In 2003, Dream Pod 9 released a conversion guide from the Silhouette game system to the d20 Open Gaming License. Heavy Gear In 1996, Dream Pod 9 partnered with Activision to create a Heavy Gear computer game, and the following year, Heavy Gear: The New Breed became Activision's first property to sell over a million copies. At the height of Dream Pod 9's popularity in the late 1990s, despite having a staff of only nine writers, Heavy Gear was reportedly the fourth-most popular roleplaying game in the U.S. In 1997, Dream Pod 9 released the second edition rules for Heavy Gear, again using the Silhouette game system. In 1998, Dream Pod 9 released their next major property, Jovian Chronicles, a rewrite of the setting they had created for the Mekton II RPG in 1993, now adapted to their own Silhouette game system. The company then published the swords-and-sorcery post-apocalyptic Tribe 8 (1998), and then its fourth role-playing game Gear Krieg (2001), an alternate-history game set during World War II. In 1999, Dream Pod 9 licensed Heavy Gear to Sony Pictures, which resulted in a 40-episode 3D-animated series that had world-wide syndication. In 2002, Heavy Gear: The Animated Series was nominated for a Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing in Television Animation. Decline In 1999, Activision's Heavy Gear II: Black Talon was commercially unsuccessful, selling less than 30,000 copies by the end of the year; Activision chose not to develop a third title. By 2001, sales of Dream Pod 9's Silhouette-based games also declined as the d20 system became popular throughout the role-playing game industry. Dream Pod 9 responded by releasing a third edition of the Heavy Gear roleplaying game in 1993 that had been converted to the d20 system under the Open Game License (OGL). Since this edition could not include game system rules under the terms of the OGL, players had to purchase the Players Handbook for the third edition of D&D in order to play the game. For players who still wanted to use the Silhouette rules system, Dream Pod 9 also published the Silhouette CORE Rulebook (SilCORE), which contained the Silhouette rules system; conversely, it also explained how to convert previous editions of their games that used the Silhouette system to d20 rules. Regardless of which system players wanted to use, they still had to purchase two books in order to play the third edition of