Does this sound reasonable...

[Haesslich]

Yes they do, I have 9 apps.

Let's see how many of those 9 apps stay with you before the year's out. What makes an RPG is the quality, and the numbers which continue to play... not the ones who play for a few days and drop out - that's not what makes most of them successful.

 

[psych]

Yes they do, I have 9 apps.

And they are for the most part - young, naive, idealistic fanboy teenagers along the likes of you, Antman, Concordia, and other like minded WC losers correct?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I'd actually be interested in regularly playing a WC RPG that isn't some weird continuation no one asked for. A game where you're a character in some time period rather than a weird random number generation session.

 

[psych]

Original picture copyright of Ted Rall

 

[Sylvester]

Have you seen wc.kuattech?

 

[Delance]

You got it all wrong. After Bacon Boy and Primate were abducted by the Mopok/Double Helix league, that's when Confed got new ships.

 

[Expendable]

Primate! No!

 

[Dundradal]

I was thinking of having this race called the "place that lacks light" come in with these big spidery looking ships and a dicer beam that would dice ships up and have it come attack earth and have the 2nd battle of terra because confed has to hold the line...yeah

 

[psych]

I was thinking of having this race called the "place that lacks light" come in with these big spidery looking ships and a dicer beam that would dice ships up and have it come attack earth and have the 2nd battle of terra because confed has to hold the line...yeah

There already was a Second Battle of Terra I think, if I remembered correctly, it was written in the Star Wars-WC crossover written by that genius NeoDevilbane.

 

[Dundradal]

damn it...well I guess I could write it in and make it the 3rd battle of terra where they come in and ravage every inner world with a weapon that encases every world in jello...planetary jigglers I tell you!

 

[Eder]

Hey Sylvester, in case LOAF didn't make it clear... the point isn't that your story is impossible, the point is that there's no reason to make all that stuff up. Let's assume that we have two RPGs which are perfect in every aspect, one about the Naz'blargh and a lot of ships, characters, battles, etc that you made up, and the other about the Nephilim/Kilrathi conflicts, with ships which we know with maybe one or two new things thrown in (or even better, old things viewed from another perspective and/or in more detail, more on this later). Guess what? One of them will have 9 players, the other will have a few hundred.

Nine people may care about the random space combat setting that you made up and decided to call "WC in the future", but a lot more people would care if it was *actually* anything to do with WC as we know it (not as you reinvented it, because that doesn't mean anything to anyone else except you)... people would relate to that and think of it as a true WC experience.

I mean, that's just my opinion, but it seems more people here agree with it. Take a look at Standoff... I could have gone and made up a whole new set of stuff, but what did I do? I decided to take a WC story which most WC fans people are really fond of (Fleet Action) and re-tell it from a different viewpoint, making up *nothing relevant at all* in the process.

So you see, the events that will take place in Standoff's main campaign almost certainly did take place on some nameless ships in Fleet Action at one point or another. I hope people who re-read FA after having played Standoff will pause every time a nameless ship or nameless pilot has accomplished something and think "hey, that could've been that mission from Standoff", and I hope that people who play Standoff will see a mission briefing and say "oh, I remember this from the book... cool, so these could have been the guys who pulled it off"... That will make people believe they're playing something that is *really* WC. From your RPG's description, it seems people would remember WC only from the use of the words "kilrathi", "hari" and "confed"...

 

[Sylvester]

Actually, I have revamped it somewhat and I provided an entire history of WC to the guys and suggested they become familiar with WCSO, which most of them already are and 'End Run' because one of the key NPC charachters, Vice Admiral Jason Bondravesky, is from that book.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

... Bear is from a whole series of books. He retires from Confed in "False Colors".

 

[Haesslich]

Actually, I have revamped it somewhat and I provided an entire history of WC to the guys and suggested they become familiar with WCSO, which most of them already are and 'End Run' because one of the key NPC charachters, Vice Admiral Jason Bondravesky, is from that book.

In False Colors, Bondarevsky retired from Confed to join the Border Worlds Navy. In WC4N, they made some mention of 'Rear Admiral' with regard to Bondarevsky's promotions, though in False Colors it was stated he retired with a 'courtesy promotion' to Commodore with the half-pay pension that the retirement came with.

... what's this bit about not making important stuff up again?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The WCIVN reference was to his position in the Landreich after False Colors - "a rear admiral commanding a fleet of jeep carriers" or somesuch.

 

[Rax8xman]

I'm not trying to start a flame war here, but LOAF I think you're wrong with you initial statement

'The purpose of basing your RPG in someone elses universe is so that you have a pre-existing, universally accepted setting.'

I agree with this.

'Things like factions, time period, ship classes, etc. are the pre-set *backdrop* to the game - the job of the DM isn't to fiddle with them. Otherwise there is *no point* to setting your game in {variable Sci Fi universe}.'

I disagree; the job of the GM is ultimately to tell a story. While telling a story he/she must make sure that the players and the characters they play are immersed and feeling like they are effecting the outcome. Otherwise they will lose interest and drop out.

"It's Wing Commander, but in a time period Wing Commander has never dealt with, with all new ships, and we made up a bunch of new factions!". What's the freaking point?

Sometimes things need to progress outside the known boundaries because otherwise you can't stimulate the imagination of the players. Again if you can't do that you will stagnate and loose players.

As for new races killing off the rpg cold, I would point out that the wing commander rpg ( http://www.wcrpg.com ) has been going strong for seven years now. It has included several aspects in which you have slated as a no no, such as the introduction of a Kilrathi offshoot faction, the M'Tak'Jor. Also our current campaign 'The Long Cold Winter' features a race known as harvesters, is based from a pervious campaign 'Winter Harvest' which ran about 5 years ago (before WCP came out). 'Winter Harvest' has been largely credited as the best campaign we've ever had and the majority of it was not canon. Even though we've done very little 'canon' work we still have an active member base around 30 with 10 or so regularly attending our weekly sessions.

Summing up my statement I would say that using the Wing Commander Universe as a base while not sticking to canon is fine, as its not so much what you tell, but how you tell it.

Keith


The Wing Commander RPG

www.wcrpg.com

 

[Haesslich]

The WCIVN reference was to his position in the Landreich after False Colors - "a rear admiral commanding a fleet of jeep carriers" or somesuch.

It mentions that he commanded a task force of jeep carriers by the war's end, which is where the confusion comes in. The exact quote on p. 52 states "An old buddy of his, Bondarevsky, had risen to Rear Admiral at the close of the war commanding a jeep carrier task force".

Given that the rank of Rear Admiral is O8, and Commodore is (O7), we can look at it as either Blair mixing up his ranks or else Bondarevsky took a demotion during retirement to Commodore since they get paid less and thus Confed saves money.

 

[Nob Akimoto]

Since we never see a "TCS Enterprise" despite the obvious significance of the name, and the presense of ships of a similar vintage in name(Lexington, Saratoga...okay so there isn't a Yorktown or Hornet, maybe WC writers had something against the CV-5 class.) I was gonna do a fanfic about how the Enterprise was off busy charting these newsystems and jump-lines, bravely exploring where no Confed carrier had been prior...

Doesn't that sound great and original!

 

[Haesslich]

Sometimes things need to progress outside the known boundaries because otherwise you can't stimulate the imagination of the players. Again if you can't do that you will stagnate and loose players.

As for new races killing off the rpg cold, I would point out that the wing commander rpg ( http://www.wcrpg.com ) has been going strong for seven years now. It has included several aspects in which you have slated as a no no, such as the introduction of a Kilrathi offshoot faction, the M'Tak'Jor. Also our current campaign 'The Long Cold Winter' features a race known as harvesters, is based from a pervious campaign 'Winter Harvest' which ran about 5 years ago (before WCP came out). 'Winter Harvest' has been largely credited as the best campaign we've ever had and the majority of it was not canon. Even though we've done very little 'canon' work we still have an active member base around 30 with 10 or so regularly attending our weekly sessions.

Summing up my statement I would say that using the Wing Commander Universe as a base while not sticking to canon is fine, as its not so much what you tell, but how you tell it.

I would suggest the problem is this - some changes to WC are fine, though being honest, there's enough of a universe out there in WC without having to make up a lot. We know there are quite a few races in Confed, but we never see them. Ditto, we never hear of the pirate issues, though they are real, or minor things that the Confed navy probably ends up dealing with but of which news never reaches Barbara Miles or TNN for distribution. Remember that we've got the Steltek leaving artifacts all over, some of which have remained functional for millenia; Kilrathi who don't agree with Melek are raiding Confed space; the Yan started a war with Confed long before the Kilrathi did and we're not sure if they're peaceful members of Confed, or if they just have a somewhat stable treaty that could grow shaky at any moment.

But creating a lot of new ships, and juggling things around so the only recognizably WC items in the RPG are a few names? Nuh-uh. Especially when they stole, originally, from a VERY recognizable source - I find it difficult to believe that someone wouldn't just hear the word 'Nas'Ghoughl' and think "Naz'Ghoughl... nazgul... hey, wait a minute!'. Feck's sake, the Lord of the Rings movies have all that a lot of geeks have been talking about the last two or so years.

There are limits to what changes you can make before all canon goes out the window. The reason a lot of RPGers play the games they do in established settings (the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Shadowrun, etc) is because they're familiar to everyone playing. Everyone knows what an Orc looks like, what the conventions concerning magic are, and the general history of the setting. It's easy to get everyone working off the same page, so to speak, and any changes that happen to the established setting are usually minor in nature... and indeed, many NPCs in those settings are written in a way that let DMs use them to help start off campaigns, since they talk to everyone.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

There are plenty of long running WC RPGs going on, yours is one, MNelsons Black Lance group was another... and my take is that the reason they're not more popular is because they have their own "exclusive" storylines involving entirely different political settings and such.

(The Aces Club suffered from this, too - they were enourmously popular until after WCIV came out and their insistance on continuing their "alternate" storyline turned off all the new players. They credit it to declining interest in the games and such... but from the point of view of the community, that just isn't so. We've got more warm bodies interested in WC fandom than ever, statistically...)

It mentions that he commanded a task force of jeep carriers by the war's end, which is where the confusion comes in. The exact quote on p. 52 states "An old buddy of his, Bondarevsky, had risen to Rear Admiral at the close of the war commanding a jeep carrier task force".

This is a reference to the planned False Colors storyline - I'm not just speculating here (G) There's two others in the WCIV novel, IIRC.