[News] Decipher RPG Product Lines Transferred

[prophetsteve]

"Decipher still has all the licenses it had last week. They didn't announce that they were canceling the lines, which is what makes me think they're going to take the dozen+ books they had finished, and print them."

Or they could do like they did like they did with Fasa just before Earthdawn was cancelled. They tried to sell the licensing rights to another company with the draw that they had the "Dragons" sourcebook already completed and laid-out. So the new company would already have a release ready when they took over.

Unfortunately that didn't work out and Earthdwn was completely cancelled until Living Room Games got the rights much much later. LRG is still promising Dragons in print but who knows when that will happen.

So, Decipher could look to another company to produce the RPG with the selling points of having a developed game system, an established fanbase, and over a dozen sourcebooks completed (or near completion). I might be a good sell to a medium-sized company wishing to expand their market.

[prophetsteve]

think there would be an anti-sub-contracting clause out there. . . especially for Star Trek. The only reason the Star Fleet Battles universe exists , and material is still published for it, is because of a legal screw up with the licensing deal with Franz Joseph Designs for the Star Fleet Technical Manual.

I think the sticking point with SFB is not that it was sublicensed, but that because of a legal oversight on the part of Paramount, Viacom had no approval rights over what was being published and was getting no royalties from the sale.

I don't think there would be an anti-sub-licensing clause in the contract, I just think that Viacom would cover its corporate ass-ets by giving themselves veto rights.

As long as Viacom/Paramount got to review any publications and approve them, and get their licensing money and royalties, I don't think the company would have any problem.

Acutally, look at a lot of the licensed computer games out there - Activision has the rights to the Trek license (or did have it) but few games are made by Activision themselves. They tend to subcontract them out to small game design studios to do the actual work and Activision then markets and distributes the game. So I think we see a precident for that sort of thing in the games industry as a whole.

[Balok]

We know, or at least suspect, that Paramount has approval rights over any game material -- Decipher employees at one point mentioned that the approval cycle caused some delays.

I would be surprised if Paramount didn't also have some sort of clause to the effect that they have the right to approve creative personnel -- which would certainly give them a right to approve a subcontractor.

At the least, they could simply tell Decipher nothing will be approved if they subcontract it, which amounts to the same thing. Then the property would lie fallow until Decipher's license ran out. That wouldn't bother Paramount much, but it would bother Decipher a lot.

So I'm sure Decipher will seek approval before they make this move.

[Cochrane]

I don't suppose GURPS could end up publishing official Trek in addition to PD. Isn't that where Ken Hite is?

[Balok]

Ken Hite is currently working for Steve Jackson, yes.

I haven't read Prime Directive, so I don't know how well GURPS fits with it. But one potential problem is the incredibly fine grained nature of GURPS skills: Trek characters tend to be more renaissance men. You'd probably also need to simplify GURPS combat, which is optimized for medieval (ie. swords and shields) situations.

[Capt. Anderson]

If B&B don't care about Trek cannon what's with the delays. Just rubber stamp the thing and move on. I'm telling you, the Klingon book is cursed.

[Chris Landmark]

Originally posted by Fesarius
We know, or at least suspect, that Paramount has approval rights over any game material -- Decipher employees at one point mentioned that the approval cycle caused some delays.

Definitely the case. In both counts, I'm sure.

On a semi-related note, at our weekly gaming session this past weekend, one of my players told me that he'd heard (yep, we're well into the legal definition of hearsay) that part of the Trek license was that Paramount got to decide the number of Trek books that Decipher publishes per year. Resulting in Decipher having the last quarter of the calender year with books piling up in the development pipe but no actual publication to get them into our hot little hands.

Unsubstantiated rumor? Conspiracy theory? The effects of gasoline on fire? You decide.

-Chris Landmark

[REG]

Well, if they know how much books they can publish per year, they should be able to plan each book's development well, including the reviewing process by Paramount.

It's the same with Wizards of the Coast and their Star Wars license with Lucasfilm Licensing, although their word are "at least X books per year," not "no more than X books..."

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Actually the Star Wars RPG license stipulates 3 to 5 books a year - so both "no more" and "no less." But if there's one thing WotC is quite good at, it's planning and scheduling their lines. Of course they also have the advantage of higher printing priority compared to a lot of the smaller companies.

[REG]

Why? Decipher and Wizards of the Coast both use the same bookprinting company?

[First of Two]

Well, I've sent my letter to Dec's customer service, as nicely-worded as I could possibly make it. I told them I bought their products, had ordered Worlds, and wanted to buy more Star Trek products in the future.

All I asked for was a reassurance that the ST:RPG line would continue.

Now, we wait and see.

[AslanC]

Originally posted by REG
Why? Decipher and Wizards of the Coast both use the same bookprinting company?

Yup both use (as does 98% of RPGs and Comics) a company called Quebecor in Montreal.

For us Canadians this defies logic as the books are printed here, shipped to the US and then shipped back to Canada.

Though there have been a few instances where the books were allowed to be shipped from Quebecor to the Canadian distributors.

[Treefrog]

Originally posted by Sho-sa Kurita
Actually the Star Wars RPG license stipulates 3 to 5 books a year - so both "no more" and "no less." But if there's one thing WotC is quite good at, it's planning and scheduling their lines. Of course they also have the advantage of higher printing priority compared to a lot of the smaller companies.

Plus you also have to consider that WotC was able to extend their license with LFL an additional 10 years. The Star Wars rpg line license will end sometime between 2010 and 2015 (I think).

AIA, WotC is extremely good at getting their products out in a timely manner. If there is a delay, it usually will be announced regularly. One instance I can think of is that the Ultimate Adversaries was originally supposed to be released in the 1st Quarter FY2004. It was announced in the 4th Quarter FY2003 that that particular book was delayed, and wouldn't be released until June 2004, instead of December 2003. So although those of us that regularly play Star Wars d20 wouldn't be able to take advantage of the uses for this book, at least WotC was considerate enough of their customers to notify them that the book in question was going to be delayed (unlike a couple of different companies: LUG and Decipher).

[prophetsteve]

So although those of us that regularly play Star Wars d20 wouldn't be able to take advantage of the uses for this book, at least WotC was considerate enough of their customers to notify them that the book in question was going to be delayed (unlike a couple of different companies: LUG and Decipher).

And that is my own personal pet peeve with some gaming companies - some of them are so tightlipped that the players have no idea what the heck is going on with them.

I mean, there is no need to give us insider information or trade secrets but man, just let us know the status of the books.

Decipher had a huge problem with that but I thought it was getting better - Jesse and Jeff were pretty vocal on various forums and Doug as always did what he could get keep us in "the know".

Now J & J are gone, the RPG studio is closed, and Decipher is as tight-lipped as ever. Luckily we still have Doug but I don't think he is getting any more info than the rest of us

There are days when I wish that Wizards had kept the Trek license. The game would have been d20 but at least we'd be getting 3-5 books a year guarenteed. Sigh

[Ergi]

Originally posted by prophetsteve

There are days when I wish that Wizards had kept the Trek license. The game would have been d20 but at least we'd be getting 3-5 books a year guarenteed. Sigh

I am beginning to share that wish. All it would have taken us to do in order to have a class-less system is convert the skills, feats and attack modifiers into a point-based character creation system and everyone would have been happy. PLUS, customer support, in the form of information and web-anhancements, is excellent.