Goodman Games

know what else would be nice? a Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick game. i don't mean something that necessarily follows the movies, but the setting from that series is incredible and there's a fair amount of setting material out there now between the anime, the movies, and the video game.

*shrug* just a thought.

-c

I would think that for licensing, you want something that has a large appeal, but is not overly-expensive to license.

Comedy: Get Smart! might be good--nice cult following and can make use of some of the stuff from other spy games. There were at least 99 agents afterall...

Adventure: The Lost World might be nice. With the TV show doing well, it would be able to use almost anything available excepting for really modern day stuff. Guns, Dinosaurs, ladies in distress, and weird native cultures gives alot of possibilities.

Sci-fi: My first thought here is Firefly but I understand that's already in development somewhere else. Spaceships and smuggling with cowboys, savage marauding cannibals and legalized prostitution is a hard one to beat. Next would probably be Dune--maybe based on the Legends of Dune series concerning the Butlerian Jihad; 10,000 years prior to Dune is alot of leeway to have fun. That might be alot more expensive than it's worth however.

Horror: White Wolf has pretty much locked down any of the staples here, so something weird needs to be found. Kolchak: the Night Stalker maybe. Reporters from a rival trash-rag? It's bound to be cheaper than X-files and has enough weird stuff that could be generated for an X-files game without all the hassle. Besides, X-files was really just a variation on it anyway.

Didn't Mongoose Games lose the license to the Conan franchise? That would be a neat one to grab!

Already passed on it. It would have been cool...a couple years ago, before the staggering amount of Conan material that has hit the market in the last couple years (both RPG material and all the other comic/game stuff). I think it needs to lie fallow for a while to rebuild the interest level. I'm a big REH fan (I've read all of his Conan material) so don't get me wrong, I love the property, but it's just in overkill mode right now out in the marketplace, in my opinion.

Yeah, I've been thinking about this from a business standpoint ever since my earlier Conan suggestion, and I've pretty much come to the same general conclusion.

The problem, as I see it, is that most games and modules probably don't rake in tons of money. They have a somewhat limited print run compared to national bestseller books, they have a very limited sales outlet selection with only a few stores and online sales to work from, and I suspect the overall profit from most games isn't that large.

Then you have to factor in the merchandising fees. WotC gave up on the Dune franchise because it was too expensive, not because they didn't think there would be a market for it.

I suspect that whatever profit one could earn from a Conan game (or similar big-name property) would mostly get eaten up by the IP owners in the form of the license. I also agree with your point that having Mongoose produce so many Conan products would deminish the value of the license right now.

I was just thinking that a new RPG would be kind of neat if combined with a popular "name brand", but it could be that the DCC name is already established enough to sell the game by itself.

Well, look over the appendix N thread and see which stuff is fairly well known but not currently licensed. I know there are current games on the market for Moorcock's stuff and the Lankhmar stuff.

I'd like to see a good Flash Gordon-style sci fi game, personally.

Speaking of Flash Gordon ... am I the only one who liked the SciFi Channel series? It got butchered in the various boards but I thought it was kind of cool. (Not as cool as Dresden Files, and not a great replacement, but not bad.)

I liked that suggestion of a Command & Conquer sort of game. Or like Rise of Legends, a nice RTS inspired RPG or similar.

Otherwise I want to know what the status of Etherscope is personally?