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Welcome
To the sixtieth Briefing and the fifth scheduled Briefing of 2016. In the real world, April has been a month of setting exams and marking mocks for me, May will be a month of marking assignments and exams. Normal life will resume by some point in June.
RMU
Jonathan Dale has been working hard on the changes to RMU Arms & Character Law. Races, cultures, professions and talents have been updated. Four more races have been added. Professional skills are now specific skills. He is about halfway through the manuscript text changes. Once he has completed the text changes, we will post the revised tables for error-checking, and Jonathan will then proceed in fixing up the attack and critical tables.
TGA #4
Terry has been working very hard on the layout for TGA#4. The text has been poured in to the layout files. He is grimly slogging his way through getting the tables to behave themselves. This is most likely due to the fact that the tables have come originally from multiple versions of Word and Excel, been adjusted in at least two versions of Word and Excel by me and have been adjusted on the wordprocessing and spreadsheet apps on my tablet. Still waiting on the rollout of Office365 to staff at my institution so that I can have proper fully functioning Word and Excel on my tablet, sigh.
Terry’s checks on the constituent files for TGA#4 suggests that TGA#4 will be pdf-only. We don’t have the resolution in some of the maps for print, unfortunately.
Adventures
The Shadow World adventure module continues to accrete more concrete elements.
Andrew and Heleen Durston, who have written Enya Lote (a Cyradon module that is essentially in finished draft awaiting the Cyradon setting relaunch) for us, have been commissioned to produce a connected adventure module based on the first set of adventure seeds posted by Colin.
As you might have noticed, Colin posted a second set of adventure seeds on the ICE blog. I have already had an expression of interest in turning them into a full-blown adventure module and have just received the formal proposal outline.
Software
The next version release of AutoHARP has been uploaded onto OneBookShelf. This release fixes a number of bugs and allows characters created in Fantasy to be updated under AutoHARP SF and vice versa. In the Windows version, print sheet customisation is now possible. AutoHARP Architect now creates all necessary folders and files for a custom system. It now allows import of existing datasets and it can reflect back changes made in Architect to existing datasets. For example, if you change a skill name and that old skill is used in cultures, training packages and so on, the old skill name in these files: cultures, training packages, etc, are adjusted to the new skill name.
HARP
Firstly a reminder that we are still looking for proposal submissions for HARP Fantasy sourcebooks with the wishlist currently HARP Martial Arts, HARP Strongholds, and HARP Subterfuge. The initial deadline for proposals is end of this month.
Secondly I have been bedevilled with the Demons chapter for HARP Bestiary. The non-monstrous text covering demonic natures, the subplanes of the Abyss, travel and survival on the subplanes, demonic heritage talents and such like is all now updated. You will find a preview excerpt in the May issue of the Guild Companion magazine. All twenty-one Demon varieties imported from the Something Wicked manuscript now conform to the new format of Description, Abilities and Combat, Lifestyle, Background, and Adventure Notes. The devils are in the details and this is where I’ve had to move with all the caution of a summoner preparing a conjuration pentagram is in the abilities section. Mere Demons (where “mere” is not merely), Swamp Things, Water Demons and the White Ladies still need their amphibious and aquatic talents brought into line with current rulings. Ice Demons, Rock Demons and Sand Demons require their material phasing abilities to be recast as Blood Magic Talents, albeit using the greater blood magic talents created by John Duffield and myself for other creatures. Mist Demons need their ability to create monsters out of the miasmic energies of the Mists of Nightmare to be converted into Blood Magic equivalents of the Conjure spells from the Circle of Thaumaturgy. So still to be done are fixing these residual talent issues, writing up three new demons (more monsters in a monster sourcebook is a good thing and the three additions fill necessary roles of helper, tempter and ruler), and then the combined paper notebook and spreadsheet work of generating the stat blocks. It is likely that there will be a pause before I can complete the spreadsheet work, so that is when I plan to get editing on other projects done (Poseidon Gambit, Shadow World sourcebooks). Once all the numbers are crunched, then I will be off the critical path for Bestiary until everyone is finished and will be able to make progress on other writing projects.
Until next time
Back to the twin demons of marking and of the Bestiary. The next scheduled Briefing will be in June.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
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