With Saga Edition being the final Star Wars game from Wizards of the Coast, I am left wondering who will pick up the license now? Being that it is Star Wars it's not going to sit around long before someone grabs it and runs.
I had thought that it might go to White Wolf, as they are the only company that has a fan base near WotC, and they have an established system, though I have a very hard time seeing WW picking this up. Not to mention they aim at retarded, goth nerds that like vampires, not really the place for lightsabers and wookies, ya know? And after what they did to BESM, I really couldn't handle seeing what they do to Star Wars.
The other prime candidate is Paizo, the gang behind Pathfinder, they have the best track record with 3.5 and they have a huge fan base that is half WotC fans, which makes for an easy transfer. The shitty part about this is if it did happen, we might end up with Monte Cook's World of Star Wars, basically it's Revised Edition all over again. As much as I love D20, I don't think it's the place for Star Wars, but this seems like a very possible pairing.
After those two there isn't much left. I don't see Steve Jackson Games picking it up, since GURPS will let you play a Star Wars game without needing anything more than what is already out there. Catalyst Games is far too small for this license and the only system they have is Shadowrun, which wouldn't meld well at all. Pinnacle Entertainment is a very distant choice here, they are tiny and their system is much like GURPS, in that you don't need a Star Wars book to run a Star Wars campaign.
There is another group that could make a last ditch effort at picking this up, namely, Green Ronin. GR doesn't have a lot going right now, they have some games that they have handled well but without the hype machine to back them. If they landed Star Wars it could very easily make them into a formidable gaming company, after all they already have Mutants and Masterminds, Song of Fire and Ice, True20, and the new Dragon Age RPG. I don't know how possible this is but it might be LucasFilms' best choice, and it might be GR's only hope, as they have been scraping by since 4th Edition came out.
I have no idea what will happen with the Star Wars license and I don't believe we will see a new game in at least 4 years. However, I am hoping beyond hope that someone like GR picks it up since they would have the most to gain from making a solid and supported Star Wars game.
I just don't understand Wizards here... A 4th edition update might actually be pretty kick ass, but as it is, most other designers seem ready to build something better than their d20-based system. But as it is, their game is so popular I have trouble understanding why they'd let their monopoly go. Why give up the license?
ReplyDeleteIf Green Ronin picked up Dragon Age, it makes me wonder if they didn't campaign to get Star Wars, too, and have a longterm plan to become serious competition to Wizards. Wizards has been a serial fan-abuser for a long time, and there are any number of things an upstart could do to outflank them with cheaper, easier-to-play games. (Cheap, paperback character generation workbooks for one.) With a solid fantasy franchise and then a solid scifi franchise, they could be ready to go bigtime.
I actually picked up the Saga core rulebook yesterday, and I've been flipping through it... I love the simplifications I see from the original d20 conversion. Still... how easy is it to build a spacer who isn't a scoundrel? It feels like a bit more GURPy customization would be welcome.
Which brings me back to Wizards... in 3.0/3.5, you could build dozens of very different fighters, wizards, or clerics out of the original PHB, but this is hardly true with 4th edition, where brawler classes are split up over multiple PHBs. I smell the marketing department.