Stewart Wieck and Nocturnal are Resurrecting West End Games.

On April 13th of this year, Stewart Wieck announced that Nocturnal Media had purchased West End Games from it's past owner Eric Gibson. West End Games (WEG) was founded in 1974 and like many early companies in the role playing game hobby, started off as a publisher of wargames. Prior to their transition into a role-playing game publisher, WEG produced a number of classic wargames including Cosmic Encounter, Junta, and Kamakura. The company made a major leap into "hobby" wargames when they published Bug-Eyed Monsters and Web and Starship, both designed by Greg Costikyan, in 1983 and 1984. When WEG finally jumped into the role-playing game market, they did so with quite a splash with the Paranoia role-playing game, a game that combined a simple rules set with a comic sensibility that mocked Cold War fears and the role-playing game hobby.

WEG would eventually add a host of high quality licensed role-playing games like Star Wars and Ghostbusters and unlicensed games like The Price of Freedom and Torg to a strong line of hobby games that included Tales of the Arabian Nights, Druid, and Tank Leader. For a time, WEG was one of the biggest brands in the hobby and their rapid decline came as a surprise to many fans, but the company managed to limp along as it moved from one owner to another. None of the owners could quite manage to recapture the particular combination of mechanics and settings that made WEG a force in the hobby.

Now the company has transitioned into the hands of Stewart Wieck, one of the leading names in the modern gaming hobby, who has a long history in the gaming hobby dating back to his days with White Wolf Publishing (a company he co-founded in high school) and which includes stints working on the Star Wars and Torg properties as a freelancer.

While some may be skeptical that Wieck can revive WEG and bring success back to the brand, I'm fairly optimistic about the endeavor. Wieck has a long track record in the industry and his company Nocturnal has done a good job with Pendragon. Additionally, Wieck has a detailed knowledge of the direct to digital RPG marketplace. One of the first things that Wieck is planning as WEG owner is to add Print on Demand versions of the WEG "in house" d6 RPG gamebooks. He is also planning to do a Kickstarter launch of the classic WEG board game Web and Starship.

 

 According to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Web and Starship is a :

Board and counter Wargame (1984). West End Games (WEG). Designed by Greg Costikyan.

Web and Starship is a Hard SF Wargame played on a two-dimensional map of nearby stars, with the third dimension represented by notations on the display. The setting is asymmetric; there are three players, each of whom has different capabilities. The Pereen can travel between stars by means of an instantaneous "Web", but must use slower-than-light probes to add new planets to the network, while the Gwynhyfarr use Faster Than Light ships, which are too small to move large amounts of material from one star to another. As a result, the Pereen will generally win in any ground combat, while the Gwynhyfarr forces are superior in space engagements. The third player, Earth, has access to both the Web and faster than light starships, but begins the game with limited versions of both Technologies, which only slowly improve. Earth is initially located directly between the Pereen and Gwynhyfarr spheres of influence, leading to a great deal of diplomacy as player alliances form and reform. The result is an interesting exercise in strategy in which gameplay is generally focused on economic expansion, interrupted by intermittent warfare.

Image Source Scott Smith

If we can talk Wieck into republishing Bug-Eyed Monsters as well, there are at least two WEG products that will be added to my must own list.

Margaret Weis Productions Releasing Smallville RPG at Gen Con

Margaret Weis Productions is quickly becoming the West End Games of the 21st Century -- and that is a good thing.

In the 1980s, West End Games went from a publisher of war games and board games. Among their early titles were Campaigns of Napoleon, Operation Badr, and Killer Angels on the "war gaming" side, and Junta and Bug Eyed Monsters on the "board gaming" side. In the mid-80s, West End Games acquired the license to make official Star Trek based board, war, and role playing games. They weren't the first company to get the Star Trek license, but they were the first company to create consistently high quality products based on an existing license. Star Trek itself had been licensed as an RPG product prior to the West End license, but that product lacked the combination of high production value and quality mechanics that West End brought to the table.

Following on the Star Trek license the company acquired a license for a Ghostbusters role playing game, and the rpg they published for that game secured their reputation. So secure was their reputation that they eventually landed the grand daddy of all rpg licenses -- Star Wars and the game they produced was a masterpiece. To this day it stands as the gold standard for adaptation of a licensed property into a role playing game. The Star Wars mechanics were an adaptation of the Ghostbusters d6 system, one of the cornerstone rules sets for players who prefer "cinematic" role playing games over "mechanics."

The list of licensed properties that West End created games for grew and grew, and they maintained their consistent quality, but changes in the gaming market like the explosion of Magic: the Gathering, the d20 explosion, and the loss of the Star Wars license conspired to bring the company down. It took a while for the company to completely peter out, and you can still find a small pulse out there somewhere, but peter out it did.

When West End's reign as the king of licensed rpgs ended, there was no clear leader in the field. Several companies had licensed properties. Wizards of the Coast had Star Wars. Decipher had Star Trek and Lord of the Rings (the movies only). All of which are/were good products based on "mainstream" intellectual properties, but none of which fired the imagination in the way that West End Games' Star Wars line did.

The death of West End left a hole in the marketplace for a company to emerge as a leader in creating adaptations of "mainstream" intellectual properties.

Green Ronin is earning a reputation as a skilled creator of licensed games, but prior to their recent acquisition of the DC Comics license their properties had been more niche than mainstream. As much as I love George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, it's a fantasy series and not a television series/movie.

It appeared that Eden Studios, with their Buffy, Angel, and Army of Darkness games might have become the next true successor to West End, but these hopes fizzled with their City of Heroes license.

Margaret Weis Productions, on the other hand, seems to be acquiring license after license and publishing quality product after quality product. The first licensed game they produced was Serenity based on Joss Whedon's film of the same name -- and which takes place in the Firefly universe. The game was well put together and well received. This was followed by a Battlestar Galactica game and an excellent game based on the Supernatural television series. All three of these games use some variation of Margaret Weis Productions' in house "Cortex" gaming system. The "Cortex" system is a cinematic system, in the tradition of West End's old d6 system, and bears some similarities to the excellent Savage Worlds game system. Not enough similarities that one would accuse MWP of lifting another system, but both systems are easy to learn and use "steps" of dice to signify attributes/skills. The similarities, and the quality of products, likely contributed to their ability to acquire the license for a Leverage based game. The fact that John Rogers, the creator of Leverage, is a big gaming geek couldn't have hurt either.

What is remarkable about this list of licenses is that they come from a variety of networks and companies. Serenity is Joss Whedon/Fox, mostly Joss Whedon due to the status of that IP. Battlestar Galactica is NBC Universal. Supernatural is a CW property (CBS and Warner Bros.), and Leverage is a TNT show (Turner). All of the properties have "geek street cred," but all of them also have audiences outside the gaming community.

This summer, MWP will be adding Smallville to the list of games it produces. According to MWP, the game will use a variation of their in house Cortex system -- but with some key changes:

We've had a few questions regarding if we'll be using the Cortex system for Smallville. The answer is we'll be using an updated version now called
Cortex Plus. It focuses on Values (what's important to you) and Relationships (who is important to you). Powers, training, etc. are Assets you can add
into your rolls when appropriate.

Smallville will use d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12. Many of the game elements are the same but fixed difficulties are gone, replaced by opposed rolls. We feel it's a super fit (sorry for the pun) for this line of product!

The focus on "Values" and "Relationships" demonstrates a desire by Line Developer Cam Banks -- and the writers working on Smallville -- to highlight the interpersonal relationships of the characters over combat situations. Stressing interpersonal relationships in superhero rpgs is an important, but often overlooked element of the emulation of the subject matter. One of the innovations of the "Marvel Method" was the incorporation of personal relationships with "real life" stakes attached. Marvel's genius was in combining Teen Romance comic narratives with superhero action. Some roleplaying games -- like Capes, TSRs Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP), Mayfair's DC Heroes -- have internal risk/reward systems that facilitate non-combat role play. Other games -- like Champions and Mutants and Masterminds -- encourage and allow for personal interactions, but lack a robust mechanic specifically designed to encourage such interactions.

About a year ago, Cam Banks blogged some initial thoughts regarding the development of an independent RPG called Superteam. The game would have been a superhero role playing game that was structured around team dynamics and team-member interdependence, inspired by comics like Teen Titans and the X-Men. Sadly, Bank's posts on the topic faded and I had lost hopes of seeing some of his ideas regarding the proper design of a superhero RPG.

Thankfully, he is working on the Smallville project and we'll get to see some of his ideas there. I would still like to see where he was going with Superteam, but I eagerly await Smallville.

MWP is offering free pdfs of their Supernatural rpg to anyone who pre-orders Smallville.

I'm wondering if one can pre-order and request to pick up the game at Gen Con rather than to have the game shipped.