I found the following statements from May 13th the most telling:
“Can we assemble (outside the office) a team/stable of writers and designers able to produce as many RPG products as we can sell?”
“Before any deal is signed, we have to do some homework. I literally need to go into a game store, buy half a dozen RPG modules, and study now they are laid out and printed. How much of an art budget will we have to have for each such product? Can we find enough artists to work cheap enough to DO that much art?”
People gave Decipher flak for getting into the RPG business with no experience, but ADB by their own admission have even less practical experience or talent pool to draw from.
PD1 tanked badly (again self-admission from ADB) and this doesn’t look much better, aside from going outside to license their own game engine (additional cost that must be recouped on top of writing, development, and art). I have to admire his passion and drive, however!
And in response to the original question (and Eric statement of Decipher being ‘blithering idiots’) here’s ADB’s position when asked the same question:
“I'm sure this has been considered, but I haven't seen anything posted on it. Has any thought been put into approaching Decipher to license PD2 to them or have them develop it in some way? I don't have a clue as to how that would work out, but seeing's how they have the sole Star Trek license maybe they could integrate PD2 into any system that they may come up with and generate some big sales.”
Response: “I doubt they would be interested at all, and am 99.9999% certain that Paramount would reject any such deal.”
From what I could tell PD's gameplay didn't seem very good, but Character Generation was good and mainly I like the races they created. The maps were cool and I like the Starfleet Technical Manual, even though Deneb, Altair, Vega, Alpha Centauri (the list goes on) are in completely the wrong directions and the galaxy doesn't appear to be shaped right. What would be cool would be if they keep the empires situated the way they have them but correct the positions of specific stars, and write up all the empires and races, including Omega Sector, with the same quality as IconTrek.
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The Trekkie Formerly Known As Surak, AKA The Coch, Humble Creator of the Bwuutut and Mensaeans, Aba and Zwickau, and the Perseus Federation, Guy Who Still Hasn't Actually Played The Game, And Who Finally Decided To Use A Signature.
Yes Don it's me Actually, I've been around here a lot lately
I think Paramount's original beef with ADB and Star Fleet Battles is that they weren't making any money off it (that and the fact that Roddenberry reportedly hated SFB). Now that they're getting paid, they're likely to be mellower. But I can understand why they wouldn't want to mix SFB with the "real" Star Trek, even if only in some people's minds. On the other hand, while I don't think PD II will be any competition to Decipher's efforts at all, Paramount might not want to compete with themselves...so who knows? I'll bet it'll wind up being D20.
To be honest with you all, that would be a very bad business move on Amarillo Design Bureau (current Star Fleet Battles publisher) to use d20, unless they are seriously considering overhauling their entire SFB game. If that is the case, it may revive my old wargaming instinct to want to return to the Star Fleet Battles and see how they use d20 system for a space combat rule-slash-wargame.
I would think it would be best if ADB or somesuch third-party game publisher develop a rule system that is compatible and easy to integrate with their current SFB rules, keeping in mind that it also be easy to roleplay, easy to understand, and flexible to use any species (SFB standard or user-created) as player characters.
------------------ Anyhoo, just some random thoughts...
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Actually, I've been around here a lot lately 
