Black Industries

Black Industries was the role-playing game imprint of BL Publishing, the publishing arm of Games Workshop. It was announced on January 28, 2008 that it would cease operations after its products currently scheduled for release are published.

History

In early 2003, after James Wallis closed down Hogshead Publishing, the rights to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay reverted to Games Workshop; a year later Games Workshop decided to publish a new edition of the game through their BL Publishing division and created a new subdivision called Black Industries as a roleplaying imprint. In 2003, Green Ronin Publishing was hired by Games Workshop to produce a second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and thereafter package a line of supplements to be sold by Black Industries.

A fourth edition of the Talisman fantasy board game was released in 2007.

Black Industries also produced a Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay game, Dark Heresy, with the mass-market version released on January 26, 2008; Two days later, on January 28, 2008, Games Workshop announced that they were shutting Black Industries down, as the RPG products did not sell as well as the Black Library fiction and Games Workshop wanted to concentrate on what was most profitable.

Games Workshop gave a new license to Fantasy Flight Games, and the last product for Green Ronin's version of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was the Career Compendium (2009) produced by Fantasy Flight Games.