This is our sixteenth Briefing and is the scheduled Briefing for November
Busy in the Real World
I have been extraordinarily busy in the real world, engaged on my own quest involving a matched pair of rings of power (yes, I am now very happily married), and battling the monsters of funding proposals to ensure continuation of my day job (the proposals are now either fully submitted or off my desk). So if you’ve been wondering where I’ve been or why you’ve not heard much from me, those are the reasons. So bear with me as I work through the accumulated backlog.
Print-on-demand and Shadow World
Last month (or thereabouts), OneBookShelf announced to publishers that their print partner Lightning Source was introducing a new grade of colour printing – “standard colour†which would be substantially cheaper than “premium colourâ€, but with only a modest reduction in quality.
To put the prices in perspective, let us compare the softcover prices: a black&white book has a manufacturing cost of 1.6 USD plus 2 cents per page, a premium colour book has a manufacturing cost of 1.8 USD plus 10 (ten) cents per page, but the new standard colour book has a manufacturing cost of 1.6 USD plus 3 (three) cents per page!
It just happened that Terry Amthor had been querying me about whether we should try to get his Shadow World: The Land of Xa-ar sourcebook into print. Xa-ar has mixed black&white and colour illustrations and maps, and downgrading the colour material would do the book an injustice. However, here was an opportunity to get Xa-ar into print at an extremely affordable price point, so I requested Terry to do the needful layout magic for OneBookShelf printing. Before I left for my final ten days of wedding preparations, proof copies were on order for Terry, and he has since indicated happiness with the resulting printed products. I’ve now ordered my own test copies from the UK Lightning Source division. Assuming that all is well with the UK copies, we will be putting Xa-ar on sale in both softcover and hardcover formats. We’ll let you know as soon as that happens.
HARP Fantasy and Martial Law and College of Magics
Now that I’ve fewer real-world distractions, part of my attention is back on HARP Fantasy. We’ve some additional fixes to put into the content and the layout and then it will be good to update the pdf and release as a print-on-demand. Many thanks to the keen-eyed gamers on the forums, who have been spotting some very stealthy errors for us.
As soon as HARP Fantasy is tidied up, we will be using the refreshed layout templates for the enhanced versions of HARP Martial Law and HARP College of Magics. As both books are complete in terms of material changes and new artwork, there’s no reason not to put both into layout in parallel
And then it’s back to refreshing HARP Loot: A Field Guide and Cyradon, and continuing to organise the writing of the brand-new HARP Bestiary.
I will also be finally checking through the latest version of the AutoHARP software package – you may have seen some posts on the ICE forums from its creator and indeed links to screenshots. This has two portions (so far): a Character Creator, which is capable of handling HARP Fantasy and HARP SF – and there will be extensions for HARP Martial Law and HARP College of Magics in short order, and a Combat Tracker which can track multiple combatants in a HARP Fantasy battle, tracking all attacks, magical actions, maneuvers, damage, etc., so you and your players don’t have to. The Combat Tracker also allows you to save the state of a battle so that if the session has to end, the action can restart next time without a hiccup. There’s a lot to enjoy in this package and we will be offering it for purchase at 20 USD through OneBookShelf, just as soon as I can sign it off.
Rolemaster Playtest – What Happens Next?
The three most important RMU rulebooks have been available in Public Playtest for several weeks now. I am very happy with the large number of downloads of all three books. I am equally happy with the large quantity of useful feedback that has been and is still being posted. I am happy to see actual playtest reports appearing and would encourage more GMs to report on their games, whether they are running a trial mini-campaign or just having a beer-‘n’-pretzels one-nighter.
It is clear that there are many things that are liked about the new rules set, and that there are some aspects which people dislike. It is also clear that there are new elements that work and some that are not. All of this is to be expected.
I have been ruthless in preventing the authors from making instant “improvements†in response to feedback because quick changes rarely catch all the consequences to other parts of the system. I speak from the experience of having safely steered HARP SF through its prolonged beta and the current highly targeted enhancements that I’m leading on HARP Fantasy.
Now that the tidal waves of initial comments have run their course, I will be working with the editing and writing team to identify aspects that need adjustment. In some cases, it will be obvious what the fix should be and the fix will have limited knock-on effects, so we’ll make the fix and post it for additional feedback. In other cases, the fix may be less obvious or there may be significant risk of knock-on effects, in which case the authors will need more time to produce proposed changes. We expect a staged release of changes to the rules set for further discussion in Public Playtest.
Please do not sit around waiting on the changes as they will roll out over time and we still want and need you to put the game through its paces to see if anything else
comes up. So please, playtest what already exists and incorporate the changes as they arrive in your playtest games.
And finally thanks from all of us at GCP (and ICE) to everyone who has already participated in the playtesting process. Your efforts are all appreciated by us and will be appreciated by the Rolemaster community for years to come.
Next Time
The next scheduled Director’s Briefing will be in December
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
