On The Edge

I started playing On The Edge when in 1995 when I was 13 years old. I converted to OtE from Magic and never looked back. OtE captured my imagination and was just a million times more fun to play that any other game at the time. Several months ago I dusted off the old card boxes and started playing again at the age of 25 with a core group of 4 people. Let me tell you, with a couple of new converts to the game they are hooked. With the relatively cheap cost of the cards everyone has been able to afford to order boxes at a time. While this is great for us, I can't help but feel semi-crappy for you guys. You made a great game and for whatever reason it just didn't catch on. I don't understand why. Just tonight I was Squeezing Pocket Panic Buttoned professors from D'Aubainne U. Its just fun to say the names of the cards. Anyway, I was looking over my Surving On The Edge Players Guide last night and I noticed that references are made to "new" versions of Giovanni Mancini and Monique...I figured they might have been in the Wetworks expansion which, sadly, never saw the light of day. I was hoping that maybe you guys would be willing to give a rundown of the cards that were going to be included with the set, along with stats...what can I say I'm addicted, again, and would love to be able to "make" the Wetworks expansion for me and my playgroup.

Thanks for the great game that has lasted as my favorite for the past 10 years,

Sincerely,

Jon Salvia

Location: Annapolis, MD

And don't forget the dusted Robin Laws stand-alone order/chaos OnTE expansion (something about birds, I seem to recall). I actually did get to see some early ideas of the Wetwork cards ages and ages ago; some great ideas there.

By the bye, get that group of four players together and go cavorting through 'Over the Edge'. Great RPG system with a lot of flexibility to do all sorts of exploration of ideas you have. I've even had a lovely time recently with a short merge of OvTE characters into the Feng Shui universe - and bringing FS characters into the hyperReal world of Al Amarja. Both systems are simple enough that conversions were a snap for my players, and the Over the Edge character construction was a great way for people to further flesh out their other-system PCs.

On the Edge was truly a great game. Great memories.

I recall working on the initial stages of design and playtest for a stand-alone OnTE expansion in '96 or so — an all-the-cards-in-one-box deal using the same rules, but not collectible. Also had some new/optional rules, if I recall correctly. I think the working title was "Halls of Power."

A quick search of my hard drive doesn't turn anything up; I wonder if it was on an old Atlas hard drive. If there's any interest out there, I could try to track the files down. I'm sure John wouldn't mind if I posted them here (John?), since there's unliklely to be an OnTE renaissance that would suddenly make new published supplements profitable... :wink:

There were a couple of projects that stalled out in development when On the Edge petered out. The problem is that I don't think Trident/Atlas ever actually bought the work-in-progress from frelancers who were developing things. Thus, even if we could find some draft material, I'm not really comfortable posting it online.

So John, can we get the full, behind-the-scenes story on the death of On The Edge? A complete history with cheesy 90's alt music thrown in?

Well, that would be kind of a big project to write. But in short, the market for CCGs went south in a hurry as speculative demand vanished (as supply more than outstripped it), and we found out that we were losing a lot of money by continuing to support the game. So we downsized sharply, bought Ars Magica from WotC, and published Lunch Money and a new (at the time) edition of Once Upon A Time, and somehow managed to survive the K-T boundary event that ravaged the industry in about 1995-1997.

I'll tell you what happened to the game it came out with a bang but was different and the Magic the Gathering Nazi's
said it is different and so it must be bad only games that look like MTG can be good. So the Followers of the card geek gods refused to even try to play the game. and so its cross was born and carried by gamers like myself to be played in the dark, behind closed curtains so they would not arrest us and take our cards away . We slowly built a fan following but by then it was to late and the money went away. So I still play with my Cabal secretly trying to deciffer what the great creator needed us to do. Hoping to attend the convention where someday we may find a lost copy of The Wet Works hidden behind a box of Cut-ups.

Sadly this is the case with a lot of great collectible games. Seems me the games I liked and enjoyed playing got canned, while the games I thought were utter shite thrive on, some even unto today.