Harn

[JoseFreitas]

I played Harn the first time back in 86 or 87. I was a player, and the GM used Chivalry & Sorcery 2nd Edition rules, This started a longish love affair with Harn (I pretty much bought most of the product for it over the years, and still do), and with C&S 2, also (I play a bastardized mix of AD&D 1st and C&S2nd). I love the setting and also used a lot of its stuff in my Greyhawk campaign.

Nowadays, though.... I still love the setting, I still think it's the way to go if you want a realistic low magic world, but the problem is the publishers. They seem like they want to kill the setting. VERY FEW releases (I am talking about one release every couple of years or so), the prices are OUTRAGEOUS, like 30 to 40$ for a binder with a few dozen punched sheets in it, with adequate but not great art, and competent if uninspired layout, and most of the stuff coming out these days is pretty much reissues of older books.

Fortunately, the fans put out an amazing amount of good, well written, professionally laid out PDFs, and the harnforum is one of the places you can have an intelligent conversation about medieval role-playing games.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I did a search on my DVD RPG PDF archives and turned up a D20 conversion for Harn. I may have to give a try.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Nowadays, though.... I still love the setting, I still think it's the way to go if you want a realistic low magic world, but the problem is the publishers. They seem like they want to kill the setting. VERY FEW releases (I am talking about one release every couple of years or so), the prices are OUTRAGEOUS, like 30 to 40$ for a binder with a few dozen punched sheets in it, with adequate but not great art, and competent if uninspired layout, and most of the stuff coming out these days is pretty much reissues of older books.

I must, to some extent, disagree.
Very few releases: true, but there are several factors to take into account.
First, Hârn is currently in schism, creator N Robin Crossby had a falling out with Tom Dalgleish, the head of Columbia Games. The issues appear to be creative (Robin likes putting accents (he prefers the term diacritic marks) to place names, Tom does not) and financial (each claims that the other owes them money). As a consequence there is a dispute between the parties. Briefly, Robin claims that CGI are in breach of contract and have no right to publish any Hârn material and Tom claims that Robin can’t revoke CGI’s rights without first using an agreed grievance proceedure.
Second: N Robin Crossby is unwell and has been for several years. He is currently undergoing another regime of chemotherapy.

The release schedule is not, however, ‘one release every couple of years or so’. Since ‘the schism’ Robin has been releasing his own material independently, as ‘Kelestia Productions. So there are two (tiny) companies releasing material. Kelestias stuff is produced by Robin and a few of friends, it’s done on a shoestring budget and releases have been badly hit by Robin’s illness.

The ‘worst’ recent year for releases (I’m defining ‘recent’ as: since 2000) was 2006, which had only three releases from CGI and one from Kelestia. Most years it’s 6+ articles.
Of the CGI products one, Gardiren, is, probably at the top end of CGI prices: $19.99 for 38 loose leaf sheets detailing a town & castle. It was all new material.

The outrageous price of $30-$40 for a binder with ‘a few dozen punched sheets in it’ presumably refers to one of the Kingdom Modules. The two available are each $29.99, the smaller (Kanday) is 52 pages.

Most of the stuff coming out is NEW. A lot of it was based on old, out of print material. But, the Kelestia stuff is ALL new and the CGI stuff, for the past two years has been ALL NEW.

The last thing which could possibly be described as a ‘reissue of older books’ was City of Tashal. It took a 12 page article from two Out of Print publications (Cities of Hârn and Son of Cities) and turned it into a 70 page highly detailed city. That’s over 50 pages of NEW material. Fan work has further expanded Tashal to over 100 pages!

Fortunately, the fans put out an amazing amount of good, well written, professionally laid out PDFs, and the harnforum is one of the places you can have an intelligent conversation about medieval role-playing games.

I entirely agree.

Of course, most of the fans and many of the forum members are also the writers of official material.

 

[Sigurd]

Thanks for the diplomatic overview Grump.


Sigurd

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Thanks

Also

I forgot

…with adequate but not great art…

Art is always a matter of taste. I think that the Hârn artwork is good, sometimes great, and always accurate for the milieu.

CGI’s current artist of choice is Richard Luschek, check out:
www.richardluschek.com
Not everyone likes his stuff, I do.

Kelestia have used Eric Hotz (a long time Hârn illustrator who also did a lot of work on Ars Magica) and Juha Makkonen. I like their stuff too, check out:
www.erichotz.com
and
www.raide4.com

 

[Graybeard]

My former Harn GM has done some playtesting and contributing of material. As for the artwork, I really like the maps and haven't looked at very many recent releases. The older artwork though, IMO was not very good. I just didn't like the style.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

My earlier comments about the dispute between Columbia Games (Publishers of Hârn) and and N Robin Crossby (Creator, writer and mapper of Hârn) should be ignored. It would appear likely that the dispute could be resolved in the worst possible way.

Some people get cancer and get cured, while the rest of us have to fight ‘holding actions’. Some of those fighting holding actions can make the fight last for many years… The rest of us well… that has abruptly become the troubling part. I just got back from my latest visit to the oncologist. For those of you who care, I’ll just be blunt and worry about amusing us all later.
It seems that the chemotherapy protocol I am on has stopped working (they all, eventually, do) and my troubling little oncs are not as little any more. In fact they have doubled in size since December. There is one more chemo-protocol left, but it is given only a 10% chance of success.

The above is taken from his www.Kelestia.com website. Mr Crossby is a remarkable man, and has worked meticulously to create a complex and believable game world. A world which was, and is capable of being used with almost any fantasy rules system. Mr Crossby, like many game creators is passionate about his vision. His dispute was (IMO) because he wanted to pursue his vision in his own way. As a long time fan of Hârn, I am truly devastated by this news.

 

[Maldin]

This is terrible news indeed!! While I've never used the Harnmaster game rules, I've been using Robin's setting supplements in my campaigns since the very beginning... 1983/1984... and still do. The quality of the work set industry standards that put to shame most every other publisher... including the King (TSR/WotC). I sincerely hope that Robin beats the statistics! Best of luck and best wishes! And thanks for all the fantastic work.

Denis, aka "Maldin"
Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com

 

[Aholibamah]

I don't actually play or run Harn, but I do use the material. I don't agree with the poster who said that the place names are always difficult to adapt; in particular the latest pdfs you can get at lythia.com for example have names you can use or easily adapt to any campaign.

One of the things I like about Harn is that you can also get information on how a craft guild would operate in a game setting (you can always make use of history books and technical information but it's easier to have actual game material) or for instance you can simply take a pre-written example of a village or manor and just plunk it down in a game setting. Like others here I use it for a somewhat low magic setting when I need a place to be well developed.

Harn is also good for ordinary characters for any medieval setting game; it could certainly easily be used in Pendragon for example.

 

[Dan Bell]

Poor Robin!!! I'm so sorry to hear this news.