Director’s Briefing – November 2013

 
Welcome to the twenty-ninth Briefing and eleventh scheduled Briefing for 2013.
 
Delayed in the Real World
 
As you might know, I upgraded myself to a Lecturer position (tenured in North American jargon) over the summer. The downside of my new post is that being a new lecturer, I have no stockpile of lovingly crafted lecture materials with which to educate my students. So I’ve been fiendishly busy creating lectures, class exercises, homework exercises, assignments, and exams as well as doing the actual teaching and dealing with admin. This has limited my ability to get fun stuff done as the creation treadmill has steadily eaten more and more commutes, evenings and weekends in addition to the proper day job hours. The treadmill will not last forever, however. At some point in the future, I hope to be able to harness my cohorts of eager students into building programs for me (to support Rolemaster and HARP) though I might need to inveigle myself into teaching on the Computer Games Design degree first!
 
Fortunately me being temporarily overwhelmed does not prevent freelancers from getting on with their projects.
 
HARP & HARP SF
 
The second set of PoD copies of HARP College of Magics turned out to be fine in terms of art and text, and so College of Magics is now available in pdf, softcover, and hardcover.
 
AutoHARP has been released to version 1.0.4 with new databases for College of Magics and HARP SF Xtreme being released in tandem at introductory prices. Version 1.0.4 also has updates for the UNIX version.
 
Cyradon
 
I have second (and potentially final) drafts of “M for Murder” (which I think needs a different title) and “Escort Duty” to review.
 
Rolemaster
 
The big news for Rolemaster is the imminent release of the Rolemaster Combat Minion for public playtest to support all your Rolemaster combat needs. There are a lot of people out there who refuse to play or GM Rolemaster because they find grappling with attack tables and critical tables and d100 rolls too hard or too fiddly. Some of them will even claim that you need a computer to run Rolemaster . For all of them, we now have the solution to their problem – a killer app for Rolemaster combat. The Rolemaster Combat Minion engine will be free to download and will come with a selection of combat tables for trial purposes.
 
(Naturally those of us who can cheerfully handle d100 rolls, attack tables, critical tables, etc., using just the physical books, some dice and pen-and-paper may find it incredibly useful!)
 
Shadow World
 
Terry completed his additional adventure material for Emer 3 and I have already given feedback. The RMSS stat blocks are underway and Terry has made great progress in getting the rest of the layout whipped into shape. I have completed my review of the Lethys and Priest King of Shade module “works in progress”; they await Terry getting a proper read of both.
 
A reminder that our call for Shadow World adventures is still open – see last month’s Director’s Briefing for details.
 
Until next time
 
Back to work in the real and gaming industry worlds. The next scheduled Briefing will be in December.
 
Best wishes,
Nicholas
 
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.