***EXCITING NEWS***
Iron Crown Enterprises will be officially returning to the world of roleplaying conventions starting with this year’s Dragonmeet, London’s (and probably the UK’s) foremost roleplaying, boardgame, collectable card game and now miniatures convention.
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.
HARP Fantasy – a Gold pick on RPGNow
Iron Crown Enterprises is thrilled to announce that High Adventure Role Playing (HARP) Fantasy is now a gold pick 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.
If you’re a fan of HARP, you’ll be glad to hear that we’re currently working on the brand new HARP Bestiary. While it is still early on in the production process, you can sign up to our mailing list and we’ll keep you updated on our progress and let you know the second it is available.
If you haven’t played HARP already, 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.
FEATURES
- 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
In addition you can purchase HARP Martial Law and HARP College of Magics to expand on combat and magic use within your HARP game. As if that isn’t enough, you can also get AutoHARP Fantasy, an e-support package that combines a character creator and combat tracker to help make your gaming experience as quick and hassle free as possible.
Director’s Briefing – July 2014
Welcome to the thirty-seventh Briefing and the seventh scheduled Briefing for 2014.
Marking and Grading
I can confirm that marking and grading is an absolutely draining process, and just when you think it’s done, there’s another umpteen forms to fill in. I can also confirm that it did take out my entire June. On the upside, it’s done.
Also on the upside, I have seen the projected calendar for the next academic year on the two degree courses that I principally teach on and the message is “No new modules” so this summer and next academic year is *not* going to be an endless lecture writing death march. The university here has also restructured its organisation and the IT teaching team (that I am part of) has now moved to the Department of Science and Technology, which means that the amount of business management teaching that I will be expected to provide will be limited (and again no new modules to take on).
Progress on the ToDo List
RMU: I deliberately have been keeping updates on RMU minimalist for months.Partly this is because the second quickest way of delaying a writing project is to talk about its details in public (the first quickest way is to declare a release date before writing is completed). Partly this is because I am not Line Editor on Rolemaster (it’s more than enough work running the overall company and being Line for HARP and Cyradon and quasi-Line Editor for Shadow World without trying to micromanage RMU) as that is Marc’s job. Of course, I could get Marc to talk about it in detail but then he’s talking not doing.
Colin’s ICE newsletter report gives a sense of how close the team is to getting Arms Law/Character Law and Spell Law off their desks. They do have several stubborn issues such as the RR mechanism that have been frustrating their efforts to declare closure; in the end, these issues will resolve even if Marc or myself have to choose / impose a solution.Despite the marking mountain and despite the home broadband dropping out again for over a week (two simultaneous faults, now fixed), there has been progress on the todo list.
With regard to Guild Adventurer #4, it is a painfully slow process updating HARP stats using a tablet on a train. I have not yet found an optimal workflow for this but I will persevere as there are other projects with similar issues.
On Shadow World, Terry continues to multitask his way across multiple projects, but Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn is still most likely to be first out from his pack.
On Cyradon, I am still open for suggestions for a new name for Phillip Ellis’ module based on the “M is for Murder” adventure seed.
The Spacemaster Imperium text recovery process continues with more modules being recovered for their text.
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.
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 – June 2014
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It has been a crazy month at ICE headquarters. Everyone on the team has been working hard to get products through the pipeline and real life (as it always does) has not made it easy for us. Luckily we have managed to make some great progress on a number of different products and I for one am genuinely excited about what the coming months will bring.
Catch up on what you’ve missed with this month’s Director’s Briefing.
ROLEMASTER
As it has been some time since we gave an in depth outline of where we are with the new Unified Rolemaster system, I have got in touch with the team working on it and have been given the following report:
“The Core rules (Character Law and Arms Law) have been combined into a single text and have gone through a lot of changes based on the feedback from the beta.
Due to the complexity of the interlocking rule sub systems, simple corrections to one area need to be mapped out over every other rule they touch to check they don’t cause a break elsewhere. A positive sign here is that the majority of the issues still being worked on are now style and flow of the content and explanations rather than rule issues, indicating we’re approaching the end point of this process.
The latter two books (creatures and treasures) are essentially assembled structures of the pieces defined by the first two, so while they are in a less finished state, their derivative nature means they should wrap up faster. I thank you for patience, and look forward to feedback as we get these off our screens and into your hands.”
HARP
While I can’t speak for the other contributors, I for one have made great progress with my part of the HARP Bestiary. I plan to have it all submitted to Nicholas within the next week and although I expect there will be numerous amends and changes, it will feel good to have completed such a large project (or at least what I consider to have been a large project).
Keep watching this space for further updates.
SETTINGS
The new Shadow World adventure “Tales of the Green Gryphon Inn” by Terry Amthor is moving quickly through the production process and Terry has offered the following outline of his current projects and where he is with them:
“Tales of the Green Gryphon Inn is creeping so much closer to completion; it is topping off at over 74 pages now, and frankly looking more like a ‘campaign’ module. Maybe I have been rewatching too much X-Files, but the adventures do break down into ‘monster of the week’ and ‘mythology’ with intertwining storylines (but no little green men, I promise, at least in this module). In between, I am bouncing back to Emer II and the Wuliris/Jaiman NE modules, and even outlining Artifacts & Lost Tech, so keeping busy in general.”
In addition to this Terry has checked the softcover and hardcover proof of Emer 3 and we are pleased to announce that the map issue has been resolved and you can now once again buy Emer 3 in print. Thank you for your patience and apologies for any inconvenience.
PARTNERS
Our friends over at AppEndix (creators of the brilliant Sherlock Holmes: Murder at the Diogenes club and Sherlock Holmes: The black river emerald adventure book apps) have created yet another great app: Proteus – The tower of terror.
Proteus pits you as a student at the Academy of the Grand Wizard Eleutheria against an evil Wizard called Belenghast. Armed with your own Dexterity, Strength, and Courage, a sword and torch, and a number of magical potions, you will ascend the Tower of Terror until you arrive face to face with the evil shape-shifting Wizard.
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Proteus by AppEndix out now
Appendix, the creators of the brilliant Sherlock Holmes: Murder at the Diogenes club and Sherlock Holmes – The black river emerald have just released yet another brilliant product:
PROTEUS – THE TOWER OF TERROR
Written by David Brunskill, the first Proteus adventure pits you as a student at the Academy of the Grand Wizard Eleutheria against an evil and powerful Wizard called Belenghast, the Ruler of Darkblood. Armed with your own Dexterity, Strength, and Courage, a sword and torch, and a number of magical potions, you will ascend the Tower of Terror until you arrive face to face with the evil shape-shifting Wizard.
Get your copy now from the iStore
Director’s Briefing – June 2014
Welcome to the thirty-sixth Briefing and the sixth scheduled Briefing for 2014.
Marking and Grading
The teaching portion of the academic year is now complete. The nightmare that is marking and grading is already underway. Fortunately all the materials that I have to mark are word-processed (even the exam scripts) so I don’t have to decrypt illegible scrawls, but unfortunately there’s a lot of it to mark – sixty research essays, forty programming assignments, and 150,000 words across a dozen dissertations. (I have already cleared the exam scripts.) I expect most of my June will be spent in the marking process. My commiserations to all my fellow academics who are similarly burdened.
Progress on the ToDo List
Despite the marking mountain and despite the home broadband dropping out again for over a week (two simultaneous faults, now fixed), there has been progress on the todo list.
The financial data for 2013 was duly assembled and sent to the company accountant. At some point this month, he will report on how much profit GCP made last year and how much corporation tax needs to be paid. Why do you care? A profitable GCP means that in addition to being able to pay all our freelancers without quibble (which means happy freelancers who will continue to work for us in the future), we can invest the profits into additional product development and marketing and take a longer view of return on investment, without worries of cash flow crunches. Which translates into we can produce better books, even if these get delayed by events outside our control and pay the freelancers even before income has been generated by the first sale, and we can keep on doing this.
Complete Guild Adventurer #4. The introduction has been updated and I have been in contact with the contributors to ensure that I have their most recent payment details. Still to be done is an update of the HARP stats in the adventures and conversations with Terry regarding the cartography. We know a lot more about what works for OBS/LS printing than when we started TGA#4 and I would like to ensure that the maps will look right in OBS/LS standard colour.
Shadow World: I have sent a review of the Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn draft to Terry and have ongoing email conversations on a number of projects.
For HARP Bestiary, all of the other contributors have reported in and are making steady progress on their current assigned chapters.
For HARP Folkways, Jonathan Cassie is quietly working away on the project and I have a projected draft delivery date.
In Cyradon, I completed my review of the “M is for Murder” adventure module draft by Phillip Ellis. Really good, only a few minor things for Phillip to adjust. We will need a better name than the original adventure idea title as listed in the Cyradon setting book. Suggestions welcomed.
For the Spacemaster Imperium setting project, I went through all of the old products currently owned by Aurigas / ICE and the list of desired text is now on the forums. The first recovered text has already arrived and the process of recovery is ongoing.
Maximiliano Tabacman’s ERA software continues a successful public playtest.
In Unified Rolemaster, I continue to nag “Are we there yet?”.
Until next time
Time for more marking and more GCP work. The next scheduled Briefing will be in July.
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 – May 2014
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After all the excitement of launching the Order of the Iron Crown last month, this month has been all about getting our heads down and really pushing ahead with the huge number of products we have in the pipeline. If you haven’t already joined the Order of the Iron Crown or if you just want to find out more, you can do so on the Order of the Iron Crown webpage.
Catch up on what you’ve missed with this month’s Director’s Briefing.
ROLEMASTER
Work on The Guild Adventurer #4 is ongoing and we are making good progress. Nicholas has just completed a new introduction and we’re hoping to release it in the not too distant future.
For those not familiar with The Guild Adventurer it is a compilation of original adventures and adventure-related material, not only for Rolemaster but for HARP, Spacemaster, Shadow World and HARP-SF.
Check out The Guild Adventurer #1, The Guild Adventurer #2 and The Guild Adventurer #3.
HARP
With Nicholas now available to devote more time to all things ICE, he is working hard on progressing HARP Folkways and the HARP bestiary.
HARP Folkways is currently make good progress and the contributors to the HARP Bestiary (of which I am one) are beavering away at finishing things up and getting it all submitted to Nicholas for review.
SETTINGS
We have two great new adventures in the pipeline and both are making great progress.
The Cyradon adventure “M is for Murder” has just been reviewed by Nicholas and has sent it back to the author for a few tweaks.
The Shadow World adventure “tales of the green gryphon inn” by Terry Amthor has been reviewed and sent back to him for tweaks.
While the Cyradon adventure won’t be released for a while, it is now a race between “tales of the green gryphon inn” and “The Guild Adventurer #4” to see what will be the next release.
PARTNERS
Those of you who read last month’s newsletter will know that we announced a beta test of a brand new e-support product ERA for Rolemaster..
The brains behind the software have been working hard and have now released an updated version for testing.
If you want to take part in the test or want to find out more about what ERA for Rolemaster can offer your game, visit our FORUM THREAD.
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Shadow World wish list…
Shadow World – The high fantasy setting for Rolemaster is an ancient world of powerful magic, real deities, and shades of grey between good and evil
Whatever system you use, Shadow World setting material with its crystal-clear text and stunning artwork will help bring Shadow World’s wonders and your campaign to glorious life.
The player guide offers everything a player and game master should know about the magic, the lands, the gods, the history, and the peoples of Shadow World while Emer III covers the southeast of the great continent Emer including the mysterious rainforests of Khûm-kaan and the plains of Onar. Shadow World: The land of Xa-ar brings you details of the Land of Xa-ar and Northern Saralis on the continent of Jaiman, while Cloudlords of Tanara looks at the east of the continent of Jaiman where the evil Cult of Ezran, the Priests Arnak, and even the Cloudlords themselves have returned from legend into stark reality.
Despite the number of products available already, one of our forum fans wants more and has set out a wish list for further products that he would like to see in the future. What would you like to see? Which areas of the Shadow World are you interested in hearing more about? Let us know by visiting OUR FORUM.
Iron Crown Enterprises at conventions
With the launch of The Order of the Iron Crown last month, GMs can now earn rewards as a member of the Order for running games at local game stores and conventions. These points can then be exchanged for discounts on ICE products or exclusive merchandise.
If you’re attending a convention and would be interested in running an ICE game, contact us and we will get you set up as a member of the Order of the Iron Crown and help you with running your event.
We have already had requests from Quincon and Texicon for GMs to run games at this year’s conventions AND one of our forum members will be running a game at FG Con on 10th May (tomorrow at the time of writing).
If you’re a player looking for games at conventions or a GM who might be interested in running games at conventions or game stores, you can keep up-to-date by joining our forum or following us on facebook or twitter.
Director’s Briefing – May 2014
Welcome to the thirty-fifth Briefing and the fifth scheduled Briefing for 2014.
Encroachment over
ALL the lectures have been completed and I am very happy to see the end of the preparation battle. Yes, there is marking to be done come the end of May but I’ve ensured by careful deadline setting that I will have a reasonable amount of time to do the marking without it turning into an encroachment situation.
Moving books
Over Easter, I had the sudden need to move my book and rpg collection. Now while I love physical books dearly and prefer them to ebooks, packing, moving, unpacking and reorganising hundreds of them tested even my love of the physical artefact. (And I will have a second collection to move in the next few months.)
While my rpg collection is smaller than my fiction collection, their larger size and weight meant they took up more space and demanded stronger boxes. Come the unpacking, I made a conscious decision that a significant proportion would stay in the plastic storage boxes and not be allowed back onto the bookshelves. Obviously HARP, Rolemaster, Cyberspace, Shadow World, and Spacemaster made it to the bookcases. GURPS and the Dying Earth RPG transitioned back to the shelves – I admit the fact that I have written professionally for both systems assisted in their return. So did both the original paperback and Magnum Opus incarnations of Dragon Warriors – I have made extensive use of their Legend world in my own campaigns and it is one of the very few settings that I would consider trying to license for HARP. Also back on real shelves are the original paperback and the Arion Games’ incarnations of Advanced Fighting Fantasy as the Titan setting that developed from the Warlock of Firetop Mountain etc solo gamebooks is old school dungeon crawling personified and I could easily run HARP games there. (You will know Arion as the publisher of Rolemaster Rome) The final non-ICE product on the shelves is Green Ronin’s Pirate’s Guide to Freeport because it is such a fine setting book. However D&D 3.0, 3.5, and 4e, d20 materials, various Dungeon and Dragon issues, 7th Sea, Brave New World, Space 1889, Traveller and a mishmash of various singleton books have all been consigned to remain in the plastic storage boxes as I won’t be GMing them, am extremely unlikely to be playing them, and I won’t be publishing for them.
What Next?
With the real world job finally under control and the worst of the home move dealt with (and home broadband restored), I am firmly back at the helm of GCP. There is, as always, a lot to do, and many of our freelancers will be receiving emails requesting updates on progress.
Looking at some of the items on my todo list:
Organise the financial data for the 2013 calendar and deliver to the company accountant for calculation of profit and corporation tax due. Due to issues of income in dollars, most expenditure in dollars, but tax being paid in sterling as GCP is a UK company, it is sufficiently complicated that it is always worth having a professional sort it out.
Complete Guild Adventurer #4. This boils down to updating the HARP stats in the relevant adventures and writing a new introduction. Then I hand all the material over to Terry for layout, and we to-and-fro the document between us checking that it stays error-free. Meanwhile I ensure that I have the most current payment information for all contributors so that I can get them paid on publication. Publication will be as a pdf and, if the size is over the OBS/LS minimum page count, in printed softcover a few weeks later.
Speaking of Terry, there’s obviously lots of Shadow World work underway. From my perspective, this means emails to Terry checking on progress, reviews of drafts of Tales from the Green Gryphon Inn and Emer 2, and then the organisational phase where I put artists under contract and get volunteers to craft the necessary RMSS stats. For third-party modules such as Lethys and “Shade”, my role is ensuring the timely transfer of feedback at the moment.
For HARP Bestiary, the work is twofold. Firstly, there is checking how the other contributors have been getting on, achieving consistency and consensus in terms of introducing new special abilities, and organising the checking of proposed stats against the rules. Secondly there are the chapters that I need to write, which are a mixture of importing creatures from the Something Wicked manuscript and revising them to conform to the new monster creation rules, plus of course recreating some Undead and Demon staples. As the descriptions of monsters start to accumulate, I will be sending out artwork requests so that the project can accelerate to layout.
For HARP Folkways, I need to drop Jonathan Cassie an email and see how he’s been getting on with this, what input he requires from me, and when he expects to deliver a draft.
For the Spacemaster Imperium setting project, I will be producing a master list of the products from which we need text extracted, checking the results of the fan organised OCRing to see how well the content has been retrieved, and then putting what still needs to be done on a big list so that volunteers can choose their targets and avoid duplication of effort.
For Maximiliano Tabacman’s ERA software, the work needed is to finalise how it can most sensibly be packaged up for commercial release.
For Unified Rolemaster, my immediate task is essentially to nag “Are we there yet?” The moment that the drafts are returned, they will go for a deliberately minimalist layout and be sent into public beta. My expectation is that the RMU team will have generated solutions acceptable to the fan base for the controversial areas highlighted in the first round. That being so, while public playtest finds and resolves any remaining issues, I will be able to set in motion the necessary artwork creation and acquisition.
Until next time
Time to get cracking on that todo list. The next scheduled Briefing will be in June.
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.