WotC News: Star Wars & Gamma World

[Mister Andersen]

4E Gamma World?

Amazon has a page up for a book intriguingly entitled "D&D Gamma World Roleplaying Game: A D&D Genre Setting". The details are sparse - it says it's a 152 age book, $39.99, slated for 19th October 2010 (although early Amazon details are often innaccurate).


No more Star Wars from WotC

(click to show/hide)

    There have been several questions lately regarding the future of the Star Wars Miniatures and Roleplaying Game and until now I haven't had definitive answers to give you. After a lengthy evaluation, Wizards of the Coast has decided not to renew the Star Wars license with Lucasfilm. We've had a long and fantastic run, but with the economic downturn, we have made the tough decision to discontinue our Star Wars lines.

    The license officially ends in May this year, with WotC product available through August. In the meantime, we have awesome new products still coming your way. This week, we released The Dark Times minis and Galaxy of Intrigue RPG. We'll have more coming with Masters of the Force minis in April, which will have some of your most favorite characters along with rare creatures from the Dejarik Holochess game that have never appeared in our game. We'll also release The Unknown Regions RPG in April, which includes entirely new planets and mini-adventures for each world.

    We are finishing the line with a bang so look for special programs at your local game store to stock up on favorite sets before they go into the vault. We will continue to support our Star Wars forums on the Wizards Community site so you can reach out and chat with us and other fans.

    While I know the news is disappointing, we wanted to make this announcement as soon as possible and thank you for being such great fans. It's been a fantastic ride with the Star Wars community and working with Lucasfilm. We hope you enjoy the next several months of great products. You never know when we may circle back again!

    Greg Yahn

    Director of Marketing, Wizards of the Coast

[glimmerrat]

Tut. Fucking Wizards.

[Wolverine]

Tut. Fucking Wizards.

To be fair, there are a lot of books already available for the latest iteration of the Star Wars RPG. More than enough to cover almost any sort of game you could want to play. The big downside is that they're no longer available in a PDF format (that I know of), which will make it even harder to get hold of them (legally) once the licence goes away.

[Mister Andersen]

I'd be happy to see the minis go to NECA's heroclix

[Nepenthe]

Tut. Fucking Wizards.

To be fair, there are a lot of books already available for the latest iteration of the Star Wars RPG. More than enough to cover almost any sort of game you could want to play. The big downside is that they're no longer available in a PDF format (that I know of), which will make it even harder to get hold of them (legally) once the licence goes away.

Yeah, guess I better pick the final ones up. I think this is actually a good move, in a lot of ways they managed to create the definitive d20 Star Wars game with this iteration - better to let it go than milk it with yet another reboot.

Wonder if it has been performing badly, or if they are replacing it with another license/non-licensed sci-fi property.

[Desertpuma]

Surprising that it happened now as opposed to a year or two ago

[ThunderMonkey]

It is kind of a stupid move, and I'm wondering if there's more to it than just Wizards saying: "We don't want to renew."

Considering Lucas' live-action Star Wars show is supposed to go up in the next year or so, there would be a renewed interest and at least some sort of reason to hold onto the License.

[Psion]

4E Gamma World?

Amazon has a page up for a book intriguingly entitled "D&D Gamma World Roleplaying Game: A D&D Genre Setting". The details are sparse

There was some info shared at DDXP about this. I'll let you all hunt the source up (can't do so at work myself), but Gamma World will have a collectible card component.

Ya, RLY.

[MilitiaJim]

...Gamma World will have a collectible card component.

Ya, RLY.

I have two responses to this:
1)  This is why we can't have nice things.
2)  When Jayne said it he was talking about eating people alive.  When I ask now I mention collectible games:  When does that become fun?

[Wolverine]

Wonder if it has been performing badly, or if they are replacing it with another license/non-licensed sci-fi property.

I believe it's more a money-management move on WotC's part. It's fair to say that the Star Wars licence would be one of the more expensive out there. Wizards have already put out a lot of profuct, and made a whole lot of money from it. It may have just been easier to wind down the RPG line now, instead of trying to keep it going with more and more books that would probably just be iterations of previous titles (Starships of the Galexy II, etc).

I don't know how well the miniatures line has been doing, but it has been around for a LONG time now. How many different Han Solo models do they really need to make? Plus, they never really fixed the problem of 'sabre-droop' that has plagued the models for some time now.