Welcome
To the ninety-third Briefing and second scheduled Briefing of 2019.
GenCon 2019
Preparations for GenCon moved up a notch with the new year. Our colleagues at Pointy Hat Games have been keeping a firm grip on matters, and were deftly able to secure hotel rooms near the convention centre, which will make lives much easier for our hardy volunteers who will man the booth.
RMU
Progress is happening with RMU. A number of races have been safely extracted by Jonathan from the Creature Law manuscript and are now installed into Arms & Character Law, so more choice for players and another pruning back on the size of Creature Law. Aaron Smalley is limbering up for a run at the whole set of remaining creatures.
HARP Fantasy, HARP SF and Cyradon
In an effort to prevent me from becoming a logjam in product schedule, I have agreed with Terry that he will take over artwork direction for the HARP Fantasy and HARP SF lines. He has a better eye for seeing what might make a good concept for an artist than I have. Since the layout will come to him in nearly all cases anyway, he is better placed than me to pick out where we will absolutely need some art to fill in some otherwise unfortunate whitespace. Yes, I know there are very good reasons to have whitespace but it can sometimes end up in awkward places, whereas a nice piece of art can sometimes inspire and sometimes inform.
The delegation is just as well because no sooner was I preparing to send HARP Subterfuge and HARP Garden of Rain in Terry’s direction, than there was a knock on my inbox from another of our freelancers. Jonathan Cassie has handed in a complete draft of HARP Beyond The Veil, our future sourcebook on religions and the divine, and a modest query to ask if there was anything that he should be adding to it. I have had a quick skim through to get a sense of it and it is looking excellent so far. I can think of some more areas where Jonathan can add some more – and this is likely to include some Shadow World and Cyradon content, just as we did for HARP Folkways.
I am pleased with Colin’s progress to date on the Cyradon reawakening. He’s battled through the difficult part of the creatures.
Shadow World
When not keeping out of the inclement winter weather, Terry has been working on a short adventure for Shadow World to be set in SW Emer as an intro to Emer IV. He’s finding it a useful recharge from constructing Haalkitaine NPCs.
I have Priest-King safely on my tablet and in the queue for editing.
I am also mindful that with RMU Creature Law moving again that we will soon be in a position where we can safely solicit adventure modules for Shadow World with the intention of having RMU stats incorporated within them. Likewise, given the HARP Fantasy books published and those in manuscript form, we are also in a position where a HARP Handbook for Shadow World could be written. I would be very happy to see discussion on both of these areas.
Until next time
The next scheduled Briefing will be in March 2019
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Iron Crown Enterprises Ltd