Hi.  I have a question for those familiar with the Harn material: Is it too developed to have fantasy adventures?  I'm looking at running a game with 1, and maybe 2, players, low fantasy, low magic, set in a more realistic world, and can handle a mass combat and Harn hits all the targets.  The amount of critters is manageable, I'd like more than are standard and have some material to deal with that.  I read a lot of mundane activities in the published adventures, not much fantasy.  There are wilderness articles (don't own any yet) but the regions seem very developed with keeps, cities, etc to the point that any "monster" would be a major deal.  In the 3ed of Chivalry & Sorcery there was a section talking about roaming monsters and how they'd be handled by a lord, kind of like how elephants roaming through African villages being a major disruption.  I'm not looking at tribes of orcs roaming the land or hordes of dragons but I get the feeling that fantastic creatures would be hunted down pretty quick.  Am I just not reading the right material?  I know I can make it my world but I don't want to stomp over all the good material Harn has.  The player(s) want some fantasy (it's a game for relaxation) and not all the court intrigue all time.

Harn was built with the premise that it is easier to add fantasy than to remove it, I've found that to be true. For example in my game I replaced the Gargun with Warhammer Greenskins because the articles in White Dwarf at the time made the Greenskins colorful and fun.

Quote from: Striker on September 04, 2024, 09:48:09 AMHi.  I have a question for those familiar with the Harn material: Is it too developed to have fantasy adventures?  I'm looking at running a game with 1, and maybe 2, players, low fantasy, low magic, set in a more realistic world, and can handle a mass combat and Harn hits all the targets.  The amount of critters is manageable, I'd like more than are standard and have some material to deal with that.  I read a lot of mundane activities in the published adventures, not much fantasy.  There are wilderness articles (don't own any yet) but the regions seem very developed with keeps, cities, etc to the point that any "monster" would be a major deal.  In the 3ed of Chivalry & Sorcery there was a section talking about roaming monsters and how they'd be handled by a lord, kind of like how elephants roaming through African villages being a major disruption.  I'm not looking at tribes of orcs roaming the land or hordes of dragons but I get the feeling that fantastic creatures would be hunted down pretty quick.  Am I just not reading the right material?  I know I can make it my world but I don't want to stomp over all the good material Harn has.  The player(s) want some fantasy (it's a game for relaxation) and not all the court intrigue all time.

Harn is pretty sparsely populated compared to medieval or dark age Great Britain.

As for the fantastic elements, Harn has Earthmaster sites, Gargun (Harnic Orcs), the pit at Araka-Kalai associated with Ilvir the god who creates weird monsters. And there are other sites like the Plain of Towers and Noron's keep that have fantastic elements.

Yes technically a monster appearing in any of the settled regions would be a big deal but there are lot of wilderness throughout the island of Harn.

You can see how that works from Columbia Games product map
https://columbiagames.com/harn/

And keep in mind even within the blobs of color marking out the kingdoms/republic there are considerable wilderness and rural hinterlands.

If you download the free Harn map and look at all the land marked as cropland you will see just how thinly populated Harn is. Keep in mind that each hex takes about 5 hours of walking to cross if it is level ground.

https://columbiagames.com/harnworld/freemap/

The place to start is the Harndex which is a mini encyclopedia of all the locales in Harn. Then if an entry has an article available then it will also point you what to get out of what is available.

I've played HârnMaster, set in Hârn. I found it enjoyable fantasy - the setting works really well.

I'm a little less bullish on the system, but I think that has to do with trying to run investigation type adventures with it.

Quote from: estar on September 04, 2024, 02:00:24 PMHarn is pretty sparsely populated compared to medieval or dark age Great Britain.

As for the fantastic elements, Harn has Earthmaster sites, Gargun (Harnic Orcs), the pit at Araka-Kalai associated with Ilvir the god who creates weird monsters. And there are other sites like the Plain of Towers and Noron's keep that have fantastic elements.

Yes technically a monster appearing in any of the settled regions would be a big deal but there are lot of wilderness throughout the island of Harn.

It's true that Harn is sparsely populated compared to dark ages Britain, but it's also true that Harn is more settled (and less magical) than many other fantasy worlds. Monsters (Ivashu) are a big deal in Harn - they're not just a normal part of the landscape.

I think it requires some premise-setting. With a good premise, there can be reason for heroes in Harn to go and find Ivashu and other high fantasy elements. On the other hand, if the premise is just that they're typical people in a city, then yeah, it wouldn't fit well for them to just have random encounters with monsters.

Most of my Harn games have been low-fantasy with little magic or monsters - closer to historical-setting games than high fantasy adventure. However, if you set up some Harn PCs who are more powerful and/or weirder than standard, they could be dealing with magic and Ivashu and other high fantasy elements regularly. It's just not the default.

Quote from: jhkim on September 04, 2024, 03:56:15 PMIt's true that Harn is sparsely populated compared to dark ages Britain, but it's also true that Harn is more settled (and less magical) than many other fantasy worlds. Monsters (Ivashu) are a big deal in Harn - they're not just a normal part of the landscape.

Less magical? Sure, if you limit yourself to central regions of the various kingdoms. Which also, where the bulk of published detail happen to lie as well.

As for being more settled, I strongly disagree. Most settings are just content to put a dot on a location, call it a city, and leave it at that. Harn appears more settled because NRC opted to show the pale of settlement that would surround the towns and castles. Greyhawk, Waterdeep, etc., also would have their own surrounding area of settlements, but it rarely fleshed out. Or, more often, just ignored.

For example, the settled area of Kaldor is roughly bounded by a 100 mile by 100 mile square. On the Sword Coast map the corners of a 100 mile by 100 mile centered on Waterdeep would touch on the Sword Mountains in the NW and Ardeep Forest on the SE.

From Kaldor to Chybisa which is a postage stamp sized kingdom less 30 mile wide is a 100 mile. Comparable to the distance between Waterdeep and Daggerford. From Chybisa to the westernmost settlements of Melderyn is another 75 miles. North to Orbaal is over 200 miles of wilderness and the trail to the settled part of western Harn is over 300 miles.

And shown on the map I linked the realms of Harn are small islands in a wilderness sea encompassing an island the size of Madagascar.

So, while I agree that if you stick with the settled regions, then we are talking about a default medieval low fantasy game. But outside of those regions (and in some case even within) the fantasy elements are there to be ramped up if that is the focus of the campaign.

For example, a Harn campaign can have a very Keep on the Borderland feel, with the PCs starting out in the Trobridge Inn and exploring central Harn dodging barbarians and poking around in Gargun (orc) caves, strange ruins, or even a megadungeon in a fallen dwarven city (Kiraz).

Quote from: estar on September 04, 2024, 08:00:37 PMLess magical? Sure, if you limit yourself to central regions of the various kingdoms. Which also, where the bulk of published detail happen to lie as well.

Obviously, I'm going by what the published HârnWorld material is - since that's the canon. The settled kingdoms aren't described as being abuzz about the hordes of magic to be found as soon as one enters the wilderness. Wizards (Shek-Pvar) are described as being rare.

In any given GM's personal Hârn, they are free to create high-magic areas in between the published detail, or even contradict the published detail. I'm just talking about Hârn as portrayed in published material. That's not a straightjacket, but it should be the starting point for discussion.

Quote from: estar on September 04, 2024, 08:00:37 PMAs for being more settled, I strongly disagree. Most settings are just content to put a dot on a location, call it a city, and leave it at that. Harn appears more settled because NRC opted to show the pale of settlement that would surround the towns and castles. Greyhawk, Waterdeep, etc., also would have their own surrounding area of settlements, but it rarely fleshed out. Or, more often, just ignored.

Again, I'm going by what is in the published D&D material - not by what any given DM has. Many D&D modules have a dungeon within a day's walk of a city (or even an hour's walk), and it's in an uninhabited area. One can say that's unrealistic, but that's what the modules tend to assume.

The world of Hârn is full of magic and monsters.  It's also full of people who aren't super heroic demigods with dark vision and five different character classes. 

The Hârnmaster rules aim for realism so you get armor as damage reduction and fatigue for fighting too long.  And the amount of damage your character's body can take will probably never get better, only worse with age. 

But there are wizards who are organized into a strict guild, and clerics, and a rich pantheon of gods who can grant "spells" to the faithful.

There are even Elves and Dwarves, but the player characters will 99% percent of the time be human. 

Quote from: jhkim on September 04, 2024, 09:17:19 PMObviously, I'm going by what the published HârnWorld material is - since that's the canon. The settled kingdoms aren't described as being abuzz about the hordes of magic to be found as soon as one enters the wilderness. Wizards (Shek-Pvar) are described as being rare.

Not disagreeing with that.

Quote from: jhkim on September 04, 2024, 09:17:19 PMIn any given GM's personal Hârn, they are free to create high-magic areas in between the published detail, or even contradict the published detail. I'm just talking about Hârn as portrayed in published material. That's not a straightjacket, but it should be the starting point for discussion.

I happen to know a bit about what been published about Harn

Quote from: jhkim on September 04, 2024, 09:17:19 PMAgain, I'm going by what is in the published D&D material - not by what any given DM has. Many D&D modules have a dungeon within a day's walk of a city (or even an hour's walk), and it's in an uninhabited area. One can say that's unrealistic, but that's what the modules tend to assume.

A day's walk is two hexes in Harn, four if you talking a all out march. Unless you are starting out in the middle of the Thard Valley or in the Kaldor heartland you are within the wilderness within a day. And even in the heartland you are only two days away.

It is trivial to make Harn more D&Dish especially when it comes to the lower level adventures. And for higher levels Harn has fantastic elements and sites that can cranked up. But I think people don't realize just how much fantasy there actually is in Harn.

For example this one-shot was run using the published Field of Daisies.

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2011/06/911-call-from-attic-repost.html

Now if you are looking for a Descent into Avernus style epic adventure well there isn't much of that but... then again.

I'm only familiar with the Kingdom of Melderyn, but as others have suggested, the settled lands are sparsely populated enough to allow a few mysteries to exist in the wastes between villages. More importantly, the Kingdom was bordered on two sides by a howling wilderness. It is on the edge of that wilderness, the quintessential borderlands, that I based my players. It is totally possible to make a few tweaks to some classic D&D adventure locations and set them a few days walk into that wilderness. Just rename the humanoids as gargun or barbarian cultists. Surviving characters would come back to town with stories that absolutely nobody would believe. I really like Harn, but to be honest it is a bit more work adapting things to fit than if you used a generic "D&D-land" setting. I used Castles & Crusades as the rule system.

Harn has the bonus of being grounded in reality. Let's call it verisimilitude. It's not some crazy setting that ignores tons and tons of data as a poster above explained. I don't use Harn when running HarnMaster, but I do steal this and that at times and plonk them right into my setting.

To most, I feel Harn would be too detailed. It's really not. Detail doesn't equal complicated. Much of it comes down to what you want (if you're the DM) in your game. A lot of folks (5E people) want some ultra high-powered world, some don't.

I like being able to add in fantasy elements without the world already being so fantastical it's no longer fun. When everything is magic, nothing is magic.

Just a quick question for the Harn experts here.  I want to see if I have something correct:

Harn World is just the setting which you can play using any system you wish (System Neutral) where Harnmaster is the entire game, setting and rules.

Is that correct?   I have always found Harn interesting but I was worried it would be too hard to run.

Quote from: GhostNinja on September 06, 2024, 10:58:41 AMJust a quick question for the Harn experts here.  I want to see if I have something correct:

Harn World is just the setting which you can play using any system you wish (System Neutral) where Harnmaster is the entire game, setting and rules.

Yes Harn World is system neutral. I have ran Harn campaigns and/or used Harn products (for my Majestic Wilderlands) using multiple fantasy RPGs ranging from the minimal like OD&D to the very detailed like GURPS.

For an overview of Harnmaster I made a series of posts here
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-walk-through-harnmaster-introduction.html

For an overview of Harnworld I recommend downloading the free map from Columbia Games and looking over the backside which contains an excellent terse summary of the setting.

https://secure.columbiagames.com/product/5001A-PDF

Quote from: GhostNinja on September 06, 2024, 10:58:41 AMIs that correct?   I have always found Harn interesting but I was worried it would be too hard to run.

The way Harn works as a setting is you have the Harnworld core book

https://secure.columbiagames.com/product/5001HC

Harnworld consists of a 80 page article on Harn detailing cultures, government, rural manors, cities & towns, economics, price list, religion, history, and campaign.

Then this followed by shorter articles on Kethira the world on which Harn is located, and Lythia, the continent that Harn is part of.

Finally, it is followed by the Harndex, which is a terse encyclopedia in alphabetical order. Fleshing out various locales in one or two paragraphs.

From there you have two choices either buy one of the kingdom hardbacks

Like this one for the Kingdom of Kaldor
https://secure.columbiagames.com/product/5610HC

 or buying individual articles about various locations.

https://secure.columbiagames.com/products/Harn

For a sense of the writing style I recommend going to the following fan site.

https://www.lythia.com/

and download one or more of the Harn Pottage PDFs (free)
https://www.lythia.com/series/pottage/

The quality is a excellent and the various Harn authors are known for keeping things terse and providing a lot of useful information about a location.

So what are the downsides? basically there is one the price. It is priced at a premium and for a good reason, as it is produced by a small company. There used to be another where the only format was loose leaf articles to be placed in binders. But now there is a series of full color hardbacks if you want that format.

If you like the line and become a fan, my recommendation is to subscribe to Harnquest. You will get the new loose-leaf articles plus a 50% discount on the PDFs.

The other things to keep in mind are:
While Harn has its share of "Dungeon" and wilderness adventures, the bulk of its adventuring potential is found in interacting with the NPCs. You can see this in the Harn Pottage series. Most location articles explicitly lists out several hooks and adventure possibilities.

Harn is medieval fantasy but Harn's original author N. Crossby was a Tolkien and fantasy fan so while it got a feel, it also feels part of the same foundation that most fantasy RPGs draw from. Which means individual articles can serve as a supplement for use in other campaign campaigns including those that have a more fantastic side to them. Again, Harn Pottage and the other Lythia downloads illustrate for free how that works.

The trend for newer Harn articles is to focus equally on the physical descriptions and the NPCs descriptions and combine them with full-color illustrations. However, they don't go for a full-color layout. Instead, color is tastefully limited to things like page headers and section dividers. Older Harn articles were black and white and focused more on physical illustrations.

For my part while I only ever ran a handful of Harn campaigns, I used Harn products numerous times in my Majestic Wilderlands campaigns when I needed a keep, castle, or other types of side fleshed out and was pressed for time.

Quote from: estar on September 06, 2024, 11:51:04 AMYes Harn World is system neutral. I have ran Harn campaigns and/or used Harn products (for my Majestic Wilderlands) using multiple fantasy RPGs ranging from the minimal like OD&D to the very detailed like GURPS.

For an overview of Harnmaster I made a series of posts here
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-walk-through-harnmaster-introduction.html

For an overview of Harnworld I recommend downloading the free map from Columbia Games and looking over the backside which contains an excellent terse summary of the setting.

https://secure.columbiagames.com/product/5001A-PDF

I will look over the post and I downloaded the map and will read over it.

Quote from: estar on September 06, 2024, 11:51:04 AMThe way Harn works as a setting is you have the Harnworld core book

https://secure.columbiagames.com/product/5001HC

Harnworld consists of a 80 page article on Harn detailing cultures, government, rural manors, cities & towns, economics, price list, religion, history, and campaign.

Then this followed by shorter articles on Kethira the world on which Harn is located, and Lythia, the continent that Harn is part of.

Finally, it is followed by the Harndex, which is a terse encyclopedia in alphabetical order. Fleshing out various locales in one or two paragraphs.

From there you have two choices either buy one of the kingdom hardbacks

Like this one for the Kingdom of Kaldor
https://secure.columbiagames.com/product/5610HC

 or buying individual articles about various locations.

https://secure.columbiagames.com/products/Harn

For a sense of the writing style I recommend going to the following fan site.

https://www.lythia.com/

and download one or more of the Harn Pottage PDFs (free)
https://www.lythia.com/series/pottage/

The quality is a excellent and the various Harn authors are known for keeping things terse and providing a lot of useful information about a location.

So what are the downsides? basically there is one the price. It is priced at a premium and for a good reason, as it is produced by a small company. There used to be another where the only format was loose leaf articles to be placed in binders. But now there is a series of full color hardbacks if you want that format.

If you like the line and become a fan, my recommendation is to subscribe to Harnquest. You will get the new loose-leaf articles plus a 50% discount on the PDFs.

The other things to keep in mind are:
While Harn has its share of "Dungeon" and wilderness adventures, the bulk of its adventuring potential is found in interacting with the NPCs. You can see this in the Harn Pottage series. Most location articles explicitly lists out several hooks and adventure possibilities.

Harn is medieval fantasy but Harn's original author N. Crossby was a Tolkien and fantasy fan so while it got a feel, it also feels part of the same foundation that most fantasy RPGs draw from. Which means individual articles can serve as a supplement for use in other campaign campaigns including those that have a more fantastic side to them. Again, Harn Pottage and the other Lythia downloads illustrate for free how that works.

The trend for newer Harn articles is to focus equally on the physical descriptions and the NPCs descriptions and combine them with full-color illustrations. However, they don't go for a full-color layout. Instead, color is tastefully limited to things like page headers and section dividers. Older Harn articles were black and white and focused more on physical illustrations.

For my part while I only ever ran a handful of Harn campaigns, I used Harn products numerous times in my Majestic Wilderlands campaigns when I needed a keep, castle, or other types of side fleshed out and was pressed for time.

I will look over this information and see if I can make heads or tales with it.  It almost looks like using Harnworld with a different fantasy system might be the way to go.

But I have to do a bit of reading before I can figure that out.  Thanks.

Quote from: Ruprecht on September 04, 2024, 11:17:25 AMHarn was built with the premise....

Looks like I misunderstood the 'built up' part of the question, possibly because half the island is wilderness and the Kingdoms only really have one or two actual towns each and those are fairly small. It isn't built up at all.