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Star Wars, no one is watching.

Started by Ratman_tf, February 14, 2025, 09:36:32 PM

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hedgehobbit

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 01, 2025, 09:48:24 AMIf only there were other franchises that offered a similar experience to Star Wars and weren't canceled or driven into the ground by corpos.

The reason Star Wars was such a huge success when it came out was that it was different from everything else out there. Mainstream Sci-fi at the time was generally depressing and overly thinky. SW was fun, like much of the B-movie scifi of the period, but it actually looked good. Compare Star Wars to At The Earth's Core which came out the year prior.

This is why I'm convinced that trying to copy Star Wars (even by Disney) will never produce the excitement that the original Star Wars did. You've got to do something completely different.

Ratman_tf

Quote from: hedgehobbit on May 11, 2025, 05:14:14 PM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 01, 2025, 09:48:24 AMIf only there were other franchises that offered a similar experience to Star Wars and weren't canceled or driven into the ground by corpos.

The reason Star Wars was such a huge success when it came out was that it was different from everything else out there. Mainstream Sci-fi at the time was generally depressing and overly thinky. SW was fun, like much of the B-movie scifi of the period, but it actually looked good. Compare Star Wars to At The Earth's Core which came out the year prior.

This is why I'm convinced that trying to copy Star Wars (even by Disney) will never produce the excitement that the original Star Wars did. You've got to do something completely different.


And the reason Star Wars exists is because Lucas couldn't get the rights to make a Flash Gordon movie.

Disney bought Star Wars, but they couldn't buy Lucas's love for the genre and desire to tell a fun space adventure movie.
The notion of an exclusionary and hostile RPG community is a fever dream of zealots who view all social dynamics through a narrow keyhole of structural oppression.
-Haffrung

BoxCrayonTales

Quote from: hedgehobbit on May 11, 2025, 05:14:14 PM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 01, 2025, 09:48:24 AMIf only there were other franchises that offered a similar experience to Star Wars and weren't canceled or driven into the ground by corpos.

The reason Star Wars was such a huge success when it came out was that it was different from everything else out there. Mainstream Sci-fi at the time was generally depressing and overly thinky. SW was fun, like much of the B-movie scifi of the period, but it actually looked good. Compare Star Wars to At The Earth's Core which came out the year prior.

This is why I'm convinced that trying to copy Star Wars (even by Disney) will never produce the excitement that the original Star Wars did. You've got to do something completely different.

How?

Mass Effect is the most recent franchise to be created (what others are there?) and it's a lazy throwback to mid-20th century pulps with a crappy ending that retroactively ruins it.

I think TSR's Star*Drive was the last contender to be created (feel free to suggest others). It's not a clone of an existing story like Dune, Star Trek, Star Wars or Buck Rodgers. The politics, tech, and bioethics are very different from those other settings.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like anybody can worldbuild creative settings anymore. All the scifi ttrpgs that I could find are either Dune clones (Traveller, Fading Suns, Coriolis, etc) or weird posthumanist screed.