Welcome
To the one hundred-and-fortieth Briefing and third scheduled Briefing of 2023.
RMU
First off, an updated version of Core Law has been released and we hope that you have found the updated version a helpful and useful improvement. I know many of you have set your communication preferences such that you receive email messages of updates from publishers, and so I trust you will have downloaded the new updated version. For those who have not done so, this is a heads up to get a fresh copy – and do consider setting your communications preferences to receive update messages. Publishers cannot see your email addresses through this mechanism and we don’t abuse it.
The other big piece of news for Core Law is that the print masters for both softcover and hardcover have been uploaded into DriveThru. Both versions have survived the DriveThru validation checks and have made it to Lightning Source for their checks. We are still waiting on whether we have passed these checks. Once the word is given, we will make them available and Colin will be publicising how to get appropriate discounts.
The next big piece of news is the second volume of Rolemaster Unified, namely Spell Law, is now available in pdf!
Rolemaster Spell Law (RMU) contains the complete set of Open, Closed and Evil spell lists as well as all the profession spell lists for all of the professions introduced in Core Law. All spell lists are complete for first to twentieth levels, and epic spells for 25th, 30th, 35th, 40th and 50th levels. In addition, Spell Law contains the rules for magic, spell casting, and learning new spells through research. Ritual magic is presented as an alternative mechanism of achieving magical effects. Finally Spell Law provides comprehensive explanations on how to handle the more complex areas of magical effects such as portents, healing, summoning, illusions, invisibility and more.
ERA for Rolemaster
A series of updates have been made by Max to the ERA datasets. Most notably are additions to the Shadow World datasets (RMC and RMFRP) to include the NPCs from Shadow World Powers of Light and Darkness and some additional attack and critical tables, plus some amendments to the Rolemaster Companion I.
HARP
No, we have not forgotten HARP, and in particular, I am very mindful that we have HARP Subterfuge to get to print (and I know some folks have been asking about this on DriveThru and on the forums). I am on the case of checking through the proposed corrections to this sourcebook, so we will have an updated pdf and then get a set of print masters into DriveThru.
Until next time
Please stay safe and keep gaming.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Iron Crown Enterprises Ltd
Hi Nicholas,
I’m curious to understand why Rolemaster is only offered in PDF form these days. Is it not economic to produce on-demand print versions, or would those not be satisfactory on quality or turnaround time? We used to play RM a lot in the 80s, and being older now, the price of a well made hardcover might not be prohibitive for others in my position. Are there any plans for that?
Thanks for any insights you can share?
Friendly greetings
Frank
Hi Frank
Thanks for getting in touch.
Everything that we can make available in print, we do make available in print. A number of the older products aren’t available in print because of the low quality of the files we have. We lost a lot of original files a long time ago and the quality of what we have isn’t worth the money that we would have to charge for them.
Hope that answers your question.
Thanks
Colin – The marketing troll