The Order of the Iron Crown is a select group of fans that have made it their mission to promote Iron Crown Enterprises’ products at game conventions and in game stores around the world. The Order was set up to allow us to better help those who want to promote our games and to reward them for doing so.
Each month we will be reporting on what members of the Order of the Iron Crown have been up to and publicly thanking them for all the great work that they carry out on a daily basis in the name of Iron Crown Enterprises.
In February we’ve had a great deal of activity amongst the OIC elite including starting work with a couple of members who are planning on attending GenCon in the name of ICE! The points for GenCon won’t be awarded for a while, but here is what the Order members got up to last month:
The Rolemaster Blog
Peter R continues to add more great content to his Rolemaster blog. If you haven’t had a chance to visit it yet, I highly recommend it.
Cheat sheet for space combat
Pyrotech has created and uploaded a brilliant Cheat Sheet for space combat in HARP Sci-Fi in the forum. A great addition to any HARP-SF game and well worth a look.
Cloudlords of Tanara review
egdcltd (I never spell it right first time) has done an in depth review of Shadow World Cloudlords of Tananra. There are more to follow and will help tremendously in spreading the word of Iron Crown Enterprises’ resurgence.
A huge thanks to all of our Order members and to everyone who has helped support them and us. If you would like to learn more about the Order of the Iron Crown, you can visit the Order of the Iron Crown webpage or click the banner below.
Director’s Briefing – March 2015
Welcome to the forty-fifth Briefing and the third scheduled Briefing for 2015. Colin wrote in the ICE newsletter of February being the cruellest month, but for me it just seems to have been and went.
Rolemaster
In RMU, both Rolemaster Arms & Character Law and Rolemaster Spell Law have been handed over to Terry for layout and he is slaving away on them. Please don’t pester Terry about when he will be finished. That’s my job.
Joeri has handed in the full text and tables for Creature Law so we’re now going through that making final checks and corrections as a team. Once they are done, I will hand Creature Law over to Terry for layout. Meanwhile Dan is hard at work on Treasure Law.
In terms of second beta release, we will put up both Arms & Character Law and Spell Law at the same time. They will get fresh boards on the ICE forums. The first beta boards other than Playtesting will be closed to new posts but they will not be removed.
Shadow World
It’s down to the cover art still being needed for Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn, so once that’s in place, Terry can finalise the pdf layout in very short order and we will put it on sale.
Obviously Terry is heavily committed at the moment on RMU second beta layout, but he believes in “a change is as good as a rest” so when he’s had enough of spell lists or attack table formatting, he transfers to editing work. Any rumours of tea shortages in the East Coast of the USA should be discounted.
HARP and HARP SF
The big progress here has been on HARP Folkways. I have completed the editing sweep on the second draft of Folkways. This is an excellent manuscript and looks set to become a great product. Folkways will empower GMs to create more believable and richer cultures in their settings. In terms of system “crunch”, there are new races, professions, and training packages. Jon’s remaining work is in the main designing more races and fine-tuning the new professions.
In terms of new professions, the emphasis is on professions usable in a wide variety of settings that broaden the choices available to players. The focus is not on martial or magical variations but on archetypes such as traders, hunters, scholars, etc. An earlier incarnation of HARP did have some support for what it called non-adventuring professions – unfortunately these were short-changed on favoured category skill ranks. This time, the new professions will be fully fledged and worthy comrades, through dint of their own particular focus, to join the ranks of adventurers.
Until next time
I have lots of reading to do on Creature Law and more writing on HARP Bestiary. The next scheduled Briefing will be in April 2015.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
If you would like to receive the Director’s Briefing straight to your inbox each month, you can sign up to our mailing list HERE.
The Order of The Iron Crown – January round-up
The Order of the Iron Crown is a select group of fans that have made it their mission to promote Iron Crown Enterprises’ products at game conventions and in game stores around the world. The Order was set up to allow us to better help those who want to promote our games and to reward them for doing so.
Each month we will be reporting on what members of the Order of the Iron Crown have been up to and publicly thanking them for all the great work that they carry out on a daily basis in the name of Iron Crown Enterprises.
January’s round-up comes a little later than expected as we’ve been working out a few kinks in the process. However, without any further ado, here is what the Order members got up to last month:
ICE at Dragonmeet
Admittedly this was back in December, but we’ve only just got around to awarding the points. At Dragonmeet last year Chris Seal ran a HARP demo (which I was lucky enough to play test for him). By all accounts the game was an absolute success and he was kind enough to direct a number of players and fans to our stand.
The Rolemaster Blog
One of our forum members (Peter R) has set up and is running a brilliant Rolemaster blog. It is filled with thoughts and ideas about not just Rolemaster, but RPGs and gaming in general. In addition, we’ve received quite a lot of traffic from the site as people move between that blog and this one.
Game Store Demo
One of our most prolific Order members (Bruce) has run a game at his local game store and referred a number of players to the ICE website. Bruce was good enough to hand out a number of flyers for us which has helped get people more interested and more involved in Iron Crown Enterprises.
New member gets off to a great start
A brand new Order member (Inez Hull) has got off to a brilliant start by posting Rolemaster articles on his blog Death and Dismemberment which discusses Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and Rolemaster and other Roleplaying Games.
A huge thanks to all of our Order members and to everyone who has helped support them and us. If you would like to learn more about the Order of the Iron Crown, you can visit the Order of the Iron Crown webpage or click the banner below.
ICE is #1 for RPG Software!
Every month RPGNow releases stats on which companies are selling the most products, the most printed products and the most RPG software. It allows gaming companies to keep track of their progress in the marketplace and plan for the future.
It gives me great pleasure to announce that this month Iron Crown Enterprises topped the list of RPG Software sales!
Over the past months and years, there has been a real focus here at ICE on releasing great online aids and e-support packages to help enrich people’s gaming experience and help them get the most out of their time gamin. With the help of some brilliant program creators, I think we’ve achieved that and the figures go to show how popular these products are.
To celebrate reaching number 1, we’ve decided to take a look at the various RPG Software packages we currently have available:
AutoHARP
The AutoHARP e-support package combines a Character Creator and a Combat Tracker and helps speed up character creation and combat.
The Character Creator comes with a full Wizard for creating new characters, full support for Adolescence and profession rank selection, talent selection for certain professions, easy access to character traits, ability to print full character sheets with avatars, frequently used skills, RR information, Initiative information, BMR information, offensive attacks: both melee and missile, skills, spells, and equipment and a fully customized database written in XML allowing the user to easily adjust information as specific worlds or house rules.
The Combat Tracker has the ability to create, edit, open and save encounters, create, edit, import or duplicate characters which make up an encounter,
customize the character’s level, hit points, power points, Stamina, BMR, Armor, talent and shield DB, size, focus item, casting penalty, as well as create a character that doesn’t take stun, penalties or bleeding criticals and keep track of all spells, attacks, maneuvers, initiatives, character statuses, etc.
AutoHARP is available for both HARP Fantasy and HARP-SF and there are already a number of add-ons available for purchase including: AutoHARP Fantasy Martial Law, AutoHARP Fantasy College of Magics and AutoHARP SF Xtreme. The core products contain the HARP Fantasy/HARP-SF database and for convenience, a copy of the executable software application. Check out AutoHARP Fantasy and AutoHARP SF at RPGNow.com
ERA for Rolemaster
ERA (Electronic Roleplaying Assistant) is the ultimate companion for Rolemaster campaigns. Just by running this free application players can quickly and easily create their characters using a step by step wizard, then level them up and configure all details in stats, skills and special abilities, even overriding the automatic calculations. Afterwards, they can be added to a running campaign in the adventuring module. From there, the game master can control all aspects of the game: resolve maneuvers, resistances, resting, and of course, spell casting and combat.
ERA for Rolemaster is a free app which comes with sample races, professions, spells, attacks and criticals. You can then either add your own data tables or download the official datasets from RPGNow. Check out the free ERA application and Rolemaster Classic Arms Law, Rolemaster Classic Spell Law, and Rolemaster Classic Character Law.
Rolemaster Combat Minion
For those wanting a simple and fast way to manage combat encounters, “Rolemaster Combat Minion” is web application to help GMs process and track combat including stats, health and wounds. It streamlines the entire combat process, including initiative, combat calculations, attack and critical tables. It can be used on any desktop PC or tablet with a normal web browser.
The web application itself is completely free and available for anyone that would like to use it. To enhance the free Rolemaster Combat Minion web app however, you can buy licenses for the RM2/RMC dataset and the RMSS/RMFRP dataset from RPGNow. These datasets unlock all weapon and critical tables for that Rolemaster system. You can evaluate the functionality of the app before purchasing this product by visiting: www.web.com.au/rolemaster/minion
Buy the Rolemaster Classic dataset
Buy the RMSS/RMFRP dataset
Director’s Briefing – February 2015
Welcome to the forty-fourth Briefing and the second scheduled Briefing for 2015. January has been a painful month for me of assignment marking (I have mentioned that I hate marking?), course specification writing, and dealing with dampproofers (so our bedroom was completely emptied and we are still inhabiting the living room as various bits of the bedroom are put back together). I can see now why green slimes nd gelatinous cubes made it into the bestiary canon of D&D.
Rolemaster
In RMU, the residual examples for Rolemaster Arms & Character Law now exist and the team took advantage of the elapsed time to chase out a number of inconsistencies and annoyances in the text. Rolemaster Spell Law is now consistent with Arms & Character Law and I hold a copy of the full text and tables of it as well, while the RMU team are catching residuals. Every one they catch is one less to be caught in second beta, but I am painfully aware of the dangers of perfectionism.
Shadow World
Two pieces of art still needed for the Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn adventure module, namely final cover and a view of the greatroom of the inn itself. Terry has been drinking much tea as he battles to a conclusion of Eidolon and continues to edit Lethys. There’s been progress with “Priest-King of Shade” as well.
I am delighted to report that Norek will be returning, and it will be returning as an enhanced sourcebook. Kevin Casey (the original author) and Terry are in discussion about updates. I should reiterate that the returned Norek will not be a scan pdf, it will be a proper rebuild, so available in pdf, softcover and, pagecount willing, hardcover.
HARP and HARP SF
In HARP Bestiary, John Duffield has created more dragons, adding Air, Earth and Water to his initial Fire Dragon. I have added the Ghoul and the Mummy to the Undead set. Ghouls will come in both Lesser (Type I) and Greater (Type II) variants, while the Mummies will have Lesser (Type III), Greater (Type IV), and Mummy King (Type V) versions. And there is a Curse of the Mummy ability so that a Mummy who has been disturbed by the living or has had even a copper piece stolen from its funereal treasures can inflict grave misfortune (pun intended) on tomb robbers.
Jon Cassie has already submitted his second draft of HARP Folkways so I am looking forward to an editing sweep soon there.
I have formally commissioned The Poseidon Gambit for HARP SF. This is a brand-new adventure module set in the Tintamar universe being written by Joel Lovell. (There was an unintentional error in the ICE newsletter where this was mentioned as an update product. It’s not, it’s brand-new.)
Until next time
The next scheduled Briefing will be in March 2015.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
If you would like to receive the Director’s Briefing straight to your inbox each month, you can sign up to our mailing list HERE.
Iron Crown Enterprises Newsletter – January 2015
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Happy 2015 everyone! The new year is now thoroughly underway and with the rest and relaxation of the holiday period firmly behind us, the wheels are back in motion here at ICE HQ. We’re making some huge progress and already have a great deal in the works for 2015..
Catch up on what you’ve missed with this month’s Director’s Briefing.
ROLEMASTER
As mentioned in the Director’s Briefing, the new Unified Rolemaster now only requires the examples and the tables to be sorted before the second beta can be released.
We’re not quite there yet but the finish line is in sight. We will of course let you know the second that it is available on the forum for download and thanks again for your patience.
THE ORDER OF THE IRON CROWN
There have been a few changes behind the scenes already this year. After a company meet up, we have rejigged a couple of the responsibilities in the team.
The most exciting of these (for me anyway) is that I (Colin the Marketing Guy) will now be taking care of The Order of the Iron Crown.
Nothing will change for members, it is simply that I will now be the new point of contact. If you’re not already a member, check it out here.
SETTINGS
As always Terry Amthor is hard at work creating yet more brilliant products for Shadow World. He is currently flipping between making the finishing touches to the Eidolon revision and continuing work on the Lethys module.
In addition, ICE is currently in negotiation with the author of Norek to return it as an updated product. A deal is yet to be done, but we will let you know the second it is available once again.
HARP
Things are picking up speed in HARP. The second draft of HARP Folkways is now with Nicholas for the next editing sweep, bringing it one step closer to completion.
The HARP Bestiary is motoring away. Nicholas has just finished the Ghoul Overlay and is now working on the Mummy Overlay with a suitable Curse of the Mummy ability.
The Poseidon Gambit for HARP SF is now under contract. This is an adventure module set in the Tintamar universe. There is still quite a lot of work to do in re-releasing it but we’ll let you know the second it is available again.
To receive this monthly newsletter direct to your inbox, sign up to our MAILING LIST now.
Star Strike now a copper pick on RPGNow!
Star Strike for Spacemaster has just reached ‘Copper Pick’ status on RPGNow.
A huge thanks to everyone who has purchased Star Strike and continues to support ICE products old and new.
For those of you that haven’t purchased or read Star Strike, you can pick it up in pdf format for $8 from RPGNow.
Star Strike allows you to simulate deep-space battles involving any number of vessels. Dogfight with small but lethal SMAC fighters or deploy Line Cruisers to slug it out with a death dealing Dreadnought.
Star Strike allows you to choose the level of detail and realism. Even more detailed Optional Rules can be layered on as you desire. Alternatively you can create your own starcraft using Star Strike’s comprehensive starcraft construction system.
Thanks again to everyone who bought it, we hope you enjoy it!
Director’s Briefing – January 2015
Welcome to 2015
Happy New Year to everyone
Welcome to the forty-third Briefing and the first scheduled Briefing for 2015. My reading this holiday season was the Void space opera (The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void, and The Evolutionary Void) by Peter F Hamilton, which has been patiently waiting on my physical bookshelves for my attention. This is a sequel trilogy to his Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained duology, mixing technothriller, sf, an pseudofantasy medieval extra setting (you will understand this on reading) and galactic threat. I enjoyed this. My Kindle has also had its library boosted by a whole slew of fantasy trilogies by Raymond E Feist so there will be plenty of restful reading for the commutes to come (that is when I am not writing or editing) and I’ve already started rereading the classic Magician. My wife and I did go to the cinema and “The Battle of the Five Armies” was indeed a glorious spectacular retelling of the final portion of The Hobbit. I am feeling reinvigorated.
A retrospective on 2014
As with 2012, 2013, and 2014, let us begin with a look back on what was achieved in 2014. Reality and our plan for 2014 diverged rapidly.
Emer 3 came early and opened up southeastern Emer to exploration. Other Shadow World projects made progress over the year, notably the enhancement of Eidolon and the new Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn adventure module and Wuliris sourcebook, and some third-party modules received initial editing.
In HARP, the HARP Bestiary made slow but solid progress. I have personally playtested some of the new monsters appearing from the chapter drafts and they are very good. Updates from HARP Bestiary have been finding their way into TGA#4 which has rather too diverse a set of monsters requiring adjustments for its own good. Cyradon continued to acquire complete manuscripts of adventures but also remained in a waiting limbo on Bestiary progress. HARP Folkways, which has no dependencies at all on HARP Bestiary, reached full first draft, has already received a full edit and Terry’s imprimatur for its Shadow World section. It is back with Jon Cassie for his amendments.
2014 was a great year for Rolemaster support software, seeing the release of the Rolemaster Combat Minion for both RM Classic and RMSS/FRP, and later in the year ERA for Rolemaster Classic.
2014 was not a good year for RMU. We were not able to deliver the second beta in 2014 and this was a major disappointment for us.
As 2014 drew to a close, ICE and GCP attended the Dragonmeet convention for the first time as traders. This turned out to be the largest Dragonmeet ever and we have compiled our lessons learned so that our next Dragonmeet will be even more successful.
GCP remained a frequent entrant on the top 15 publisher listing on RPGNow. We were in the top 2-3% of publishers over the year across all OneBookShelf sites, routinely in the top 20 for printed products and in the top 5 for software products across OneBookShelf.
2015
Let us begin with some really good news. I have the edited RMU Arms Law and Character Law complete rules sans final examples in my inbox. The examples are still being written but that is a finite set of work to be done as is putting the tables in the text (so that Terry can trivially see where to import them from the master spreadsheets). Finally the path is clear for second beta. As I said, really good news.
In HARP, we will see HARP Folkways this year. We will also have a major push on HARP Bestiary as it is currently the logjam for HARP, Cyradon and TGA#4. Even as we press on with Bestiary, I will be commissioning additional adventure modules for Cyradon so that when the Bestiary manuscript and the Bestiary chapter in the revitalised Cyradon chapter are complete, we can back fill those and other modules with compatible monster stats. I will also be formally commissioning a HARP SF adventure module set in the Tintamar universe.
In Spacemaster, we will have a major drive to complete the text extraction of the Imperium setting from old second-edition Spacemaster products ahead of a future HARP SF setting sourcebook and unified Spacemaster.
In Shadow World, art is flowing inward to complete Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn and Terry is within a couple of weeks of handing me the complete refreshed Eidolon manuscript. (If the timing is right, Terry will be handing me the Eidolon manuscript to edit in return for me giving him the second beta of RMU Arms and Character Law for layout) We should see the brand-new Wuliris sourcebook in 2015 and other refreshed sourcebooks are likely (exactly which ones depends on how Terry is inspired.) The author of Norek has been found and I hope to see it make a very welcome escape from IP limbo this year. Lethys will continue to be edited and a second editing pass will be triggered on Priest-King of Shade once its author is able to send us more detailed drawings of some of the adventure sites.
We fully expect to be at Dragonmeet in 2015 and we will be booking our stand as soon as the organisers are ready. We are hoping to be able to scout out UK Games Expo this year, in order to evaluate it as a future convention that we may attend as traders. If we can send an ICE rep such as John or Thom to either Origins or GenCon this year, this will help pave the way for an ICE/GCP stand in the future.
Until next time
The next scheduled Briefing will be in February 2015.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
If you would like to receive the Director’s Briefing straight to your inbox each month, you can sign up to our mailing list HERE.
Races and Cultures now a copper pick!
Races and Cultures for Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing (RMFRP) has just reached ‘Copper Pick’ status on RPGNow.
A huge thanks to everyone who has purchased this product and continues to support Rolemaster and Iron Crown Enterprises.
For those of you that still haven’t purchased it, you can pick it up in pdf format for $15 from RPGNow.
Created for Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing and Shadow World, Races & Cultures gives you everything you need to design unique, exciting and diverse characters for your Rolemaster and Shadow World adventures.
It includes all the core races as well as many humanoid (including centaurs), and fey races (like the Dwelf and the Pech). Also included are unusual races from Creatures & Monsters, and the monster races as well.
Thanks again to everyone who bought it, we hope you enjoy it!
Director’s Briefing – December 2014
Welcome to the forty-second Briefing and the twelfth scheduled Briefing for 2014. Christmas and the holiday season are nearly upon us, and the final instalment of The Hobbit movies in the form of “The Battle of the Five Armies” will soon be in cinemas everywhere. I look forward to seeing Peter Jackson’s audiovisual spectacular – I am sure that the tale has once more grown in the telling.
Dragonmeet
Our own ICE/GCP fellowship gathered at Dragonmeet on the 6th December. This turned out to be the largest Dragonmeet ever at over 1600 attendees. Chris Seal ran a successful Rolemaster scenario, while Colin, John and myself were on hand at the GCP/ICE table to chat with attendees, invite them to enter our raffle, and to sell product (in terms of print copies of HARP/HARP SF and Shadow World). Many people had fond memories of playing MERP, Rolemaster, Spacemaster and more, and were pleased to see that the games are still alive and resurging. With ICE listed in 10,000 Dragonmeet flyers and a full-page advertisement in the programme book, the word will continue to spread.
So our first-ever Dragonmeet as traders was a success. We are compiling our lessons learned list so that our next Dragonmeet will be even better. The experience gained will also feed into how ICE / GCP can make a success of GenCon or Origins in the future. Yes, ICE / GCP does plan on being at future GenCons and/or Origins, but the earliest this can be is 2016.
The waiting game
One of the downsides of being a small publisher is that everything depends on freelancers – writing, artwork, maps, editing and layout. Even as far back as the original 1980s and 1990s incarnation of ICE, freelancers were contributing significantly across multiple gaming lines. The problem is that all freelancers are at the mercy of events in their lives and we’re enduring a thoroughly awful and prolonged period where multiple freelancers are taking hits. The related problem is that creative tasks do not readily allow for swapping people in and out of projects – two artists given the same topic will draw very different illustrations, writers cannot easily carry on where someone else has left off, and so forth. The software industry has had its mythical man-month issue crystallised for decades. Nevertheless on several projects, we are moving into the position where Plan B actions must shortly be executed.
HARP Folkways
HARP Folkways has, however, proven itself to be exceptional. Jon Cassie has delivered a full draft of his manuscript for this brand-new sourcebook, and I have begun my editing sweep. Once I have completed this sweep, I will be soliciting artwork while Jon makes any amendments and additions that I feel are required.
Until next time
The next scheduled Briefing will be in January 2015, so all that remains for me to do is to wish you all a Merry Christmas (or other holiday of your choosing) and a Happy New Year.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
If you would like to receive the Director’s Briefing straight to your inbox each month, you can sign up to our mailing list HERE.