Author Topic: Director's Briefing - July 2016  (Read 2397 times)

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Offline NicholasHMCaldwell

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Director's Briefing - July 2016
« on: July 01, 2016, 02:44:39 AM »
Welcome

To the sixty-second Briefing and the seventh scheduled Briefing of 2016. The summer beckons here with sporadic visits to the office, occasional short conferences, writing up some research, gently preparing next year's material, and actual holiday. Some of that holiday will be actual vacation when my leave and my wife's are in synch, some will be spent writing and editing at home! That's the plan and I intend to be militant about sticking to it.

RMU

Graham Bottley, who has taken over the reins of Spell Law, has completed most of his significant changes to Spell Law and the team is reflecting on those proposals. Graham is already bending his will to tackling Treasure Law and simplifying some of its systems. Jonathan is continuing to press on with the combat table updates, and will then join with Joeri in bringing Creature Law to where it needs to be - two volumes, the first of ready-to-use monsters, the second of more ready-to-use monsters and the design/customisation system.

Adventure Modules

Andrew and Heleen Durston are quietly working away on the Trail of the Corrupt. First draft is expected in August.

Brad White will be going under contract for a trilogy of adventure modules. These will be statted for RMU and HARP.

Shadow World

Terry is in multiple places at once - writing new words in southwest Emer (for Emer IV), writing new material for northeast Jaiman, while at the same time making revisions to both Emer I and Emer II.

HARP

Firstly, on the HARP sourcebook wishlist, discussions continue regarding HARP Strongholds and I already have some sense from the author of what the proposal is likely to include.

Secondly, I have had a chance to review Joel Lovell's HARP SF adventure module, The Poseidon Gambit. The manuscript is already in a very good place here - Joel only has some plot and setting points to fine-tune, nothing major. Joel has also produced a number of great renderings to illustrate the work. If you look at the covers of HARP SF and HARP SF Xtreme, you will understand how well Joel has assimilated the Tintamar setting, and that’s clear again in The Poseidon Gambit.

Thirdly, most of the art for HARP Folkways has now been allocated and is underway. I am hopeful that all of the art will be in place at some point in September, whereupon HARP Folkways will be sent to layout.

Fourthly, I have written some words about Gargoyles, Sharks and Wyverns. No, this has nothing to do with HARP Bestiary. Once upon a time, there was a true treasure of a HARP sourcebook known as Loot: a Field Guide written by Jon Cassie. For contractual reasons, it disappeared into IP limbo, but Jon and I came to an arrangement some time ago to allow it to return. It requires a mechanics update to ensure that its material is consistent with HARP Fantasy and HARP College of Magics, and my plan is to complete this as soon as possible. We already have HARP Loot's new art in hand, so as soon as my update pass is complete, it will transfer to Terry for layout, and I will return to stat block work for HARP Bestiary.

Until next time

I return to working on HARP Loot. The next scheduled Briefing will be in August

Best wishes,
Nicholas

Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd
Dr Nicholas HM Caldwell
Director, Iron Crown Enterprises Ltd
Publisher of Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Shadow World, Cyradon, HARP & HARP SF, and Cyberspace, with products available from www.drivethrurpg.com
Author: Mentalism Companion, GURPS Age of Napoleon, Construct Companion, College of Magics, HARP SF/HARP SF Xtreme

Offline assur

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Re: Director's Briefing - July 2016
« Reply #1 on: July 13, 2016, 01:43:38 PM »
HARP Bestiary isn't your priority? It's difficult to understand what it's your release schedule priority; Folkway, Bestiary, Strongholds, Loot: a field guide. Can you clarify?

Offline NicholasHMCaldwell

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Re: Director's Briefing - July 2016
« Reply #2 on: July 13, 2016, 05:10:21 PM »
HARP Bestiary isn't your priority? It's difficult to understand what it's your release schedule priority; Folkway, Bestiary, Strongholds, Loot: a field guide. Can you clarify?

Strongholds will be written by a freelancer. Wearing my line editor hat, I spend some time in email discussions to help shape the freelancer's outline. This is prep work now that will lead to a future product written by someone else. We need a flow of HARP products and that means putting other people to writing them.

Folkways has been written by a freelancer. Wearing my Director hat,  I have to write the agreements with the artists so that they create the necessary art for the product. Then the artists work their magic and in due course another product gets published.

The work that I still have to do on Bestiary needs laptop time not time on my tablet on train journeys and I am not the only person who has some work still to do, so it won't be ready for layout until everyone is done. (Though we can already use large chunks for freelance work).

I took the liberty of doing some work on Loot because I had an opportunity and Loot needs to be progressed as well.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

Dr Nicholas HM Caldwell
Director, Iron Crown Enterprises Ltd
Publisher of Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Shadow World, Cyradon, HARP & HARP SF, and Cyberspace, with products available from www.drivethrurpg.com
Author: Mentalism Companion, GURPS Age of Napoleon, Construct Companion, College of Magics, HARP SF/HARP SF Xtreme

Offline Hurin

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Re: Director's Briefing - July 2016
« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2016, 03:03:00 PM »

Graham Bottley, who has taken over the reins of Spell Law, has completed most of his significant changes to Spell Law and the team is reflecting on those proposals. Graham is already bending his will to tackling Treasure Law and simplifying some of its systems.

On that point, if it is helpful, I would say several specific aspects of Treasure Law could be simplified.

Take for example the rules for recharging magic items. One might expect this to be a relatively simple thing, but the rules as they stand seem more complicated than they need to be (Treasure Law, p. 156):

'By casting the appropriate Charge spell (e.g., Charge Wand for a wand) daily for a number of TUs equal to the level of the Charge spell times the level of the highest level embedded spell divided by the highest level spell embeddable in the item type, an Alchemist can restore the item to a fully charged state. If this results in a fractional TU, round up to the nearest whole TU. Note that only a full recharging cycle will have an effect. You cannot take half the time to charge an item "half full", nor does it take less time to recharge an item that has some charges remaining unused. In the rare event of multiple charged abilities, each recharges separately.'

Surely there could be a simpler equation for how long it takes to charge a wand? And why can't I partially recharge it?

Wouldn't it be simpler just to say that a successful roll on Attunement or Runes (depending on item type), and expenditure of PP equal to the level of the item/spell, recharges one charge of the item?
'Last of all, Húrin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed'. --J.R.R. Tolkien

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Offline jdale

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Re: Director's Briefing - July 2016
« Reply #4 on: July 15, 2016, 03:17:21 PM »
We're currently discussing that sort of thing, so specific comments and suggestions (like the one you posted above) would be timely. Probably better to put them on the appropriate board though.
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Offline Hurin

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Re: Director's Briefing - July 2016
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2016, 03:42:43 PM »
We're currently discussing that sort of thing, so specific comments and suggestions (like the one you posted above) would be timely. Probably better to put them on the appropriate board though.

Will do.
'Last of all, Húrin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed'. --J.R.R. Tolkien

'Every party needs at least one insane person.'  --Aspen of the Jade Isle