Dream Pod 9
[ Home | Store | RSS ]

Dream Pod 9 (also known as DP9) is a Montreal-based entertainment properties design and publishing studio. They also produce lines of pewter and resin miniatures for their Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, and Gear Krieg games.

The company got its start as the game design studio of what was then IANUS Publications, a Canadian publisher of anime-related magazines (Mecha Press, Protoculture Addicts). The team took care of the gaming sections of the magazines. They started publishing games on their own, releasing licensed Cyberpunk 2020 supplements and two Mekton books in the early 1990s. The design group split off in 1994 to become DP9.

The company had a rise to fame in the mid and late 1990, fueled by the purported quality and depth of their books. It suffered from the general depression of the game industry after 9/11. Since 2004, the company has put an increased emphasis on wargames and has recently released the Heavy Gear Blitz! miniature game; both actions have done a great deal to counteract the problems encountered after the market downturn. While the company has not published RPG books recently, they have repeatedly stated they will continue to support the SilCORE system and the associated game lines. They have also noted they will publish new books once the company can branch out again.

The company's unusual name comes from an intense late night brainstorming session intended to avoid the tired form "Such-and-such Games, Inc." It brought forth the name "Dream Pod;" the number "9" was added to add a bit of pulp sci-fi flair.

The company is best known for the Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, Tribe 8 (RPG) and Gear Krieg universes, on which role-playing games, wargames, scale models and miniatures have been based. The company also created a few other settings for use in various publications (d20 Mecha Compendium, for example), though they are less well-known.

Heavy Gear is a military science-fiction universe where human worlds wage war against one another with mecha.

Jovian Chronicles follows the exploration of the solar system in the 23rd century and the conflicts that arise between the Earth and the space colonies.

Tribe 8 (RPG) is a tribal, post-apocalyptic fantasy game of horror and epic adventures.

Gear Krieg takes place in an alternate reality World War II firmly set in the pulp genre.

CORE Command is a space opera universe set millennia in the far future.

Alternative publisher names are: Ianus Publications.

[ edit this ]