Licensed Games - huh, they got good...

[Totally Guy]

Is it just me or are a lot of the big hits coming in at the moment based on pre-existing licences?

Dresden Files, Mouse Guard, Leverage, Smallville, Dragon Age, Star Wars...

I always thought the general rule was that licensed games suck... But these above I've only heard great things about. There's a lot of critical acclaim amongst these!

How did that happen?

[The Rose Dragon]

Well, for one thing, none of the licensed games, with the exception of Dragon Age, use a system specific to the license. That might help a bit.

For another, people are more interested in seeing work done well on their favorite franchises, and the world is a lot smaller thanks to the wonders of the internet. As such, bad games do not sell well (except for D&D, thanks to its legacy), and people can afford to be picky. This means that publishers work harder in making their products work, which usually means better games. And when you are working on a licensed game, you are not only working for one company, you are working for at least two.

[Totally Guy]

Oh yeah... Puzzle solved...

Fate, Burning Wheel, Cortex and d20. I guess the right people are buying the licences. :smallsmile:

Edit:

/thread @ Rose Dragon

[Reverent-One]

I always thought the general rule was that licensed games suck... But these above I've only heard great things about. There's a lot of critical acclaim amongst these!

How did that happen?

I'm curious, did that general rule ever really apply to PnP games? Video games, sure, but I haven't heard that said in regards to PnP.



For another, people are more interested in seeing work done well on their favorite franchises, and the world is a lot smaller thanks to the wonders of the internet. As such, bad games do not sell well (except for D&D, thanks to its legacy), and people can afford to be picky. This means that publishers work harder in making their products work, which usually means better games. And when you are working on a licensed game, you are not only working for one company, you are working for at least two.

Or perhaps, by not being a bad game. Crazy idea, I know.

[Totally Guy]

I'm curious, did that general rule ever really apply to PnP games? Video games, sure, but I haven't heard that said in regards to PnP.

I just figured it was a universal thing. I thought the same game theory bits applied but apparently not!

You know... the may be a case for D&D also being a licensed game. I mean, it literally is a licence that WotC got. It just happens to be a licence for a something that is already a tabletop game rather than being a comic or tv show...

[Fhaolan]

I'm curious, did that general rule ever really apply to PnP games? Video games, sure, but I haven't heard that said in regards to PnP.

Depends on how far back you're willing to go. There was an Indiana Jones RPG ages ago, and it sucked. There have been many an attempt at a Star Trek RPG, and while some of them didn't suck as games, none of them really managed to be 'Star Trek' in truth. I'm aware of the Babylon 5 RPG, but I've not played it.

The rule of thumb is based on the fact that once you've bought the license and all the necessary art, there's usually not much left over for the game designers. So you end up with some half-assed thing knocked together over the weekend, or created by a writer who's more knowledgable about the setting than game design.

Doing a sourcebook for another game system, rather than a new game system for the license, is usually far more successful. However many times the licensing agreement includes some clauses that give the licencer the right to veto any work if it's not 'up to spec'. Given that the licencer is rarely a gamer and usually has some ego tied up into the license, there have been many occasions when sourcebook-style licensed properties were scrapped because the licencer believed that *not* being a whole-cloth RPG would devalue the property.

[Calmar]

Hwat's the system of the Dragon Age RPG like?

[Totally Guy]

Hwat's the system of the Dragon Age RPG like?

Unfortunately I'm not sure. I bought to box set for my friends for Christmas hoping that they'd play it with me. But they started playing it with a different group altogether.

They tell me it's good though... They say I'd really like it... :smallsigh:

[Talkkno]

The system support is really thin though, I mean you still can't be Grey Warden. :smallmad:

[Ravens_cry]

How is the system Serenity uses? I hear it actually uses a new system that has since been ported elsewhere.

[The Rose Dragon]

How is the system Serenity uses? I hear it actually uses a new system that has since been ported elsewhere.

Cortex, which has its own rulebook. I'm not sure whether it came out before Serenity or vice versa. It is also what Leverage and Smallville use. I haven't read it, but I've at least heard the Serenity incarnation is good.

[Kiero]

Cortex, which has its own rulebook. I'm not sure whether it came out before Serenity or vice versa. It is also what Leverage and Smallville use. I haven't read it, but I've at least heard the Serenity incarnation is good.

Not what I've heard. The one in Serenity isn't very good by all accounts.

However the "Cortex Plus" system in Smallville/Leverage is much better. Though it won't do "physics" if you're expecting a system to run your game-reality for you.

[Friv]

The Serenity incarnation of Cortex is not bad, but it has some fairly noticeable flaw. The biggest is that it doesn't know whether to be gritty or not with book-keeping. For example, everything has very specific prices, from weapons to food to fuel to maintenance for your ship, and there's a drawback related to losing money all the time, but there's no good rules for how to determine your ability to get money or cargo.

[Curmudgeon]

Cortex began with Serenity and was updated for Battlestar Galactica before it came out as a stand-alone rule set. Nathan Rockwood, one of the Cortex designers, posted a short set of articles on the changes:

Part 1 (http://garrettplc.livejournal.com/1578.html)
Part 2 (http://garrettplc.livejournal.com/2629.html)
Part 3 (http://garrettplc.livejournal.com/3362.html)
Part 4 (http://garrettplc.livejournal.com/4345.html)

[Numinous]

Well, for one thing, none of the licensed games, with the exception of Dragon Age, use a system specific to the license. That might help a bit.

Oddly enough it feels almost the opposite to me.

Dragon Age (which I must admit that I don't own) has it's own system, but it's a quite bland generic fantasy system.

Dresden Files, Mouse Guard, Leverage and Smallville (all of which I do own), while they are based on existing systems, they take those systems and tailor them to the style of the licensed property. IMHO they all do an excellent job.

I think it has something to do with lessons learned from earlier failures of licensed games. The designers of these games are all very much of the "system matters" design philosophy and tweak the mechanics to give mechanical support to the style of play that emulates their source material.

[ninja_penguin]

Hwat's the system of the Dragon Age RPG like?

We've been playing the modules, and it's pretty fun overall. You're supposed to roll all your stats though, which is very hit or miss. The random rolling for the backgrounds on character creations is pretty nice though.

All rolling is 3d6 + whatever, with one of the dice being a different color, as the 'dragon die'. This is used to determine measures of success, tie breaking, and gives stunt points.

Whenever you roll doubles on a spell casting or attack roll, you get stunt points equal to your dragon die. you can use stunt points on a lot of various fun shenanigans.

Armor is rather big thing, too. If not for myself (rogue) and the warrior, the party would have TPK'd on the first encounter in the module. The mages tend to be patching themselves up a lot more than the rest of us, although one of them has gotten positioning down well enough so that he's avoided the worst of things.

[Totally Guy]

And I forgot Doctor Who! I don't believe that one is based on an existing game. I've not read it but I'm told it had an amazing initiative concept!

If you are talking you go first.
If you are moving you go second.
If you are performing an action you go after that.
If you are fighting you go last.

Which pretty much fits the show perfectly!

[Narren]

Did anybody ever play the Dragonball Z rpg? Even with ample house ruling to try and make it work, I couldn't get it to float after players power levels went above 10,000.

[Fhaolan]

And I forgot Doctor Who! I don't believe that one is based on an existing game. I've not read it but I'm told it had an amazing initiative concept!

If you are talking you go first.
If you are moving you go second.
If you are performing an action you go after that.
If you are fighting you go last.

Which pretty much fits the show perfectly!

There are three different RPGs based on Doctor Who:

The Doctor Who RPG published by FASA in 1985. It was a variant of the Star Trek RPG that FASA also produced.

Time Lord - Adventures in Time and Space published by Virgin in 1991. It was... weird, and had many glaring ommisions, such as a lack of a character generation method.... yeah, you read that right.

Doctor Who - Adventures in Time and Space published by Cubical 7 in 2009. This is probably the one you're talking about.

[tyckspoon]

Did anybody ever play the Dragonball Z rpg? Even with ample house ruling to try and make it work, I couldn't get it to float after players power levels went above 10,000.

So.. perfectly in line with the source material, then. :smallwink:

[Totally Guy]

There are three different RPGs based on Doctor Who:

I first played an RPG is 2007. There are certain things I happened to miss...:smallwink:

[nyarlathotep]

Well, for one thing, none of the licensed games, with the exception of Dragon Age, use a system specific to the license. That might help a bit.

For another, people are more interested in seeing work done well on their favorite franchises, and the world is a lot smaller thanks to the wonders of the internet. As such, bad games do not sell well (except for D&D, thanks to its legacy), and people can afford to be picky. This means that publishers work harder in making their products work, which usually means better games. And when you are working on a licensed game, you are not only working for one company, you are working for at least two.

You're forgetting Exhalted which sells a terrible system because of highly popular fluff.

[Xefas]

You're forgetting Exhalted which sells a terrible system because of highly popular fluff.

True. But on the big scale of RPG quality, it's still about two Cranes above D&D.

[pasko77]

Did anybody ever play the Dragonball Z rpg? Even with ample house ruling to try and make it work, I couldn't get it to float after players power levels went above 10,000.

Come on... it's over 9000, not 10000.

[Totally Guy]

But on the big scale of RPG quality, it's still about two Cranes above D&D.

Proper noun Cranes? :smallconfused:

I'm guessing that must be a new scale that measures RPG quality named after the infamous Mr Crane.:smalltongue:

[nyarlathotep]

True. But on the big scale of RPG quality, it's still about two Cranes above D&D.

Honestly I consider system quality on two scales: system elegance and how interesting the mechanics are from the perspective of someone trying to build something with them.

I rank D&D and Exhalted near identically in terms of elegance, in that they absolutely abyssal. As for how fun and interesting the mechanics are I would actually say D&D ranks fairly highly for me personally, while Exhalted is merely okay. (both have their high points)

That being said D&D loses points for canceling all of its even vaguely interesting campaign settings (until Eberron was released anyways), but this is looking at mechanics divorced form the setting.

Compare that to Mutants and Masterminds which has an amazingly elegant design but said design has incredibly boring mechanics.

[Shyftir]

Dresden Files RPG? I want! though I don't know anyone who'd play with me.

[The Rose Dragon]

I rank D&D and Exhalted near identically in terms of elegance, in that they absolutely abyssal. As for how fun and interesting the mechanics are I would actually say D&D ranks fairly highly for me personally, while Exhalted is merely okay. (both have their high points)

Now if only you could spell it correctly, without the h. :smalltongue:

[stainboy]

Cortex began with Serenity and was updated for Battlestar Galactica before it came out as a stand-alone rule set. Nathan Rockwood, one of the Cortex designers, posted a short set of articles on the changes:

Part 1 (http://garrettplc.livejournal.com/1578.html)
Part 2 (http://garrettplc.livejournal.com/2629.html)
Part 3 (http://garrettplc.livejournal.com/3362.html)
Part 4 (http://garrettplc.livejournal.com/4345.html)

The Serenity RPG had diminishing return on XP for higher abilities and no diminishing returns at character creation. And according to this blog, they acknowledged it was a problem and fixed it.

This wouldn't seem like a big deal, except that D6 and White Wolf have had the same design flaw for twenty years. I gotta give Cortex another look.


Anyway, about licensed games in general:

The big weakness of licensed games is that they're set in a world that was only conceived to tell one story. I love Firefly but its world isn't detailed outside of the things encountered by Mal and co. It's a hard world to play in without being a pale shadow of things you saw in the TV series.

Star Wars gets around this because of 30 years of nerd wank and aggressive marketing by Lucas. Star Wars has more canon than Forgotten Realms. It probably has more canon then the entire Great Wheel. You can make a jedi who isn't anything like Luke Skywalker.

[Fhaolan]

I first played an RPG is 2007. There are certain things I happened to miss...:smallwink:

Heh, yeah that would happen. I've been playing RPGs since 1978, and I have been watching Doctor Who since 1968. Yep, I'm old. :smallbiggrin:

[Erom]

Dresden Files RPG? I want! though I don't know anyone who'd play with me.
It's fun, but the system is soooo breakable compared even to 3.5 edition it's sort of pathetic. It's trivially easy to build a supposedly "pure mortal" character with no supernatural powers that can perform superhuman feats like outrun a bullet or lift a car. Add in supernatural powers are you get to a very un-dresden like power level pretty quickly.

I'm of the opinion that the system would make a nearly 100% perfect Bioshock RPG, since both the mechanisms and fluff are surprisingly similar.

[Fhaolan]

I'm of the opinion that the system would make a nearly 100% perfect Bioshock RPG, since both the mechanisms and fluff are surprisingly similar.

That kind of thing happens occasionally. Here's the order of events that occured at a publisher I worked for once, many years ago:

1) Game designer creates a system for his/her own use in a homebrew campaign setting.
2) Publisher sees games stores popping up all over the place, and the volume of indie-type RPGs on their shelves, decides that they need to expand into this already glutted market. Thinking to get brand recognition on their side, they buy the RPG license for a currently popular property (something like Indiana Jones, Star Trek, Dresden Files, etc. This was not the license for this specific instance, just examples.)
3) Publisher sets a budget for this license, and hires the cheapest game designer they can get ahold of, in order to allow for the art, fluff writing, and editing costs. Since the publisher has not done this before, they do not put any budget towards playtesting or market testing.
4) Game designer realizes that it would be a lot less effort to just change the names of a few things on his existing homebrew system than to come up with something from whole cloth.
5) Game is published, only 'real' fans buy it and notice almost immediately that the system and the setting don't mesh, and the game withers away.
6) Publisher gets annoyed at putting so much money into this game, and having it fail so fast, so gets their cousin (who supposedly played a game once) to do another name shuffle on the ruleset and publish it again under a different license.
7) Game designer gets upset because they weren't brought in for the system shuffle, because they handed over their system as part of a work-for-hire contract and so they have signed away all their rights to said system.
8) Lawyers get involved, court cases never happen because nobody actually *has* a case, but the lawyers get paid anyway.
9) Publisher goes out of business.
10) Game designer puts their system out on the web, and then disappears as they lose interest in it.

[Totally Guy]

Wow, sounds like exciting times!

[ninja_penguin]

It's fun, but the system is soooo breakable compared even to 3.5 edition it's sort of pathetic. It's trivially easy to build a supposedly "pure mortal" character with no supernatural powers that can perform superhuman feats like outrun a bullet or lift a car. Add in supernatural powers are you get to a very un-dresden like power level pretty quickly.

What power level were you playing at? I'll admit that if you don't keep a steady hand with things, it's possible for some hilarious things to happen, but I'm curious as to how your mortals weren't folding once something impressive came along (or even another impressive mortal). Also, 1 refresh mortals are specifically mentioned as being crazy people.

[Erom]

We actually found it was the high refresh characters that were a problem - I don't remember the specifics, but we generally found that the tagging mechanics allowed you to stack situational modifiers in silly ways. The movement speed thing basically came up as a result of the zone-based maps: you really don't have to stack very many modifiers before movement speed gets silly, unless your DM starts subdividing the map into such small zones that you are basically back to a grid based game.

I should note that the strength of the characters actually is perfectly balanced with regard to the enemies - as you noted, the heavy hitters are actually terrifying to fight as a pure mortal - the problems are all verisimilitude related, not game balance related.

[ninja_penguin]

Ah, yeah, I can understand that. I tend to try and avoid encounters that need a lot of speedy movement, and choose to use challenges instead if speed is a serious manner. Alternatively, I set up a Barrier: X between two zones to represent the time it takes to get there.


Edit- Maneuver stacking is pretty much the smart way to go. If you don't do that and rely on just pure rolls, unless every player is a combat monster, and your opponents are not, combat can last forever.