Topic: Director's Briefing - 1st October 2011

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

For those coming late to the party, my name is Nicholas Caldwell and I am the Director and sole shareholder of Guild Companion Publications Limited, the company licensed by Aurigas Aldebaron LLC to publish Rolemaster, Spacemaster, HARP, Shadow World and Cyradon. This is the third of our Director’s Briefings.

So what is the status of our various projects?

Firstly, I have received the final version of HARP SF Xtreme from Craig John. The deck plans are now safely in with expanded explanatory keys. The whole product looks fantastic. My task now is to carefully scrutinise for any residual glitches, let Craig resolve these, and then we will get it on sale and ensure that purchasers of the HARP SciFi Beta receive their complimentary PDF copy via the OneBookShelf coupon system.

Secondly in the Shadow World domain, Craig’s next task is to finalise the Shadow World Player’s Guide print-on-demand version. Once we have submitted the master files into OneBookShelf for their checking and while we wait on sample physical books for our quality checking, Craig will then relax by creating a Shadow World cover and some interior illustrations for Terry’s “Eyes of Stone” scenario in Guild Adventurer #4, and follow that with doing the layout for TGA#4.

Thirdly, in the HARP Fantasy reconstruction, the spell creation system has been revised to more easily support epic spell-casting (this is meant to be High Adventure after all) and to eliminate the problems that were introduced by the adjustments to spells that occurred between the original HARP 160-page rules and the 192-page rules. The spells in the HARP Fantasy core rulebook have been adjusted to conform to the spell creation system. In terms of other progress, the Professions chapter, the Character Statistics chapter, and the Races & Cultures chapter have all been updated to improve the balance between the various races and professions and individual characters. Additionally we’ve made changes to the special abilities of the various professions to increase the variation in the archetypes. For example, instead of all Thieves having the Subtle Talent, they will be able to choose from Assassin Training, Master Burglar and Master Pickpocket. Likewise Fighters will have alternatives to Shield Training and Lightning Reflexes.

Fourthly, our layout gurus have been utilising Quark and InDesign in combination to manhandle recalcitrant archives for rebranding. RMFRP Arms Law (1999 Edition) has been processed, approved and will be appearing for sale as a pdf shortly on the OneBookShelf network. RMFRP Fire & Ice: The Elemental Companion has also been processed and is with me for final checking. More products will follow through this Quark/InDesign method.

Fifthly, we initiated our public search for authors and contributors to various Rolemaster, Spacemaster and Cyberspace products in September as described in last month’s Director’s Briefing. A number of authors and contributors have been located; more still need to be found. Visit the ICE forums for the current list of the missing. We have completed the paperwork on the Spacemaster 2nd Edition adventure modules so expect to see such classics as “War on a Distant Moon”, “Tales from Deep Space”, and “Imperial Crisis – House Devon in Turmoil” available for purchase this month. We are also in discussion with some Rolemaster 2nd Edition authors. All being well, we will be able to recover other long-lost and much-loved products.

Lastly, the next scheduled Director’s Briefing will be presented at the start of November.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.