This is our seventeenth Briefing and is the scheduled Briefing for December. Before I get into the Briefing proper, a quick thank you from myself and my wife for all the best wishes and congratulatory messages.
Print-on-demand and Shadow World (and more)
So in last month’s Director’s Briefing, I discussed the new standard colour option being offered by OneBookShelf and that we would be trialling this with the Shadow World: Land of Xa-ar sourcebook. Well, I received my proof softcover and hardcover versions of Xa-ar and I’m very happy too. Xa-ar is now available in both these formats from OneBookShelf. I’d suggest that you treat yourself for Christmas with a printed version of the book.
We are looking at creating a standard colour version of HARP SF Xtreme and once we have that, we will be posting sample pages so that you can compare standard versus premium colour for yourselves.
Dragonmeet 2012
For the first time in several years, I attended the Dragonmeet convention in London. This was a bit of a snap decision to attend, but the time seemed right to kickoff an ICE/GCP presence at conventions and Dragonmeet is a comfortable convention to ease back into the con scene. Aurigas/ICE were also attending in the form of John and Colin and they doubtless will be talking about their experiences.
Rather than simply attend, I decided that I would GM a game; I decided that since I knew HARP Fantasy inside out and had physical copies of the new rules (master proof copies), this would be the easiest game to run. I did consider HARP SF but I did not feel like rerunning any of my existing HARP SF convention scenarios and had not enough time to build a new adventure (which also ruled out RMU). I ransacked my collection of existing convention scenarios, decided that I had worn them out (and anyway they are all available in the Guild Companion magazine archives), and considered running Muck and Mire from the future TGA#4 but ruled it out because I’d not run it myself and a convention is not the right place to run an adventure for the first time.
Then I stumbled across the Deserted Village, which was a RMSS scenario extracted from my playtest campaign for Mentalism Companion back in the late 90s, and I had written it up for publication in Portals magazine (the predecessor of the Guild Companion) but Portals closed first and for reasons unknown I never published the adventure myself in The Guild Companion. Of course The Deserted Village was statted for RMSS, so four evenings of ruthless rejigging of the mechanical material and creation of six sample player-characters at 3rd level duly followed. All material was ready two days before the convention fortunately.
I met up with Colin and John at the convention and we had a wander around the convention, chatting with industry folks including Graham Bottley of Arion Games who had some softcover versions of Rolemaster Rome on sale at his booth, and seeing what was happening on the scene. I ran the Deserted Village in the afternoon gaming slot with five players (one of whom was Colin getting his first face-to-face RPG experience.) Various of the changes made to HARP Fantasy paid off in the gaming, such as the revised Turn Undead spell reducing the amount of havoc the Cleric could dish out in any one round to not-so hapless Zombies. For a few very tense minutes, it looked like the final battle was going to end in a total party kill. However, a couple of wisely used fate points, persistent archery by the ranger and thief against the witch’s henchfey, and a combo of Cleric heals Mage who casts a scaled Dispel Magic using the new targeted spell effect scaling option knocking out the witch’s +60 from maxed out Tree Skin, giving the Fighter the necessary edge to take her down in hand-to-hand combat, altered the odds and we had a total party victory instead. I think everyone had fun.
All being well, we (GCP and ICE) will be at Dragonmeet next year and indeed will have a presence one way or another at other 2013 conventions.
Lots for us to do, something for you to think about
I did manage to check through the AutoHARP software and it is now available in a beta format from our website and Sourceforge for you all to try and see. I have also received all of the interior artwork for the enhanced version of Loot: A Field Guide and have two of the five new covers for RMU now in hand as well. I and others on the team still have a lot to do in all of HARP, RMU, Shadow World and Cyradon, so while we’re deep in project work, there’s something we would like you to think about.
Many of the projects that we’re working on and indeed those in Public Playtest are obviously rules-oriented products, and core rules and key supplements are the heart of any game line and the bread and butter for any company. But they aren’t and can’t be the whole deal. Busy GMs need more than just rules – some need complete settings, some need ready-made campaigns that they can tailor to suit, some need ready-to-run adventures to plug a hole in their own campaign.
Like me, many of you keep copious notes on the adventures and campaigns that they have created for their own groups. As the core rules for RMU settle down and as more of HARP Fantasy line returns, there will be a need in the first instance for collections of adventures for Shadow World, Cyradon and Tintamar. We do have a number of setting-related and adventure products - TGA#4, Enya Lote, Caer Glais, No Quarter under the Crown, The Sirens of the Silence and Emer III - at various stages in the creative pipeline plus Ruins of Kausur and A Wedding at Axebridge to return. However we (and those busy GMs) will need more material. So for those of you who might like to try your hand at rpg writing, have a look through your treasury of campaign materials and/or muse upon new material that you might like to write.
For now, just rummage for notes and muse. We will get into specifics about what we need most urgently and the mechanics of product proposals next year.
Until next time
The next scheduled Director’s Briefing will be in January, so until then Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.