Both HARP and HARP Sci-FI. Does anyone here still use them? I liked Rolemaster, but a Rolemaster lite would be just about right for the way I've been feeling of late. I want something where I can run fun and fast monsters and encounters and mix up races.
What is the Site's thoughts on HARP?
Quote from: Mostlyjoe;712497Both HARP and HARP Sci-FI. Does anyone here still use them? I liked Rolemaster, but a Rolemaster lite would be just about right for the way I've been feeling of late. I want something where I can run fun and fast monsters and encounters and mix up races.
What is the Site's thoughts on HARP?
Meh. Just play RM or get RMexpress or MERP.
HARP was a fun experiment but ultimately adopted too many d20isms.
D20isms?
Quote from: Mostlyjoe;712512D20isms?
Yeah just various ways the system worked felt like they were taking cues from d20 rather than RM to the extent that I eventually just went back to RM.
I was hoping for a gateway system to help get a d20 group out of a rut.
I ran HARP some years ago when it first came out.
Actually I really enjoyed it. It's very flexible.
I made the mistake of getting all the various addons as they came out.
By the end I may as well of been running Rolemaster.
I suggest getting the core game and just using that. It's simplicity and flexibility is it's strength which is taken away with all the addons.
Quote from: Piestrio;712509Meh. Just play RM or get RMexpress or MERP.
HARP was a fun experiment but ultimately adopted too many d20isms.
That's ironic, because I've always thought that d20 adopted too many Rolemaster-isms (by way of Monte Cooke, who worked at ICE for years)
I'd like to pick up the ARMS Law and College of Magic if I need it not because I'll feel forced to use it. My big thing is I want meaty enough but not overbearing. If I pulled out RMSS on my players I think I'd have some heads explode. (I don't know why, RMSS is reasonable.)
Quote from: Piestrio;712509Meh. Just play RM or get RMexpress or MERP.
HARP was a fun experiment but ultimately adopted too many d20isms.
I find that interesting. HARP redeemed the system for me. I found RM to be needless fiddly. Especially with the 101 weapon charts. HARP would be my 'go to' game if I didn't want to run Pathfinder or Radiance.
I never took a look at HARP Sci-Fi, is it any good?
Quote from: JeremyR;712528That's ironic, because I've always thought that d20 adopted too many Rolemaster-isms (by way of Monte Cooke, who worked at ICE for years)
Exactly. Large chunks of 3e were just Rolemaster modified from d% to d20.
Quote from: danbuter;712584Exactly. Large chunks of 3e were just Rolemaster modified from d% to d20.
Care to be specific?
Is HARP still a thing?
I liked classic RM, never cared for all the others (RMSS, RMFRP, ETC.), just wish they would stick with RM Classic and drop the rest and keep it in print. I would probably play it again if they did, but finding a RM Classic set is mind numbing.
HARP was one of the games my group play-tested looking for a Fantasy game. The critical tables ruined combat. If you house-rule your own and pump up defense a tad, it might work. I wasn't interested in fiddling with a game, so it was voted off the island. Mages can die casting spells, which is hilarious for a comedy, but makes the game somewhat less fun. Also, combat was slow. The game needs a tune-up.
We also play-tested Novus, by the same designer. Much better game than HARP IMHO, however you need to have an iron fist as the GM. There are "power builds" in that game (like the Monk) that can seriously overpower the other PCs in combat (in fact, ditch the Monk). Novus rolls happen more often than you might expect. I thought a 2d10 roll would "normalize" the spread, but it didn't (at least in play). Of course, many may see this as a feature so YMMV. I think it's worth checking out. Has a similar feel to HARP but is better tuned. The maneuvers in combat you get for rolling higher than DEF (getting boon points) of your opponent are fun, and give the players lots of options. We house-ruled the knock down option to 2 boon points however, as it was the obvious GO TO for every combat boon. Ultimately (again) I punted. Didn't want to tune it up for my table and my experience helped me realize I'm super-tired of the point buy optimization game.
We are currently playing Hackmaster 5e and I appreciate the level of crunch (I consider it medium+) and the count-up in seconds aspect of combat. So far it's scratching my fantasy gaming itch really well without some of the aspects that irk me about D&D. It's close enough to D&D with classes and an old-school spirit, that it eliminates much of the whole character optimization game. It has a nice crunchy skill system and mages use spell points and can enhance/upgrade spells. I think it's the game I would design to meet my needs in play. The group is really enjoying our experience with it!
Quote from: RPGPundit;712837Is HARP still a thing?
If you have to ask, then of course not.
Quote from: FASERIP;713462If you have to ask, then of course not.
Thought as much.
RPGPundit
It's still in print and GCP is still producing supplements. So yeah, it's "still a thing".
QuoteHARP was a fun experiment but ultimately adopted too many d20isms.
The thing to remember is that when HARP was written, d20 had just come out and had essentially grabbed ALMOST ALL of the market share.
Also, the ONLY version of RM for sale at the time was RMSS/FRP.
HARP was initially tasked with becoming something to fill the gap left by MERP originally (in fact, the first draft had chargen much like that found in MERP, but the guy who owned the RM rights was too confused by it and wanted us to change it).
We also wanted it to make it into a good transition game (for those moving away from d20), so it deliberately incorporated some aspects (such as the limited skill costs). And when released, it was much simpler than RMFRP.
Then ICE decided to recapture some of the RM2 market by releasing RMC, and in order to reduce some of the myths about RM2 being so complex, we stripped out everything but the core, made a few little tweaks to enhance the survivability of low level characters and released it as RM Express, and damn, it was simpler than HARP!!! I think that was the nail in HARP's coffin...
Quote from: RPGPundit;713998QuoteQuoteIs HARP still a thing?
If you have to ask, then of course not.
Thought as much.
RPGPundit
Additionally, though I didn't realize it at the time, HARP has a number of flaws. Which is very unfortunate because the recent "semi-revision" or tweaking as they call it (to me, the essentially revised it, period) did not fix the worst of those flaws (flaws that, to be clear, were my fault to begin with).
Quote from: Rasyr;718896The thing to remember is that when HARP was written, d20 had just come out and had essentially grabbed ALMOST ALL of the market share.
Also, the ONLY version of RM for sale at the time was RMSS/FRP.
HARP was initially tasked with becoming something to fill the gap left by MERP originally (in fact, the first draft had chargen much like that found in MERP, but the guy who owned the RM rights was too confused by it and wanted us to change it).
We also wanted it to make it into a good transition game (for those moving away from d20), so it deliberately incorporated some aspects (such as the limited skill costs). And when released, it was much simpler than RMFRP.
Then ICE decided to recapture some of the RM2 market by releasing RMC, and in order to reduce some of the myths about RM2 being so complex, we stripped out everything but the core, made a few little tweaks to enhance the survivability of low level characters and released it as RM Express, and damn, it was simpler than HARP!!! I think that was the nail in HARP's coffin...
Additionally, though I didn't realize it at the time, HARP has a number of flaws. Which is very unfortunate because the recent "semi-revision" or tweaking as they call it (to me, the essentially revised it, period) did not fix the worst of those flaws (flaws that, to be clear, were my fault to begin with).
Some refreshing honesty there. I got interested in HARP from pre-release back in 2003, and bought it as soon as it was released. (There were really few options for non-d20 fantasy back then, it was a totally different landscape). Then I discovered it was terribly broken, though I can't remember what the issues were. ICE immediately came out with a revised version fixing some the most egregious, game-breaking bugs. But once bitten, twice shy. After shelling out for the first draft, I never played the game.
So, Tim, what in your opinion are the big flaws still present even in the current edition?
Quote from: The_Shadow;718937Some refreshing honesty there. I got interested in HARP from pre-release back in 2003, and bought it as soon as it was released. (There were really few options for non-d20 fantasy back then, it was a totally different landscape). Then I discovered it was terribly broken, though I can't remember what the issues were. ICE immediately came out with a revised version fixing some the most egregious, game-breaking bugs. But once bitten, twice shy. After shelling out for the first draft, I never played the game.
So, Tim, what in your opinion are the big flaws still present even in the current edition?
In that minor revision, we changed the Crit tables, as there was an issue with reaching specific results, and the caps for weapon sizes (and we added armor by the piece rules from Martial Law into the core.
As for the remaining problems, the two biggest were as follows:
1) The original combat system had been based upon the tables found in MERP. However, during playtesting, I was asked if there was any way to get rid of the attack tables and just use the critical tables.
The problem was that those attack tables have a built in add to DB (the variable for armor was kept as a mod to DB, but the built in DB from the tables themselves was not, so this resulted in the combat system being a LOT more deadly than originally intended. And while some RM fans may not mind that, for the audience we were trying to reach (i.e. those moving away from d20), this could be considered something if a major flaw.
2) The Spell Creation System -- When HARP was written, I was using a basic outline of what eventually became the spell creation system (with College of Magics, we actually threw out the spell creation system that the author wrote because it was felt that it was too abstract, and we replaced it with a more polished version of what I used in creating the original spells).
The problem was, instead of going back during playtesting and fixing the system being used to create/price spells, we simply tweaked the end results. This means that most of the spells in HARP's core rules don't follow the rules for creating spells given in College of Magics (and trying to reprice them would INCREASE the spell costs almost across the board.
Now, we had had plans on revamping that those spell creation rules (creating a cost column for attack spells and one for utility spells, which would solve the costing issues), but that was to be done after we released our RM revision (which the owner refused to allow us to release - this being just a month before Mjolnir lost the license - because the owner's brother-in-law and one of his friends (i.e. the 2 guys NOW running ICE) thought that it was "too HARP-like" (I changed what RRs were used - but not how they were handled).
If you want to read an overview (it is in 4 parts, cause I went into a lot of detail) of what this RM revision would have looked like, you can find it on my personal website -- http://www.wizlair.net/archives/category/gaming/myrmrevision
I tried to secure permission to publish it myself under a different banner (offering to pay a humongous royalty, just to get it out there), but was turned down as they apparently already had their own RM revision underway (the current results of which makes me shudder).
Quote from: Rasyr;718963this being just a month before Mjolnir lost the license - because the owner's brother-in-law and one of his friends (i.e. the 2 guys NOW running ICE) thought that it was "too HARP-like"
Irronically, HARP's biggest fault was that it was too close to RMSS. Training packages and talents and cultures. Much of which has been ditched in the current RM revision. HARP needed to be tighter and simpler to fill the niche it was intended for.
HARP gets more support than RM by a long shot these days. The RM revision process seems to have been stalled for over a year. I suspect that after I walked away the rest of the team fell apart. I hope I'm wrong, we wasted a lot of time debating something that was mostly done before we were invited in to discuss a revision, and I'd like to see something come of that effort.
My own complaints might stem as much from my own inability to work in a group as anything that was or wasn't done mechanically. I'd certainly confess to having been pretty stressed out by other stuff in my life by the time I blew out. So I grind away ever so slowly at my own fantasy rules that I've shown on the game design forums here a couple times and occasionally shake my fist and whine about a wasted year spent polishing someone elses work.
Attribute point development costs in HARP look a bit dodgy too.
Correct if I'm wrong but:
It seems You get Development Points (DPs) for stats >50, but no further penalties if its low.
The optimum spend seems to be to buy six scores of 90 and two scores of 5 (with the initial 550 attribute points), giving you 48 DPs/level. Comparably, someone splitting their scores evenly has 69s across the board and 32 DPs. The character with more DPs can then take those and spend them on raising attributes again, so in five levels spending 16 DPs level, one of their 5s would be an 85, which in turn would be giving them more DPs (55/level).
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;719106Attribute point development costs in HARP look a bit dodgy too.
Correct if I'm wrong but:
It seems You get Development Points (DPs) for stats >50, but no further penalties if its low.
The optimum spend seems to be to buy six scores of 90 and two scores of 5 (with the initial 550 attribute points), giving you 48 DPs/level. Comparably, someone splitting their scores evenly has 69s across the board and 32 DPs. The character with more DPs can then take those and spend them on raising attributes again, so in five levels spending 16 DPs level, one of their 5s would be an 85, which in turn would be giving them more DPs (55/level).
Yup, another of the issue...
One of my big problems when writing HARP was that, while I was the author, I had to make changes according to the wishes of those above me.
The end result was much much different from the original, first draft of the manuscript.
For example, in the first draft Professions were given a limited number of skill points per skill category. They then spent 1 skill point per rank on skills within that category.
They could then use Development points (which were (perhaps foolishly) based on stats as in the final result) to purchase more skill points in a given skill category (2 DP per SP in categories that they had originally received SP in; 4 Dp for categories which did not originally receive skill points). Each profession then received a professional bonus in specific skills (not in categories, but in the original rules, these bonuses could, in some cases, be moved from one skill to another at each level (the already applied bonus would not move, but the new skill would start receiving the bonus from that point).
I have attached a picture of what the Professions originally looked like, one of one of the original spells (which were not made with any sort of spell creation system), and I will upload a PDF of the original combat tables in a second post.
Here is the original attack table I promised.
Keep in mind that the combat skills where by weapon groups...
so basically, each skill would apply to a single column on an attack table...
For those who are interested, I have taken my above couple of posts and expanded them into a full-sized blog entry on my personal website.
http://www.wizlair.net/archives/1199