STAR WARS - without really "knowing" STAR WARS (expanded Universe or otherwise)

Kaz · November 27, 2007, 01:23:39 PM

I don't really see the difference between playing your vision of Star Wars and calling it 'Star Wars with a twist' and playing a derivative version and calling it something else.

Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Zoran Bekric · November 28, 2007, 04:44:52 AM

Quote from: KazI don't really see the difference between playing your vision of Star Wars and calling it 'Star Wars with a twist' and playing a derivative version and calling it something else.

And I don't see any point to ignoring everything except the first five minutes of the first movie and calling it Star Wars -- with or without a twist.

The difference is that if the derivative version called something else turns out to be any good, you could do something else with it without having to worry about any rights issues.

Or, to put it another way, according to Francis Ford Coppola:
"George wanted to do Flash Gordon ... he met with the people who owned it, and they didn't take him at all seriously. So he took the Flash Gordon trailers -- the diagonal titles that talk about the universe at that point -- and sort of combined it with a Stanley Kubrick 2001 world and created his own Flash Gordon."

So, if you think Flash Gordon and Star Wars are pretty much interchangeable, then you're right -- it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.

obryn · November 28, 2007, 09:26:47 AM

Quote from: Zoran BekricAnd I don't see any point to ignoring everything except the first five minutes of the first movie and calling it Star Wars -- with or without a twist.

The difference is that if the derivative version called something else turns out to be any good, you could do something else with it without having to worry about any rights issues.

Or, to put it another way, according to Francis Ford Coppola:
"George wanted to do Flash Gordon ... he met with the people who owned it, and they didn't take him at all seriously. So he took the Flash Gordon trailers -- the diagonal titles that talk about the universe at that point -- and sort of combined it with a Stanley Kubrick 2001 world and created his own Flash Gordon."

So, if you think Flash Gordon and Star Wars are pretty much interchangeable, then you're right -- it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.

This makes no sense at all to me. As a gamemaster, I have absolutely zero concern about any kind of publishing rights.

There's precisely zero benefit to making up new names for crap that have perfectly good names already in the SW universe - lightsabers, the Force, Jedi, and so on.

-O

Zoran Bekric · November 30, 2007, 01:11:40 AM

Quote from: obrynThere's precisely zero benefit to making up new names for crap that have perfectly good names already in the SW universe - lightsabers, the Force, Jedi, and so on.

So, on the one hand, people shouldn't put any effort into doing research so they can portray those things accurately.
On the other hand, they shouldn't put any effort into differentiating their variants from those in an established setting because, apparently, it's other people's job to know what the nature of their particular version of the Force (or whatever) is.

And, as far as I'm aware, you're perfectly free to call a starship a starship, an empire an empire, a force field a force field, hyperdrive hyperdrive and so on. No-one ever suggested that you couldn't. I know I certainly didn't. Those are perfectly good names and you're free to use them.