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
More editing and more HARP writing for me to do. The next scheduled Briefing will be in September.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
Director, Guild Companion Publications Ltd
