Director's Briefing - January 2025

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Welcome

To the one hundred-and-sixty-second Briefing and first scheduled Briefing of 2025, and a very happy and healthy new year to all of you.

The 2023 Christmas reading included Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson and it was August last year before I managed to complete the full ten-volume sequence. This year, my Christmas reading was the duology Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross (post-human technothrillers set in an interplanetary distant future and a very distant interstellar far future), Michio Kaku's The Future of Humanity (an upbeat view on how we might become a multi-planet species) and I am currently on Scourge, the first novel in Gail Martin's Darkhurst fantasy trilogy (where a trio of undertaker brothers have the misfortune to live in a city menaced by vindictive guards, nocturnal ghoul attacks, blood mages and tyrannical rulers.) I also nipped into the appendices of the Lord of the Rings to remind myself of what Tolkien had actually written about Helm Hammerhand and his era, before seeing the War of the Rohirrim movie. My only significant criticism was that it was an animated feature film but then I have been spoiled by extended live-action versions of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.

A Retrospective on 2024

For RMU, Treasure Law appeared in print and debuted in print at Gen Con 2024. As 2024 neared its end, the first volume of Creature Law went into another layout pass. I also completed an editing sweep on Character Companion, the first expansion book for RMU.

In terms of HARP and HARP SF, Banecroft: The Mage's Tale remained waiting on its artwork and cartography. HARP SF The Corporate Worlds went back to Dave Martin for corrections and changes. HARP Steampunk went through the editing phase and is waiting on its final artwork arriving.

In terms of Cyradon, Colin declared that he was ready for the main setting manuscript to be edited by me. I completed a pass on this with HARP-related comments for Colin to consider as well as noting areas of interest for the RMU conversion work.

On the software front, our coding geniuses were working across the year on a host of projects. David Klecker delivered a wholly new edition of AutoHARP and new datasets. Max Tabacman kept pace with RMU releasing datasets and fixes, a new legacy dataset and introduced the Gaming Table component. Brett Nash produced the first three Roll20 packages for RMU. Bob Morris has been developing a Foundry virtual tabletop implementation for RMU.

Once again ICE attended both Dragonmeet and Gen Con with both conventions being successful events for us.

2025

Looking to our hopes for 2025 in terms of new products.

In RMU, the release of the first volume of RMU Creature Law in pdf will be the next big thing, and yes, the goal will be to debut it in print at Gen Con 2025. The release after that for RMU is much harder to call – it ought to be the second volume of Creature Law, but Character Companion from Jonathan is a shorter manuscript and has already passed its editing phase with flying colours. It will boil down to the vagaries of illustrations arriving and layout.

In HARP, impatiently waiting on the artwork all arriving is HARP Steampunk. Dave Martin's Banecroft: The Mage's Tale is also waiting on residual artwork and maps and its RMU stats being finalised. My prediction is that Steampunk will release before Banecroft. I hope that Brad White's Dark Harvest Dark Hunt will appear in full manuscript form at some point.

In HARP SF, Joel Lovell has continued to suffer from the curse of perfectionism defeating the goal of
completion of HARP SF Poseidon Gambit. Dave Martin still has significant work to do on HARP SF The Corporate Worlds.

Returning to HARP, what do George RR Martin and I have in common? Both of us have unfinished books that fans have been waiting on for years. My goal is to have HARP Something Wicked Something Wondrous finished in terms of writing and editing this year, and then it will be over to artists and layout (and I will be off the critical path). I want this product ready to support the Cyradon relaunch and HARP needs a Mentalist variant mage so that we can support Shadow World using HARP because Terry Amthor made good use of Rolemaster Mentalists, Seers, Astrologers and more in his books. (George, a lot of people would like to see you finish The Winds of Winter. Any chance this year?)

Cyradon is still going to be a behind-the-scenes project as there is still much to be done to get six books reworked, dual-system'ed and publication ready.

Yes, Shadow World in RMU and HARP. Jonathan has been and is working on a Rolemaster (RMU) conversion guide for Shadow World. Once this is complete, we would like volunteers to undertake the conversion work on the existing Shadow World books that we published. Ideally we would have a group of volunteers so that each book can be done in parallel and we can get the RMU appendix pdfs added to the DriveThru catalogue. At the same time, we will be looking to make headway on Priest-King of Shade and Night of the Third Moon, and yes, Emer IV and Terry's legacy.

On software, I expect ongoing support for HARP from AutoHARP3 and all editions of Rolemaster through ERA. I have approved a request to create a Spacemaster Privateers implementation for Fantasy Grounds. I know Roll20 support is tracking RMU Creature Law progress. On Foundry, I was sent a preview of Ravi's interview with Bob Morris which has an extensive demo of the RMU Foundry work-in-progress (see https://youtu.be/zFNZ-0OhK7c)

ICE will be present at Gen Con 2025 with our own dedicated stand in Entrepreneurs Avenue, and we will be attending Dragonmeet.

Much to look forward to in 2025!

Until next time
Please stay safe and keep gaming.
Best wishes,
Nicholas

Director, Iron Crown Enterprises Ltd

[awesomesauce]

GenCon 2025 is the end of July. That's a long time to wait for a very overdue 50% version of Creature Law...

If it is the artwork that is holding things up, then why not release a version without artwork in PDF at full price, and allow anyone who purchases that to get the full version free when it finally gets released?

[5th Knight of Xar]

I think we'll wait for the full Creature Law I to be published, it's not the end of the world of we have to wait a few more months.

[DavidKlecker]

AutoHARP3 support is definitely underway. I'm not getting a lot of tickets though.

Currently I am working on getting an online version very similar to what ERA does.

[Micael]

Thanks Nicholas,
for your long awaited response to shadow worlds future.
Could you please elaborate if your comment to Terry's Legacy with EMER 4 is already a decision for the next product or a general information that we will see more content from him? I ask because in the great SW fan voting NE Jaiman /Wuliris got a higher count of votes? Thanks Micael

[Micael]

Sorry, I couldn´t modify my last message any more (I rechecked and wanted to update it after reading the fan voting again), so I make an update here- please delete my last message as soon as possible:

Thanks Nicholas,
for your long awaited response to shadow worlds future.
Could you please elaborate a little bit, if your comment to Terry's Legacy with EMER 4 is already a decision for the next product or a general information that we will see more content from him? I ask because there were similar count of votes in the great SW fan voting for NE Jaiman /Wuliris and also a very high count for a revision of an starting adventure area like Gryphonburgh or Quellbourne?
Thanks Micael

[nash]

GenCon 2025 is the end of July. That's a long time to wait for a very overdue 50% version of Creature Law...

If it is the artwork that is holding things up, then why not release a version without artwork in PDF at full price, and allow anyone who purchases that to get the full version free when it finally gets released?

The -print- version will trail the pdf version by a few months.

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

GenCon 2025 is the end of July. That's a long time to wait for a very overdue 50% version of Creature Law...

If it is the artwork that is holding things up, then why not release a version without artwork in PDF at full price, and allow anyone who purchases that to get the full version free when it finally gets released?

Goal is print for Gen Con which means pdf several months before Gen Con.

Best wishes,
Nicholas