Director’s Briefing – January 2020

 
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Welcome
 
To the one hundred-and-third Briefing and first scheduled Briefing of 2020, and a very happy new year to all of you.
 
My reading over Christmas has been finishing the seven volume “Crown of Stars” fantasy epic by Kate Elliott (which will necessitate an extra paragraph in HARP Beyond the Veil) and starting The Witcher sequence by Andrzej Sapkowski (which has so far been very good). The key films were Jumanji: The Next Level and obviously The Rise of Skywalker (a fitting end to the trilogy of trilogies).
 
 
A retrospective on 2019
 
2019 could be described as a year of unseen progress in that much has been accomplished, but it’s not made it out the door in terms of many new releases.
 
Our visible progress was primarily in Shadow World with the release of the Haunted Village mini-adventure and the enhanced Haalkitaine sourcebook. Haalkitaine is now available in softcover and hardcover editions as well as pdf, and various early-bird discount offers are still available. We also had ongoing support of ERA for Rolemaster, and convention presences at Dragonmeet and, thanks to Pointy Hat Games and our volunteers, at GenCon.
 
The unseen progress was in HARP, Cyradon, and RMU. Three HARP products (HARP Subterfuge, HARP Bestiary and HARP Garden of Rain) completed the editing phase with me and are now in artwork commissioning phase with Colin orchestrating a team of artists, old and new. In Cyradon, Colin completed all his amendments and additions for the Cyradon setting base book refresh. In RMU, Aaron Smalley and Jonathan Dale have tamed Creature Law to an extent that I have been able to formally add RMU to the editing queue.
 
 
2020
 
Shadow World will see another mini-adventure release, entitled The Citadel of Osaran. This is already in final stages. The major target for Terry is to complete the all-new Emer IV sourcebook. Priest-King of Shade is in my editing queue and I will edit it before I enter the RMU editing cycle. As detailed last month, we would like to see a HARP Handbook for Shadow World and I would be happy for this to be a team project.
 
In HARP, the artists will be variously concluding their efforts on Subterfuge, Garden of Rain and Bestiary over the next six months and these products will then transfer into layout phase. We hope to publish all three this year. HARP Beyond the Veil is still with me for final editing – one chapter requires an additional paragraph from me, one chapter requires a “Did Jon miss any spells?” check, and one chapter requires some additional thought. Still with their authors are HARP SF Poseidon Gambit, HARP SF Vehicles Compendium, HARP Dark Hunt, Caer Glais, and HARP Something Wicked Something Wondrous.
 
With Cyradon, I need to perform an editing sweep and make arrangements with Colin to undertake the next portion of the work in bringing back Cyradon. This is likely to be an area where we will report progress but nothing may be visible outside the work team for months.
 
On RMU, there has been major progress on the Creature Law front with Aaron having balanced all of the creatures going into Creature Law I and many of those for Creature Law II. He is currently pulling data from the spreadsheet version into the Creature Law manuscript. Unless any additional complete manuscripts arrive on my desk, I will immerse myself in RMU editing as soon as I have cleared Beyond the Veil, Cyradon and Priest-King.
 
On software, I will be shortly uploading the next version of ERA for Rolemaster.
 
On the convention front, we want to strengthen the visibility of ICE games, so we will be looking to support fans who are willing to run games at conventions, through prizes and other support.
 
 
Until next time
 
Back to making unseen progress on multiple projects.
 
Best wishes,
Nicholas
 
Director, Iron Crown Enterprises Ltd
 
 
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