The Order of the Iron Crown is a select group of fans that have made it their mission to promote Iron Crown Enterprises’ products at game conventions and in game stores around the world. The Order was set up to allow us to better help those who want to promote our games and to reward them for doing so.
Each month we will be reporting on what members of the Order of the Iron Crown have been up to and publicly thanking them for all the great work that they carry out on a daily basis in the name of Iron Crown Enterprises.
March has been another great month including a new member of the OIC and yet more planning for GenCon and other upcoming conventions. Here’s a run down of what the Order members got up to last month:
The Rolemaster Blog
Peter R’s commitment to his Rolemaster blog and to creating brilliant new content on a regular basis is incredible. In March he continued this work and is currently the most consistent member of the OIC.
Redefining Arcane Magic
JDale’s articles in The Guild Companion where he redefines Arcane magic for the new RMU system have earned him OIC points. If you haven’t read them yet, I highly recommend them.
Iron Crown Product reviews
egdcltd has continued to review ICE’s newer products. Last month it was the turn of Shadow World Player Guide – The World and Shadow World Emer III.
Theurgist
A brand new member of the OIC has got himself off to a great start by earning points for submitting an article to The Guild Companion outlining the Theurgist profession for RMSS/RMFRP which was originally intended for the Channeling Companion.
A huge thanks to all of our Order members and to everyone who has helped support them and us. If you would like to learn more about the Order of the Iron Crown, you can visit the Order of the Iron Crown webpage or click the banner below.
If you believe you are due some OIC points, please get in touch and let me know. I do my best to keep up with everyone’s efforts but an e-mail outlining what you intend to do/have done to earn points is always well received.
Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn – Out Now!
Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn – OUT NOW!
In case you missed it, you can now get the brand new Shadow World adventure module; Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn at RPGNow for the introductory price of just $7.99!
This brilliant new adventure module has already become a ‘copper pick’ on RPGNow, within days of its release. A huge thanks to everyone who has already purchased it and continues to show support for Iron Crown Enterprises and the Shadow World setting.
Terry Amthor brings you a brand-new adventure module for Shadow World. Set in northern Rhakhaan on the continent of Jaiman, this module includes:
- Nine complete adventures, plus several adventure seeds
- Complete plans of the Green Gryphon Inn, along with profiles of the eccentric staff.
- Complete stats for major NPCs in Rolemaster Second Edition/RM Classic and RMRFP /RMSS.
- Charts for area encounters, pricing charts for food and lodging. Information about the Kingdom Highway crossroads.
- Powers of the ancient Gryphon Bridge, built by the mythical Earthwardens.
- Layout of the town of Gryphonburgh, including important locations.
If you haven’t yet got your copy, you have until the end of April to get it at the introductory price of $7.99 before it goes back to $9.99.
Thanks again to everyone who has bought it so far, we hope you enjoy it!
Buy Shadow World: Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn
Director’s Briefing – April 2015
Welcome to the forty-sixth Briefing and the fourth scheduled Briefing for 2015. As a historical note, Terry Amthor reminded me that on this day (April 1st) thirty-five years ago that at a meeting in a Mexican restaurant in Charlottesville the original ICE was founded. It seems only fitting that we celebrate that anniversary with a new product launch!
Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn
This is the long-awaited Shadow World adventure module by Terry Amthor. Set in the heart of northern Rhakhaan on the continent of Jaiman, the Green Gryphon Inn is a welcome rest for travellers upon the highways and byways, vying with the enchanted bridge of Gryphonburgh for most notable location in the area. Gryphonburgh is beset with dangers and intrigues that may reward adventurers who tarry with opportunities to gain fortune and defeat hidden evils or doom them to an early grave.
Replete with nine full adventures, maps, NPC and monster stats (RMClassic and RMSS/FRP), and more, this brand-new Shadow World adventure module is now available in pdf and is available to buy at www.rpgnow.com and other OneBookShelf sites. The normal price is $9.99 USD but if you use this link you can buy it at $7.99 USD. This special discount expires on 30th April, so don’t delay.
Buy Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn Now >>
More Shadow World
Terry is finishing up the draft manuscript for the updated version of Eidolon and I expect to receive that shortly for my editing pass.
An old copy of Norek has been scanned and Kevin Casey, the original author, is now busy correcting the OCR’ed text and deep in reflection on how he would like to enhance this module for its revival.
Rolemaster
I spent a large chunk of last month editing my way through the monster that is RMU Creature Law. Joeri has completed his final corrections and that is now ready to add to Terry’s layout agenda.
I am expecting to receive the completed RMU Treasure Law manuscript from Dan at the end of this month and I will switch gear to edit that as soon as it arrives.
Terry has been making slow progress with the layout on RMU Arms & Character Law and RMU Spell Law. The InDesign files are unnecessarily large (this appears to be a common issue with InDesign, it’s not the content size), meaning InDesign becomes slow and cantankerous. We’re seeking ways of slimming down the files.
HARP and HARP SF
In HARP Bestiary, one of the team has had to bail for personal reasons. However Colin has nobly volunteered to take on the Water Monsters chapter and John Duffield has equally nobly accepted the Lycanthropes chapter. John has also sent me revised drafts of his Land and Air Monsters, and is currently working on more draconic creatures. I have been busy too, and now have completed my drafts of the Lich, Wight, Wraith and Vampire overlays (joining the already completed Ghost, Ghoul, Mummy, Skeleton, Skeleton Lord, Spectre and Zombie overlays). Yes, I know it’s the Earth Elementals that are still the missing piece to complete Guild Adventurer #4 but I am timesliced by so many projects that maintaining quality means I will write up Undead until I have finished all the Undead. (Even the interruption of writing this Briefing means I will have to think and read my way back into writing the next Undead overlay). Then it’s Elemental time and then I will finish the updates for TGA#4.
Further progress on HARP Folkways with Jon producing some additional races in his latest draft. I expect only a brief editing pass will be needed.
Joel Lovell is quietly working on his HARP SF adventure module, The Poseidon Gambit, emerging only occasionally to seek clarifications on rules and Tintamar setting issues.
Until next time
I have more Undead overlays to write and lots of editing on drafts of many products in progress. The next scheduled Briefing will be in May 2015.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
If you would like to receive the Director’s Briefing straight to your inbox each month, you can sign up to our mailing list HERE.
New ICE merchandise!
Playing role play games is thirsty work (and creating them is even thirstier). That is why we’ve created three brand new ICE branded mugs to help make your gaming sessions even cooler.
You can pick up these mugs, along with a myriad of other Iron Crown Enterprises merchandise at our cafe press store.
The new mugs use artwork from Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing (RMFRP) Races and Cultures, Shadow World’s Demons of the Burning Night and The Spacemaster Companion. You can buy each of them for just $14.29 ($15.59 for the larger mugs).
Keep an eye on the store as we are updating it with new cool merchandise including T-shirts, mugs, glasses, mousemats and a whole lot more!
What I thought of… Gloom
Welcome to a brand new series on the ICE blog; “What I thought of…”
I didn’t want to limit myself to reviewing other games or books or films and so instead thought I would just wildly impose my opinion on you, regardless of the topic. I encourage you to give your own thoughts on the topic either by commenting on this blog post or discussing it in the ICE forum.
So, without further ado, here is what I thought of… Gloom.
Gloom
Gloom is a card game by Atlas Games where you take control of a bizarre family of characters with the aim of making their lives as miserable as possible before eventually putting them out of their misery. The core deck comes with four families and a large number of event, modifier and death cards. On Amazon you can pick up the game for $22.06.
There are a number of additional packs that you can purchase including: Cthulhu Gloom, Gloom: Unhappy Homes, Gloom: Unquiet Dead and Gloom: Unwelcome Guests. This review covers the core game and the Unhappy Homes expansion.
The game is played in turns, playing cards on family members to make them more miserable or (in the case of your opponents) happier before eventually killing them off with a death card. The winner is the player at the end of the game that has the most miserable dead characters (alive characters do not count towards your score).
My thoughts
Before we go any further, I need to confess something: I’m a huge fan of Will Wheaton’s Tabletop show on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it (maybe I should review that next). I bought Gloom after seeing it on Tabletop.
The brilliance of the game isn’t in its wonderful smelling translucent cards (I can’t be the only one that smells new cards), but in the hilarious ‘events’ that each card describes. You could play the game simply by placing cards on characters until its eventual conclusion, but this would be somewhat missing the point. The fun of the game is in telling the story. It’s in quickly coming up with a backstory to why a character was “menaced by midgets” or “scarred by scandals”.
I’ve played this game a lot now. I’ve played with literary drama types and with beer swilling barbarian types and I have to say, everyone enjoyed it. Some people struggle with coming up with backstory and if you have too many of those in a game it can become dreadfully slow or dreadfully boring as players just lay down cards without elaborating. To really get the best out of the game you need everyone to commit to it. When that happens, the results are brilliant.
On a number of occasions I have put off winning the game because I am having too much fun hearing the stories of these poor souls and the horrible things that befall them. It is one of the most entertaining games I have played in a while.
I’ve been really simplistic in my explanation of the game play, there are lots of nuanced rules about which cards you can play when and earning extra points for various things. In addition, the expansion pack introduces the idea of the family’s homes and the events that befall them. All these extra rules serve to make the game more strategic but don’t necessarily add anything to the game play. When playing with people who haven’t played before I simplify and house rule a lot of it. The brilliant thing is that it’s easy to do and again, doesn’t affect the playability of the game.
Final thoughts
I really like Gloom. I play it on nights in with my friends, family gatherings and I nearly always take it on holiday (It killed a few hours while waiting for a flight once and for that reason I will always love it). It’s simple without being boring and you can choose to add in additional rules and add-ons. Most of all, it is fun. I really recommend this game but try to make sure you play it with people who will get into the spirit of it otherwise you’re missing out.
Rating
8/10 – Highly recommended
The Order of The Iron Crown – February round-up
The Order of the Iron Crown is a select group of fans that have made it their mission to promote Iron Crown Enterprises’ products at game conventions and in game stores around the world. The Order was set up to allow us to better help those who want to promote our games and to reward them for doing so.
Each month we will be reporting on what members of the Order of the Iron Crown have been up to and publicly thanking them for all the great work that they carry out on a daily basis in the name of Iron Crown Enterprises.
In February we’ve had a great deal of activity amongst the OIC elite including starting work with a couple of members who are planning on attending GenCon in the name of ICE! The points for GenCon won’t be awarded for a while, but here is what the Order members got up to last month:
The Rolemaster Blog
Peter R continues to add more great content to his Rolemaster blog. If you haven’t had a chance to visit it yet, I highly recommend it.
Cheat sheet for space combat
Pyrotech has created and uploaded a brilliant Cheat Sheet for space combat in HARP Sci-Fi in the forum. A great addition to any HARP-SF game and well worth a look.
Cloudlords of Tanara review
egdcltd (I never spell it right first time) has done an in depth review of Shadow World Cloudlords of Tananra. There are more to follow and will help tremendously in spreading the word of Iron Crown Enterprises’ resurgence.
A huge thanks to all of our Order members and to everyone who has helped support them and us. If you would like to learn more about the Order of the Iron Crown, you can visit the Order of the Iron Crown webpage or click the banner below.
Director’s Briefing – March 2015
Welcome to the forty-fifth Briefing and the third scheduled Briefing for 2015. Colin wrote in the ICE newsletter of February being the cruellest month, but for me it just seems to have been and went.
Rolemaster
In RMU, both Rolemaster Arms & Character Law and Rolemaster Spell Law have been handed over to Terry for layout and he is slaving away on them. Please don’t pester Terry about when he will be finished. That’s my job.
Joeri has handed in the full text and tables for Creature Law so we’re now going through that making final checks and corrections as a team. Once they are done, I will hand Creature Law over to Terry for layout. Meanwhile Dan is hard at work on Treasure Law.
In terms of second beta release, we will put up both Arms & Character Law and Spell Law at the same time. They will get fresh boards on the ICE forums. The first beta boards other than Playtesting will be closed to new posts but they will not be removed.
Shadow World
It’s down to the cover art still being needed for Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn, so once that’s in place, Terry can finalise the pdf layout in very short order and we will put it on sale.
Obviously Terry is heavily committed at the moment on RMU second beta layout, but he believes in “a change is as good as a rest” so when he’s had enough of spell lists or attack table formatting, he transfers to editing work. Any rumours of tea shortages in the East Coast of the USA should be discounted.
HARP and HARP SF
The big progress here has been on HARP Folkways. I have completed the editing sweep on the second draft of Folkways. This is an excellent manuscript and looks set to become a great product. Folkways will empower GMs to create more believable and richer cultures in their settings. In terms of system “crunch”, there are new races, professions, and training packages. Jon’s remaining work is in the main designing more races and fine-tuning the new professions.
In terms of new professions, the emphasis is on professions usable in a wide variety of settings that broaden the choices available to players. The focus is not on martial or magical variations but on archetypes such as traders, hunters, scholars, etc. An earlier incarnation of HARP did have some support for what it called non-adventuring professions – unfortunately these were short-changed on favoured category skill ranks. This time, the new professions will be fully fledged and worthy comrades, through dint of their own particular focus, to join the ranks of adventurers.
Until next time
I have lots of reading to do on Creature Law and more writing on HARP Bestiary. The next scheduled Briefing will be in April 2015.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
If you would like to receive the Director’s Briefing straight to your inbox each month, you can sign up to our mailing list HERE.
The Order of The Iron Crown – January round-up
The Order of the Iron Crown is a select group of fans that have made it their mission to promote Iron Crown Enterprises’ products at game conventions and in game stores around the world. The Order was set up to allow us to better help those who want to promote our games and to reward them for doing so.
Each month we will be reporting on what members of the Order of the Iron Crown have been up to and publicly thanking them for all the great work that they carry out on a daily basis in the name of Iron Crown Enterprises.
January’s round-up comes a little later than expected as we’ve been working out a few kinks in the process. However, without any further ado, here is what the Order members got up to last month:
ICE at Dragonmeet
Admittedly this was back in December, but we’ve only just got around to awarding the points. At Dragonmeet last year Chris Seal ran a HARP demo (which I was lucky enough to play test for him). By all accounts the game was an absolute success and he was kind enough to direct a number of players and fans to our stand.
The Rolemaster Blog
One of our forum members (Peter R) has set up and is running a brilliant Rolemaster blog. It is filled with thoughts and ideas about not just Rolemaster, but RPGs and gaming in general. In addition, we’ve received quite a lot of traffic from the site as people move between that blog and this one.
Game Store Demo
One of our most prolific Order members (Bruce) has run a game at his local game store and referred a number of players to the ICE website. Bruce was good enough to hand out a number of flyers for us which has helped get people more interested and more involved in Iron Crown Enterprises.
New member gets off to a great start
A brand new Order member (Inez Hull) has got off to a brilliant start by posting Rolemaster articles on his blog Death and Dismemberment which discusses Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and Rolemaster and other Roleplaying Games.
A huge thanks to all of our Order members and to everyone who has helped support them and us. If you would like to learn more about the Order of the Iron Crown, you can visit the Order of the Iron Crown webpage or click the banner below.
ICE is #1 for RPG Software!
Every month RPGNow releases stats on which companies are selling the most products, the most printed products and the most RPG software. It allows gaming companies to keep track of their progress in the marketplace and plan for the future.
It gives me great pleasure to announce that this month Iron Crown Enterprises topped the list of RPG Software sales!
Over the past months and years, there has been a real focus here at ICE on releasing great online aids and e-support packages to help enrich people’s gaming experience and help them get the most out of their time gamin. With the help of some brilliant program creators, I think we’ve achieved that and the figures go to show how popular these products are.
To celebrate reaching number 1, we’ve decided to take a look at the various RPG Software packages we currently have available:
AutoHARP
The AutoHARP e-support package combines a Character Creator and a Combat Tracker and helps speed up character creation and combat.
The Character Creator comes with a full Wizard for creating new characters, full support for Adolescence and profession rank selection, talent selection for certain professions, easy access to character traits, ability to print full character sheets with avatars, frequently used skills, RR information, Initiative information, BMR information, offensive attacks: both melee and missile, skills, spells, and equipment and a fully customized database written in XML allowing the user to easily adjust information as specific worlds or house rules.
The Combat Tracker has the ability to create, edit, open and save encounters, create, edit, import or duplicate characters which make up an encounter,
customize the character’s level, hit points, power points, Stamina, BMR, Armor, talent and shield DB, size, focus item, casting penalty, as well as create a character that doesn’t take stun, penalties or bleeding criticals and keep track of all spells, attacks, maneuvers, initiatives, character statuses, etc.
AutoHARP is available for both HARP Fantasy and HARP-SF and there are already a number of add-ons available for purchase including: AutoHARP Fantasy Martial Law, AutoHARP Fantasy College of Magics and AutoHARP SF Xtreme. The core products contain the HARP Fantasy/HARP-SF database and for convenience, a copy of the executable software application. Check out AutoHARP Fantasy and AutoHARP SF at RPGNow.com
ERA for Rolemaster
ERA (Electronic Roleplaying Assistant) is the ultimate companion for Rolemaster campaigns. Just by running this free application players can quickly and easily create their characters using a step by step wizard, then level them up and configure all details in stats, skills and special abilities, even overriding the automatic calculations. Afterwards, they can be added to a running campaign in the adventuring module. From there, the game master can control all aspects of the game: resolve maneuvers, resistances, resting, and of course, spell casting and combat.
ERA for Rolemaster is a free app which comes with sample races, professions, spells, attacks and criticals. You can then either add your own data tables or download the official datasets from RPGNow. Check out the free ERA application and Rolemaster Classic Arms Law, Rolemaster Classic Spell Law, and Rolemaster Classic Character Law.
Rolemaster Combat Minion
For those wanting a simple and fast way to manage combat encounters, “Rolemaster Combat Minion” is web application to help GMs process and track combat including stats, health and wounds. It streamlines the entire combat process, including initiative, combat calculations, attack and critical tables. It can be used on any desktop PC or tablet with a normal web browser.
The web application itself is completely free and available for anyone that would like to use it. To enhance the free Rolemaster Combat Minion web app however, you can buy licenses for the RM2/RMC dataset and the RMSS/RMFRP dataset from RPGNow. These datasets unlock all weapon and critical tables for that Rolemaster system. You can evaluate the functionality of the app before purchasing this product by visiting: www.web.com.au/rolemaster/minion
Buy the Rolemaster Classic dataset
Buy the RMSS/RMFRP dataset
Director’s Briefing – February 2015
Welcome to the forty-fourth Briefing and the second scheduled Briefing for 2015. January has been a painful month for me of assignment marking (I have mentioned that I hate marking?), course specification writing, and dealing with dampproofers (so our bedroom was completely emptied and we are still inhabiting the living room as various bits of the bedroom are put back together). I can see now why green slimes nd gelatinous cubes made it into the bestiary canon of D&D.
Rolemaster
In RMU, the residual examples for Rolemaster Arms & Character Law now exist and the team took advantage of the elapsed time to chase out a number of inconsistencies and annoyances in the text. Rolemaster Spell Law is now consistent with Arms & Character Law and I hold a copy of the full text and tables of it as well, while the RMU team are catching residuals. Every one they catch is one less to be caught in second beta, but I am painfully aware of the dangers of perfectionism.
Shadow World
Two pieces of art still needed for the Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn adventure module, namely final cover and a view of the greatroom of the inn itself. Terry has been drinking much tea as he battles to a conclusion of Eidolon and continues to edit Lethys. There’s been progress with “Priest-King of Shade” as well.
I am delighted to report that Norek will be returning, and it will be returning as an enhanced sourcebook. Kevin Casey (the original author) and Terry are in discussion about updates. I should reiterate that the returned Norek will not be a scan pdf, it will be a proper rebuild, so available in pdf, softcover and, pagecount willing, hardcover.
HARP and HARP SF
In HARP Bestiary, John Duffield has created more dragons, adding Air, Earth and Water to his initial Fire Dragon. I have added the Ghoul and the Mummy to the Undead set. Ghouls will come in both Lesser (Type I) and Greater (Type II) variants, while the Mummies will have Lesser (Type III), Greater (Type IV), and Mummy King (Type V) versions. And there is a Curse of the Mummy ability so that a Mummy who has been disturbed by the living or has had even a copper piece stolen from its funereal treasures can inflict grave misfortune (pun intended) on tomb robbers.
Jon Cassie has already submitted his second draft of HARP Folkways so I am looking forward to an editing sweep soon there.
I have formally commissioned The Poseidon Gambit for HARP SF. This is a brand-new adventure module set in the Tintamar universe being written by Joel Lovell. (There was an unintentional error in the ICE newsletter where this was mentioned as an update product. It’s not, it’s brand-new.)
Until next time
The next scheduled Briefing will be in March 2015.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
If you would like to receive the Director’s Briefing straight to your inbox each month, you can sign up to our mailing list HERE.