Director's Briefing - January 2026

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Welcome

To the one hundred-and-seventy-fourth Briefing and first scheduled Briefing of 2026, and a very happy and healthy new year to all of you.

The 2025 Christmas reading was a deliberate mix of science fiction and fantasy. I decided to reread the six slim Daedalus novels by Brian R Stableford (The Florians, Critical Threshold, Wildeblood's Empire, City of the Sun, Balance of Power, The Paradox of the Sets). In this future history, Earth has sent out colony ships to many worlds, turned its back on space for over a century, and has now sent out a small starship to recontact some of the colonies and see if they need assistance. When I first read these novels many years ago, I was struck by the problems (and solutions) faced by the colonies being biological, ecological and social. After a detour into "Beren and Luthien" and "The Children of Hurin" (yes, I am gearing up for a rereading of The Lord of the Rings), I turned to The Green Man's sequence by Juliet E McKenna, whose Einarinn novels I have mentioned in the past. The Green Man's Heir is Dan Mackmain, carpenter and dryad's son, who has the ability to see the unnatural creatures and spirits who also inhabit our world. This is very contemporary fantasy, jointly grounded in the real world (at one point, the characters walk through Ely and the street route is exactly correct as it is the one my family take when we walk into the town centre from the train station; real-world events like the pandemic are mentioned as the series progresses) and in British folklore. One of the reviews describes one novel as "Midsomer Murders" with a supernatural twist – I will note that these novels would have to be shown after the nine o'clock watershed on British television.

A Retrospective on 2025

For RMU, the first volume of Creature Law was published in pdf and debuted in print at Gen Con 2025. Additional material has been added to Character Companion and a second editing sweep undertaken. Writing has also started on Arcane Companion.

In terms of HARP and HARP SF, Banecroft: The Mage's Tale has had RMU stats added and was deep in layout. HARP SF The Corporate Worlds remained with its author for corrections and changes. HARP Steampunk received final artwork and layout but I have been making some final adjustments to the rules. I made progress on HARP Something Wicked Something Wondrous to the tune of 30,000 new words drawing upon relevant Mentalism Companion material and revising it fully into HARP terms.

In terms of Shadow World, we have a complete RMU conversion guide in full draft.

On the software front, AutoHARP3 has received updates and new updates, ensuring that all HARP rulebooks are now supported by AutoHARP3. ERA has also seen updates to existing datasets, now has the complete RMU datasets and support for Spacemaster: Privateers. All four RMU books now have Roll20 analogues. For Foundry, all four current RMU books have Foundry equivalents and we were working on the behind-the-scenes setup as 2025 came to a close.

We attended Gen Con with our dedicated stand and were delighted with the new ExCeL London venue for Dragonmeet. Both conventions being successful events for us.

2026

Looking to our hopes for 2026 in terms of new products.

In RMU, we will be pressing hard to bring the second volume of Creature Law to completion. Colin has already started the artwork commissioning for Character Companion. The first full draft of Arcane Companion is expected to arrive in the next few months.
 
For HARP, we will release Banecroft: The Mage's Tale and I expect this to be at the end of this month as a pdf. I will then focus on HARP Steampunk and make the final adjustments to it.

The remaining writing work for HARP Something Wicked Something Wondrous is modest additions, updates and consistency checks. I have a shopping list of new spells to craft and some new talents to define. These will necessarily require additions to the elements of GM advice across the chapters of the manuscript.

For HARP SF, I hope to see a revised draft of HARP SF The Corporate Worlds by mid-year. And just perhaps Joel will be able to finally complete HARP SF The Poseidon Gambit.

For Shadow World, we will be releasing the RMU conversion guide and then formally soliciting volunteers to undertake the conversion work on the various Shadow World sourcebook written by Terry and published by us. I hope we will be able to do more than this, but this is definitely where we will be starting.

Cyradon will continue to be a behind-the-scenes project – I want multiple Cyradon modules publication ready before it goes back on release. - as there is still much to be done to get six books reworked, dual-system'ed and publication ready.

For software, I expect ongoing support for HARP from AutoHARP3. Likewise I know that Rolemaster in all its editions will be supported by Max through ERA, and Brett will keep Roll20 support tracking each and every new RMU release.

Imminently we will be releasing the Foundry software for RMU. Indeed my task after finishing this Briefing is to set up the four DriveThru listings for the four modules. My intention is that we will release RMU Core Law on the closest Thursday that our colleagues in Foundry are comfortable with and then release Spell Law, Creature Law and Treasure Law on the Monday, Wednesday and Friday of the following week. I am deliberately spacing the releases in case we have any immediate post-release bugs. Once all four are safely released, I have persuaded Bob to turn his hand to a Foundry implementation with the intent that we see Foundry modules release for HARP as Bob produces them rather than a big-bang release of all at once.

(I am talking to Brett about doing a Roll20 implementation of HARP.)

ICE will be present at Gen Con 2026 with our own dedicated stand in Entrepreneurs Avenue for the second time. As has now become our tradition, we will be intending to debut at least one product in print at Gen Con this year – although I don't yet know which one it will be! We will also be attending Dragonmeet as is our even longer standing tradition.

Lots of hard work ahead for us in 2026!

Until next time

Please stay safe and keep gaming.
Best wishes,
Nicholas

[munchy]

Great that Foundry gets finalised!
Will there be a bundle price/offer if I wanted to buy the full set of RMU for Foundry at once or will I have to buy all four seperately?

[Filroden]

I'm not sure relaasing RMU for Foundry in stages reduces the risks of post-relesae bugs. All it will do is increase the amount of support as customers are sold 1 leg of the table at a time and spend the entire week asking questions about "why can't I cast spells", "why does this equipment not work", "where are the creatures so I can design my adventure", etc.

Digital systems like this are tightly integrated and deliberately breaking that integration is only going to frustrate customers. Please reconsider releasing them simulataneously.

[jdale]

RMU Core is now available for Foundry. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/552627/rolemaster-core-law-rmu-foundry-vtt

Drivethrurpg limits releases to one per day, so simultaneous is not an option. However, I understand we are now going to release one book a day which is as fast as permitted.

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Spell Law is now up too -
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/552629/rolemaster-spell-law-rmu-foundry-vtt

One release per day is as fast as we can go.

Creature Law Saturday, Treasure Law Sunday.

I cannot create a bundle until the last one is ready to release.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Thot]

[...]
In RMU, we will be pressing hard to bring the second volume of Creature Law to completion. Colin has already started the artwork commissioning for Character Companion. The first full draft of Arcane Companion is expected to arrive in the next few months.
[...]

All good news! Looking forward to all these products!

Are there any plans for doing a "SpaceMaster" companion to expand RMU into tech worlds?

[jdale]

There's been some talk among possible contributors but it hasn't reached the stage of being a formal proposal to ICE.

[Thot]

So, not before 2030. 

Thanks for the info. 

[jdale]

I would hope if they end up going ahead with it, it takes less time than the RMU playtest.

Personally, though, I'm focused on creating more fantasy content. Have written about 27000 words so far this year!

[nash]

So as Nicholas mentioned we are talking about a possible Roll20 version of HARP.  Can people who would be interested DM me (either here or on the Discord).   I am trying to guage the level of interest.  Even reusing the RMU code as much as possible it's rather a big project.