This issue brings to light something we should really deal with: recordings of staff rulings. Staff Rulings are basically official clarifications or temporary changes to the rules under certain situations. Unfortunately, we’ve never kept a record of them, merely we have “I remember when Gash said” or “Didn’t Omnae once rule that…”
It appears we have two issues here.
One. The old rule stating that you couldn’t make up rare resources. This rule was
intended to mean “you can’t make up a new resource for something cannonitically sourced in one place”. EG: Bacta couldn’t magically come from another planet, that happens to be in Vinda-Corp space rather than that of the Empire. Unfortunatly the wording of the rule resulted in a few disputes over whether or not someone could create a rare resource. I forget how that was resolved.
The purpose of this rule is to foster competition for the rare resources of the Galaxy. That’s it.
Two. The more recent
ruling stating that we have essentially found all possible hidden caches of ships and superweapons, and that if you want something cool you need to build it.
Now that we have the common sense rules, we’re not following the strictest sense or spirit of the ‘old rules’. I personally do not see anything wrong with someone finding/developing/creating a rare element and exploiting it in Role Plays and R&D’s. Obviously you’ll have to be realistic and slow about it, but hey, we could get some good stories yes? I also don’t have a problem with people discovering something cool in a book, researching it on TRF and upon finding that no one has exploited it, doing so themselves. Obviously you cannot do this for the latest book of which you have pre-release copies for due to your Dad’s sweet position as janitor for Del-Ray Books, but if the hardcover has been out for a year or two I say go-ahead. But be reasonable, and write the RP with care and respect.
The above are my opinions, but if this is a big enough issue I’m sure we could find some sort of official, permanent solution. In the meantime I’m off to add “Staff Ruling History” to the wishlist.
