The most exciting news of the whole week. An update about Palladium Books' Robotech: Shadow Chronicles RPG! Let's get right to it!
The Shadow Chronicles RPG has been delayed until August or Fall (Pending) (I say next year). Here's what they had to say:
"Sometimes things don’t happen as quickly as you’d hope. All you can do is keep plugging along. That’s what we’ve been doing with the Robotech® license. We had hoped to nail the license down last Winter and have the first RPG out by Spring 2007, but fate had other plans. For one reason or another, this deal just couldn’t be done quickly. However, the entire time Harmony Gold has expressed its excitement for Palladium Books getting the license and doing new Robotech RPGs and sourcebooks. And that’s what we hope to do.
Kevin hopes to have a Robotech® RPG deal, signed, sealed and delivered by the Palladium Open House, if not sooner. “We’ve made tremendous progress over the last few weeks, and both Harmony Gold and Palladium Books are anxious to see Robotech® RPGs from Palladium Books back on the market. We’re shooting to have the RPG out by August. Failing that, sometime this Fall. Keep your fingers crossed.”
Here is a glimpse of what we have in mind for the initial release.
- The first book in the series will be Robotech® The Shadow Chronicles RPG. Don’t know yet, but it may include a lot of the New Generation/Invid Invasion/Mospeada information, as Shadow Chronicles picks up where Invid Invasion leaves off.
- It will be a 192-224 page “manga-sized” book. So will the subsequent supplements.
- Price will be an irresistible $15.95 retail.
- The Shadow Chronicles® RPG will probably be followed by the Macross-based sourcebook, followed by Southern Cross and new stuff.
- Yes, we will be updating, correcting, and adding to the RPG series. The original books from the 1980s will only be the base from which we build a new era of excitement for Robotech®. The new books are NOT going to be reprints of our old titles.
- Kevin is also considering doing a deluxe, collector’s hardcover edition with some interior color pages, similar to what we did with Rifts® Ultimate Edition at the usual 8 ½ x 11 format, 224 pages. If we did, it wouldn’t see publication until Fall or possibly early 2008. Everything is still in the planning and concept stage, so nothing is written in stone.
source: http://www.palladiumbooks.com/press/press2007-03a.html
Special thanks to Chris of Space Station Liberty
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6 comments:
Is it me or does it sound like Palladium's running into the same problem Michael Bradley face with trying to get his CD out? Maybe HG's legal department needs a vacation. I mean...come on.
-adc-
Actually no. It's not like Bradley. What's going on is Palladium is taking a risk at producing this book BEFORE they have the license in their hands. They believe its almost 100% that they'll get the license, should it be. So, they haven't completed that process yet and are still waiting.
If for some awful reason HG turns them down...it's going to be huge
So uh...enough with the Harmony Gold hugging around here.
Palladium's history has shown that they're willing to work hard with minimal resources and get stuff done. Why did Harmony Gold choose them to do the new Shadow Chronicles RPG?--It baffled me from the start, but my guess is that companies like Steve Jackson Games didn't want to shell-out the dough, and Wizards of the Coast (d20) had too much business sense for Harmony Gold's licensing division cronies. Thus, Palladium gets the license because it's less stressful for Harmony Gold and Palladium desperately needs business and they're willing to work hard for it.
Speculation?--Sure, but at least it makes sense. Saying garbage like "Its not like Bradley" covers-up the likelihood that either a) Harmony Gold wants to milk their licensing for all its worth, or b) they're complete morons who take weeks to do what other companies' people could do in days.
Kevin Siembieda's been through some tough times recently (in case everyone didn't know), so I'd wager that he'd be willing to pull-out all of the stops to make this thing happen, including working on the book before its released just to show Harmony Gold that he's gonna go all the way. If this is the case (and given both companies' track records, it is) then Harmony Gold gets the blame for a later release.
At the end of this year? Next year? Hell, last month, no one cared about Shadow Chronicles. How does this delay serve Robotech in a good way?--It doesn't! It mangles the whole possibility of "The Shadow Chronicles" being a respectably-released product and, in turn, forges another layer of disrespectability about Harmony Gold's name.
Yours in the protoculture,
Khyron_Prime
Praise Haydon!
If this fell through I'd weep for Palladium. I know they have their detractors...I'm sure the list is long but, I've always been a fan (sense TMNT was new).
Now I buy them mostly for the stories and to collect them...even though I have a kid (that's made me dirt ass poor) I still scrape up a little here and there. I even picked up the $50 print to help save Palladium books.
I just think it's sad to see this deal languish.
-adc-
I'd just like to remind folks that I asked Kevin about this very issue during my Space Station Liberty interview with him.
License deals always take a long time to work out. At least Kevin feels confident they can come to an agreement—it's not like Bradley (sorry, Anonymous) where he was offered impossible terms from the outset. And Kevin said that games' release date slipping is not unusual in the game industry—especially for Palladium, which has a history of setting and then failing to meet ship dates that makes Harmony Gold's waffling over the Shadow Chronicles DVD release look like a minor detail.
This is just business as usual. We'll see what happens at the Open House.
Palladium's history of failing to meet ship dates might make some people complacent, but it makes other people concerned. Instead of using that history and Harmony Gold's own history of delays as excuses for the present snafus as "business as usual," both companies should think about changing their practices so they don't overpromise and underdeliver--late (if at all).
Palladium is going a timid step in the right direction by no longer claiming the Shadow Chronicles RPG is on its production schedule. It was bizarre to learn that the contracts stll haven't been signed, even though Palladium had been announcing the RPG on its release schedule since last year.
As for Palladium having a worse on-time record than Harmony Gold, at least Palladium usually ships within a year of its announcements. We can't count on Harmony Gold releases shipping within a year of its announcements--we can't even count on them shipping at all. ;)
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