An interesting project by the Guild Companion that is worth supporting if you are interested in getting some Adventures for your ICE games

Ladies and gentlemen,

We’re putting the adventures back into role-playing.

The Guild Companion proposes to publish The Guild Adventurer, a compilation of original adventures and adventure-related material for Rolemaster, Shadow World, Spacemaster, and HARP. We have commissioned and received four complete scenarios and two adventure-support articles. The Guild Adventurer is currently in layout phase.

In this premier issue, we have:
“The Temple of the Three”, a Shadow World adventure written by Terry Amthor himself, the creator of Kulthea, and dual-statted for RM2 and RMFRP.
“Web of the Kobolds”, an adventure by Tim Dugger, ICE System Editor and codesigner of HARP, and multi-statted for RM2, RMFRP, and HARP.
“The Vampire’s Barrow”, a HARP adventure by Nicholas HM Caldwell, author of Mentalism Companion, Construct Companion, College of Magics, and the upcoming HARP SF role-playing game.
“The Paranoia Game”, a Spacemaster:Privateers by Robert Defendi, author and designer of the entire Spacemaster:Privateers product line.
plus:
“People, Places and Paraphernalia: The Flying Toadstool Inn”, an adventure location for HARP by Allen Maher, contributor to the HARP character compilation, Friends & Rivals.
“People, Places and Paraphernalia: The Red Hooded Traveler’s Inn”, an adventure location for HARP by Aaron Smalley, author of City of Archendurn.

We had intended to use fundable.org for this ransom; however, our ransom is below their minima for total and individual pledges.

So, instead, we are going to use an honor system.

If you want to see The Guild Adventurer, send me an email at editor@guildcompanion.com:
Give it the subject TGA One: Pledge

In the email, include:
your name or your online alias (whichever you prefer) [so we can name you as a Supporting Patron in the Credits]
a valid email address [so that we can send you a Patron coupon to purchase TGA#1 at a discount price]
and how many copies of TGA#1 you pledge to buy at the discount price of five (5) US dollars. [normally this will be one copy, but I know some people buy on behalf of friends]

We need 100 pledges for the ransom to succeed. We will run the ransom until 100 pledges are received or the 31st October (whichever happens first). Assuming the ransom succeeds TGA#1 will go on sale at RPGNow.

Remember, by pledging you are helping to ensure that there will be new published adventures for Rolemaster, Spacemaster, and HARP, you will be credited as a Patron, and you will save two dollars on the normal retail price of The Guild Adventurer.

Please use this thread for any queries you may have about The Guild Adventurer or the ransom process. I will set up a separate thread as a running total of pledges received.

Best wishes,
Nicholas HM Caldwell

Here’s a copy of an announcement Tim (Rasyr) posted on the ICE Forums including some information about a project I’ve been helping out with, Rolemaster Classic.

Apparently, this latest newsletter from Bruce may have been mangled by anti-spam progams for some reason. Therefore, I am reposting it here.

Quote
Hi Folks,

There was a complaint on the forums recently that we have made Spacemaster 2 PDFs available and have not made Rolemaster 2 PDFs available. So we are fixing that today. Just be aware that these are scans like the Spacemaster 2, Star Strike, and Armored Assault products put up recently and that the PDF text is not searchable. Here are the first 3 RM2 titles from the ICE Online Store “Oldies But Goodies” category (http://store.ironcrown.com/category.jsp?category=9546):

1100P Arms Law & Claw Law $5: http://store.ironcrown.com/detail.jsp?itemId=1467683&category=130428
1200P Spell Law $10: http://store.ironcrown.com/detail.jsp?itemId=1467684&category=130428
1300P Character Law & Campaign Law $10: http://store.ironcrown.com/detail.jsp?itemId=1467685&category=130428

We are releasing three main rules books today in PDF and ST# 1400P Creatures & Treasures will follow later. Very few additional RM2 products will follow directly from ICE as few of the additional books contain intellectual property that we entirely own. At the moment I do not expect to go back and purchase those rights, but we will be trying to work through The Guild Companion (http://www.guildcompanion.com) like we did with the recent Castles & Ruins release and the upcoming Essence Companion.

Before purchasing these PDFs, please be aware that we are in the process, and have been for some time, of redoing these RM2 books for full re-release. We initiated the project with the help of LordMiller and his mighty band of Rolemaster experts. Up until recently they have done the bulk of the work and we are extremely grateful to them for what they have done. It will be hard on them, but LordMiller and his crew will still have to remain mostly in the background a bit longer as it is still too early to talk about details of the new releases.

The new series will be called Rolemaster Classic and will consist of both PDF and physical books available on our website and through distribution. Prices and sizes have yet to be set in stone. The first four books in the series are Character/Campaign Law, Spell Law, Arms Law, and Creatures & Treasures. We are still not sure when the first release will hit but we are aiming to have the first book out in the Fall 2006.

We are planning mainly graphical and organizational changes with no material changes to the rules. We intend that someone using RMC will get the same gaming experience that the 1989 editions provided, but with much better presentation and organization. It will be much easier to use and to teach as a result.

We are not abandoning RMFRP and both Rolemaster lines will see increased support in the coming years particularly in the area of adventures and background releases that can be done for both versions. The RM2 fanbase is still one of the largest parts of the Rolemaster world and this project allows them to fully participate now.

We will be releasing more details in the weeks ahead.

Best,

Bruce at ICE

Additionally, ICE would like to take a moment, to to publicly and proudly thank LordMiller and his mighty band of Rolemaster experts which include the following folks:

LordMiller
ictus
Brent Knorr
Cormac Doyle
eiseg
munchy
maikeru
Ned

I would also like to take a moment to thank our Global Moderators (Nick Caldwell, lazvon, Midknight, ChosenDM) and Rob Defendi for helping the RMC team out with advice and comments and everything in general.

They are a great bunch and all deserve a tremendous round of thanks!!

Note: If I have forgotten anybody, my aopolgies.

——————————————————————————–
TANSTAAFL

For those of you that are fans of Spacemaster 2nd Edition, ICE has recently released PDF versions of some of the material for that version of the game, including the Core rules, Star Strike, the three Vessel Compendiums, Armored Assault, and the Armor Reserves Vehicle Compendium.
They can be purchased at:

http://store.ironcrown.com/items.jsp;jsessionid=U3jdLsPeQQgbXG3k?category=23191

Well, it’s vacation time for me, have a couple of weeks off work and I’m only leaving town for part of one week, so it’s a chance to plan to get more done than I’ll actually have time for

There’s a couple of projects to work on, I’ve got a project for ICE that I spent a good part of today working on, need to do somw more work on that tomorrow too (don’t ask, I can’t tell), but I think the main focus tomorrow will be getting some things done on my HARP Sci Fi Playtest game over at RPGResources. I need to post a summary of the players involved, a summary of the story so far. I definitely need to work on creating the “Psychic Pack Rat” race so I can do up a character sheet for Gustav the rat.
Also need to start a couple new threads for the next part of the story, and come up with a basic map.

The other thing for that site will be to update my character Jordon in the Kraken World game to third level.

Some of my other vacation plans, Thursday will likely be spent at the Calgary Stampede, then take off to Fernie for an extended weekend, leaving Friday and coming back sometime Tuesday. While I’m out there I’d like to finish reading “Deadhouse Gates” by Steven Erikson, then start (and probably finish) reading “The Traveler” by John Twelve Hawks. The problem with “Deadhouse Gates” is that I read the first half of it about a month ago, and haven’t read much of it since, so I’ve sort of lost track of a few things, I might have to back up a couple chapters to refresh my memory. I enjoyed the first book in the series quite abit, and I’m enjoying this one too, but I think he writes the sort of novel that you really need to be able to devote the time to read them from start to finish without too many breaks.

When we are out in Fernie we’ll probably play a couple games of “Killer Bunnies” and hopefully try out the “Zombies” game too, as well as doing a few hikes and maybe some day trips to do some of the mine tours or something similiar. Might do a little work on some parts of my HARP Sci Fi campaign as well.

Once I’m back in town, it will be time for my annual tour of the local used book stores. I like spend a day at least once a year and hit as many of them as I can, looking for interesting novels and of course good finds for gaming items.

Some of the other things I want to get done are to get some of the extra copies of gaming items that I’ve accumulated over the years listed on ebay and see how the selling end of things goes for me. I’d also like to do a little more playing around with WordPress and experimenting with Php and MySQL to see what the best method of converting the product lists to be database driven might be. That will be a really long term project and I don’t really expect to get any real changes going right away. Right now I just need to learn more about using customized fields and Page templates in WordPress and compare doing things that way to doing it as a seperate Database. Since I don’t know alot about WordPress, PHP or MySQL, some reading and playing around will definitely be required.

I’d also like to work on doing up the Aquatic Elf as a race for HARP as a Guild Companion article, as well as doing somemore work on Dolphins as a character (or at leas NPC) race for HARP, complete with spell use and creating several spells unique to the underwater environment. Really part of a larger project for dealing with Underwater in HARP, and possibly Rolemaster as well. Again, something I don’t expect to work alot on on the vacation, but would like to get at least something done on it, even if it’s just collecting the various notes I have scattered all over into one area.

And, mixed in with all of that, there’s some yardwork that I’d like to get done and a garage that is sorely in need of some rearranging and cleaning out.

The PDF version of the new HARP Gamemaster Screens are now available at www.harphq.com

Description: Everything you need to play HARP at your fingertips! Spend more time playing and less time looking for tables. This 20-page booklet (plus a 4-page full-color cover that’s backed with 4 pages of crucial critical tables and other charts) contains:

• ManeuverTables
• Lore Tables
• Attack Tables
• EncounterTables
• MonsterTables
• Herbs & Poisons
• Magic Item Tables
• Mundane Gear
• Special GM Forms

Don

Well, so far the count for actual real comments entered is 11, most of which I made, spam comments, 32. So, getting three spams for every real comment. Fortunately the filters catch 90% of those, and anything that gets past that still needs to get moderated by me. Almost makes me wonder if it’s worth it, but time will tell.

And don’t even get me started on Referral Spam, my web stats have become almost useless because of the amount of referral spam cluttering them up. I know there are steps that can be taken to reduce it, but I really don’t want to invest the amount of effort that seems to be required to prevent it. But, if anyone knows of a simple method to control it, please pass it on!

There is a possibility that the ICE WebRing will be down late Friday night / early Saturday Morning May 19th and 20th as my ISP will be doing some maintenance on the server at that time.

ICE has recently released the first in a planned series of Gamemaster Screens for their products. This is the Rolemaster Screens and they are available at: The ICE Store

I’ve updated the Headers and Menus on the static pages so that it looks consistent (almost) with the Header and Menus on the Wordpress pages, actually managed to get it to pull in the Wordpress menu on the non-Wordpress pages, although the column width shrinks a little and the spacing between lines of text gets bigger on the non-Wordpress pages. At least thats what it does in Explorer.
In Firefox, it seems to shrink everything instead

I’ve gone back and started doing some more work with the Shadow World Character spreadsheet and have discovered a few glitches with it. Picking certain combinations of races and backgrounds seems to give the skills calculations indigestion. I think I’ve got the majority of the problems figured out, but I’m going to hold off on posting an updated Master Sheet until I finish working with it and am pretty confident that I’ve got everything working okay.
Also, I won’t be going back and redoing the individual characters that are already posted, they should be fine the way they are.