Director's Briefing - August 2026

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Welcome

To the one hundred-and-eighty-first Briefing and eighth scheduled Briefing of 2026.

Gen Con!
As I write this Briefing, Aaron and Monte are hard at work at Gen Con, selling books, orchestrating games and generally keeping the ICE flame burning bright at the convention. We will get the lowdown on Gen Con once the team returns.

Rolemaster
Character Companion is complete! We have managed to bring Character Companion to pdf in time for Gen Con and went live on 30 July.

Character Companion has:

• 5 new professions: the Assassin, Barbarian, Outrider, Swashbuckler, and Trader.
• 17 new cultures, including cultures especially suited to non-humans.
• 119 new talents, including talents especially intended for epic power level campaigns.
• 90 new flaws to help remind us that the most interesting characters are far from perfect.
• 58 new training packages, providing a new option to define your character's background.

Beyond the crunch, the book has expanded skill descriptions giving clarity for both game masters and players, while guidelines for training address how characters learn both skills and talents. Flaws can be linked to talents, so your greatest strength may also be your weakness.

The introduction of fighting styles offers new options especially for Arms professions, allowing them to continue to develop new tricks and techniques even at high levels. There are 24 fighting styles encompassing 91 unique abilities. If that isn't enough for you, rules are included for creating your own styles, adding a new dimension to the cultures and organizations of your own settings.

A selection of new magic items illustrate how fighting styles and other new options can be incorporated into enchantments, while new guidance for character creation will help new players find their way. A new system of traits helps link personality and physical features to stats, especially as an aid to the gamemaster when creating NPCs.

Jonathan enjoyed writing Character Companion and we know you will enjoy reading it and using it in your games.

Software

And that's not all.

Brett has completed the Roll20 version of RMU Character Companion, adding the sourcebook to the virtual tabletop software. It is now live on the Roll20 store and, as of 31 July, it is also live on DriveThru.

Max has also completed the ERA dataset for Character Companion. It is now live, as of 1st August, on DriveThru.

Bob has been busy with the Foundry software packages. He has recently finished combat tracking (action point allocation, shield blocks, parry, and movement), and is currently working on enhanced support for casting spells from magic items. He expects to be working on the Foundry version of Character Companion in September.

HARP

HARP Steampunk has now been released in print form – we have lots of copies available at Gen Con, and for those unable to attend Gen Con, softcovers and hardcovers can now be ordered via DriveThru.

On HARP Something Wicked Something Wondrous, I have completed the spell chapter! In the end, forty-two additional new concepts have been worked up and statted up. These include my renditions of some of Rodd Kleinschmidt's suggestions, such as Geas, Warlock's Revenge, Witchlight, Burning Hands and Bloodstep. Onward to finishing the updates for the other chapters.

Until next time

Back to my summer of writing and editing. Please stay safe and keep gaming.

Best wishes,
Nicholas