction hitting shelves. Sorry to hear your area seems to be missing out. They must be hoarding them here in VA. :)

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Well, I can only hazard a guess that they keep the Trek books in limited numbers each, and just don't replace ones that eventually sell. There's usually about two shelves full in all the major book stores around.

The used book stores, of course, have hordes. So there isn't a shortage of material for me, natch. Just didn't seem like there was a lot of new stuff compared to the 'golden age'.

Fully prepared to admit (and take some solace in) being wrong about a downturn based on the shipping lists pointed out to me, though. :>

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Originally posted by TFVanguard
I hadn't heard the second bit. From what I can gather (and I never have pushed this), there was some tension involved with LUG's buyout. Was there just some comment passed about the matter not being worth the hassle?

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Tension between who and who? Listen, the people at Lucas were no more aware of or interested in the LUG buyout than they would have been about your sister getting married.

I'm going to be frank; I think you're making this crap up. I don't think you've talked to any "lawyers" for either side. I think you got this from some message board somewhere or some idiot at a game store and figure that since no-one here knows you, you can act like you have some direct experience of the issues.

As someone who's job was these issues on a daily basis, the things you're putting forward are nonsense.