Dream Pod 9

Dream Pod 9 finds its early roots in Ianus Publications founded in 1987 to publish the Protoculture Addicts Anime Magazine and which later also published Mecha Press magazine dedicated to Japanese SF animation, mecha, modeling and gaming. In 1992, Ianus struck a deal with R. Talsorian Games to publish an Alternate Reality Universe line of products based on RTG's successful Cyberpunk 2020. The game design team at Ianus became known as Dream Pod 9 and when on to publish Jovian Chronicles for RTG’s Mekton II game system. DP9 was then hired in 1993 by Palladium Books, publishers of the Robotech and Macross II roleplaying games, to produce three volumes of the Macross II Deck Plans books.

In 1994, DP9 began developing its first home grown game called Heavy Gear Fighter, which was the Card Fighter game that introduced gamers to the world of Heavy Gear. We worked on other projects including the Project A-ko roleplaying game, all the while continuing to work on our own game system. Heavy Gear the Roleplaying and Tactical Game was released in the summer of 1995. It became a success with its anime inspired artwork and realistic warfare game mechanics. Due to phenomenal growth of the game in late 1995 we decided to split Ianus into two new companies, Protoculture, which would continue to publish Protoculture Addicts magazine and Dream Pod 9, which became a fully fledged company publishing gaming books and miniatures.

A year later, DP9 entered in a partnership with computer game giant Activision to create computer games based on the Heavy Gear property. Both Heavy Gear: the New Breed, and its advanced sequel, Heavy Gear II: Black Talon, took the computer game world by storm! In late 1999, Dream Pod 9 licensed the worldwide television rights to its popular Heavy Gear game universe to Sony Pictures Family Entertainment. The 40-episode computer animated series debuted in syndication across the world in early 2001.

Dream Pod 9’s game universes include Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, Gear Krieg, Tribe 8, and Core Command. With numerous RPG rulebooks and sourcebooks published for each, along with miniature wargame rulebooks for Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, and Gear Krieg and full lines of pewter and resin miniatures.

In 2003 the team behind Dream Pod 9 started work on a new project to work on action scenes for movies. Dream Pod Entertainment was created along with the Shadow Squad Stunt Team. Members of Shadow Squad have worked on numerous productions in Canada and Internationally one of the biggest being the 300, which film here in Montreal.

Heavy Gear Blitz became the dedicated tabletop wargame version of Heavy Gear in 2008. We manufacture a complete line of 1/144 scale pewter and resin miniatures for the game. Plus, our first successful Kickstarter at the end of 2014 made possible plastic miniatures for 4 factions (North, South, CEF, and Caprice) in the game. And we recently ran additional successful plastic miniature Kickstarters to make 3 more factions (Peace River, NuCoal, and Utopia), which are available to customers now.

Jovian Wars is the updated edition of our Jovian Chronicles miniatures wargame. In 2017 we ran a successful Kickstarter for a new line of miniatures, starting with the 2 main factions. The Venus faction miniatures have been added since then and additional Kickstarters are planned to make all the Jovian Wars factions available in the future.

Dream Pod 9 currently has an outside team working on a new 4th Edition of the Heavy Gear Roleplaying Game, which we plan to release in 2022.