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http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/23436.html

The long-time publisher of the Robotech role-playing game, Palladium Books, has announced a new license with Harmony Gold USA, Inc., which will include the rights to produce and sell pewter miniatures based on the Robotech property.

The company plans to produce and release both mecha and spaceships based on the Robotech anime. The models will be produced in 1/285 scale, and are expected to release sometime in 2013.

Palladium is currently negotiating with sculptors and manufacturers of metal miniatures. The specific models and release schedule have not yet been determined.

The new license with Harmony Gold will also allow Palladium to produce new Robotech sourcebooks. Plans include the 96-page Genesis Pits Sourcebook for Fall 2012, as well as two new sourcebooks written by Irvin Jackson for next year.

Cool. sounds like it could be lots of fun.

Unseen! At last.

Orlanth wrote:Unseen! At last.

depends on scale. Would not put it past Palladium to make the figures incompatible with battletech

They would be fools to make the figures incompatible as it cuts down on secondary sales. Palladium would get a rush of Battltech players buying their product, more than enough to offset some initial costs.

Besides the link says 1:285, which is good for Battletech.

I hope they are getting with Paulson Games.

Since he went to the all the trouble of sculpting those fantastic minis and presenting them to Palladium only to be shot down for some nonsense reason.

TalonZahn wrote:I hope they are getting with Paulson Games.

Since he went to the all the trouble of sculpting those fantastic minis and presenting them to Palladium only to be shot down for some nonsense reason.

This might be what is happening, but somehow I doubt it, it sounds too ... just.

Several of the original "unseen" designs are from Crusher Joe, a separate anime to Robotech. Presumably they will not be included, which is a shame.

TalonZahn wrote:I hope they are getting with Paulson Games.

Since he went to the all the trouble of sculpting those fantastic minis and presenting them to Palladium only to be shot down for some nonsense reason.

They aren't. He pitched it and they liked the idea but didn't want to go with him. I'm thinking about just paypaling him some cash whenever I pick this up.

A buddy from my gaming group was the fella that got this whole ball rolling with his Robotech Battles rules. He posted on his blog recently that Palladuim didn't want to work with Paulson ..

http://robotechbattles.blogspot.com/

Orlanth wrote:They would be fools to make the figures incompatible as it cuts down on secondary sales. Palladium would get a rush of Battltech players buying their product, more than enough to offset some initial costs.

Besides the link says 1:285, which is good for Battletech.

Unfortunately, fool's decisions are not incompatible with Palladium Books. They've been trudging out the same MDC system for over 25 years despite constant calls for a real update/change from the ever shrinking playerbase (despite their own constant reporting of how close they are to going out of business for years). I have hopes for the system (similar to my hopes for the Robotech RPG before they were dashed) and the minis but I'm not holding my breath... and I'm especially not going in on any sort of amateur crowd funding event they'll set up for it. They're not using official kickstarter or indiegogo of course as that would take 5% of the profits when they can halfass it themselves for free and require 100% payment before its ever fully funded! The preview minis posted over the last couple of months looked nice but I'm not sure if they're using them as they're apparently looking for more sculptors.

As long as I can get my hands on more Marau... *ahem* Zentradi Commander Pods, I will be happy.

warboss wrote:The preview minis posted over the last couple of months looked nice but I'm not sure if they're using them as they're apparently looking for more sculptors.

They won't. Those were done by Paulson. Palladium is looking for their own sculptors to start from scratch.

robertsjf wrote:

warboss wrote:The preview minis posted over the last couple of months looked nice but I'm not sure if they're using them as they're apparently looking for more sculptors.

They won't. Those were done by Paulson. Palladium is looking for their own sculptors to start from scratch.

Thats a bit of a bummer, those minis were looking really nice.

I used to play a lot of Palladiums Robotech RPG. and Battletech (in the unseen days) was my introduction to miniatures gaming...so ill be keeping an eye on this.

warboss wrote:

Orlanth wrote:They would be fools to make the figures incompatible as it cuts down on secondary sales. Palladium would get a rush of Battltech players buying their product, more than enough to offset some initial costs.

Besides the link says 1:285, which is good for Battletech.

Unfortunately, fool's decisions are not incompatible with Palladium Books.

Can not quote this hard enough. As much as I used to love the old Palladium games (TMNT and Other Strangeness was a staple for a LONG time), the system for them was beyond atrocious and has never really changed. Simbeida is known for his rash and horrible decision making skills.

Meh, I like Paulson's stuff. It was really good. Who knows what these other sculptors will pump out. And I find it a little silly that they have to start over from scratch. Also if HG/Palladium is embracing their Shadow Chronicle IP then they wouldn't necessarily be doing the Unseen right off the bat.

It's really too bad for Palladium because their old Robotech stuff is really played out. I mean does your new teenage gamer even know about the Robotech books or are they just trying to pull from their 20 year old player base. And not having changed the rules in 20+ years kinda sux too.

I wish them the best, but I foresee an uphill battle for them.

Yeah, Robotech isn't as popular as it used to be. I remember at Gencon when they had a Robotech panel prior to announcing Palladium's getting the license again people asking about the RPG. You could tell the Harmony Gold guys were trying to be diplomatic when they responded to specific questions about whether the RPG rights are going to go to Palladium with something along the lines of "we're examining our options and not limiting ourselves to previous licensees". Its been a few years since I went to a con but I rarely saw anyone under 30 at a Robotech panel when I did.

streamdragon wrote:

warboss wrote:

Orlanth wrote:They would be fools to make the figures incompatible as it cuts down on secondary sales. Palladium would get a rush of Battltech players buying their product, more than enough to offset some initial costs.

Besides the link says 1:285, which is good for Battletech.

Unfortunately, fool's decisions are not incompatible with Palladium Books.

Can not quote this hard enough. As much as I used to love the old Palladium games (TMNT and Other Strangeness was a staple for a LONG time), the system for them was beyond atrocious and has never really changed. Simbeida is known for his rash and horrible decision making skills.

I always thought the weird part about the Robotech RPG (and really Palladium Books' stuff in general) was that it went into a lot of detail about the mecha and weaponry, but never provided any kind of system for handling combat beyond just assuming that you'd roleplay it. Seemed kinda weird when you're talking about that kind of action, which could involve foot soldiers, tanks, walking mecha and fighter jets all in the same combat.

Maybe he addressed this later, I dunno. I haven't even looked at my stuff in many years. Just to show everyone how old I am, I still have an original copy of The Mechanoid Invasion, on that newsprint paper and everything. Cost me a hefty $3.95 back in the day...or something like that.

Unfortunately, the combat system is 90% still the same as back in the 1980's Robotech days with some parts copy and pasted (literally with wax glue and scissors as Palladium only started using desktop publishing on a limited basis in recent years) from the old rulebooks into the current "new" ones. You can still take a Robotech adventure from the 80's and run it in Rifts with a few minor tweaks to the stats as if it were published last year. Considering the number of house rules you need to make the clunky Palladium mechanics simply work as intended, that's not a good thing. :(

I think they would be completely stupid not to go with Paulson and the work already produced. I also have come to expect completely stupid from Palladium games over the years...

Shame really. Paulson should have gone to Harmony Gold directly. Oh well. Hindsight, 20/20, and all that...

Will be interesting to see what they do some up with.

~Eric


Edit:

Palladium Books wrote:
And the good news keeps coming
UPDATE: Robotech®

You haven’t heard us talk about Robotech® much lately, because we have been secretly working on some big plans for that game line. As you know, I try to keep you informed about everything going on at Palladium Books®. However, sometimes we just can’t reveal our plans or projects for strategic business reasons. For example, we didn’t want a competitor trying to swoop in on Robotech® if we talked too much about our plans. Moreover, we get some fan complaints when we talk about an upcoming project and it gets delayed, or worse, it falls through. We didn’t want that to happen with Robotech®, so we quietly stopped talking about the line but kept working on things behind the scenes. Well, I can finally give you an exciting update.

This week, Palladium Books signed a deal to expand its current Robotech® license with Harmony Gold USA, Inc., including the right to produce and sell pewter game pieces of Robotech® mecha and spaceships. This has been one of the secret projects we’ve been working on for months. Our thanks to Tom Roache, Jon Paulson, Jeff Burke and Carmen Bellaire, along with many others, for their help with our investigation and research on the subject. How soon can you expect to see 1/285 scale mecha available? Probably not until next year sometime. We’ll keep you posted. Sculptors wanted.

/facepalm

I love how they set it up as if someone else did not do all the leg work for them, just a little "research". This all just reeks of shady-ness.

I did go directly to HG first, unfortunately the lisc that Palladium has c***blocks anyone else interested in doing miniatures. The guys at HG were very cool with discussing it but there was no way to get it liscensed directly with them. (while Palldiums lisc is active)

The miniatures that have been floating around in pics on differant sites were ones my company was working on, I will not be working with Palaldium any further so those sculpts defiantely will not be the ones they use. They are freelancing out their own sculpts, although knowing how long it takes to get things into production I wouldn't hold my breath on seeing anything released inside the next year. (if at all) What scale or quality will they be? No clue.

For anyone considering working with Palladium you may find this an interesting read:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?74137-What-s-up-with-Palladium-and-BTS&p=1445566#post1445566


My expectation is that if they actually make it to market with minis that they are going to produce a somewhat mediocre product based on their track record of games and general lack of knowledge concerning the miniatures industry.


I've had a lot of emails asking about the mini so I'll direct people to my repsonse here: http://www.mechdudesblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/whered-pics-go.html

Necros wrote:A buddy from my gaming group was the fella that got this whole ball rolling with his Robotech Battles rules.

Only partially correct, there have been a number of fan games promoted on TMP for a while that go back about 7-8 years. Tom does get full credit for banging on HG's & Palladiums door very loudly though.

I'd been working on my own version based on the TMP system abotu a year and a half ago, although I didn't start messing around with custom sculpts until june of '11. I'd approached HG about a week after Tom did so it was inetresting timing, I'd held off contacting them until I had a couple physical models to display & pitch. I do hope he's able to do something with his rules. Although it doesn't seem like Palladium has much interest in a rules set as they've only announced that they are pursuing miniatures as game acessories for the rpg line and no mention of a stand alone rules product for miniatures.

It's probably too early to tell so maybe they'll do a minis rules set, I dunno.

paulson games wrote:I did go directly to HG first, unfortunately the lisc that Palladium has c***blocks anyone else interested in doing miniatures. The guys at HG were very cool with discussing it but there was no way to get it liscensed directly with them. (while Palldiums lisc is active)

Wow, that stinks. Sorry man. For what its worth you were on your way to producing an awesome product.

~Eric

Over the next couple months I'll be working on my own mecha based game, it may not be Robotech but the sculpts should be every bit as good and I'd put money on it having a system light years better than anything Palladium puts out

Palladium Books wrote:
And the shafting keeps coming

Our thanks to Tom Roache, Jon Paulson, Jeff Burke and Carmen Bellaire, along with many others, for their help with our "investigation and research" on the subject.

IMO the "Research" tag in that post is more like "yoink! stole it suckers, what a great idea Palladium just had"

So I can finally get some legit old school Marauders and Warhammers!? Oh, feth yeah! I don't give a gak about the Palladium game system, I just want em for BattleTech, assuming they're the right size.

paulson games wrote:Over the next couple months I'll be working on my own mecha based game, it may not be Robotech but the sculpts should be every bit as good and I'd put money on it having a system light years better than anything Palladium puts out

Cool. Looking forward to it.

paulson games wrote:

Palladium Books wrote:
And the shafting keeps coming

Our thanks to Tom Roache, Jon Paulson, Jeff Burke and Carmen Bellaire, along with many others, for their help with our "investigation and research" on the subject.

IMO the "Research" tag in that post is more like "yoink! stole it suckers, what a great idea Palladium just had"

There's a well deserved reason why KS has the king of douches reputation.

That's exactly how I read it too...

~Eric

paulson games wrote:For anyone considering working with Palladium you may find this an interesting read, and I'd highly advise not working with them unless you want an ulcer and to go bald from stress.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?74137-What-s-up-with-Palladium-and-BTS&p=1445566#post1445566

Besides the infamous Coffin report, there are other instances where Palladium has done some news worthy actions that garnered them negative press. IIRC their Dead Reign line of books began as a series of articles in their quarterly magazine/book Rifter; they were popular so PB hired the same authors to write the formal game book. Unfortunately, after the entire manuscript was recieved, Palladium's owner decided that it wasn't up to his personal standard and he had to rewrite it (as well as give himself first credit among the authors on the cover). It was never really explained how the initial drafts and milestone submissions (if any.. but one would assume there were as that is a generally accepted practice for professional writing) were apparently OK but the final work was so bad that it needed so much tweaking...the Coffin thread you linked does touch on this general subject as well. There was some disagreement about how much was changed but I doubt the whole story will ever get out as the original authors moved on to other companies in the industry IIRC (and its a bad idea to publicly trash an old employer). If you search RPG.net's forums, you can find the appropriate threads from around 2008ish where the regulars there chat about it with some posts by the original authors as well.

The moment I saw the name Palladium, I knew whatever was coming next would only be disappointment. I give GW a lot of gak here, but next to Palladium they are paragons of integrity, forward planning, creativity, and competence.

Pewter? Pewter figures are soooo nineties. All the cool companies are making their figures in plastic, or plastic-y resin-stuff if they are really cool.

I was super excited about this when I started the other news thread a few months back. After seeing Paulson Games is not doing the minis, and the guy form Robotech Battles is probably off as well, my interest in this is practically zero. If the minis don't look completely terrible (and judging by their Rifts minis, they will be crap) I may pick up some Unseens, but as for the game I have no faith in Palladium anymore, haven't in years.

MightyGodzilla wrote:Meh, I like Paulson's stuff. It was really good. Who knows what these other sculptors will pump out. And I find it a little silly that they have to start over from scratch. Also if HG/Palladium is embracing their Shadow Chronicle IP then they wouldn't necessarily be doing the Unseen right off the bat.

It's really too bad for Palladium because their old Robotech stuff is really played out. I mean does your new teenage gamer even know about the Robotech books or are they just trying to pull from their 20 year old player base. And not having changed the rules in 20+ years kinda sux too.

I wish them the best, but I foresee an uphill battle for them.

The honest truth is a lot of the younger mecha fans absolutely hate Robotech for "butchering" Macross and blame Harmony Gold for 7, Zero, and Frontier never getting a domestic release. (Personally, I don't consider the changes to Macross to be that terrible for the time, and Southern Cross and Mospaeda sucked anyway.)

If given the chance, I'd want to do a Super Robot Wars miniatures game. License the property and the OG designs from Banpresto, develop a universal system, and gradually build the line with minor licenses and original work until I could grab the white whale of UC Gundam.

I mean jeez, I almost started an Arcanists army in Malifaux just so I could paint the Coryphee as Fairlion-S and Fairlion-G.