The brand new Stargate Roleplaying Game is just a few months away, and as development continues we’re hearing more about what the game will be like. The release of the tabletop RPG is anticipated for this summer.
Recently two members of the dev team from Tennessee-based Wyvern Gaming appeared to chat about the game on the Role of the Dice podcast.
Wyvern CEO Brad Ellis appeared on the show in January. He talked about his early gaming days, the founding of the company, and working with MGM as an official license.
“It was so easy to get people to want to work on this project,” he said. Not only are members of the team fans of Stargate, but “it’s perfect for a roleplaying game. Every week you have your team, they go through a gate, and on the other side of the gate you can have anything you want. If you want to have a team go through a western this week, cool! Medieval? Cool! You want to be sci-fi this week? Go right ahead. It all still fits in the universe.”
Ellis said that the game won’t merely reproduce the formula of the Stargate universe, but build new content within that fictional world. That starts with the Phoenix Site, the home base for players in the RPG.
Phoenix Site is an off-world location run by Stargate Command that incorporates allies from numerous races. The idea takes some initial inspiration from the SG-1 sixth season episode “Allegiance,” set amidst the conflict between Tok’ra and Jaffa at Earth’s Alpha Site.
“Its purpose is to house the freedom fighters from across the galaxy, and train them in the Stargate Command tactics and ways, to aid in the fight against the Goa’uld,” Ellis explained. “So being able to bring the Tok’ra, the Jaffa, the Unas all together — and humans across from other worlds — being able to come together to this facility, and then strike out from there as S.G. teams, is the idea and the springboard for the campaign.”
The game also introduces a new race, the Aturen, who look a bit like the fan-favorite Nox. Once a warring people whose world was filled with conflict, long ago the Nox shepherded the Aturen into a new era of peace — and even shared some of their advanced technology with them.
Ellis said that GMs for player campaigns will be nicknamed “Gate Masters.”
Each adventure in the game will represent an “episode,” with story elements building together in a living campaign to create a coherent “season” of the game — starting in SG-1‘s sixth season. Players can register and update their characters online, gaining credits over time. They’ll also be able to transfer their characters from one table to another to play with a different group.
Production on the Stargate Roleplaying Game will be supported by a Kickstarter campaign, which is launching soon. At that point the current private play-test will be opened to public play-testing. After further refinement the core rulebook and first episodes will be released at Gen Con 2020 this July.
(In Brad’s interview the conversation about Stargate begins at the 12:30 mark.)
Also appearing on a recent show is John D. Kennedy, a line producer and freelance writer in the role-playing game industry. He’s contributing to the Stargate RPG as a writer.
“Stargate was so influential to me,” Kennedy said. “… It’s a true honor. One of the things that we get to do with writing the drafts is we get to add little tidbits of conversation from the S.G. teams. So getting to write in the voices of Daniel Jackson and Teal’c, Samantha Carter, and Jack O’Neill — getting to capture their voices as they comment on something that happens in the draft — it’s great. I never for the life of me thought that I’d get to do something like this.”
Play testing kicked off at Gen Con in 2019, and will continue with a public beta later this year. Twitter / @WyvrenGaming
“Stargate was all about not just a bunch of airman traveling the galaxy, shooting aliens, and high-fiving each other,” Kennedy added. “Stargate was always [about] meeting new civilizations, exploring old ruins, having to navigate both human politics and then galactic politics. It was just so much more than just guns and bullets and aliens.
“So when we got to work on it we … wanted to make sure that there wasn’t just a group of all soldiers fighting each other. Because if we wanted to make a war game, we could make a war game. [But] the team felt really strongly about not just making sure that this was a Stargate-branded game — we wanted to make sure this was a Stargate game.”
“Working on Stargate, we’re not just telling a Stargate story,” Kennedy said. “We want to help you tell your Stargate story, and really make you feel like, yes, you are a member of one of the Phoenix teams — traveling the galaxy, fighting against the Goa’uld.”
In the rest of the interview Kennedy talks about getting into this field and his career so far, his work in the Star Trek universe, as well as his own love of history and writing for SG-1’s resident historian and archaeologist.
(Here the conversation about the Stargate RPG begins at the 27:00 mark.)
Stay tuned for more from Brad Ellis and Wyvern Gaming when he appears this month on the GateWorld Podcast! Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. And check out these and other gaming conversations on Role of the Dice.
On Twitter: @WyvrenGaming, @JKMyth
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I don't play RPG's ... and I have to read through a 5th edition rule book first to make it even to a first step of anything. I have a an eidtion of D&D at home. It was opened once in its lifetime.
Without a game master (or gate master), this is as useless to me as Stargate Origins was on Stargate Command.
Will I check out the Kickstarter -- maybe...
I don't feel like this is going to speak to a wide enough audience though, and will probably end up a niche and disappear like the other games so far, which I find sad nonetheless.
First, no you don't have to read a 5th edition book, the game is not an expansion of D&D, it's a standalone game that happens to be based on D&D 5th Edition. The game will have its own core rulebook, which is all you need.
And of course you need a GM, because that's how RPGs work. It's not a video game. Someone needs to run the game for you and the other players. However, it's certainly possible to play "solo" (i.e. by yourself) with the right kind of tools and mindset, but it's quite difficult and time consuming to get started (especially if you have no experience with RPGs in general).
It will probably reach a wide enough audience, as long as it's marketed well. I know you're not experienced with RPGs, which means you likely are also not part of the RPG community. There's plenty of interest for it. Looking at Star Trek, The Expanse, and many other (including smaller) IP-based RPGs, there's plenty of room for it. The only point of criticism people seem to have is that it's 5e-based.
I'm looking forward to this, but curious as to why they are relying on Kickstarter. Does that indicate that they are not 100% sure they'll make their money back on this? Wouldn't this delay the overall summer delivery of the game?
Wyvern Gaming is solely responsible for making money off this thing. MGM isn't contributing any money (I imagine). WG has to pay MGM for use of the license. Same as American Mythology paid for the license (which MGM didn't renew or reply about after that first series SGA/SGU run). AM too did a kickstarter to fund their comics. Hence why I fear, like the comics this will die a quiet death, a year -- two years from now, since it won't be officially released until the summer of 2020 (which we don't even know whether that is global or state-side release).
Many, many RPGs are funded through Kickstarter, in part because the industry is tiny with relatively little money floating around (D&D sales represent 95% of the income of the RPG industry), and in part because a successful kickstarter serves to demonstrate to distributors that there is a market for a game. It also helps avoid some of the cashflow issues that can occur with a big new release, which can be tough for small publishers (and the freelancers who work for them).
Good to know - thanks for sharing those insights. If the kickstarter comes with one of those Stargate models... I'd likely be an interested party. But then again I'm easily swayed :)
The D20 System (3rd edition D&D) was a terrible choice for the original Stargate RPG. What bonehead thought 5th edition D&D was going to be any better ?