As much as I like the Honorverse...

[kafka47]

Honor Harrington's worlds seem like that they will be detailed elsewhere but rather than wasting any further effort, may I suggest to Hunter that he would be better pursue a license with the Asimov estate for a Foundation RPG (one that would take us from the early days of US Robotics right through to Pax Galaxia), as there are many more Asimov fans out there than HH (as a librarian, I know) combine it with some of the revisionisms of the 3Bs and killer art like from Rendocity, and you would have something all Asimov fans would love to get their hands on. Plus, it would provide an excellent resource for Traveller...

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

kafka, I find myself agreeing with most of your posts than not, but I'm not sure I'd be all on fire for an Foundation francise. While I definately appreciate Quik-Link's 'by geeks, for geeks' ethos, my gut feeling on this is that the Foundation books have quite a learning curve to overcome. Asimov gets fairly esoteric in these novels and I'm unsure of how well they'd tranlate into an RPG.

I'm disappointed at the loss of the Honorverse project as I was very interested in seeing how that milieu would translate. Maybe it's just that I'm a fan of military sci-fi anyway, since I'd like to see a Hammer's Slammers RPG treatment. But then, that is only my opinion. Frankly, the Slammers could be ginned up into any system that had coherent vehicle auto-fire rules. *THAT'S IT! CAR WARS: HAMMER'S SLAMMERS!*

Really, francise-wise, I'm not specifically sure where QLI should go from here. But I've observed that Asimov (and Frank Herbert, for that matter) is an author that has a real binary reaction from folks; you either like him or hate him. I'm thinking that you'd want more of an appeal than something so black and white.

 

[rogermccarthy]

My own preference would be for the Cherryh Alliance-Union universe.

FTL works in a relatively Traveller-like way, it has free traders, Aslan (never been sure who influenced who but Cherryh's Chanur and Traveller's Aslan clearly owe a lot to each other), grasping megacorps, battle riders - everything except a silly pseudo-feudal galactic empire.

The Cherryhverse also has the advantage of having both a relatively well-documented and fully mapped early era (rather analagous to the Traveller Interstellar Wars era) and a much more open later era when humanity has expanded over a signficant volume of space and encountered numerous alien races - this gives developers and GM's a lot more freedom to develop their own worlds and cultures.

Additionally Cherryh appears to have rather given up writing new material in it - which is a big loss for her readers but does mean that the setting is unlikely to be seriously retconned by the author.

At one point there was apparently some discussion of a GURPS Cherryhverse book but somehow can't see it coming soon under 4th edition.

So why shouldn't QLI step into the breach?

 

[kafka47]

The complexity is exactly why I would suggest the Robots/Foundation crossover. It can be as Hard SF as anyone who knows Asimov's work or it could be soft as any Space Opera saga. However, the strength lies in that you can choose any time to set your stories in...the Near Future or the Far Far Future (pun intended). Problem is that the man himself did not leave too many road maps nor have fans stepped into the breech and coloured the Asimov universe.

Yes, Cherryh Alliance-Union, would also make a great RPG setting but somehow I thought the rights were already taken by SJG. It would nice if they could negotiate and get some of the same art.

 

[Pickles]

Mucha as I like Asimov's work, I'd have to agree that Cherryh would make the better RPG background. Foundation and Robots have aged a little, and they were never too big on detail. That's not a problem for a story, but it does make it more difficult to write a recognisably "Asimov" RPG. The OTU is notably influenced by the great man, of course, although not very obviously.

Not that I would ever try to get involved with securing the rights to an author-franchise RPG. Stormbringer? Ringworld? Serenity? Blakes 7? That way madness lies ...

 

[Liam Devlin]

Cherryh gets my vote over Asimov's Foundation. But then, I'm biased.

As for acquisition of such RPG-verse projects, IMO it would be better to put forth product to the consumers before spreading one's self too thin financially. Get a stable line or two out there, before branching off.