Today Games Workshop announced that it is shutting down Black Industries, its roleplaying wing. Green Ronin worked with BI for many years as a design house and put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into the products we created for them. Getting to design the new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was in many ways a dream project for me and seeing it become the #2 fantasy RPG on the market was pretty gratifying. It is sad to see WFRP come to an end yet again, though I’m sure the fan community will keep it going for many years to come.
Many people have asked me what this means for Green Ronin and if the closure of BI will adversely affect us. There’s nothing to worry about on that score. Our contract with them concluded last year and we turned over the files for Thousand Thrones last month. We knew this transition was coming and were ready for it. We just didn’t realize that WFRP itself would not be moving forward. At least the line is going out with a bang though. Thousand Thrones is a huge adventure that’ll take a long time to play through. It seems like an appropriate way to send things off.
Best of luck to the GW folks affected by this. I’ve been through similar days and they are never fun.
I, like thousands of others, bought the 40k RPG Dark Heresy on Saturday and now, boom, so it ends! Chaos taint indeed.
I have been running the new WFRP since the early summer of 2006 and loving it all the way. My Sunday group (including some original play testers) just finished Barony of the Damned and we are looking forward to the Thousand Thrones maybe in the fall after beating the heck out of Dark Heresy.
GW are idiots (no news there) but they done good getting the GR gang to handle the greatest revival in RPG history. Thanks Chris!
–michael
Least it wasn’t two weeks before Christmas, eh? Cheers, Chris.
TS