Director’s Briefing – April 2014

 
Welcome to the thirty-fourth Briefing and the fourth scheduled Briefing for 2014.
 
Encroachment in its last throes
 
The real-world battle has continued. The enemy sent in reinforcements -forty mock exam scripts, ten dissertation literature reviews, and eleven software project reports (where unlimited wordcount meant one of them was 100 pages long -definitely Super Large report). I am, however, still standing. The remaining lecture count is four still to write, with two already in outline form. So it’s now a matter of pressing home my advantage and finishing them – very like a role-playing battle where the final foes of an attacking horde need to be slain and everyone (GM included) wants it done and dusted so that player-characters can get their loot, get in their healing and the GM can get the plot moving again.
 
(Obviously there will be some future skirmishes when the marking for the summer turns up, but that should be manageable as I won’t be preparing lectures and teaching at the same time.)
 
Shadow World
 
Terry has been working on Emer 2 and on an adventure module – I have an initial draft of the latter to download for my first review. I have had an opportunity to do my own editorial review of the new “Shade” module draft from Brian Hanson – it is looking like it will become a great addition to the Shadow World line in due course – and this is now with Terry for his review.
 
Rolemaster
 
The RMSS/FRP dataset for the Rolemaster Combat Minion is now live. As some of the tables for RMSS/FRP are in books where we don’t have good build files, the initial set is essentially RMSS/FRP Arms Law but tables from the Armory, Martial Arts Companion, Fire & Ice, etc., will be added to this dataset. Keep an eye on the forums for progress and latest news.
 
The next software offering for Rolemaster will be the ERA package from Maximiliano Tabacman. This is a character creation, management and inventory program, among other features. It will be going into a public beta test around mid-April, so again watch the forums for the latest news and check out the links to video demos.
 
The unified RM team are currently shuttling the Arms Law & Character Law and Spell Law drafts around at a very rapid pace so that they can feed in comments and capture knock-on impacts of changes. Very heartening to see.
 
HARP and HARP SF (and spacemaster)
 
On HARP, some combat data regarding the new missile and thrown weapons has been discovered to be missing from the enhanced Martial Law. It transpires that this data was never in the original version either, so analysing the weapons to generate the data is now on my todo list.
 
Some people have already started OCRing old Spacemaster products in advance of me being ready to organise the process (in a way that will avoid duplication of effort yet ensure that we get them all). As soon as I can, I will be getting on top of this. (My commute is great for reviewing work (as long as the apps are happy with the document formatting), writing Briefings and actual rpg material, but not so great for responding to forum posts or emails -there are stretches of the journey where there just is no signal.)
 
Until next time
 
Back to the real-world as my train heads in to Ipswich station. The next scheduled Briefing will be in May.
 
Best wishes,
Nicholas
 
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
 
 
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