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.
 
 
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