As you may be aware, this year a couple of members of the Order of the Iron Crown went to GenCon. Below is one member’s (BeggarKing’s) account of GenCon and his playtesting of the new Rolemaster system at the world’s biggest RPG convention.
“I had the opportunity to run a few RMU sessions at gencon earlier this year. It was great to see such excitement about RM. My events came to registration late, and were in out of the way places but I still had full tables.
About the players: The tables were multi-generational, in that each session had at least one to 2 old timers (original RM) and couple that came aboard during RMSS. Most of the attendees had played one version or another. Only 1 complete newbie. Almost all were familiar enough with the system rules that there weren’t many surprises with the beta rules. For both sessions, half the spots were filled by a group the Roleplayed together and wanted to get the gang out to try the new rules. They tended not to be heavy roleplayers – mainly they wanted to get in and try out combat (criticals being the highlight, of course).
I also ran into RM players outside of the events – a couple of us fought over a dusty copy of The Iron Wind found in the exhibit hall. The Good news: There still seem to be many passionate fans. Possible bad news: Most of these players were oblivious to the beta rules. Ones that had been active in the beta generally expressed frustration around the slowpace/lack of updates/lack of transparency into the process.
The play sessions themselves went well – generally the first hour was choosing characters, backgrounds, and asking questions to get up to speed on abilities (note – it takes a while to ramp up even with experienced players and pre-made characters). There were some quick roleplaying opportunities (only a few took advantage) and then into combat. Experienced RMers really fought over playing spellcasters, and wanted to do crazy things with the spells. (1 group fought a bear, and after being told “no” to casting leaving on the bear and using that as a projectile attack, used leaving instead to ‘port the bear into the air above enemies). Everyone seemed to really appreciated spell expertise and combat expertise.
Combat was generally smooth, although I credit cards and mats I put together that makes that experience fairly smooth – everyone was able to leverage the tactical combat rules after the very first round (my own group took some time to get used to this). I used a ton of props – I had figures (wooden meeples I use when travelling) cards I put together for players to set up their phase actions, and tiles I picked up from other games. All these made it easier to handle the finer tactical parts of RM.
The only really fidgety parts in the beta were around calculating movement (“so I’m moving with 25% and I want to run over to the bear that’s on fire, what pace is that and what’s my negative? Wait, how do figure that without a calculator??”). There was one doc-bug we hit where a 64 crit was more damaging than a 66 on the same table (I think the results are switched).
Summary: I had fun running the games and will likely do so again. Players as well seemed to like the rules.”
If you are interested in running ICE games at conventions and becoming a member of the Order of the Iron Crown, get in touch!
Order of the Iron Crown – Playtesting at GenCon 2014
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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Iron Crown Enterprises Newsletter – August 2014
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It has been another big month here at ICE HQ packed full of yet more great news and announcements. Before we get into that however I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that continues to support ICE whether that is by buying products, contributing to our forum or simply reading our monthly newsletters. Now on with the news…
Catch up on what you’ve missed with this month’s Director’s Briefing.
ROLEMASTER
This month saw the Rolemaster Facebook group reach 1,000 follows! To celebrate we gave fans and followers the opportunity to buying hardcover versions of HARP SF, HARP SF Xtreme, Shadow World Cloudlords of Tanara and Shadow World Emer III with a $5 discount.
In the world of the new Rolemaster which is currently being playtested – Terry Amthor is primed and ready to start a rapid layout of the new Core Rules while the tables and texts are getting their final signoff from the team.
HARP
Last month’s Christmas in July sale was a great success. A huge thanks to everybody who took the opportunity to buy HARP products for 25% off, please don’t forget to review your purchases on RPGNow.
You will be pleased to hear that real progress is being made on the HARP Bestiary and I received my first ‘editorial nag’ to encourage me to work a little faster on it. Luckily I have earmarked a lot of time over the coming week to finish my sections and consider the opportunity to take on some other sections.
SETTINGS
The upcoming Shadow World adventure “Tales from Green Gryphon Inn” is nearing completion and just waiting on graphics. Once these are in palce it will be ready to go for final approval.
Meanwhile, Terry is working hard on Eidolon before moving on to Emer II. According to Terry himself “Emer I is going to require some major map work (those old maps from the first edition are not acceptible). I am also writing/editing on both the NE Jaiman and Artifacts/Lost Tech books” so lots to come for Shadow World.
PARTNERS
As I’m sure you are all aware, GenCon was last week and this year we had a number of members of the Order of the Iron Crown attend and run ICE games. By all accounts the convention was a complete success with a number of them managing to meet up on the final day.
I already have a GenCon round up form one of the attendees which will be up on the Iron Crown blog in the coming days and (hopefully) there will be more to come.
If you’re interested in joining the Order of the Iron Crown and running games at conventions, Get in touch.
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GMing for first time gamers
I’ve managed to convince some friends who have never gamed before to let me run a one off game for them. My plan is for it to be so good that they consider playing on a more regular basis (or at least agree to a second game).
As they’re first game (and they’re pretty cynical about the whole thing) I want it to be really engaging. I’ve come up with a basic idea but I would really appreciate any thoughts/ideas/opinions that anyone else has.
Rough idea:
A simple dungeon layout with a number of rooms in a rough circle around a central (much larger) room. There are a number of ways to enter the central room. In each (or most) non-central room are challenges be they puzzles, traps or monsters which grant magic items/weapons/potions to the adventurers. Unbeknownst to the adventurers, defeating each challenge will best equip them to defeat the beast lurking in the central room guarding the… whatever it is they’re after but it is up to them which doors they take and when.
My challenge is coming up with enough puzzles and traps etc to fill the rooms. Also I would like them to be things which take them away from the gaming table or give the players themselves the opportunity to shine. Current ideas (and very rough ideas) are as follows:
- A room that looks exactly like a room in my house with a timer ticking down to find something (they need to search the room in my house)
- A riddle from a mischievous parrot
- A collection of potions with each giving a clue about which potion must be drunk
- Flat out fight with a monster of some sort
- A booby trapped room which requires some form of knowledge (a la the last crusade)
Anyone ideas please let me know on the ICE Forum.
– Colin
1,000 Followers!
To celebrate reaching 1,000 followers on our Rolemaster Facebook page we’re giving everyone $5 off of hardcover copies of some of our top products!
You can now get HARP SF, HARP SF Xtreme, Shadow World Cloudlords of Tanara and Shadow World Emer III for $5 less. Hurry though, the discount runs out on the 20th August.
A huge thanks to all of our fans and followers, without you we would quite literally be nothing. If you haven’t already, you can follow us on Facebook either on our Iron Crown Enterprises page or on one of our product pages: Rolemaster, HARP or Spacemaster. We are also active on Twitter and Google +. We’re always happy to hear from our fans so if you have any thoughts on what you would like to see more of in our social media posts or on our blog, simply get in touch.
Thanks again for the support and enjoy the discount!
Director’s Briefing – August 2014
Welcome to the thirty-eighth Briefing and the eighth scheduled Briefing for 2014. This month’s Briefing has been delayed by my excursion to the USA for a microscopy conference, but better late than never.
Progress on the ToDo List
RMU: The combined Arms Law & Character Law has gone through Marc Rosen’s editorial hands and a series of catches have been posed to the team for immediate correction. Once these are complete, Marc will be forcing Spell Law through a rapid editorial pass. Meanwhile I will arrange for Arms Law & Character Law to receive a minimal layout and we will get it out to second beta. The moment that Spell Law is ready to hit layout second layout beta, then the RMU team will focus on Creature Law and Treasure Law.
I am hopeful that we will not need a third beta round but I am expecting thorough but focused discussions to catch errors.
Guild Adventurer #4 (and HARP Bestiary): I found a means by which I could update stats in a less painful way on a tablet, namely opening the pdf in one document viewer and Word documents in a different editor app, with careful choice of the apps allowing cascade view on my tablet. Choose the wrong app combination and the multiwindow cascade view does not work. So I made great progress on some of the HARP stat updates for the adventures until I hit a number of monsters that aren’t in HARP Fantasy. For Marc Rosen’s Muck and Mire, I was missing some crocodiles – fortunately Colin had been battling his way through his Dangerous Animals chapter for HARP Bestiary and he had already done the crocodile. Ward Miller’s Keep of the Damned features a lot of Undead but we only have a sample Skeleton and a sample Zombie in HARP Fantasy. Not enough. I am responsible for the Undead chapter in HARP Bestiary so time for me to roll up my sleeves and write some words and stats in terms of descriptions and “overlay” mechanics. An “Overlay” is ouf proposed term for the series of additions, subtractions, and replacements to stat bonuses, RR modifiers, Endurance, Power Points and talents that are applied to a base creature to represent its transformation into a new form. Thus a creature which is raised from the dead to become a Skeleton will have its stat bonuses replaced, forfeit any base PP in favour of additional Endurance, and acquire various undead-related abilities but lose any Tough Hide or Dense Musculature talents. I have written up Skeletons, Skeleton Lords, Zombies, Ghosts and Spectres, so that is the first five Undead done for HARP Bestiary and enough overlays to sort out Ward’s adventure. Robert Defendi’s Who Saves the Saviour requires Earth Elementals and a Dragon, so I need to update the Elemental chapter to be imported from the Something Wicked manuscript into Bestiary and the Bestiary team needs to create our first Dragon. Getting there and equally importantly progress being made on Bestiary. (And I am having fun writing new HARP material which is also important)
Shadow World: Terry has delivered the final draft of “Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn” adventure module. The RMSS/FRP stats have been created (courtesy of Charles Morris) and the artwork has been commissioned. I am part way through my editing sweep. Terry, meanwhile, has returned to multitasking on his other projects. Eidolon and Emer II seem to be neck and neck in terms of working their way through to enhancement completion, so too close to call what will emerge next after Tales from the Gryphon Inn.
Dragonmeet: As Colin has announced in his newsletter, Aurigas/ICE and Guild Companion Publications will have a stand at Dragonmeet 2014. Various details still to be finalised but we are keen to have OIC members run games at the convention and we have some entertaining minigames and scenarios planned. We will also have some physical copies of HARP and Shadow World products available for purchase.
Until next time
Time for me to get back to the doing and less talking.The next scheduled Briefing will be in August.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd.
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Last day of the sale!
You now have only 24 hours left to get the entire HARP and HARP-SF lines for 25% off in RPGNow’s CHRISTMAS IN JULY SALE
A huge thanks to everyone involved in the RPGNow Christmas in July sale. It has been brilliant to be a part of it and a huge success.
If you took the opportunity to buy HARP or HARP-SF and to try it out for the first time, please let us know what you thought of it. If you enjoyed it you’ll be pleased to hear that we plan to continue building the line and we are currently working on the brand new HARP bestiary.
If you haven’t had a chance to pick up your copies of HARP, HARP-SF or any of their supplements, you still have 24 hours to do so.
GET 25% OFF:
Iron Crown Enterprises Newsletter – July 2014
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Big announcements are like busses… After a couple of months of quietly beavering away to get products out the door, this month has seen a sudden influx of really exciting news (though of course we continue to beaver away of getting products ready to release). For those of you who don't follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Google + and who don't visit the Iron Crown Forum particularly regularly, I won't ruin the surprise, just read on…
Catch up on what you’ve missed with this month’s Director’s Briefing.
ROLEMASTER
Work on the updated playtest files for the new Unified Rolemaster system continues. The team are now doing an editing sweep of the new Arms & Character Law to make sure there are no errors or omissions and that everything stacks up correctly.
HARP
Great news for HARP this month as it became a gold pick product on RPGNow! With only 94 other products achieving this accolade, HARP Fantasy is now part of a very elite group.
A huge thanks to everyone who has bought and supported HARP throughout the years. We hope it has been as much fun to play as it has been to work on.
To celebrate HARP reaching gold pick status, it (and the entire HARP line including HARP College of Magics, HARP Martial Law, HARP-SF and HARP-SF Xtreme) are available now with 25% OFF through the RPGNow Christmas in July sale.
So if you're new to HARP or haven't got round to implementing any of the supplements yet, with 25% OFF there has never been a better time to try it out.
If you’re a fan of HARP, you’ll be glad to hear that we’re work continues on the brand new HARP Bestiary. While it is still early on in the production process, it is moving along nicely.
SETTINGS
Terry Amthor is closing in on completing the new Shadow World adventure “Tales of the Green Gryphon Inn”, commenting; “the adventures run the gamut from a little mission to a murder mystery, to exposing a conspiracy, to local political intrigue, to a rather dark couple of final scenarios involving the darkest evils of the Shadow World.”
PARTNERS
I am unbelievably excited to announce that Iron Crown Enterprises will be officially returning to the world of roleplaying conventions starting with this year’s Dragonmeet in London, England.
While the specifics are still up in the air, we have some big plans for our return to conventions including a stall from which to sell some of our products, competitions with some incredible prizes for convention goers to win and we’ll be running a number of games for ICE gaming veterans and newbies alike to take part in.
If you are planning on attending Dragonmeet and would like to be part of the official ICE team either by helping out on the stall by selling products, chatting to convention goers, orchestrating competitions or by running an ICE game / games, please contact us.
Our aim is to steadily increase our presence at conventions both by having members of the team attend, run stalls and GM games and also by offering members of the Order of the Iron Crown everything they need to attend cons and run games and rewarding them for doing so with exclusive offers and merchandise.
If you are planning on attending a convention and would like to find out more about representing Iron Crown Enterprises, Get in touch.
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Christmas in July
To celebrate High Adventure Role Playing (HARP) Fantasy becoming a gold pick product on RPGNow (one of only 95 products designated as gold picks), you can now get the entire HARP line as pdfs with 25% off!
If you haven’t played HARP already, now is the perfect time to do so and here’s why it has become one of the best selling products on RPGNow:
HARP Fantasy brings you everything you love about fantasy role-playing: flexible character creation, exciting combat, critical hits, potent magic and challenging foes.
- Fast, Exciting Character Creation – choose from nine professions, six races, and seven cultures, and dozens of skills and talents
- Combat that leaves you breathless with one roll combat resolution
- Truly flexible and dynamic scalable spell system
- A bestiary of diverse monsters to challenge any adventurer
- A veritable treasure hoard of magic items, mystical herbs and deadly poisons
- Rules for fantasy adventuring and guidance on customising the rules to suit your needs
- Everything you need to play in one book
Alternatively, if you prefer science fiction focused on events on a single inhabited world in the near future or is a galaxy-spanning epic set millenia hence in the far future, why not try HARP SF. HARP SF retains all the simplicity and flexibility of the original HARP Fantasy game while expanding its reach to a whole new universe of infinite possibilities.
Key features include: Flexible character creation, critical hits and team effort, Transhumans and Psionics. Everything you need for a great Science Fiction roleplaying experience.
You can also expand on you HARP Fantasy or HARP SF games by purchasing HARP Martial Law, HARP College of Magics or HARP SF Xtreme, all with 25% off!
HARP Martial Law breaks new ground in the field of fantasy role playing combat rules. It expands the fast, dramatic combat of HARP Fantasy to include detailed hit location criticals. Also included is a section on creating and playing warriors in fantasy settings and cool new moves and equipment for fighters.
HARP College of Magics on the other hand expands the depth and breadth of HARP magic. This product introduces new types of magic, including natural magic, alchemy, and enchantment. College of Magics also includes rules for creating and designing new spells, and a primer on temporary and permanent magic item design. And of course new professions: The Elementalist, the Vivamancer, the Thaumaturge, and the Necromancer.
If however you’re looking to expand your HARP SF game, why not get HARP SF Xtreme. HARP SF Xtreme offers a complete set of vehicular rules for both slower-than-light and faster-than-light travel, an extensive catalogue of land, marine, air, space and hybrid vehicles to get your heroes from Alpha Centauri to Betelgeuse and everywhere else, deck plans of the featured starships and interplanetary craft and vehicle combat rules that scale from starfighter dogfights to epic battles between mighty dreadnoughts that will engage the entire party in the action.
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