Designers and Dragons

[Blackhawk]

Wow. That's pretty impressive. If I ever make it back to your part of 'merica I'd like to stop by and see that. Purchasing copies on Ebay has turned out to be...prohibitive.

It is one of the later printings, so it isn't the super-valuable version, but it is still the original material in near-mint condition, and it is coming up on forty years old (!)

[hentzau]

I ran an epic Star Trek campaign back in college. We would reserve one of the meeting rooms in the dorm, and re-arrange the tables to resemble a bridge, facing a chalk board that we used as a screen and would draw pictures on it. When the away team would leave, they would stand under these recessed pot lights in the ceiling and we would flip the switches on and off to simulate the "transporter".

And yes, I still somehow got married.

[Smoove_B]

That's a great story.

According to this book, the Star Trek FASA material actually did very well until TNG TV show came out. It was at that point that Universal decided that the FASA materials didn't mesh with the new direction of the Star Trek universe and they decided not to renew the licensing agreement. The Wiki also indicates the perceived level of violence in the FASA game was cited as a reason. Clearly they didn't realize people were re-arranging dorm tables and playing with lights. I'm not really a Star Trek guy but I guess FASA created all kinds of new Star Trek universe stuff that didn't exist and might have conflicted with the TNG show. So strange to think a PnP role playing game would have any influence on a TV series, but I guess with Star Trek you have that rabid fan base.

[hentzau]

Back in the day, Star Trek had one of the best Character Generation systems I had come across. Started you at the academy, you made career choices, rolled for events through the academy and your early Star Fleet career, until you land at your ultimate rank and assignment. Really provided a lot of background for your character to get into.

[Blackhawk]

I've still got the FASA Star Trek books on my shelf, but I don't think I've ever used them for anything beyond building a character or two. I just never found anyone who was interested in going boldly.

[Smoove_B]

I'm now well into the Hero Games story and what I didn't know was how tied to ICE/Rolemaster the company was starting in 1986. I completely understand why I never played Champions - it was before my time in role playing games and I found D&D first. What I can't explain is how I didn't start up after the merger with ICE as I was someone that was playing Role Master and MERP (which was another great chapter, BTW). This book suggests the downfall of Hero Games really came from their merger with ICE and the fact that three of the people behind Champions were only really working on it part-time through 1988 or so -- they all had paying jobs at EA or SSI. By the time ICE more or less took over for Hero Games, the brand had taken a substantial hit. And then the overall industry began to tank (did you know that there was a paper price spike in the 1990s, raising publishing costs?).

What I also didn't know was that the Dark Age of Camelot MMO -- a game I was able to experience thanks to Rich and Gone Gold -- was originally based on the Rolemaster system but when ICE declared bankruptcy in 2000 Mythic pulled Rolemaster from the game design and came up with their own system. This book suggests it ultimately cost ICE about $7 million in licensing losses, based on game sales - money that would have helped them make it through the RPG meltdown in the early 90s that everyone was going through.

Regardless, just learning about the ICE/Rolemaster story was worth it for me as I was always confused as a kid playing MERP and trying to understand how it related back to Rolemaster. Turns out, that was one of their big problems - sort of needing to shoehorn MERP into the Rolemaster system. And similar to TSR, getting into regular book publishing (Tolkien Quest / Middle Earth Quest) almost bankrupted them. I think it was close to $3 million between lawsuits over the Tolkien IP and the losses on printing too many books. That's not chump change.

[Smoove_B]

Just saw that each book is now listed on Amazon Prime for $15.35 -- that's a link to the first one. There is a Kindle version for $9.99 available right now -- if you have holiday money burning a hole in your pocket.

I did finish the first two and the 80s was sort of a bittersweet read for me. As I surmised from reading the 70s, I really did get into role playing games at exactly the worst time -- right after DnD started to implode and right before the so-called second coming started in 1992/1993. I was happy to read just how important the Cthulhu and Paranoia games were to role playing games overall - at least in terms of how much they changed thing (I was a big fan of both), but just like the 1970s, there was so much that I missed.

[Blackhawk]

Wishlisted!

[IceBear]

There's a bundle of all 4 books in multiple formats on drivethrurpg.

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/1 ... Set-BUNDLE