If you would like to receive our monthly Director’s Briefing direct to your inbox, you can join our mailing list HERE.
Welcome
To the one hundred-and-eighteenth Briefing and fourth scheduled Briefing of 2021. I hope that you and yours are staying well.
Gen Con 2021
Gen Con has presented its current plan for how Gen Con 2021 is hoped to go ahead as a physical convention in September, and a range of options for vendors to consider. We have consulted with Pointy Hat Games and various factors – the risk of further pandemic-related disruption, the expected cap on numbers, the later timing and so forth – have convinced us that it is wiser for both our companies to roll over our Gen Con 2021 spot to Gen Con 2022. It is a disappointment for both companies, and we will support any fans who do make it to Gen Con this year.
HARP
We have had three passes now with HARP Bestiary. It is weighing in at 468 pages now that everything is in place, including an appendix providing additional creature talents and a few new spells associated with some of the new creatures. Nick Morawitz is currently wrestling with the OneBookShelf / Lightning Source template. It has been a very worthwhile learning experience – we are trying out some layout tricks that may prove useful in RMU.
Once Bestiary has reached publication, I will be letting Nick turn his attention to HARP Garden of Rain and HARP Beyond the Veil.
For health reasons, Terry is progressing cautiously on HARP Subterfuge.
Shadow World
Terry is still tinkering with mini-adventures, while work continues on the HARP Handbook for Shadow World, with current efforts looking at how to map Shadow World races and cultures into HARP equivalents.
RMU
Aaron Smalley and Jonathan Dale continue to work on Creature Law. Assuming there are no more gotchas, Aaron is hopeful that he can see the finishing line on the main body of the first volume of Creature Law. We have a known required addition, namely random encounter tables, but these won’t prevent the rest of the manuscript coming to edit. I am expecting to have a flurry around various other projects in order to ensure that everyone else is OK before disappearing into RMU editing mode. The first RMU rules supplement is also very advanced in its writing. Colin now has commissioned all of the artwork for RMU Arms & Character Law, so I have contracts to issue.
ERA Software
In addition to various enhancements and bug fixes to the existing software packages, work is underway for a Spacemaster: Privateers set of datasets for ERA.
Until next time
Please stay safe.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Iron Crown Enterprises Ltd