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Thursday, June 16, 2011

ADB, Inc. and Mongoose Publishing, Ltd. Announce Joint Venture

ADB, Inc., has signed a new joint-venture deal with Mongoose Publishing, Ltd., which is one of the largest companies in the Adventure Game industry. They're famous for numerous product lines, including miniatures and roleplaying games. This long-term relationship includes three immediate elements, but the future is as open as space and as exciting as a supernova.

Let's briefly mention the first three projects.

A CALL TO ARMS: STAR FLEET

This is Mongoose's well-known space combat game, designed for massive battles with dozens of miniature starships. The new joint-venture deal provides for the production of a series of beautiful hardback rulebooks that will bring together the ships of the Star Fleet Universe and the game system of A Call to Arms. This worked very well for the Starmada product line, and should work even better for the much more widely sold A Call to Arms series.

There is an even chance that the first book will appear before the end of 2011.

PRIME DIRECTIVE: TRAVELLER

One of the most popular RPG game engines in the industry is the Traveller series (which has produced in various incarnations by several companies). The current "Mongoose Traveller" incarnation is one of the best of those. Our Prime Directive team is hard at work converting our books Prime Directive, Federation, Klingons, and Romulans to use the Mongoose Traveller engine. Our theory is, and has been, to license the best existing RPG engines and install them into our existing RPG books, and this project will follow that pattern.

The first book will appear near the end of 2011 or early in 2012.

STARLINE 2500

Every existing Starline 2400 ship will be replaced with a new computer-generated design. (We call this Starline 2500, but they plan to market it under another brand yet to be selected.) The first ships will appear in late 2011, and ships will then follow every month or two. This will include some entirely new ships as we move forward. Ships will have a lot more detail and many known problems with existing designs will be solved by Mongoose's expert model designers.

These new production ships will be fancier and a little bigger (in 1:3125 scale) and made from resin by Mongoose's first-rate team. Everyone who has an extensive collection of Starline 2400s can keep it, or perhaps slowly replace it with new designs. (The existing 2400 line could be used for Early Years if you want, or the new 2500 designs could be used for X-ships. The 2400 line will convert to "mail order only" and be kept available as long as market demand exists.) Mongoose will convert all of the Federation Commander Squadron Boxes and Border Boxes to the new Starline 2500 range of ships, and will launch new $99.99 Fleet Boxes. (The first boxes to appear will be Squadron Box #1 Federation, Squadron Box #2 Klingons, and Squadron Box #9 Romulans. You read that right, number NINE.) The new A Call to Arms: Star Fleet books will be keyed to use the same Squadron Boxes that Federation Commander and Star Fleet Starmada already use. This will be good for retailers, who can stock one line of miniatures for three different game systems.

THE FINE PRINT

These products are joint ventures, and both companies will use the same stock numbers. Any of these products can be ordered from either company but because of the contract we have with Paramount, the invoice will come from ADB, Inc. All packaging for joint venture products will include the Star Fleet Universe logo and both company logos.