Thieves' World?

[brionl]

Now that Elfquest is back, any chance of seeing Thieves' World again? I used to have a copy, but it got ruined in a flooded basement many years ago.

The publisher "recently" released an ebook collection of all the stories, so they may be open to redoing the license.

 

[Ravenheart87]

I would love it. Heck, I think it would worth remaking it as a standalone BRP-based game.

[Atgxtg]

It would be nice, assuming the IP is available. It was a popular series back in the 80s, but I'm not sure if it would still draw in enough fans to justify the license. 

I think the harder bit might be getting permission to reprint all those game stats. I seem to recall Gigi D'arn mentioning in her column that getting the permission and coopration from the various game companies at the time wasn't easy. Now I don't think any of the companies dealt with still own the rights to those games anymore! 

 

 

[AndreJarosch]

On 12/10/2024 at 3:35 AM, brionl said:

Now that Elfquest is back, any chance of seeing Thieves' World again? I used to have a copy, but it got ruined in a flooded basement many years ago.

The publisher "recently" released an ebook collection of all the stories, so they may be open to redoing the license.

 

There might be some issues with it: 

1) The Original Boxed Set and the Companion only cover the first few Thieves World anthology books. 
(This is what it has in common with ElfQuest)

2) The Original Boxed Set had stats for multiple RPGs, some which are not well known anymore. It might be hard to get all companies that own the IP today on the same boat. 
(This could of course be avoided if the reprint would cover ONLY BRP stats)
 

Edited December 19, 2024 by AndreJarosch

[Ravenheart87]

On 12/11/2024 at 9:07 AM, AndreJarosch said:

3) The Thieves World IP seems to be at Pinnacle Games and in use for the Savage Worlds RPG, AND Goodman Games for their Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. 

You are mixing up Thieves World with Lankhmar.

[AndreJarosch]

9 minutes ago, Ravenheart87 said:

You are mixing up Thieves World with Lankhmar.

You are right. My bad!

[soltakss]

Nostalgia over old products is great, but I'd prefer to see new supplements. Having said that, reissuing the RQ3 material would be fanstastic.

[NickMiddleton]

Some old products that are no longer available are worth the relatively modest (ha!) effort to return them to availability, if only as decent high quality PDFs - but the RQ3 material and Worlds on Wonder are about the only things from the “glory days” of Chaosium that I think are worth the effort and not either challenging in terms of licensing (Ringworld), in need of significant revision to make a viable reissue (Thieves’ World), or both (Thieves’ World!).

A completely reworked BRP powered Thieves’ World adaptation, perhaps building on the sterling work Green Ronin did back in the d20 era would be great, but is I’d guess a far more substantial, challenging and above all resource intensive undertaking than eg the ElfQuest reissue.

I’m all for nostalgia to a degree: I backed the ElfQuest kickstarter, and I would be delighted to see a reissue of Worlds of Wonder. But I am keener on seeing Lords of the Middle Sea… and hopefully other new BRP settings and materials.

[g33k]

9 hours ago, NickMiddleton said:

... But I am keener on seeing Lords of the Middle Sea… and hopefully other new BRP settings and materials.

Yeah, me too.  LotMS was looking _really_ fun.
"Pulp" style rules, I'd hope -- sure looked pulpy!!!

What about it, @Jason D ... Any chance of a new update (likely over in this thread:  https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/20211-lords-of-the-middle-sea-update-hot-pursuit/   (last updated 5 months ago) ) ?

  

Edited December 15, 2024 by g33k

[jackleg2010]

I that supplement and read quite a few of the books. I even have the books from the Science fiction book club from back in the day. 

Getting permission to use other game systems might be hard given today's game companies. You might be able to get two. Like when Achtung! Cthulhu, was formatted for Savage Worlds and Fate.

 

 

[Jason D]

On 12/15/2024 at 11:41 PM, g33k said:

Yeah, me too.  LotMS was looking _really_ fun.
"Pulp" style rules, I'd hope -- sure looked pulpy!!!

What about it, @Jason D ... Any chance of a new update (likely over in this thread:  https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/20211-lords-of-the-middle-sea-update-hot-pursuit/   (last updated 5 months ago) ) ?

  

I've just been underwater with a big new project, some more BRP, and Age of Vikings, and regrettably Lords of the Middle Sea is a bit backburnered at the moment. Rest assured that that when [big unannounced thing] is off my immediate plate LotMS will be moving again. 

[Jason D]

As for the subject of this thread... we've discussed Thieves' World internally several times but to the best of my knowledge, nothing is moving on it. 

I'm not sure of the interest of a straight reprint. The original roster of games it supported are largely out of print, and at this point it's not even a very accurate view of the book series given how much came after. 

A new version would be interesting at some level - I loved the series and have played many games using the box set - but Green Ronin pretty much covered it and I'm not sure how much current interest there is in the IP.  

[g33k]

7 hours ago, Jason D said:

As for the subject of this thread... we've discussed Thieves' World internally several times but to the best of my knowledge, nothing is moving on it. 

I'm not sure of the interest of a straight reprint. The original roster of games it supported are largely out of print, and at this point it's not even a very accurate view of the book series given how much came after. 

A new version would be interesting at some level - I loved the series and have played many games using the box set - but Green Ronin pretty much covered it and I'm not sure how much current interest there is in the IP.  

I think someone in the fiction-universe would need to revisit Sanctuary/TW to (re)create that market.  I'm sure that could be viable, if someone wanted to do so and the legal maze was reasonably navigable.  It's still a very-interesting concept & execution!

An RPG could follow, though I suppose it's not clear whether GR or Chaosium would be the "obvious" publisher...

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

I think someone in the fiction-universe would need to revisit Sanctuary/TW to (re)create that market.  I'm sure that could be viable, if someone wanted to do so and the legal maze was reasonably navigable.  It's still a very-interesting concept & execution!

Yeah, that's sort of the problem with a lot of the classic RPG stuff based on a licensed IP. Most of them were based on IPs that were  really popular back in the day, but no so much now. So someone would have to revitalize it it some way, and it's probably easier to just get an IP that is popular now. 

The tricky bit with licensed IPs is that the game then has to sell even more copies than normal in order to justify the expense of the license. I think it's why most of the big IPs have changed RPG companies several times. 

1 hour ago, g33k said:

An RPG could follow, though I suppose it's not clear whether GR or Chaosium would be the "obvious" publisher...

Probably neither. The history of licensed IPs is that they tend to come our, hang around for a few years, and then vanish. If someone else picks up the IP they come out with a whole new game. Past history doesn't seem to help. In fact it looks like it hurts. So if it happened it might get published by Morphius and use their 2d20 system.

 

[Jason D]

On 1/9/2025 at 6:54 PM, g33k said:

I think someone in the fiction-universe would need to revisit Sanctuary/TW to (re)create that market.  I'm sure that could be viable, if someone wanted to do so and the legal maze was reasonably navigable.  It's still a very-interesting concept & execution!

Oh, there are no real legal issues. Lynne Abbey has the rights to the series and they published a couple of new anthologies in 2002 and 2004.

That said, that's 20 years since any movement on the IP other than the Janet & Chris Morris Tempus books, which went widely away from their origin in Sanctuary. 

[Atgxtg]

18 minutes ago, Jason D said:

Oh, there are no real legal issues. Lynne Abbey has the rights to the series and they published a couple of new anthologies in 2002 and 2004.

I think the concern was about legal issues over the game systems. They printed stats for just about every major RPG out there at the time. 

18 minutes ago, Jason D said:

That said, that's 20 years since any movement on the IP other than the Janet & Chris Morris Tempus books, which went widely away from their origin in Sanctuary. 

That's the real problem. The books were big in the 1980s, but not so much today. 

[g33k]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

...

That's the real problem. The books were big in the 1980s, but not so much today. 

Yeah, that's the point:

 

On 1/9/2025 at 9:54 AM, g33k said:

I think someone in the fiction-universe would need to revisit Sanctuary/TW to (re)create that market...

If Lynn Abbey were to get some current "big names" in fantasy-fiction to write a set of shorts set in Sanctuary, the setting could instantly become a hot property again (*), and a reprint / new-edition of a Thieves' World RPG could be viable.  As Jason says, it rather needs a jumpstart from the IP-holder.

 

(*) note also the grognard/nostalgia market could be sufficient... maybe.

[Atgxtg]

37 minutes ago, g33k said:

If Lynn Abbey were to get some current "big names" in fantasy-fiction to write a set of shorts set in Sanctuary, the setting could instantly become a hot property again (*), and a reprint / new-edition of a Thieves' World RPG could be viable.  As Jason says, it rather needs a jumpstart from the IP-holder.

Yes, but..

1. I don't think the "big names" of today are as big as the big names back then. 
2. The same could be said for any formerly hot property. What made Thieves World work orginally was the idea of multiple writers with characters in a  shared setting was a new and novel concept. Without some other new and novel concept, I don't think it would draw big names to it. 

37 minutes ago, g33k said:

 

(*) note also the grognard/nostalgia market could be sufficient... maybe.

Maybe. But most of those people already have the original.  I'd love to see the original available on drive thru as a PDF, but I doubt it's financially viable.