Director’s Briefing – September 2014

 
Welcome to the thirty-ninth Briefing and the ninth scheduled Briefing for 2014. My August was sandwiched between the conference at the start and short trips to France and Spain in the final week. September in the real world for me will be writing materials for a new module (I did in the end acquire a new IT module), tidying up my existing modules, dealing with requests for new degree specifications, and another conference (though in the UK).
 
Progress on the ToDo List
 
RMU: The team are rattling through the combined Arms Law & Character Law checking cross-references, double-checking clarity, completeness and correctness of examples, and trapping typos. I have Terry on standby to push Arms Law & Character Law through layout.
 
Guild Adventurer #4 and HARP Bestiary: I have went through “The Elemental Powers” chapter of the Something Wicked manuscript, identifying which sections will fit as-is into HARP Bestiary, which need modification, and which don’t need to be included (e.g. the section that explained why I had a chapter on Elementals in a book on evil powers). Remember that the “Who Saves the Savior” scenario for TGA#4 requires Earth Elementals. John Duffield has submitted his first draft of the Land Monsters which I have already edited and returned, and submitted his first draft of Air Monsters for my review. John has already written up the first draft of a Dragon (which again we need for “Who Saves the Savior”) and is taking on the Dragon chapter. Colin has now submitted nearly all the various subsections of the Animals chapter and I’ve returned feedback on half of them already. Sam Orton is plugging away at the Sea Monsters chapter and I hope to see it soon.
 
HARP Folkways: Jonathan Cassie has been quietly working away on this project which will provide a wealth of new races and cultures and the supporting material to make best use of them in HARP. He’s completed his first four chapters and is doing chapters 5 and 6 in tandem. His wordcount is 45,000 already so HARP Folkways will be a meaty sourcebook.
 
Shadow World: I completed an editorial pass of Terry’s “Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn” and Terry is now wrestling with one particularly stubborn section that has not jelled fully. Other than that, this module is only waiting on the artwork. Charles Morris helpfully stepped in to expand the RM2/Classic stats for the upcoming Emer 2 and Eidolon enhancement to match the detail he had already produced for us in RMSS/FRP stats, and saved Terry many hours of painful number-crunching.
 
Other Projects: I have more recovered text to check from the Spacemaster Imperium modules, the ERA software for Rolemaster to push towards commercial release, and an unexpected surprise project to organise.
 
Dragonmeet
 
I have booked the stand for Aurigas/ICE and Guild Companion Publications for Dragonmeet. We and Arion Games have requested that our stands will be neighbours so hopefully the organisers will be able to arrange this and make it easy for us to run joint minigames.
 
Until next time
 
Always more editing and more fun HARP writing for me to do. The next scheduled Briefing will be in October.
 
Best wishes,
Nicholas
 
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
 
 
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