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ferrous wrote:
But then the new book made them stupidly power creeped, and gave them a slew of options they shouldn't have. Hover gears, sure why not? They've no reason to have them, but for a designers whims. Half surprised they didn't end up with triple linked MRPs.

No kidding.

I was extremely surprised there was even a flap in the first place over the [Sensor Boom] trait on the Greyhound between the two of them, but absolutely nothing was ever said subsequently after I pointed out the Harrier hover Gear model image being just as wrong.
Amusingly, the rear image of the Greyhound appears to have been taken down at some point - maybe the boom just got left off when Robert assembled the model.

Funny though that the machine pistol addition was perfectly fine. Says loads about faction favoritism and company decisions, no?
A tiny part that could be stuck on anywhere is of more concern than an image showing a wheeled SMS for a hover model.... that probably shouldn't have existed in the first place.


An opponent used the Greyhound in a test game, but I never even noticed it had (2) actions until mentioned in that DP9 thread. It's just not something I would have looked for a regular Gear model to have, even as a typo.
I do recall noticing that PILUM upgraded platoons pretty quickly lost the (size increase = a squads per carrier reduction) during the last part of testing.


Several of the model names changed at least twice, so things got pretty confusing for those.
But you can probably imagine how willing Saleem was to budge on certain things, so all that happened for the variants was about I think where he wanted them to go anyways.

Eventually it just gets to a point where you don't even bother asking if something is intentional or not because 99.999% of the time he'll say it was or just veto any suggestions of problems.
So you end up just having to bow down except on the obviously stupid inclusions, which they still don't want to hear about anyways, because pet ideas take on a life of their own in Pod products that is almost unbelievable.
The Pod is always willing to arbitrarily make changes to incorporate something they want to do, but never to alter things that need to be made more unique or coherent.


This comment is kind of telling about how he and Robert view things within the game. He liked it, along with one or two testers, so that was a favorable, and significant, baseline.
That one of the enthusiastic voices was a player who pretty much always approves of the Pod so long as they don't touch his own favored faction was conveniently not mentioned.
And don't be too surprised to see the [Firing Slits] trait end up in the v5 rules revamp anyways for Paxton or a few sub-lists. Pet ideas just don't usually die out within TPTB.

That made working up the Northern book pretty hard at times too where it didn't need to be, even though he had handed off the work.
It was OK to get things to work, but not to make much any changes, from the source material.
It got really fun when that material was contradictory, or the few testers disagreed on how something had to get implemented by directive(s).


Which a large part of the time was once again that situation discussed earlier in this topic where the Blitz ruleset allowed completely different interpretations and playstyles.
Usually there just is no neutral middle ground within the rules to try and gauge the effect of adding or tweaking something.

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How involved was Saleem with the Northern book ? Is he still with the Pod ?

Can't say I know for sure anymore.

But IME the people that stick with the Pod as current/future freelancers & employees, or as sheeple fans, deserve everything they get as what is left of the game and setting continues to get fethed over in such a piss-poor manner.

"Mecha" as a term addition into the ruleset revamp was not an accident; This is the Pod stance for whatever future the game has left.
The more down-to-earth style from previous books is not what is wanted anymore by TPTB, and the überfans do not question it, nor allow questioning by others.
Maybe eventually HG can have it's own TRO:3055 with art generated by music industry employees that tendered the lowest bid.

Wonder how Flames of War folks would like playing their game with CAV, BT, & 40K miniatures, or else make the Dystopian Wars folks use GHQ Harpoon miniatures.
The Pod does not have nor encourage new ideas of their own, so they must copy from everywhere else, and that the sheeple can't see such a simple point endlessly written over and over on the wall is utterly silly.

I'm just tired of it all, and it may be that the best thing to do is give up on gaming entirely, because this amount of BS every day gets so old for so little.

There is never any room for a minority, in anything, anywhere.
You either have to love something absolutely without reservation, as is, or leave it.
WTF is wrong with people - at times I honestly get the impression folks think I'm/we're trying to discuss religious ideas or something similar instead of a game setting that isn't being allowed to have it's own identity.


I also notice I seem to be stuck vacillating betwixt (anger) and (depression) with occasional forays into (bargaining) while trying to end this relationship with HG.

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 Smilodon_UP wrote:


I'm just tired of it all, and it may be that the best thing to do is give up on gaming entirely, because this amount of BS every day gets so old for so little. There is never any room for a minority, in anything.

Don't throw away the coffee with the grounds! The one nice thing about DP9 is that they make you realize how competent and caring their competitors are. That's without mentioning the comparison between the communities.
Don't give Robert the satisfaction of seeing you abandon wargaming in general! Find some other game, play it, and laugh each time you buy something, 'cause it's not money that goes towards DP9!
That's what I do.

Don't be silly. DP9 is one of the best things that's happened to me as a gamer !

First, it's the drama, the train-wreck that never stops. Sure, when you're involved with it, and trying to make things better, it's soul-crushing, yet as soon as you realize DP9 is beyond help, and you start instead to watch it all from a comfy sit and your favorite munchies at hand, it's actually pretty entertaining ! With the company and community in their last throes, it's not as spectacular as it's been before, but it still manages to surprise every now and then.

Secondly, DP9 makes pretty much every other company look good. Even GW. Each time you'll discover a new game, imagine how delighted you'll be that the rules work, the game is playable and remotely balanced, and the company occasionally releases updates and FAQs ?

@Hudson: I did my every few days check of the DP9 forums to see if Robert responded about the northern pamphlet ETA (he didn't) and I saw your post there. I engaged in some super secret top level negotiations with the pod and got them to release a preview pic of the svelt new Cheetah MK3 early just for you.

Honestly, I would give them 1-2 years before they create something like that, but I don't think they have that long left.

 warboss wrote:
I did my every few days check of the DP9 forums to see if Robert responded about the northern pamphlet ETA (he didn't)

Given the question from the generalissimo I was CC'ed on again there Saturday, and Dave's response to your comment/question on the forum topic as well as this previous one, I get the impression things aren't going so well in Pod land - because, hey, rewriting the book without the person who wrote it and knows how all of the swaps were supposed to work should've been easy, right?

I notice the preferred Facebook previews have also dried up again, so I'm guessing the Lynx highlight art preview didn't get enough positive hype comments compared to the previous "sneak peaks," misspelling and all.

 HudsonD wrote:
First, it's the drama, the train-wreck that never stops.

mrondeau wrote:
Honestly, I would give them 1-2 years before they create something like that, but I don't think they have that long left.

I wouldn't have thought it was that hard for TPTB and the hardcore fans over there to understand the point I was trying to make yet again that while there are scads of rulesets and settings to let folks play mecha, there are almost none that aren't oriented like that.

But it's always OK to turn the latter into the former while also endlessly porting in numerous "easter eggs" from other settings into every single product because everything should always be the same for effective marketing.....

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 Smilodon_UP wrote:

 warboss wrote:
I did my every few days check of the DP9 forums to see if Robert responded about the northern pamphlet ETA (he didn't)

Given the question from the generalissimo I was CC'ed on again there Saturday, and Dave's idiotic response to your comment/question on the forum topic as well as this previous one, I get the impression things aren't going so well in Pod land - because, hey, rewriting the book without the person who wrote it and knows how all of the swaps were supposed to work should've been easy, right?

I actually just rechecked (I have my forum settings set to just return back the last week or 24 hours of responses) ...and apparently dave did respond a few days ago but I could have sworn that I checked the site multiple times the day after and didn't see any response from anyone... but now there is one. Did I just miss the response? It is possible and I don't want to put on my tin foil hat if that is the case.

In any case, supposedly the northern pamphlet is still coming out in May.

mrondeau wrote:
Honestly, I would give them 1-2 years before they create something like that, but I don't think they have that long left.

Yeah, that's the route they've been headed. Not that they've ever been super original, as most of their content is all cribbed from something else. Votoms-->Gears, Hovertanks-->Hammer's Slammers. GRELs-->ExoSquad (Though I'm not entirely sure which came first).

But the thing that I always liked about Heavy Gear is that it's a somewhat grounded mecha universe. It's not super hard sci-fi, but it doesn't have everything and the kitchen sink. Or at least it didn't. Didn't suffer from HeroHammer, or from larger and larger models being put on the table (which it's totally breaking that, with that stupid super hover tank, and now the gearstriders)

It never ceases to amaze me how few people it actually took for the setting to start being changed so as to include things that probably don't belong, most all of them for the sake of a very few one-off sales in lieu of fixing core issues to promote steady sales.

The Pod and it's supporters kind of remind me of national socialists, or else idealistic individuals hyped on social justice who take those views to the extremes of political correctness whether or not they have a workable plan for that power based off the unrest they inevitably cause, in that while there is never enough of either to constitute a majority group there is nevertheless always enough of them who will pull together to drown out any contrary voice they don't want to hear whilst they change things to suit whatever views they hold.

 warboss wrote:
In any case, supposedly the northern pamphlet is still coming out in May.

heh, He has a whole week and a few days yet, he could make it!

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ferrous wrote:
Yeah, that's the route they've been headed. Not that they've ever been super original, as most of their content is all cribbed from something else. Votoms-->Gears, Hovertanks-->Hammer's Slammers. GRELs-->ExoSquad (Though I'm not entirely sure which came first).

Well, ExoSquad got aired first in '93, and the 1st edition of HG got published in '94. Then again, the GRELs area actually a joke on space marines, not really neo sapiens (even though the narrative is quite similar, yes).

ferrous wrote:
But the thing that I always liked about Heavy Gear is that it's a somewhat grounded mecha universe. It's not super hard sci-fi, but it doesn't have everything and the kitchen sink. Or at least it didn't. Didn't suffer from HeroHammer, or from larger and larger models being put on the table (which it's totally breaking that, with that stupid super hover tank, and now the gearstriders)

Exactly. That's what hooked me, and... well, it is diverging more and more from that with each passing year.

At least I'm lucky to know the DP9 gaming police won't come to my house to burn my old HG RPG books. And if they do, I have guns and pepper spray.

 Smilodon_UP wrote:
I also notice I seem to be stuck vacillating betwixt (anger) and (depression) with occasional forays into (bargaining) while trying to end this relationship with HG.
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I originally got involved with the company through Jovian Chronicles. Loved the setting... except for that one awful adventure they released. And then the company shut down everything except for Heavy Gear.

I always hoped they'd manage to get JC up and running again (it was their second property, after all). But it's pretty safe to say at this point that isn't going to happen.


You'll get to where I am eventually.

Eumerin wrote:

I always hoped they'd manage to get JC up and running again (it was their second property, after all). But it's pretty safe to say at this point that isn't going to happen.

I think JC predates HG, actually... It's initial incarnation was as a setting book for the Mekton rules.

 Balance wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

I always hoped they'd manage to get JC up and running again (it was their second property, after all). But it's pretty safe to say at this point that isn't going to happen.

I think JC predates HG, actually... It's initial incarnation was as a setting book for the Mekton rules.

Yeah, and I actually have those two books, with Marc Vezina's signature on the inside (he found a bunch and offered them for sale on the old Jovian Chronicles Mailing List). But when Ianus Games made the name change to Dream Pod 9, Heavy Gear was the game they went with.


Of course, it was a card fighting game at first, iirc...

Oh, this is something that I have always wondered about, but why don't I see more DP9 announcements on the standard minis gaming sites? Tabletopgamingnews, TMP, etc. I rarely ever see any announcements of new figures or books, the alpha, or any of that stuff make it off the DP9 website or their facebook page.

ferrous wrote:
Oh, this is something that I have always wondered about, but why don't I see more DP9 announcements on the standard minis gaming sites? Tabletopgamingnews, TMP, etc. I rarely ever see any announcements of new figures or books, the alpha, or any of that stuff make it off the DP9 website or their facebook page.

Not 100% sure why these stopped, but if I was running a small gaming company I'd want to divide communication into a couple different categories.

First is 'official' communications, which should be written, proofed, and (importantly) scheduled. Announcements should come from a single voice when possible.

The second is unofficial (or less official) stuff and should be often and responsive to the customer base. Multiple people 'closer to the ground' (I.E. the devs, artists, etc.) and post early, post often.

I know for DP9 I have assisted with the first a bit and was always annoyed because the announcement was being written or rewritten while trying to format the post. (TMP is a good site, but they use some weird non-standard quasi-HTML formatting that annoys me and is neither BBCode, HTML, or MarkDown. To be picky, Dakka uses a different dialect of BBCode than a lot of other forums, too, but it's at least close.) I thought about writing a script that would parse text in one format and spit it out in suitable formats, but then I decided I'd rather paint some minis or something else that makes me happy.

I stopped posting DP9 news on dakka dakka because dp9 news got less orderly and I really don't know what's going on with a lot of things. If I'm not excited by the news, I don't know if anyone else would be, and have a strong disinterest in wasting people's time. I also don't like things being attributed to me I didn't write, which is one reason I'm almsot an unseen presence ont he DP9forums these days except when I come out to yell at the kids to get off my lawn.

Eumerin wrote:

 Balance wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

I always hoped they'd manage to get JC up and running again (it was their second property, after all). But it's pretty safe to say at this point that isn't going to happen.

I think JC predates HG, actually... It's initial incarnation was as a setting book for the Mekton rules.

Yeah, and I actually have those two books, with Marc Vezina's signature on the inside (he found a bunch and offered them for sale on the old Jovian Chronicles Mailing List). But when Ianus Games made the name change to Dream Pod 9, Heavy Gear was the game they went with.


Of course, it was a card fighting game at first, iirc...

Actually, as far as I know, the very first product to have "DP9" in it was the Project A-Ko RPG ^_^. It also sported the first iteration of Silhouette.

In their "defense", you haven't missed out on reporting much with their once a year paper product release schedule. I tried keeping up with some of the releases once you stopped but I couldn't stomach trying to advertise the Paxton stuff (the only new releases since last summer) once the full weight of the cheese they got sunk in.

Oh, look! Point discounts for things I was already going to get!

...how very much not surprised >_>

I think I'm a little frustrated right now, in part, because two micro-projects I did some work on (as freebies) got ignored/turned down.

1: I had a project management/issue tracking tool (used an open source package, minimal customization) pretty much at the point where it could be put out for the community to start using. Shot down as too complicated. I knew it would be complex (these tools are) but I still feel like it wasn't give a chance.

2: I set up a basic 'datacard viewer' that was database driven. Basically a tool to make it easier to handle the Known Issue of having model stats that have typos, and make it easier to filter. Could have supported Dave's Unit Building (which I am personally not happy with) and other useful things to sort by. Maybe searching, if I had put more time in on it. Zero interest, so...

(Check out http://www.dp9.com/badlands-rally-cards?field_usage_value=All if you want to see what I was talking about. I apologize for the bad humor. BTW, this was designed off the Gencon release Badlands Rally rules, so some things may be a little weird. Spent an annoying amount of time so back-end users can use a color picker to set the card's highlight color.)

Googled Heavy Gear news, got this back in one of the top ten results.

http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/tag/heavy-gear-blitz/

So what's up, docs? -slurps Monster-

Edit: Balance, cute fire-fighting Caiman there. "Folks, everybody stay calm, the Caiman will be there shortly and we'll see if our racer's all right...."

-Brandon F.

Silly Balance.

For that to get green-lighted, Robert should have been capable of understanding what you were talking about, you know.

Some 'news' sources are basically written off RSS feeds. Not sure which sites are doing that, but I provided feeds for a couple of them.

There's a lot of those in fact.

-Brandon F.

BrandonKF wrote:
Googled Heavy Gear news, got this back in one of the top ten results.

http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/tag/heavy-gear-blitz/

So what's up, docs? -slurps Monster-

Edit: Balance, cute fire-fighting Caiman there. "Folks, everybody stay calm, the Caiman will be there shortly and we'll see if our racer's all right...."

-Brandon F.

You might notice that TMP doesn't even show up in that top ten =)

You are right in that more announcements on that site you mentioned than I actually remember, still no Hoppers, no greyhound, no hoplite apc.

Correct indeed, ferrous.

Though even I haven't heard of TMP. I'm not really huge on the Internet, you know. I just search-fu my way through lots of schtuff.

-Brandon F.

 Albertorius wrote:
Silly Balance.

For that to get green-lighted, Robert should have been capable of understanding what you were talking about, you know.

Actually, these were Dave, but the lack of enthusiasm has not helped my mood. Both of those efforts were done with me donating the initial up-front time, so I'm pretty much burned out on doing much without permission to bill for my time. Both were interesting (for a bit) as development experience (getting the color picker and sort options for the datacard browser was fun. As it's all database driven a view could be made for the cards similar to the table views in the playtest material.)

I'm hopeful Jason & Greg (and Brandon) do something interesting with their license (despite a negative comment I made elsewhere in a moment of annoyance) as, while I may not always agree with them, I do think they get the setting better than the current tabletop effort or the video game (which lost a lot of interest as they seem unwilling to accept that interest in the game they want to make is low; and that they are really barely using the license as some of the Gears are so redesigned people were picking out flaws on one pic for days before being told they were nitpicking the wrong chassis). I like the core mechanic of the Alpha, I jsut don't have a lot of faith in a number of the details. Thena gain, I know a lot of my preferences wouldn't fly for everyone, either.

I'm hopeful Jason & Greg (and Brandon) do something interesting with their license (despite a negative comment I made elsewhere in a moment of annoyance) as, while I may not always agree with them, I do think they get the setting better than.....

Thank you for that.

Then again, I know a lot of my preferences wouldn't fly for everyone, either.

Methinks there's a few men here who are better at game creation than myself... but I do want to create a real fan-made ruleset for the miniatures. I have a basis with what I posted in Thunder Run, but I need more finesse with it.

What all works for you?

-Brandon F.

@Balance: Sorry to hear about the projects. Was the management tracking tool supposed to be for website issues or game issues like FAQs/questions/errors?

@Brandon: Eventually I have to try out infinity (and by definition your HGT). Will you be updating the rules for the new version of infinity coming out this summer? I may take the plunge and pick up the book since I know it'll be current for a while. I know that the rules are online but I like having an electricity free copy to look at as well.