Slashdot Mirror
Battlestar Galactica Pen and Paper RPG
gerbalblaste writes "Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. has reached an agreement with Universal Studios Consumer Products Group to produce roleplaying game products based on the enormously successful, critically-acclaimed television series, Battlestar Galactica. Weis' company is known primarily for the recent release of the Serenity Role-Playing Game. From the article: 'The game book will be a full-color hardcover book featuring still images from the series as well as original artwork. It will provide rules for play, character creation, and information about the ship and crew of Galactica as well as the other main characters from the show. A Quickstart Guide will be released in early 2007 with the core product premiering in the spring. Additional products will closely follow the release of the core product. The entire line will be supported by an interactive website. Jamie Chambers (Dragonlance Campaign Setting, Serenity Role Playing Game) is helping lead a team of writers and designers dedicated to re-creating the excitement, drama, and danger of the groundbreaking television series.'"
I don't really agree with anything that you've said.
I've run many games in D&D, A D&D 1st and 2nd ed. and have played in several Shadowrun campaigns. I've got to say, that in each instance, the books, etc just gave a world to play in. Canon, etc was pretty much ignored and everything came from the guy/gal running the game.
This IMO is how table top RPG's should be. You give the player(s) a world to play in, and let them go. The only thing that the game should enforce is the limitations from equipment, fighting ability, etc. But, why should it restrict what must happen in game entirely? That really wouldn't be very fun.
Oh, and BSG doesn't necessarily account for anyone. After all, there was that other Battlestar running around. Who's to say that there isn't another one running around? Who's to say that there isn't other civilian ship(s) running around either?
Personally, I'm going to reserve judgement until I actually see the thing.
To be fair, this team produced an excellent game in Serenity that doesn't really restrict the players or the game masters. My group has been playing this game for a while and we've had an excellent run of it. We've had problems with licensed games in the past (or at least, I have), but we aren't running into any of those problems here. I think that Margaret Weis and Jamie Chambers have worked out a few of the problems that tend to come with licensed games.
Easy Online Role Playing Campaign Management
Well as the subject implies, I'm very hopeful that they'll be able to pull this project off and the RPG community will be able to add another quality product to our shelves, after seeing how the Serenity RPG was handled I won't be holding my breath (for too long).
:-p
I was one of those overly enthusiastic types that bought the first printing of the Serenity RPG, while it IS a good system of play and I enjoy playing and writing modules/campaigns for it, the initial editing of the book left quite a bit to be desired.
The first THREE printings of the book lacked two basic, major items for any RPG - character sheet and index. The need for both, I hope, is self-explanatory. If not - the inclusion of a character sheet screams 'obvious'. Every system has its own little quirks and ways of things interacting, the character sheet is the most basic way for all those things to be tied together in a neat little package, making it easier (not necessarily *easy*) for players, especially new players, to understand how to play the character's numbers - that way the player doesn't always have to know every rule/line from the book. And as for the index, how can you create something as complex as a roleplaying gaming system and expect players to flip through the entire book or read an entire chapter to find the details of, say, 'Dodge'. An index is crucial, enough said.
To add insult to injury, it took them almost a year to publish both of these items as 'free bonus material' on the Serenity RPG website. Add the fact that there were few to no examples of just about anything involving rolling the dice (no combat example, no flight maneuvering examples, nadda...) had the players pretty much making up the rules as they went along. I'm all for free form RPG (I'm a gamer after all), but not after paying a good sum of money for a system that should have been (more) complete at release. I really believe the game was play tested by those that wrote the system - already being intimately knowledgeable of how things *should* work, they missed the obvious failings in the book. Unfortunately, unlike computer/console games, the publisher can't just release a patch - they have to release a completely new printing/edition.
All that said, I do think it's a great system and love playing, but the book wasn't the best. If MW can do better with the BSG, I'll be impressed. But being the geeky little fanboy I am, I'll probably rush out and buy the first edition/printing of the BSG RPG book anyway.