Comes the Miniatures
A long time has been spent revising our approach to miniatures, acknowledging the mistakes of the past and fixing them, one-by-one. We will be kicking off with some smaller miniatures games to begin with, looking to build confidence in our lines before doing anything outlandish or ambitious.
Yeah, I am a miniature game fan first. RPG's are great for background and story but miniatures are the way to go.
A Call to Arms: Noble Armada
This came about because of a fortuitous meeting with Chris Wiese of Holistic Design at Gen Con this year. In a nutshell, Chris was looking for a new vehicle for Noble Armada (especially as the 3rd edition of Fading Suns is due for release in 2011 – more on that a little later), while we were looking for a new setting for A Call to Arms.
Great system and background/story.
One of my favorites for a decade.
And it was already, Traveller compatible
We had looked at Star Trek, and even developed a working conversion of the rules, but during the licence negotiations we found we were going head to head with Wizkids. And that was never going to go well!
Topps owns WizKids, INC and Topps has first rights to StarTrek and StarWars. It is extremely tough to even get your foot in the door for those 2 licenses.
When Noble Armada was suggested to us, however, it just seemed like a perfect fit. Multiple fleets with room to add more, a developed universe to draw upon, and a very different style of ship combat for us to play with. No downsides!
Signs & Portents is currently previewing CTA: Noble Armada, and we would direct you to look at the current issues for more details of this game – it is going to be a good ‘un, so if space fleet combat is your thing, take a peek.
There have been some criticisms about us taking on Noble Armada for A Call to Arms on some forums, and we would like to address those comments. It has been suggested that this combination is not going to be the new wave that spreads across the planet and one poster even used the word ‘fail.’
So, are you going to have fleet campaigns in the Noble Armada universe?
And don't worry, about the negative comments. Heard the same things when we moved BattleTech to MechWarrior for the continuation of the line. Guess what they are both still alive.
One other thing we are wanting to take a look at, though no set title has been devised for this yet, is a new vehicle system for Traveller. The current two vehicle books have suffered from some criticism and, on a personal level, I am really not a fan of the construction system. We are therefore putting some thought into Traveller vehicles 2nd edition, as an obvious area where the rules could use some cleaning up. If this tome appears in 2011 (perhaps as a 200 page hardback that has a complete construction system, plus re-stats every vehicle we have produced for Traveller up to that point) then that will be a little too soon for our liking to the release of the original books – in which case, we will arrange a generous discount scheme for any purchasers of the originals.
Yes, that would a very nice book
Couple of questions though.
Will the new Vehicle book be compatible/workable with the Robots book?
Or will you at least have a way to make the vehicles robot/AI/computer controled/run?
Will the new Vehicle book make (allow) the vehicles to work with the minature game?
Or will there be a small section explain how to make/convert the vehicle stats into the minature game rules stats?
Licences
We are still looking for our new ‘bonanza’ product line, and have several irons in the fire with potential licensors for games that will fulfil this requirement. Most are miniatures-based licences (though several of those would also come with RPG rights as well), and we will be making announcements as and when we can throughout 2011.
Be interesting to watch which way you go with what license.
But I am very happy to hear that you are considering multi use of a license/IP and not just RPG'ing it/them.
Project Eon
This one is a boardgame and something we are quite excited about. It introduces a new setting to our range (think very ‘clean’ and high-tech sci-fi). Featuring a card-based system, it allows competitive and co-operative play, as well as solo play – in fact, it was going to be a solo only game until talks with various distributors convinced us otherwise. There are some rather obvious expansions that can be built for Project Eon quite easily (as well as free downloadable cards in Signs & Portents), allowing us to give it a proper level of support, and the entire game is designed to place the player right in the heart of the action. Literally in the hotseat.
Board games, good and bad. But the best part if you do it well is it is a great way to get the general public interesting your other products of that line.
Paperback (story) books are a good way to help build up the general public in getting more involved int the IP.
Bad, is that most games are stand alone. It would be nice if you could do a HeroQuest like board game system where each game is seperate into it's self but can also be combine (or parts of each) with the other board games (or other lines of the IP product).
Thanks again for giving us some insight into the working, heartaches and life of making a small fortune out of a larger one.
Dave Chase
