RPGPundit Reviews: HarnWorld

Harn is far from a new setting, and Harn World far from a new product.  So it might seem a little unusual for me to have been given a review copy of this product.

But the thing is, the people at Columbia Games have been working very hard to promote Harn in recent times and have released a whole spate of new source material for Harn that they're promoting.
Its worth noting that virtually everything that's ever come out for Harn is still available in print or PDF from Columbia Games.

Harn is a highly detailed, highly supported world. I would be remiss if I failed to mention the Columbia Games site (www.columbiagames.com), and especially the magnificent Lythia.com website full of free material and support for the Harn setting.

Now, the question is: is Harn for everyone? Obviously not.  I'm betting there's at least a few of you reading this who've played RPGs for years now, even decades, and have never actually looked at Harn, or even know much of anything about it aside from the name.

With a bit of luck, this review will serve to rectify that. But still, this doesn't mean that the setting only suffers from a lack of public recognition. Some of you might love Harn, others will likely have no interest in it. Its that kind of setting.

Who will love it? Well, if you love history, social realism, and medieval authenticity, you'll love Harn.  You see, the world of Harn is one of those extremely rare phenomena in the fantasy gaming world: a medieval fantasy setting that's truly medieval.

That said, even those who might love Harn will be likely to hate the format the books of the box set are in, and the structure that they choose to give you information.  

But hey, lets look at what the catalogue itself says about the setting:
"Harnworld is the ideal setting for your fantasy roleplaying campaign. Harnworld contains a beautiful map of the Harnic isles, maps of trade routes, ocean currents, and star charts... The cultural model for Harn is 12th century Norman England, but many elements of the earlier Anglo-Saxon and later Plantagenet periods are integral."

They aren't kidding. This isn't D&D here, where the "medieval" part of medieval fantasy is mostly just the props and costuming that acts as the setting's facade. Harn is low-magic, low-fantasy, high-detail, gritty and carefully constructed to maintain consistency.

The Harnworld box set is the start of it all; the basic setting, and everything else goes from there. Its a nice elegant sleeved box set.  And in it you get: a little Columbia games catalogue (mine had two identical ones), the Harnworld book, the Harndex (a "master index", really a kind of encyclopedia) for Harn, and a fairly attractive full-colour hexmap of the island of Harn.

All of this is setting material; the Harnworld boxed set doesn't come with its own rules.  There are of course rules that were designed for Harn (Harnmaster), but these are a seperate product.  The Harnworld boxed set itself (as well, as I understand it, the other setting books) is designed in such a way that it is free of system material and open to be used with any RPG system. You could use Harnmaster, but you could use GURPS or the Epic RPG, or FtA! or D&D if you were so inclined (though certainly some of these would fit better than others).

So the two books that come in the box set are not a system book and a setting book, they're a setting book and... well, a setting encyclopedia.

The first book is "Harnworld: A Real Fantasy World" (second edition, 1990). This book tells us about the isle of Harn, just off the continent of Lythia (the way England is just off the coast of Europe, but Harn is bigger). Harn has a variety of cultures; Humans, Elves, Dwarves and the Gargun (who are Harn's orcs).

There are dozens of tribes of barbarians, and nine civilized kingdoms.  The Harnworld book provides a map of Harn with the cultural-political boundaries outlined as well as the population, royal clan, and royal seat of each kingdom. It strikes me as odd, looking at the map, that there are vast areas of land that are populated by Barbarians, and only a few isolated regions of civilization. I would think that if we're talking "Norman England" it would be just the opposite.

The Harnworld book also provides details about feudalism, medieval government, manorialism, towns and cities, town government, Guilds (including illustrations of the various guild badges of Harn), a price list and coin guide, average incomes by career, taxes, trade, religion, star charts, a full-colour globe map of the world of Kethira, vegetation, oceanic currents, tectonics, etc etc., and that's only in the first couple of sections ("Harn" and "Lythia").

What none of this section gives us is any real detail about the nations or cities or cultures of Harn itself. We get some information about how the dense canopy of needleleaf forest results in sparse undergrowth, and we get told that "six hundred years ago the basic metaphysical beliefs were collected into a single tome called the Libram of the Pantheon" (but we are not there told anything about what those beliefs were). We get told that an ostler earns 13 farthings per day, and we get told that Coranan is the largest city on Harn with a population of 12500 people, but nothing else about it.

We get a remarkable level of detail, and a much more medieval feel than in a typical RPG setting, but what we do not get is ease of comprehension.  You don't get a step-by-step straightforward explanation from the point of view of what your game will most require, starting with regions and cities and nations and then going into the detail. Instead you get a mishmash of the details all over the place, often going into detail about the rest of the planet of Kethira or the continent of Lythia, which is neat but not exactly of immediate use for a campaign set on Harn.

In the section on Lythia you get some very nice maps detailing cultures, economics, the history of the continent, fishing and whaling, and (right in the middle of the book so you could easily remove or photocopy it if you so desired) a very beautiful full-colour map of the continent itself, with an index showing all of the areas highlited on the map. This is very nice, but again everything is on a mega-scale, we're talking continent-level details here. So what is talked about is incredibly detailed,and in between are vast gaps of empty space.  You get five pages, a map, and a flowchart about languages of Lythia, but meanwhile I still don't have a fucking clue what goes on in the nine kingdoms of Harn.

Only three quarters of the way down the book, where the Harn section mysteriously restarts, we do get a part dedicated to the Gods of Harn, its churches and fighting orders. We also are told that there was a race called the Ancients or Earthmasters who lived on Harn long before the elves arrived. They vanished without a clue, but left behind a bunch of ruins and artifacts.

We are told some more about the Elves and Dwarves (they hate each other, but many thousands of years ago they were friends, during a golden age amusingly called "The Condominium").

After that we get a 13 page history of Harn where we finally find out a bit more about the setting.  Humans first arrived on Harn about 2000 years ago, and since then have risen and fallen in a series of nations and empires, leading to the current state of affairs.
Here we finally learn a few things about the kingdoms of Harn: You have Kanday (which is a basically good feudal kingdom), Rethem (a violent, treacherous feudal kingdom), and the Thardic Republic (a state ruled by a senate of the wealthiest landowners, plagued by decadence and disunity) in the west.
In the East you have Kaldor (a very classic feudal kingdom that is now suffering a succession crisis that might plunge it into civil war), Melderyn (an ancient island kingdom just off Harn with holdings on the main island; a realm said to be strong with magical powers), Chybisa (a tiny kingdom that is all that's left of a once-larger nation), plus the elven and dwarven kingdoms.
Finally in the North you have Orbaal, which is a kind of viking-state, the most recent invaders to the island.

In between and all around these nations are the barbarian tribes and the Gargun, constantly menacing to devour any civilized place that becomes too weak.

The Harnworld book closes with some tables for "birth generation", applicable to any RPG, with random tables to roll race, sex (by race), birthdate (by the Harnic calendar), and birthplace (by nation and town/community), as well as some details about the big map, movement rates and encounters, and a weather generation system for Harn.

Again, tons of info, but relatively little of it that would be immediately useful for the practical RPG campaign. And horribly, horribly disorganized. No where does it tell give you a nation-by-nation outline of the states of Harn, and what a PC group can find in them, what the towns or cities are like, etc.
Instead, all of that is left to the other book, the "Harndex": master Index for Harn. This book, also as big as the main book (that is to say, both of them are paperback, black and white books with lots of illustrations, maps and charts, and about 40 pages long), is literally an encyclopedia of Harn.

What I mean is, the setting details are all here, in alphabetical order. So you either have go around looking up what you want, or you have to read the whole thing from cover to cover. This is not a great way to organize a setting.

So lets say I want to actually learn about one of the nations of Harn, lets say Kaldor. I would have to go over to the "K" section of the book, where the entry on Kaldor tells me quite a bit about the history of Kaldor, includes a little map of Kaldor, a list of the royal houses and kings of Kaldor, and more details about how the present monarch is 27 years old, unmarried, and on death's door (he was always sickly), leaving a complicated succession without any clear heir. Then you get a list of the fiefdoms of Kaldor along with their holder.  In Kaldor's case there are quite a few fiefdoms and communities so let's just take one at random, Tashal.  If I want to know more about Tashal, I have to go look up the entry on Tashal over in the "T" section, where we're told Tashal is the second-largest city on Harn (and the largest of Kaldor), with 11400 people. Its held directly by the king via his constable and the king spends at least half of the year in Tashal. We're given some of the history of Tashal, told how it is a major economic center of Harn where caravans arrive from all other nations (and how the biggest caravans come in the spring, causing a carnaval atmosphere in that time), and we are given details about its fortifications and temples.  Finally, theres a nice (smallish) map on the page showing the city outline.

Great; now do that with each fief of each of the nine kingdoms of Harn and you might get some idea of what the setting looks like, after flipping back and forth so much in the book that it makes your fingers bleed. Not to mention all the other stuff that's in the Harndex.

In the "T" section, for example, you get:
The Taelda (a barbarian tribe)
Tandir Castle (in orbaal)
Tashal (city in Kaldor)
Tawheim Keep (orbaal)
Taztoz Fort (of the Ramala Legion of Tharda)
The Teb river
Techen Castle (in Rethem)
Telen Castle (in Thardic republic)
Telumar, an ancient earthmaster site
The Tentmakers Guild
The Tepr River
Ternu Heath (a heathland in the southwest)
Ternua Keep (Kaldor)
Teryff Keep (Orbaal)
Tesien (an earthmaster site)
Thard River
Thardic Republic
Thay (city in melderyn)
Themeson Keep (in Rethem)
The Thespian's Guild
Thiri Keep (in Rethem)
Thoen Keep (in Orbaal)
Thrand Keep (in Orbaal)
Thursa Keep (in Orbaal)
Tieka Island
The Timberwrights Guild
Sea of Tirpal
Tirsa Islands (said to have pirates)
Tonot Keep (Kaldor)
Tontury Lake
The Castle of Tormau (Rethem)
Torthan Keep (Kanday)
Toset (a tribe of Gargun orcs)
Trobridge Inn ( a famous inn along a caravan route)
Tuleme Falls
Tulwyn (barbarian tribe)
Tuven River
Tuzyn Reckoning (the term for the Harnic calendar, with details)

In addition, the "T" section contains ten illustrations, of which six are maps.

Very cool, lots of detail, and pretty well overwhelming in the format they're in.  Highly impractical.  I can't imagine the typical GM reading through this thing from cover to cover. I was obliged to for this review, but I have to admit that there were parts where my eyes just glazed over, because it was all information out of any context (unless you consider alphabetical order a "context").  

The setting has no specific adventure ideas, and the information that could apply as adventure seeds or detailing the current threats and problems in Harn and how you would craft these to your campaign are all just scattered to the winds.

In short: this game setting is very cool if you want a heavy-duty medieval world with real medievalism.  Nevertheless, its badly showing its age, and desperately needs to be reorganized into a new format that would take the same amount and level of information and put it in a structure that would be easier to buy into and more convenient for the sake of actually running a game in the setting!

Buy it only if you just want a really cool medieval world, or if you want to run a medieval campaign in a high-detail world and aren't scared of doing some serious amount of work studying the books and organizing it all to figure out what the fuck is going on in the setting.

RPGPundit
 

I actually have the set you're talking about. My feeling on Harn is that if I'm going to put that much effort into learning about a low-key, gritty fantasy world very much like medieval Earth, I might as well use medieval Earth.

Quote from: droogI actually have the set you're talking about. My feeling on Harn is that if I'm going to put that much effort into learning about a low-key, gritty fantasy world very much like medieval Earth, I might as well use medieval Earth.

That was one thing that came to mind as I was reading it as well. Though you could say in defense of Harnworld that:

1. There is no boxed set that I know of that serves as an equally detailed RPG-setting for real Medieval earth, so instead you'd have to read non-gaming books and do the research yourself.

2. Harnworld has fantasy elements; dwarves, elves, orcs, ancient magic, etc. Jamming these into medieval earth always ends up feeling forced.

3. Harnworld is free of historical timeline; for some people that can be liberating in order to take events where one wishes, whereas historical earth means either following the historical timeline or turning the game very quickly into an alternate timeline.

RPGPundit

Quote from: droogI actually have the set you're talking about. My feeling on Harn is that if I'm going to put that much effort into learning about a low-key, gritty fantasy world very much like medieval Earth, I might as well use medieval Earth.

Ever tried to work with the data they have on medieval Earth? Dull, complicated, incomplete, and sketchy. Plus you talking a about a time period that spans several hundred years. One decade may have only have good detail for one area.  Harn takes all the boring research and puts into a nice gameable package.

Rob Conley

P.S. Here is a good test find a map of northwest europe. (Benelux area, Germany, Eastern France) that shows the borders of every domain for 1400. For example there is one for Germany that show everything just before the Napoleonic wars.

I have Harnworld myself and found it heavy going, if fascinating. But if I understand this right, Harn publications are systematically multi-tiered. I.e., from the bird's eye view in Harn World and Dex, through regional modules like Kaldar (sp?), down to modules devoted to a single town. Presumably it's the latter ones that are most useful practically.

I like HarnWorld, but you really need to get the regional gazettes they've published too.  They give you the local info. on the kingdoms, towns and some adventure good hooks.  Great maps and castle floor plans too!

Quote from: estarEver tried to work with the data they have on medieval Earth? Dull, complicated, incomplete, and sketchy. Plus you talking a about a time period that spans several hundred years. One decade may have only have good detail for one area.  Harn takes all the boring research and puts into a nice gameable package.

I get that. And the production values are excellent, which is why I've held on to it even though I've never used it. But I'd rather read the dull, complicated history books. That's just me — research is by no means boring to me.

The encyclopedia format is bad for reading through, but good for reference.  This is generally true beyond Harn or RPGs -- i.e. a beginner will usually want a topical overview organized by most important to least.  A long-time user will often want a reference guide.  

So I think part of the complaint is that HarnWorld is pitched more to old-time Harn fans than to new players.  In principle, the HarnPlayer book is more oriented to beginners or casual players, but it has organizational problems as well.

Yeah, except... didn't HarnWorld come out first??

RPGPundit

I love the HarnWorld setting but agree with your review, Pundit.  The game really needs some reorganization.  It's certainly not reader-friendly if you're new to the setting.  

Minor nitpick - the period when the Elves and Dwarves were friendly was the "Codominium", IIRC, not the "Condominium".  Though the latter does conjure up images of the Harnic Odd Couple. :haw:

Quote from: droogI actually have the set you're talking about. My feeling on Harn is that if I'm going to put that much effort into learning about a low-key, gritty fantasy world very much like medieval Earth, I might as well use medieval Earth.

There's also Lionheart from Columbia Games, which is essentially a Harn-style gazetteer for England in the time of Richard the Lionheart.  It's quite nicely done as well (though, again, really more of a reference work than an actual gamebook).

I think the local/regional modules are a zillion times more useful than the Harnworld pack. Harnworld puts things in context, and there's useful stuff about trade routes and history if you want to do a BIG campaign, but for my money (quite a lot of it over the years!) the gold is in the drilled-down detail. In fact, I'd go as far to say that Harnworld is useless without at least one regional module, preferably a couple. Conversely, a regional module and nothing else (well, a rules set) can get you playing pretty quick.

Ned

All my harn material makes a stack of paper about three feet high. That is a lot of words.

Rob Conley

(I was cleaning my  shelves and had it all stacked up and I measured it.

Quote from: RPGPunditYeah, except... didn't HarnWorld come out first??

Yup.  HarnPlayer was put out as an answer to the problem of HarnWorld + HarnMaster being hard to get started on.