Margaret Weis Productions have posted a pipline post discussing future projects. Tucked in the end of the post is the news that the company will stop producing Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Basic Game.
The reason? Success was not good enough. Christi Cardenas explains, in the post, that;
Our first event, CIVIL WAR, was successful and well received, …
The second half of the sentence puts significant twist in;
… but it didn’t garner the level of sales necessary to sustain the rest of the line.
The post also says that any customer who has pre-ordered Annihilation will receive a full refund worth 150% in credit. That’s money you can spend on other MWP products. You can still actually get Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Annihilation, though, as it’s available as a PDF from DriveThru RPG.
In fact, the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Basic Game has become MWP’s top seller this week.
What the pipeline post does not say but which is writ large on DriveThru RPG’s homepage is that all Marvel Heroic Roleplaying products will vanish after Tuesday 30th, April 2013. You only have a week to download the collection.
With this in mind, it may be the case that MWP would have been content with the sales volumes of the game – after all, they do say it was successful, but perhaps Marvel wanted more. We’ll never get a look inside the contract to know the details but it’s worth noting this comment from the pipeline post;
We brokered an admittedly ambitious license with Marvel.
The news will disappoint fans. The game had been well received.
