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West End Games had problems making it pay off as well. There is a lot of Lucas baggage that's included with licensing Star Wars and I doubt that one.... that even Paizo could turn a profit with it, and two... that they really would want to have to deal with that baggage.I suspect the problem is just inherent with the nature of this particular franchise.
I met one of the designers of the original game, and when WEG originally started publishing Star Wars material, it was so profitable, it was like they were printing their own money. I forget the details he went into, but the guy who owned WEG also inherited a shoe factory, and apparently, he started sinking the WEG profits into the factory and they both went down.
Then, Lucasfilm hiked up the licensing fees right after the special editions and right before the prequels; it sounded like with the new films, the market bore a higher price for the license.
But, around 1988 when WEG first started printing Star Wars, they did very well. It was a different era back then ... there was all this latent demand for Star Wars and very little in the way of merchandise. Nowadays, I think that particular well has been pumped pretty dry.
Maybe Lucasfilm should follow Paramount's example and put JJ Abrams in charge ...
I maintain that Paizo should pick up the Star Wars license.Why?..If WotC can't make it pay I doubt that Vic and Lisa would want this particular poison pill.West End Games had problems making it pay off as well. There is a lot of Lucas baggage that's included with licensing Star Wars and I doubt that one.... that even Paizo could turn a profit with it, and two... that they really would want to have to deal with that baggage.
I suspect the problem is just inherent with the nature of this particular franchise.
Their primary competitor, Star Trek, isn't much better about that. The Roddenberry estate is at least as difficult to work with.
Then you get Lucas and his bizarre notions of "mutable continuity." I used to love Star Wars. But with Lucas dinking about with retcons and telling his LucasFilm writers to ignore everything in existance other than what was seen onscreen... He pretty well killed my love for the setting.
To be fair, as a setting becomes very large and complex the owner need to have some way of limiting what the writers have to work with.
Expecting all the writers to be intimately familiar with every nuance of what ever has been published for the entire setting does get to be a bit much.
Can anyone answer this question for me? Why is Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) selling for 150+ on some sites (ebay and Amazon) where as the other books are still at the standard price?
For whatever reason, KotOR is more "rare" than other books. I don't know if it had a limited print run in comparison, or if it had equal number runs as the other titles, but the content is just that much more popular.
Suffice it to say, it's hard to find a copy on many shelves, and it commands a higher price. Starships of the Galaxy for Saga is much the same way - $75-$80 a lot of places. Starships premium price bugs me more, as it's a rather important book to the whole thing - not required, mind you, but incredibly advantageous over the other setting books.
Keep that in mind if you're browsing, and you find either of them cheap.
Can anyone answer this question for me? Why is Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) selling for 150+ on some sites (ebay and Amazon) where as the other books are still at the standard price?
My personal guess is because of this. Either due to the demand because of the forthcoming game or because gaming "scalpers" (I don't know what else to call them, sorry) perceive the demand is worth the jack-up. All I know is that I've been casually searching for a copy of this at a reasonable price for about a year I think.
I've been buying a lot of Star Wars miniatures for my Legion of Super-Heroes game, most work quite well. The ones with light sabers I traded for others. Eventually I want to re-paint the storm troopers so they look more like Science Police officers. These miniatures are excellent for fill-in NPCs for the game. I probably have all I really need for now, though some more monsters would be nice. Anyone know which set provided them?
Can anyone answer this question for me? Why is Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) selling for 150+ on some sites (ebay and Amazon) where as the other books are still at the standard price?For whatever reason, KotOR is more "rare" than other books. I don't know if it had a limited print run in comparison, or if it had equal number runs as the other titles, but the content is just that much more popular.
Suffice it to say, it's hard to find a copy on many shelves, and it commands a higher price. Starships of the Galaxy for Saga is much the same way - $75-$80 a lot of places. Starships premium price bugs me more, as it's a rather important book to the whole thing - not required, mind you, but incredibly advantageous over the other setting books.
Keep that in mind if you're browsing, and you find either of them cheap.
I noticed the price hike too. I'm just glad I got both of those books when they came out for less than cover via Amazon. I think TigerDave is right on the money with the KotOR book. Aside from game rules, the koTOR book is an excellent resource for info on that setting in general, giving details, descriptions of all the factions and major characters, especially involving the ones from the video games. It's my favorite Saga Edition book, I use info out of it regardless of the era I play in, if given GM approval(I've used it in eras like Clone Wars, Unleashed, Legacy, etc.).
As for the Starships book, that's another one of those deceivingly "must haves" so the vendors jack the price up on purpose. But, there's a way around that book if you cannot bring yourself to pay that much money; it's a dumb "patch", but your players will never know the difference:
The other, more realistically attainable SWSE books already have a plethora of available starships. If the Starship book is out of reach, find a ship from a book you have that's reasonably close in size and spec of the ship you need stats for, and just swap the flavor text.
From my experience(and just my opinion, I'm not preaching), ship combat is still way too complicated, even though they radically simplified it from Revised edition. The numbers are so wacky, the other players aren't going to notice a difference in a few HP of ship hull or shields. Unless you're a ship-combat fanatic, starships are more useful as plot devices than actual tools/weapons. We've always used our starships as a mobile HQ, only a few times over the course of entire campaigns have we even looked at the actual stats. Can it fly? Does it have a Warp Drive? Does it have Guns? Cue cut-scene.
There are plenty of smaller craft already in the Saga Core Rulebook to handle the terrestrial stuff, like speeders, speeder bikes, X-Wings, TIEs, etc.
Again, these are just my opinions from my game experiences. Your games might involve a lot more space combat, so YMMV. Basically, the Starships of the Galaxy book is great for those intricate details, but is only going to be really useful if you are planning on a lot of ship combat. You can run a perfectly viable SW game without it.
It could be too because of the WotC not picking the license back up, these books are going out of print. The SW Revised Edition books were going for astronomical prices before Saga came out. I remember the Revised Starships book going for well over $200. The price plummeted as soon as Saga was released. Given that there is no other SW rpg coming out on the horizon that we know of, these books are going to get pretty rare, I would think.