The Earthdawn CD-ROM was actually the entire core rule book as a well hyperlinked HTML file, not a PDF.

I'm not sure how many hours it took to set it up that way, but I would actually love the Shadowrun rules that way. As an electronic resource a well hyperlinked set of files is better than a PDF.

I'm guessing the business model would be very similar to most Open Source business models. Most of the money would be made in the publication of new content. Since new content can be made by anyone but there are only a limited number of publishers (CGL would be the main one and the one with with the most authenticity) they would still be making money printing off books (as they can set the price for hardcovers). R&D costs shrink to almost nothing and they can produce more content (both fluff and stuff).

I'm guessing that CGL would also be the ultimate authority when it comes to game rule changes and continuity of the Eclipse Phase system and as such can state any third person's product is not cannon.

So, theoretically, I could write/publish/market/sell my own Eclipse Phase novel, so long as I gave credit to CGL as the creator in the legalese, and possibly included a "not affiliated with CGL" disclaimer somewhere?

That what I thought, the CD being the whole core book.

But that begs the question: Why did they give away the whole farm for free rather than use some kind of teaser/quickstart rules to entice players to come back for the real thing?

On one hand, yeah, you have the whole rules -- for free! -- but if someone's not prepared for that, it can be overwhelming (New Player browsing the rules: "Do I REALLY need to know what 'thread magic' is before I start playing?"). A quickstart helps prospective players and GMs get a handle on the basics and the premise without feeling like they're drowning.

Also, giving away something for free degrades its value. I mean, how often were the pack-in freebies in InQuest actually any good? I generally dismissed out of hand most of the freebies cos they were inherently throwaway.

What's ironic is, ED may not have fared well back at FASA Proper, but if it was really dead, it wouldn't have survived to its 3rd Edition (which released this past summer). Wonder what FASA did wrong, and what lessons today's RPG makers can learn from it?

Earthdawn "died" in an age when games still had to make enough money to suport the production costs of being printed. The HTML CD was, I believe, a Hail Mary pass at a time before the market was really ready.

Living Room Games tried where FASA failed, but also did not last very long.

Red Brick kept the game going by moving to PDF (and possibly print-on-demand), removing all the upfront costs and risks associated with regular printing.

I hope that Earthdawn: Third Edition does very well as a Red Brick / Mongoose collaboration, but I am not holding my breath.

I also look forward to Age of Legend 4e (Earthdawn as a D&D 4th Ed. game world) since I actually think the Earthdawn world vision would fit the D&D4 mechanics better than the standard D&D worlds.

I may be wrong, but I believe only the new ED novels are currently PoD. Red Brick may have PDFs available for 3rd ed., but they also have very nicely done hardbacks for the core books (think on-par with the quality of the current SR hardback splatbooks, but 300+ pages).

We're going to reach a point where even the corps don't know who owns what anymore.

and thats the point where we get events like the novell vs SCO trail...

I haven't read the license yet, but if the CC license is anything like my game system, then yes you could. You should expect that CGL can turn around and say, that isn't cannon though.

Edit:
I went through and read the license and it is non-commercial, which means only the originator can make money on the content, so If you wrote a book for Eclipse Phase you can submit it to CGL and negotiate a royalty deal with them. If you published the book yourself you could only sell it at cost (and you would have to be able to show that in court). You are able to create whatever you want for Eclipse Phase, and you able to make as many copies of the existing stuff as you would like (just as long as you don't sell them for profit).

one thing struck me thinking about Shadowrun and games, is any game developer holding the rights to make a Shadowrun game? Would be fun to see a real attempt on a new Shadowrun game, maybe a FPS/RPG hybrid like Fallout 3

it was mentioned in a earlier post, smith & tinker, or something like that, have licensed both battletech/mechwarrior and shadowrun from microsoft...

hmm would have preferred if one of the bigger RPG fish had pick up the license but I shall wait and see what smith & tinker comes up with.

It was implied in an interview with S&T that they would do a Shadowrun game (but only after they were sure the new BT game was a success).

Define "bigger RPG fish."

Honestly, I'd rather have the SR/BT licenses under the helm of a company run/owned by Jordan Weisman because he co-created SR AND BT (among others). He KNOWS these universes because they are like children to him. If anyone can do them right and treat them with the respect they deserve, he can.

true but love alone can´t provide the base for a game that can compete with the big market.

Uh, have you SEEN the demo for the MechWarrior game in the works?

Tell me that's NOT a marketable commodity.

I saw it at the CGL booth at GenCon this year, and EVERYONE was drooling at it. I also read a 5-6 page interview with Weisman and the main guy helming this game. They're in it for real, and they are not messing around.

Now, take some Shadowrun. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You don't think they could EASILY pull that off? Hell, all they'd have to do is make "Deus Ex, but with MAGIC!" and people would be happy.

I agree. Even though S&T is fairly new as a company, they are employing a lot of the old FASA interactive programmers and are pulling from their years of experience. I expect that they also have unofficial support from Microsoft (I say this as they only plan to make MW for the XBox 360 and PC and they stated that a PS3 port was not likely to happen). I can't think of a better company to make both a MW and SR game.

IMO the d&d players had 3 typical complaints.


cultural- "what do you mean there are no gods? How can you have a fantasy game without gods? Wait, is this one of those games you have to bring the gods back? Man, I hate those games. Why doesn't anyone do something new?"

oppurtunistic - "So the mages not only can't have dozens of spells ready to cast but the spells he does have may never fire off because the thread weaving test can fail ad infinium?"

Mechanics - "These dice are weird. Hand me my d20."

The first two are flavor/prefence. You either like the setting and appreciate the skill based magic or you don't.

The complaints about the system were less reasonable pre D20. ED has three key charts: Step, Success, and Attribute. I never met anyone who had an issue with the attribute table since almost every system has one. The success chart was irritating because it is weighted so there's no clear algorithm, but compared to comparable games of the day, AD&D 2nd ed, Runequest, MasterTable, etc it wasn't onerous.

The Step system drives some people insane, even though it is part of the appeal to me. The Step rating is the statistical average roll and, for anything higher than step 7, the most probable result. That made comparing defenses to attacks and armor to damage very easy.

The ED designers never pointed out a) it's a repeating pattern and b) you can use any combination of low-Step dice that add up to a given high Step value with minimal impact.
There is no major statistical difference between 4d6 (step 4 x 4), 2d8+d10(step 5 x 2 + step 6), d20+d8 (official step 16). With exploding dice all will average a 16. The two notable difference is that the minimun non-botch value varies from 3-5, which isn't probably a big deal for step 16, and the odds of a botch run from 1 in 160 to 1 in 1296. So the step chart tries to use as few dice as possible.

Don't the Passions count as "gods"?


Maybe it's just me, but the D20 system bores me (and it does cause cancer, after all). IMO, there's nothing more satisfying than rolling a whole fistful of dice, which is why the mechanics of any edition of SR appeal to me. Hell, even rolling two dice is better than feeling like you're tossing a bouncy ball onto the table.

This just occurred to me: Regarding the original topic, since Topps owns the SR IP, and Wizkids was sold to NECA, isn't the legal disclaimer at the bottom of every forum page... well... inaccurate, to say the least?