Added some comments to some of my older ToDo list posts and moved some items from the “Site ToDo List” category to the “Site ToDo List - Completed” category.  One in particular that might be of interest is a comment on the post that I made for “New Year’s Resolutions” from last year.

I think I will review what is still in the “ToDo’s” and break some of the large posts into individual items to make them easier to track.

Added a whole bunch of information to the Database version of the ICE Product list, in fact it is probably more up to date than the regular lists. Started using thumbnails that are 100 wide instead of 80, it will take a long time to update them all so they will be mixed for awhile.
Added entries for the PDF and Hardcover versions of the Rolemaster products, still need to go and add in those entries for the other Product Lines.

One of my long term plans for the ICE Product list is to move from being a set of static pages to being database driven.

A bit of technical background on the site, I’m currently using Wordpress on my site, although most of the page entries other than the ones on the main page are still either standalone php pages or Wordpress Pages that just contain an include statement that pulls in a standalone page.

Ideally I want to get to the point where someone using the site can pick which items they want to see on a list (i.e. All Rolemaster, RM2, English only, etc) and how they want it sorted (Product number, release date ascending or descending, alphabetically, etc.
It would also be good if they could choose which information would show on the list

Then they can generate a customized product list and still be able to click a link to get to the full product information page.

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It’s time to add some information to the Product List for Rolemaster Classic. Should also update my “What is Rolemaster” article to include a section on it. The choices are to add the items to the existing RM2 lists or to create a new RMC section. I’m leaning towards creating a new section, but if anyone has an opinion on it, feel free to post a comment.
When I do the update to the “What is Rolemaster” article, I should also log onto Wikipedia and add that section there since a good portion of that article was derived from the “What is Rolemaster” article.

Still looking for a good plugin for Wordpress that might be able to handle the Product pages as a database but haven’t found anything I like yet, will probably end up doing it as a seperate php-mysql set of pages. Any suggestions are welcome.

It’s almost the New Year so I thought I’d post some of my goals for the ICEWEBRING site and gaming in general.

The switch to WordPress hasn’t been as useful as I had hoped. It seems to have slowed the access to pages down significantly and there have been very few comments posted by people. However, the advantage of being able to catagorize the entries I’ve made and the potential for being able to move to a more database driven design for the ICE Product lists means that I think I will stick with this format.

I don’t have big plans for the site for this year, I need to clarify some of the entries for some of the earlier products, particularly those that I am discovering had multiple versions released. There are also several areas where the cover images could be improved, I still have small images and now have aquired copies of the products so could easily scan in larger images.

I also want to get all the major pages moved to be WordPress pages and get rid of the “unconverted” portion of the left hand menu.
There’s also some tweaking of the style sheets needed to get some things cleaned up. That’s about it for planned site changes. I’ll probably still work on entering the individual products into a database behind the scenes, but I don’t expect to add any access to that from the site this year.

My main focus this year will be on doing up some additional articles for publication, first up is an Adventure that will hopefully appear in the 2nd edition of the Guild Adventurer. A big part of getting that done is learning how to use Campaign Cartographer 3 / Dungeon Designer 3 for doing maps. It’s coming along well so far, but I’ve only done two basic buildings. The challenging part will be doing up the plans for the two ships in the adventure.

I’m also hopeful that ICE will get HARP Sci Fi published this year and I can work on doing some articles related to that. I have a couple of creatures and races ready to go from my playtest group, and I am hoping to do an adaption for running Star Wars with HARP Sci Fi.

I’m also planning on doing several more Underwater Articles for HARP for the Guild Companion, including Underwater Spells and an article on Mermaids.
In there somewhere, I will be doing some more contributions to the Rolemaster Classic project with ICE, but I couldn’t reveal any details about that right now even if I knew them.

That’s about it, doesn’t sound like much, but it does leave room for some unexpected additional projects, and since another goal for me this year is to get out and excercise more and spend less time in front of the computer, I think it’s a reasonable amount to aim for.

Fixed up the links to the cover images on several pages, a few Shadow World pages and about half of the Spacemaster 1st and 2nd edition pages. These got broken when the pages were converted to php extensions, and they are pages where the cover images are not in the standard directories. These are usually smaller than usual cover images.
Since I now own most of these items, the todo list entry is to scan in larger images and update these pages so the images are in the correct directories.
Also need to add in the Spacemaster DataNet Pdf’s to the Spacemaster product list.

Thanks to a nice trade with Turambar from over at the ICE Forums, I’ve been able to update the MERP Product pages to show my new acquisitions. It really is amazing how many products ICE pumped out for MERP between 1984 and 1997. Doing the updates also made me realize that I haven’t included the Publication year column on the MERP 2nd Edition page. Another item for my ToDo List.

So, for no particular reason, here is the list of MERP items I’m still looking for, although I’m not looking too hard at the moment and am not willing to drop alot of cash on them.

8000 Middle Earth Role Playing (UK)
8001 Middle Earth Role Playing Combat Screen
8011 Mouths of the Entwash
8012 Warlords of the Desert
8013 Dark Mage of Rhudaur
8015 Forest of Tears
8080 Rivendell The House of Elrond
8090 Brigands of Mirkwood
8100 Middle Earth Roleplaying 1986 Edition Box (UK)
8101 Haunted Ruins of the Dunlendings
8103 Trolls of the Misty Mountains
8105 Gates of Mordor
8107 Woses of the Black Wood
8109 Ghosts of the Southern Anduin
8112 Hazards of the Harad Wood
8202 Teeth of Mordor
8205 Nazgul’s Citadel
3110 Mount Gundabad
3111 Greater Harad
3112 Gorgoroth
3113 The Grey Mountains
3300 Havens of Gondor, Land of Belfalas
3400 Sea-Lords of Gondor, Pelargir & Lebenin
3600 Dunland & the Southern Misty Mountains
3800 Far Harad, the Scorched Land
3900 Shadow in the South
4001 Northwestern Middle Earth Map Set
4010 Mirkwood The Wilds of Rhovanion
4011 Empire of the Witch-King
Rescue in Mirkwood
2002 Middle Earth Accessory Pack ( box )
2003 Middle Earth Campaign Guide
2005 Arnor
2007 Minas Tirith Softcover
2008 MERP Poster Maps
2013 Elves
2014 Dol Guldur
2017 The Shire
2018 Angmar
2019 Mirkwood
2020 Southern Gondor : The People
2021 Southern Gondor : The Land
2022 Arnor : The People
2023 Arnor : The Land
2024 The Lord of the Rings Poster Map
2025 Northern Waste

With the addition of WordPress to this site, one of the things that I can do is set up the Pages that have the information for individual ICE products so people can add comments. Comments could range from a review or opinion on the product, a question about the product, perhaps some errata or pointing out a mistake on the page. You could post that you have a copy of that particular item for sale, or are looking for that particular item, or just about anything.

Now, the problem is that it isn’t a simple task for me to do this, it probably takes about 30 - 45 minutes for me to clean up and adjust each page so it will work properly under WordPress. That doesn’t sound like much until you realize that I think there are now over 400 pages that would need updating.

So, my question is, how many people would find this useful, and if so, which Products would you like to see me get done first?

Here is an example of what the pages would look like:

http://www.icewebring.com/ice-products/rolemaster-first-edition/arms-law/

Please add a comment to this post if this is something you would like to see. Where I put this project on my list of things to do will be greatly influenced by the number of people that respond. Thanks!

(Note: I do have comment moderation turned on, so there will be a delay from when you post your comment until it appears)

From the ICE Forums, and apparently missing from any of the official errata pages

During todays game I was looking at the races in Future Law (PDF version) and noticed something odd. The Stats and background mods are remarkably similar to those of the Dragoon. Is this meant to be this way? I find it odd that the weakest species among the cats are the strongest if you look at the statistics. I looked at the errata for the book, but this wasnt mentioned.

If they are wrong, what should they have been?

It is a misprint, the proper stats were posted by the author in this thread in the old forums:
http://www.ironcrown.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7248

Falaris should be:

Stat Bonuses:
Ag: +10
Co: +0
Me: +2
Re: +2
SD: +8
Em: -2
In: +8
Pr: +4
Qu: +10
St: -4

RR Mods:
Poison: +0
Disease: +0
Fear: +0
Psions: +0

Body Dev. Progression:
0 • 6 • 3 • 2 • 1

Mind Point Dev.
Progression:
0 • 5 • 3 • 2 • 2

Soul Departure:
10 rounds

Recovery Multiplier:
1 times

Race Type:
4
——-

Robert J Defendi, MCSE+I

www.RobertJDefendi.com

“As a matter of fact, I am a cat person. Why do people keep asking that?”