Director's Briefing - April 2025

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Welcome

To the one hundred-and-sixty-fifth Briefing and fourth scheduled Briefing of 2025.

Dragonmeet Prime and Dragonmeet "2"

I have been busy organising our arrangements for Dragonmeet Prime, which is the new name for the Dragonmeet 2025 convention. This will be held on Saturday 29th November 2025 at London Excel. The space has been booked and the tables and chairs have been hired. Phew.

In addition, the Dragonmeet team are organising a smaller second convention on Saturday 26th April. This is intended as a call to adventure with the emphasis on introducing new people to gaming. The Dragonmeet Call to Adventure will be held at Kensington Town Hall. Please visit www.dragonmeet.co.uk for details

DriveThru Printing Changes and Tariffs


As we indicated last time, we had been warned that Lightning Source would be increasing their print prices. This has now taken effect. I have went through the DriveThru back end and made various corrections to the prices of the print products (as the automatic price controls had gone slightly askew and had increased some of the prices beyond where they should be).  We did make a large print order of Rolemaster products for Gen Con and these have already arrived with Aaron Smalley.

DriveThru have also contacted us regarding the American tariff situation. As DriveThru has printing facilities for books in the USA, the UK and Australia, our printed books should avoid any direct tariff cost consequences. I am thankful that ICE is not involved in selling boxed sets, cards, or miniatures – I have seen a post from Steve Jackson Games indicating the tariff related implications for games and game components manufactured in China. We will monitor the twists and turns of these economic uncertainties.

Software

David Klecker has been working on AutoHARP and new datasets. This is a headsup to expect updates for AutoHARP, AutoHARP Fantasy Architect, AutoHARP Martial Law, AutoHARP College of Magics and AutoHARP Bestiary. In addition, there are new datasets for Folkways, Beyond the Veil and Subterfuge.

HARP and HARP SF

Joel Lovell is very close to being complete with HARP SF The Poseidon Gambit and has sent the latest draft. Some work still to be done on the final portion of the module. I am working with Joel to see how we can get the draft to full completion.

I am in early discussions about a potential revamp/reboot/reimagining of Cyberspace within the context of the HARP SF / HARP SF Xtreme rule set.

I have been having fun creating more new spells for HARP Something Wicked Something Wondrous. Rodd Kleinschmidt of HARP Subterfuge fame has made a number of excellent suggestions for even more. Still more spells to write up but taking a short break from them for a very good reason (see below).

I am undertaking the last-minute paranoia checks (e.g. did we catch all the HARP/Rolemaster mechanics elements? Is everything now in the manuscript?) on Banecroft: The Mage's Tale before we formally put it in the layout  queue.

Rolemaster

Last, but absolutely not least, RMU Creature Law. We have now entered the Columbo phase of "One last thing" where we spot final errors, catch things where Nick knows he has fixed them already but the software has decided it has other ideas, and generally stay calm and press onward.
Expect the pdf release of RMU Creature Law very soon.

Until next time

Please stay safe and keep gaming.
Best wishes,
Nicholas

[assur]

Expect the pdf release of RMU Creature Law very soon.

Great news.

[nash]

FWIW... Creature Law on Roll20 is ready to go as well too.   It just needs the [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] and otherwise 400+ creatures are ready to make your VTT very unfriendly.

[DavidKlecker]

I am going through Harp Sci Fi right now for AutoHARP 3. For those who have been waiting for an update, this will be the one.