Village module

[GrumpyOldMan]

Harn is great, but I never know which stuff to buy. Thanks for the advice.

BTW, do you actually play Harn, or only D&D? I've never played Harn, or actually used it in my D&D games directly, but I really enjoy reading it, and I've always wanted to get around to porting in some of their stuff.

I currently run two campaigns: a Hârn campaign set mostly in the south western part of the island of Hârn. I use unmodified HârnMaster3 rules; and a RuneQuest campaign set in and around the River of Cradles.

I obviously like percentage skill based systems and hit location charts.

Both campaigns have stalled due to the inability of my players to get together on a regular basis (we all have children). I’ve managed about 8 sessions so far this year. If my campaign was moving, I wouldn’t be here!

My Hârn campaign is very low-key, lots of rain, physical discomfort and travel, plus a few sudden bursts of violence. I’ve tried to make it ‘ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.’ People too, no elves or dwarves or any other fancy races, just humans. In all the years they’ve been playing they have fought a couple of ‘trolls’ and helped take out an ‘orcs nest,’ but in the main, they’ve been up against human villains.

HârnMaster is not good at ‘epic,’ it is too easy to die. I still remember a session where four pc’s had tracked down a murderer. He was cornered, a wide river behind him, but he was in deep cover. The players decided to charge him. He downed one with a crossbow bolt, wounded a second with a thrown dagger and injured a third in the, initially, one on one sword fight. The fourth player, the parties spellcaster had to abort a spell and rush to stop the first player from bleeding to death. The bad guy was no more skilled than the party.

HârnWorld, as I’ve probably said before, is set up for anything from small scale to epic. Wars and/or civil wars are possible in any of the feudal kingdoms, and the one republic. A revolution by the oppressed could take place in the north. The difficult thing for many people to grasp is that since its creation 20 odd years ago not one thing has changed. It is still the year 720 on Hârn. The world is set up for the GM to move history forward in the direction he wants. Not everyone likes this. I do.

 

[haakon1]

HârnWorld, as I’ve probably said before, is set up for anything from small scale to epic. Wars and/or civil wars are possible in any of the feudal kingdoms, and the one republic. A revolution by the oppressed could take place in the north. The difficult thing for many people to grasp is that since its creation 20 odd years ago not one thing has changed. It is still the year 720 on Hârn. The world is set up for the GM to move history forward in the direction he wants. Not everyone likes this. I do.

I respect that a lot, and I resent that my favored campaign setting, Greyhawk, has been aged forward in ways that don't work for my campaign. It creates a lot of re-work.

I also respect the "feel" of Harn, which is more . . . real somehow than most medieval fantasy RPG -- it takes medieval as more important than the magical.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

-- it takes medieval as more important than the magical.

Over the years I've read many Hârn campaign write-ups. Not all are low-key like mine. I've come to the conclusion that it's easier to add much more magic & monsters to the setting, which assumes that they'e rare, than it would be to extract magic & monsters from a high magic world.

 

[grodog]

I respect that a lot, and I resent that my favored campaign setting, Greyhawk, has been aged forward in ways that don't work for my campaign. It creates a lot of re-work.

How's that haakon1? Are you buying new GH products I'm not aware of?

I've tried Harn once back in the '90s sometime, but it took even longer than 3.x to create a character (though less time than Champions, from what I've heard).

 

[haakon1]

How's that haakon1? Are you buying new GH products I'm not aware of?

Sure, anything published since 1992 is "new", and much of it has references to the silly Greyhawk Wars, which requires much editing and crossing out. I like Roger Moore and Erik Mona's work, but they should have re-set to the Gygax Greyhawk, then deepened, rather than deepening the corrupted version.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

I've tried Harn once back in the '90s sometime, but it took even longer than 3.x to create a character (though less time than Champions, from what I've heard).

It takes me about 30 minutes, less if I'm using one of the character generation programmes. It's all to do with familiarity! If your player doesn't know the system and wants to carefully read every option for every feat generating a DnD3.x character can take just as long.

 

[grodog]

It takes me about 30 minutes, less if I'm using one of the character generation programmes. It's all to do with familiarity! If your player doesn't know the system and wants to carefully read every option for every feat generating a DnD3.x character can take just as long.

Yeah, we were definitely new players, so it took forever (in Harn). Using a program with 3.x also speeds things up a LOT, but that somehow lacks the fun of building the character manually, for me anyway---when I have to resort to a macro-laced excel spreadsheet or a PC program to build my characters, the game's gotten too complex (again, for me).