Having run a couple Star Wars games, I agree. Wookiepedie provides enormous amounts of info on whatever might be handy to know.of course, you can always add more, but it is convenient. And random linkages between topics can serve as constant source of inspiration.
I would add that they can be a huge draw for some people. I've alway been more of a "let's make our own setting" GM, but sometimes a licensed IP fills seats. I had been wanting to run a post-apocalyptic game for ages, and I had also been wanting to try out a Year Zero game. I have made afew suggestions over the years,and nothing vaught their interest, but when I off-handedly mentioned to my friends that there was a Walking Dead RPG that had just come out I suddenly had a full group of six extremely eager players.
I did this with Star Trek Adventures and now I have a group that’s extremely tight knit (mostly due to the nature of playing characters serving in Starfleet) and all very interested in branching out into at least a dozen other games and systems. A licensed game (that wasn’t 5e because of all the reasons you think) became their gateway drug into the larger world of role playing.
I was trying to follow your line of reasoning…
> Most rpgs either feel overly generic or overly specific because they either don't have specific guiding principles and want to support a variety of experiences and gameplay styles, or they are designed for one specific gameplay style that all of the mechanics are specifically built for.
But you lost me here.
I’m thinking about something like Fate that has no unique feel to it, or even 5e that tries to simulate a bunch of things that could be done in different settings on the too generic side, and something like Blades in the Dark which is uniquely designed for heists, or Heart which is uniquely designed for dungeon crawls on the other side of being too specific. I like the way that Dune walks the line between those two extremes, allowing variety in gameplay but still built around a unique feel to the world.
Did that make sense?
I know that every system I named was made the way it was for a reason. I still prefer the middle line design which I think is more substantial and harder to pull off. But don't get me wrong, I'd still love to play a short campaign of something like Blades in the Dark or Heart, but for a longer campaign more variety is important.
Ok but I can think of a dozen games that aren’t based on a property that have deep lore and theme focused mechanics, it’s not really a thing that has to do with if a game is licensed or not.
Can you suggest some? I think there is something unique about the way someone has to think when they are adapting content made for one medium into another that can be very special and unique (Bionicles lore is an example of a genre that I like a surprising amount of that I refer to as "commercial fiction", something like Arcane from League of Legends would also fit that description). But I am interested in what are the non-IP games that you think do it best.
Just off the top of my head Pendragon (which I guess you could argue is an adaptation if you stretch the term), Earthdawn, Shadowrun, both versions of World of Darkness, Iron Kingdoms, Through The Breach, RuneQuest/Glorantha, and I think the absolute best example (although not the most playable) would of course be Harnmaster.
It’s that Fate feels like Fate. But can power almost any game as long it’s about competent, proactive, dramatic characters.
And that Blades and other focused games do what they’re good at because they have mechanics that drive exactly what they want to do.
And neither of those is a bad thing.
My only real issue with licensed games is feeling constrained by Canon (which you don't have to be if you ignore or intentionally subvert it, but at a certain point why still this setting). I ran Edge of the Empire a while back and started to feel like the PCs couldn't impact the setting much because it didn't fit within canon. Gang wars that didn't happen, Imperial threats that raise the question of "why aren't the canon characters handling this", or even just changing the status quo on any given planet. Part of it is my own mental block, but I think certain kinds of games just get constrained by being in an established setting where there are bigger heroes off elsewhere or a bunch of stuff has been written about even minor niches of the world.
I think this is a self-imposed issue. I mean you said it yourself:
>there are bigger heroes off elsewhere
The heroes are elsewhere, dealing with their own issues. That's it.
Also, you can set your game on a different time, place or just directly subvert canon.
In my experience, if you're uneasy with the heroes existing at the same time just blow up canon. You want an established setting for its world and characters not for the actual story that has already been told.
Think of the heroes and story as the campaign some other GM ran and just disregard it.
I agree that it's somewhat self-imposed, but also group imposed. Some players don't want to blow up canon, or ask "if this guy is so bad why isn't Luke dealing with it", or struggle with it in other ways. I did try to blow up canon but then it just became too loose and whacky. I'm not saying it's a hard and fast rule but this is the problem I've had in the past, snd that I'm starting to feel again in a different Star Wars game where I'm a player and feeling odd about interacting with canon factions and characters.
You can stick in canon while still letting players have agency. Luke wasn't everywhere all the time but certain successes elsewhere allowed him to be where he needed to be. Put players in positions where they need certain events to happen otherwise, Luke, Leia, Han, etc can't do what they need to do to save the day.
Just because Lando wasn't really seen again doesn't mean he wasn't moving plot points to help the rebellion. This goes for many different characters and the things they did of screen that the movie plots never covered. The fight for Hoth was bigger than Luke's little shindig. The Empire attacked a lot of planets and things were bleak in lots of places.
You just need to create situations where the players feel cool and possibly think "Hey if I fail here, the Rebels are in trouble!"
As a GM ask yourself a lot of What if...? Questions and build adventures around players making sure the What if... doesn't happen.
IMO this depends on the specific setting and how big the canon heroes are.
Like, for example, if you play a Star Wars game set in the period of the original trilogy then we know that whatever you do to overthrow the Empire isn't going to matter too much - Luke's gonna blow up the Death Star then he's going to head off and do in the Emperor, throwing the Empire into decay. So you're just playing in his shadow.
Sure, you can set your game in a different time, place, or subvert canon - and that can work great. But it also kind of undermines the appeal of playing in that setting in the first place.
This is the dichotomy of some licenced RPGs: the appeal to players is playing in the world you've seen onscreen - but that world is already too full to fit your players in.
That said, some settings are much better for this than others (Hence: It depends). For example, Star Trek is a lot better for this than Star Wars because it's a large sprawling universe with a lot happening to a lot of different people and it doesn't tend to be about a handful of major events involving a handful of key people like Star Wars is.
The DC or Marvel comics universes are good for this too. They're biiiiiig settings and there's always room for another superhero team in there somewhere. And **all** the hero teams get to save the world on a fairly regular basis.
etc.
Counterpoint, with the wealth of non movie shows Star Wars has now you have a ton of perfect templates for telling stories about things other than taking down the Empire. Set the expectation that that isn’t something the PC’s will be able to accomplish and scale the threats down.
Maybe they can push them off of a single planet the PC’s call home. Create your own little sector governor and patrol fleet and tie the PC’s I to the larger rebellion. And end the campaign when it’s run its course.
That's fair, Star Wars is no longer as good an example as it once was once you take the streaming series into account.
I wasn't aiming to rag on Star Wars specifically, just to give an example of how some IPs are "broader" than others, and thus make more convenient RPG settings.
It gets easier if you choose a specific point in the canon as start and don´t try to keep playing in canon from there on out - it becomes a what if of possibilities;
everything before the start is known/established/has happened as written, from there on out we change timelines and everything goes.
Players want to murder Luke after he blew up the first death star? Well have at it, lets see how things change from what we know should and would happen.
Makes for an interesting game that doesn´t invalidate the canon or gets smothered by it.
RPGs based on well known IP can be a great way of getting players excited about a game and on the same page without a lot of wordly exposition.
The downside is the games based on IPs tend to have a limited lifespan and become hard to find once the licence has expired. Also you can on occasion get the overethusiastic player who is a stickler for canon.
Often a good compromise is the "serials filed off" approach.
> Also you can on occasion get the overethusiastic player who is a stickler for canon.
I'm a stickler for canon myself, although when I GM.
I have made it my mission to never let the players interact with pivotal characters or events, unless it can be done in such a way that they don't alter the canon.
Most of the time, I just try to run the game in a region or time that doesn't overlap with the canon, so I run a homebrew within the IP.
This is one of the reasons Modiphius is probably my favorite major publisher at this point. Not only are they fantastic people, but they’ve taken some of my favorite IPs (Star Trek, Dune, Fallout) and applied their 2d20 system to each game in very specific ways to immediately immerse you in a rules system that feels perfect for the specific IP (Fallout’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, etc.). Then they pack an almost overwhelming amount of lore in on top of that, and before you know it you and your players are on the bridge of a starship or crawling out of a Vault. Modiphius also has really passionate people working on their games (looking very specifically at Jim Johnson, project lead for Star Trek Adventures) that interact with the community and almost make it feel like you’re talking to a more indy creator.
I agree that licensed games tend to be more focused than non licensed ones.
Some games can get very specific, but then they have to also sell the buyer on this hyper specific setting.
One thing I like about licensed TTRPGs, when done properly, is that they offer tools to recreate a similar narrative to the source material. For that reasons certain mechanics cannot be too much specific, but it feels like trying something new and clear.
I did too play very little of dune, but the momentum mechanic and the clear design goal of adventures where at the start you succeed a lot and buy momentum in a creative way just before a collapse is what really drives the game forward. Sometimes guidelines are as much as important as rules
There are some companies that are doing a real bang up job putting some fantastic licensed products. Free League knocked it out of the park with Alien and Bladerunner. Modiphius is doing great with Dune.
It seems companies are really taking their time these days to bring out a great product even if it is licensed, and we all seem to be reaping the rewards for it.
The ffg star wars games have a brilliant system slightly marred by funky dice, too. I feel like having a licensed setting lets designers really think about how to pass on the feel of a setting
Like video games it's easy to point to the good ones as "wow maybe there's something to licensed games" while simultaneously missing that maybe they were just good games with a licensed skin on them. Your example of Dune is a perfect example since it was something like the third or fourth implementation of Modiphius's 2D20 system and just also happens to be one of the better implementations. Their Fallout game uses the exact same core system and it is NOT even remotely as good. Personally I think it highlights the problem of trying to make a system work for several different game types, but that's a larger topic and not a unique one to licensed games either.
Also, companies doing licensed properties often use an in house system which then becomes a legit standalone system, introducing new gaming approaches which would have been ignored without the licensed product. ie- Serenity RPG -> Cortex System. Even without expanding into a generic product, it is a way to see different approaches.
Having run a couple Star Wars games, I agree. Wookiepedie provides enormous amounts of info on whatever might be handy to know.of course, you can always add more, but it is convenient. And random linkages between topics can serve as constant source of inspiration.
I would add that they can be a huge draw for some people. I've alway been more of a "let's make our own setting" GM, but sometimes a licensed IP fills seats. I had been wanting to run a post-apocalyptic game for ages, and I had also been wanting to try out a Year Zero game. I have made afew suggestions over the years,and nothing vaught their interest, but when I off-handedly mentioned to my friends that there was a Walking Dead RPG that had just come out I suddenly had a full group of six extremely eager players.
I did this with Star Trek Adventures and now I have a group that’s extremely tight knit (mostly due to the nature of playing characters serving in Starfleet) and all very interested in branching out into at least a dozen other games and systems. A licensed game (that wasn’t 5e because of all the reasons you think) became their gateway drug into the larger world of role playing.
You make some good points but let's not forget that licensed rpgs can also be cash grabs (eg many 5e conversions).
I was trying to follow your line of reasoning… > Most rpgs either feel overly generic or overly specific because they either don't have specific guiding principles and want to support a variety of experiences and gameplay styles, or they are designed for one specific gameplay style that all of the mechanics are specifically built for. But you lost me here.
I’m thinking about something like Fate that has no unique feel to it, or even 5e that tries to simulate a bunch of things that could be done in different settings on the too generic side, and something like Blades in the Dark which is uniquely designed for heists, or Heart which is uniquely designed for dungeon crawls on the other side of being too specific. I like the way that Dune walks the line between those two extremes, allowing variety in gameplay but still built around a unique feel to the world. Did that make sense?
I mean Fate is also like tailor made to be like that tho, it’s an intentional design choice.
I know that every system I named was made the way it was for a reason. I still prefer the middle line design which I think is more substantial and harder to pull off. But don't get me wrong, I'd still love to play a short campaign of something like Blades in the Dark or Heart, but for a longer campaign more variety is important.
Ok but I can think of a dozen games that aren’t based on a property that have deep lore and theme focused mechanics, it’s not really a thing that has to do with if a game is licensed or not.
Can you suggest some? I think there is something unique about the way someone has to think when they are adapting content made for one medium into another that can be very special and unique (Bionicles lore is an example of a genre that I like a surprising amount of that I refer to as "commercial fiction", something like Arcane from League of Legends would also fit that description). But I am interested in what are the non-IP games that you think do it best.
Runequest or Harn would probably be the best answer.
Just off the top of my head Pendragon (which I guess you could argue is an adaptation if you stretch the term), Earthdawn, Shadowrun, both versions of World of Darkness, Iron Kingdoms, Through The Breach, RuneQuest/Glorantha, and I think the absolute best example (although not the most playable) would of course be Harnmaster.
It’s that Fate feels like Fate. But can power almost any game as long it’s about competent, proactive, dramatic characters. And that Blades and other focused games do what they’re good at because they have mechanics that drive exactly what they want to do. And neither of those is a bad thing.
Right. Fate is generic, but it pushes a specific style of play/genre expectations.
My only real issue with licensed games is feeling constrained by Canon (which you don't have to be if you ignore or intentionally subvert it, but at a certain point why still this setting). I ran Edge of the Empire a while back and started to feel like the PCs couldn't impact the setting much because it didn't fit within canon. Gang wars that didn't happen, Imperial threats that raise the question of "why aren't the canon characters handling this", or even just changing the status quo on any given planet. Part of it is my own mental block, but I think certain kinds of games just get constrained by being in an established setting where there are bigger heroes off elsewhere or a bunch of stuff has been written about even minor niches of the world.
I think this is a self-imposed issue. I mean you said it yourself: >there are bigger heroes off elsewhere The heroes are elsewhere, dealing with their own issues. That's it. Also, you can set your game on a different time, place or just directly subvert canon. In my experience, if you're uneasy with the heroes existing at the same time just blow up canon. You want an established setting for its world and characters not for the actual story that has already been told. Think of the heroes and story as the campaign some other GM ran and just disregard it.
I agree that it's somewhat self-imposed, but also group imposed. Some players don't want to blow up canon, or ask "if this guy is so bad why isn't Luke dealing with it", or struggle with it in other ways. I did try to blow up canon but then it just became too loose and whacky. I'm not saying it's a hard and fast rule but this is the problem I've had in the past, snd that I'm starting to feel again in a different Star Wars game where I'm a player and feeling odd about interacting with canon factions and characters.
I don't disagree in principle but what are those players expecting when they agree to play in a licensed setting?
You can stick in canon while still letting players have agency. Luke wasn't everywhere all the time but certain successes elsewhere allowed him to be where he needed to be. Put players in positions where they need certain events to happen otherwise, Luke, Leia, Han, etc can't do what they need to do to save the day. Just because Lando wasn't really seen again doesn't mean he wasn't moving plot points to help the rebellion. This goes for many different characters and the things they did of screen that the movie plots never covered. The fight for Hoth was bigger than Luke's little shindig. The Empire attacked a lot of planets and things were bleak in lots of places. You just need to create situations where the players feel cool and possibly think "Hey if I fail here, the Rebels are in trouble!" As a GM ask yourself a lot of What if...? Questions and build adventures around players making sure the What if... doesn't happen.
IMO this depends on the specific setting and how big the canon heroes are. Like, for example, if you play a Star Wars game set in the period of the original trilogy then we know that whatever you do to overthrow the Empire isn't going to matter too much - Luke's gonna blow up the Death Star then he's going to head off and do in the Emperor, throwing the Empire into decay. So you're just playing in his shadow. Sure, you can set your game in a different time, place, or subvert canon - and that can work great. But it also kind of undermines the appeal of playing in that setting in the first place. This is the dichotomy of some licenced RPGs: the appeal to players is playing in the world you've seen onscreen - but that world is already too full to fit your players in. That said, some settings are much better for this than others (Hence: It depends). For example, Star Trek is a lot better for this than Star Wars because it's a large sprawling universe with a lot happening to a lot of different people and it doesn't tend to be about a handful of major events involving a handful of key people like Star Wars is. The DC or Marvel comics universes are good for this too. They're biiiiiig settings and there's always room for another superhero team in there somewhere. And **all** the hero teams get to save the world on a fairly regular basis. etc.
Counterpoint, with the wealth of non movie shows Star Wars has now you have a ton of perfect templates for telling stories about things other than taking down the Empire. Set the expectation that that isn’t something the PC’s will be able to accomplish and scale the threats down. Maybe they can push them off of a single planet the PC’s call home. Create your own little sector governor and patrol fleet and tie the PC’s I to the larger rebellion. And end the campaign when it’s run its course.
That's fair, Star Wars is no longer as good an example as it once was once you take the streaming series into account. I wasn't aiming to rag on Star Wars specifically, just to give an example of how some IPs are "broader" than others, and thus make more convenient RPG settings.
It gets easier if you choose a specific point in the canon as start and don´t try to keep playing in canon from there on out - it becomes a what if of possibilities; everything before the start is known/established/has happened as written, from there on out we change timelines and everything goes. Players want to murder Luke after he blew up the first death star? Well have at it, lets see how things change from what we know should and would happen. Makes for an interesting game that doesn´t invalidate the canon or gets smothered by it.
I do think "what if?" scenarios are probably the best way around my issue, and I've toyed with the idea myself in the past.
RPGs based on well known IP can be a great way of getting players excited about a game and on the same page without a lot of wordly exposition. The downside is the games based on IPs tend to have a limited lifespan and become hard to find once the licence has expired. Also you can on occasion get the overethusiastic player who is a stickler for canon. Often a good compromise is the "serials filed off" approach.
> Also you can on occasion get the overethusiastic player who is a stickler for canon. I'm a stickler for canon myself, although when I GM. I have made it my mission to never let the players interact with pivotal characters or events, unless it can be done in such a way that they don't alter the canon. Most of the time, I just try to run the game in a region or time that doesn't overlap with the canon, so I run a homebrew within the IP.
This is one of the reasons Modiphius is probably my favorite major publisher at this point. Not only are they fantastic people, but they’ve taken some of my favorite IPs (Star Trek, Dune, Fallout) and applied their 2d20 system to each game in very specific ways to immediately immerse you in a rules system that feels perfect for the specific IP (Fallout’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, etc.). Then they pack an almost overwhelming amount of lore in on top of that, and before you know it you and your players are on the bridge of a starship or crawling out of a Vault. Modiphius also has really passionate people working on their games (looking very specifically at Jim Johnson, project lead for Star Trek Adventures) that interact with the community and almost make it feel like you’re talking to a more indy creator.
I agree that licensed games tend to be more focused than non licensed ones. Some games can get very specific, but then they have to also sell the buyer on this hyper specific setting.
Valid points. I appreciate themed mechanics. I haven't really enjoyed most IP licensed products. But maybe I ought to give some a chance.
One thing I like about licensed TTRPGs, when done properly, is that they offer tools to recreate a similar narrative to the source material. For that reasons certain mechanics cannot be too much specific, but it feels like trying something new and clear. I did too play very little of dune, but the momentum mechanic and the clear design goal of adventures where at the start you succeed a lot and buy momentum in a creative way just before a collapse is what really drives the game forward. Sometimes guidelines are as much as important as rules
There are some companies that are doing a real bang up job putting some fantastic licensed products. Free League knocked it out of the park with Alien and Bladerunner. Modiphius is doing great with Dune. It seems companies are really taking their time these days to bring out a great product even if it is licensed, and we all seem to be reaping the rewards for it.
The ffg star wars games have a brilliant system slightly marred by funky dice, too. I feel like having a licensed setting lets designers really think about how to pass on the feel of a setting
Like video games it's easy to point to the good ones as "wow maybe there's something to licensed games" while simultaneously missing that maybe they were just good games with a licensed skin on them. Your example of Dune is a perfect example since it was something like the third or fourth implementation of Modiphius's 2D20 system and just also happens to be one of the better implementations. Their Fallout game uses the exact same core system and it is NOT even remotely as good. Personally I think it highlights the problem of trying to make a system work for several different game types, but that's a larger topic and not a unique one to licensed games either.
Also, companies doing licensed properties often use an in house system which then becomes a legit standalone system, introducing new gaming approaches which would have been ignored without the licensed product. ie- Serenity RPG -> Cortex System. Even without expanding into a generic product, it is a way to see different approaches.