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Babylon 5 RPG: And so it ends

P

Psylent1

Captain
Captain
Mongoose Press looses it's liscense to Babylon 5 this year and they have taken all the "left overs" from the game and put them together in a massive 636 page pdf Decontruction of Falling Stars .

It includes the never released book on the Dilgar, a Guide to Hyperspace, Everyday life in 2258 and three novels, including "Baptism of Fire" by Claudia Christian, the story of Capt Ivanova after Marcus saved her.
 
OmahaStar said:
Good. Maybe this will help put Mongoose out of business for good.
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Can't really agree with that sentiment, but sure as hell can understand it.

Why they let Starship Troopers, B5 and Judge Dredd fall apart?

They were selling, and selling WELL, then suddenly whoosh, gone.

They bring out a new range of Hyperions mere weeks before announcing "The B5 minis are finished" WTF?? :cardie:
 
Interesting note on their site:

Note: Much of this material was never intended to be published, and has thus not received the attention published material normally enjoys. No new artwork has been commissioned, and most of the material has had half an editing pass at best - this is really all the raw notes we have been keeping on the game, and a rare chance to get an insight into the work that goes on behind a game's normal publishing schedule!
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Now, I could forgive this if they were just giving this book away, but they're charging 25 bucks to download an unedited PDF that they admit is just a collection of "raw notes" without any new artwork or anything else?
 
If they don't have the license any longer, they shouldn't be selling any of this stuff at all.

Jan
 
Oh wow, I remember the controversial novels. Curious that they're just blowing them out this way, but if it's their last chance to make a buck on B5, why not?
 
I find the asking price for this dubious at best. It smacks of trying to rack a few bucks outta fans before the license does finally run out. As intrigued as I am by the material, I don't think it's worth the asking price. I suspect that they may catch two kinds of hell for this.
 
middyseafort said:
I find the asking price for this dubious at best. It smacks of trying to rack a few bucks outta fans before the license does finally run out. As intrigued as I am by the material, I don't think it's worth the asking price. I suspect that they may catch two kinds of hell for this.
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I find this funny for two reasons.

1 - They're throwing in the Claudia Christian "novel" ... The same one she was selling on her website for ... what, fifty bucks a pop?

2 - They don't have a license anymore to release those fanfics, yet here they are, selling them? I can't wait til JMS gets wind of this. *grabs popcorn*
 
OmahaStar said:
1 - They're throwing in the Claudia Christian "novel" ... The same one she was selling on her website for ... what, fifty bucks a pop?

2 - They don't have a license anymore to release those fanfics, yet here they are, selling them? I can't wait til JMS gets wind of this. *grabs popcorn*
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Even more funny is the bit about the "novels" (ahem) in the introduction to the material, which you can read by popping up the preview pages.

Emphasis mine
Finally, we tie everything up with three weighty pieces of
fiction. There is Baptism of Fire, which covers Captain
Ivanova’s actions during Season 5, penned by none
other than Claudia Christian herself. Ranger Dawning
introduces a new member of the Anla’Shok, and is written
by our own Richard Ford. Finally, there is Visions of
Peace, scribbled down by some talentless herbert whose
name currently escapes me.
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I suppose that's a joke considering what a herbert is in Trek lore (is the writer of the introduction also the writer of the novel?). Either that or the company really doesn't hold the novel or the writer in any high regards.

It should be interesting when the JMS hits the fan.
 
Chances are that intro was written by Matthew Sprange who was supposed to write one of the novels and it's his attempt at being self-deprecating.

Jan
 
middyseafort said:
I suppose that's a joke considering what a herbert is in Trek lore (is the writer of the introduction also the writer of the novel?).
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Herbert is also British slang, and that's probably the intended meaning. And yeah, it's likely Sprange being self-deprecating.

I'd get this for a reasonable price. Heck, I'd pay $10 for a print copy of Claudia Christian's novel. But $25 for a watermarked pdf of unedited junk... I find I am surprisingly able to resist the temptation.
 
Steve Roby said:
I'd get this for a reasonable price. Heck, I'd pay $10 for a print copy of Claudia Christian's novel. But $25 for a watermarked pdf of unedited junk... I find I am surprisingly able to resist the temptation.
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Yeah, if it were a little cheaper I might take the plunge just to see how (un)professional the novels seem, but I can't rationalize $25 for it.
 
FWIW, if Ranger Dawning is the one I'm thinking of, I couldn't get very far into it. It opened with a fight, just a training fight I think and it went on for page after page after page... Maybe a gamer or martial artist would have appreciated it but this civilian couldn't. Claudia Christian's didn't grab me either but I could see where it might have been okay with a decent editor.

Jan
 
OmahaStar said:
Good. Maybe this will help put Mongoose out of business for good.
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So, you'd rather writers have one less market in an already collapsing environment?

After the BS with Joe over the novels, I don't blame them in the slightest for giving up the license. Too much BS, not enough return on investment.

Hmm, where have I heard this before? :vulcan:

Oh, yeah, the U.S. novels license. Well, no B5 prose or gaming left.

That bell you're hearing is the one tolling the death of future B5.
 
Regardless of anything else, the novels are lousy. So while I'm very much in favor of good writers having many, many markets, at least one of these should never have sen the light of day. TV show tie-in novels have a poor enough reputation without more dreck hitting the marketplace.

Jan
 
Acck $25 bucks? Hell Last Unicorn gave away their unpublished stuff free online to the fans-- last I head it's still out there. If this really is a bunch of drafts various filler materials-- scraps, then I can't see how they justify $25 for that.

And, yes, it'll be funny if JMS gets into it with them.
 
Trust me, as a member of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, I'm well aware of the reputation of tie-in novels. And if you'd like to have a discussion about that, I'm more than happy to indulge you, Jan, but not in this thread, since it's too far off topic.

There are now no B5 prose or gaming markets if Mongoose gives up the license. No more new B5 novels (good, bad or indifferent). No more new B5 gaming modules. Nothing. The market is gone. Jan, JMS his own self could want to start a B5 novel today, and there wouldn't be a damned thing to be done about it come publication. He'd have to self-publish, just like the script books. And then he'd still have to deal with ownership of the novel license. If he wants to buy the license back and then self-publish, then he's probably entirely legal. Although, to be quite honest, self-publishing gets you about as much "dreck" as you attribute to tie-in novels, if not moreso because there are not usually editors involved in self-publishing.
 
Steve Roby said:
middyseafort said:
I suppose that's a joke considering what a herbert is in Trek lore (is the writer of the introduction also the writer of the novel?).
Click to expand...

Herbert is also British slang, and that's probably the intended meaning. And yeah, it's likely Sprange being self-deprecating.
Click to expand...

Learn something new everyday. And in junior high, I used to be quite the anglophile and never came across it. Tisk-Tisk. Thanks for the 411. I might have to start dropping it into my conversations.

Steve Roby said:
I'd get this for a reasonable price. Heck, I'd pay $10 for a print copy of Claudia Christian's novel. But $25 for a watermarked pdf of unedited junk... I find I am surprisingly able to resist the temptation.
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Oh, I am really curious as well; the Claudia Christian novel is at the top of my curiosity. My major issue is the asking price. Ten bones, as you suggest, isn't so bad for something that's been haphazardly put together. Five bills, even better. But $25! Dubious, dubious, dubious.

Like others, I downloaded Ranger Dawning and found it read like a first draft. Certainly not polished at all. Suffice to say, I didn't get far into it. Would it have been better with a skilled editor? Possibly, but I'm not familiar enough with the company to say if it had the kind of editor a fiction book requires.

But TerriO has a point in regards to "not enough return on their investment." So this is their shot to get something out of it, I suppose, and I have to concede I didn't think of it that way until she mentioned it.

Yet it should be interesting when, as I said, the JMS hits the fan.
 
middyseafort said:
Yet it should be interesting when, as I said, the JMS hits the fan.
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Which will probably consist of his calling or emailing WB Legal. Remember, he didn't engage Mongoose publicly until he was brought into it publicly.

Jan
 
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