This is the tenth of our scheduled Director’s Briefings.
Normally John Seal of Aurigas gets to talk about the business aspects and the cool software tools that have already arrived or are being built to support ICE games, and I focus on upcoming books. So to mix things up a bit, I thought I would say a few words about the business end and about software.
On the business end of things, I am very pleased to report that our accountant has crunched the numbers and Guild Companion Publications Ltd made a reasonable operating profit in 2011. (Of course, I already knew that we had made a profit but the accountant’s job is to ensure that all the numbers are reported in a way that conforms to how the UK taxman wants to read them.) These profits will be and are being ploughed straight back into the business to finance the next waves of new products across multiple game lines. That’s the good news. There isn’t any bad news.
Onto cool software tools and the Rolemaster Classic Fantasy Grounds virtual tabletop. I’ve never used any virtual tabletop software, being fortunate enough still to be a participant in an active local gaming group, so the demo I had of the software in April was a real eye-opener. Prior to the demo, I had downloaded all the necessary software and had a ten-minute go at trying to do something with the trial version, but really hadn’t made significant progress. An hour and a half later in the company of two very experienced users/developers and I could see how it worked and how to use it. This is a fantastic package for running distributed games where the gaming group is scattered across a country. It is also a great package for running a face-to-face game where the GM and the players want the computer to do the legwork. I hope that we’ll see a HARP/HARP SF edition in the future.
Speaking of software for HARP, Aurigas has licensed the creator of AutoHARP to commercialise his character creator and support tools for HARP. We are currently testing AutoHARP to check the character reconstructions for HARP Martial Law. Expect to see a version of AutoHARP that is wholly compliant with the new HARP Fantasy to be released in the near future. This will be sold through our presence in the OneBookShelf network.
And back to news about product development.
HARP Fantasy has now entered its layout phase – we expect to see it emerge in both pdf and print-on-demand versions in a couple of months. We also hope that we’ll be able to put HARP Fantasy into distribution (and hence game stores) via an imprint partner perhaps later this year. A quick reminder about the time-limited discount coupon for the HARP Fantasy pdf – once we release it as pdf, there’ll be announcements via a newsletter and the forums about how to get the discount. Keep watching so you don’t miss out. In terms of its revision, work is underway to make the characters at the back of HARP Martial Law consistent with HARP Fantasy. Once that is complete and that’s all we have to do, then Martial Law will go into the layout queue as its new artwork is already finished. HARP College of Magics and Loot: a Field Guide are next on the revision queue and we will be commissioning a similar enhancement of Cyradon and the new HARP Bestiary.
Last month, we noted that we might speed up the pdf return of some RMSS products where we had secured agreement to rescue them from copyright limbo. Peter Mork’s School of Hard Knocks was duly returned as a searchable scanned pdf in April. With Cyber Europe, we’re simply waiting on confirmation that its author can access his royalties via OneBookShelf.
Rebranding of the Spacemaster: Privateers products continues slowly but surely. As they emerge, we will put them back on sale directly.
The authors working on the seven Rolemaster projects continue to toil away to finalise their drafts. I expect to be talking in detail about some of these projects next month.
The next scheduled Director’s Briefing will be presented in early June.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
