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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Swanosaurus" data-source="post: 9859637" data-attributes="member: 7044220">I'm slowly re-reading the HARP core book and the Folkways supplement, and their really nice rpg books (both in their own, very different ways).The system is old-fashioned, sure, but not more so than other systems from the same family (Against the Darkmaster, Novus, Fantasy Express), and somehow, it feels a little more open and fun to me than these others - maybe it's the nice little twists on the core ancestries, or the orc-looking, but culturally totally different gryx. The magic system actually is my favourite from the Rolemaster family, with spells as skills which can be modified when casting.It also embodies an ethos of character creation that I find myself drawn to - creating your character from building blocks that can be pretty freely assembled and that interact in a certain way. Choosing a culture in HARP and gaining skill ranks from it somehow feels a little different from choosing a culture in Daggerheart and getting one stunt from it. HARP feels like one of these late 90s RPGs that (maybe accidentally) managed to embody social (de-)constructivism by demonstrating that just by mixing some of the more broader strokes elements (culture, vocation, class background) together that make up a person, you already end up with an extreme breadth of possible outcomes. It's allure is quite similar to Traveller's lifepaths. It's not really outcome-oriented and not very playtable facing - you do a lot of stuff that might not matter once you're sitting at the table and rolling the dice, but these days, I'm not even sure how outcome-oriented I want my rpgs to be. Character creation can be great, even if 70% of it never come up at the table.Folkways doubles down on these ideas - it's more of an essay book that tries to help you outline all the major elements of the fantasy culture you're creating or expanding by providing a kind of checklist. It's clear that a lot of the stuff that it suggests you should do to create your culture will probably never be that relevant, but going through the steps is both fun and might lead you to stuff that you wouldn't have come up with otherwise and that might actually be important. The text is a little wordy, and sometimes reads more like the extensive notes for a great supplement than the supplement itself, but right now, it actually is a great help to me, and there's a lot of thoughts about creating fantasy (or any fictional) cultures in there worth reading. A lot of it is absolutely system-agnostic, but it still feels like a good fit for HARP.</blockquote>

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