Hârn General /Hâg/

For discussion of the game Hârn.

columbiagames.com/harn/
Columbia Games
kelestia.com/
Kelestia website

burning-harn.net/intro_welcome.html

Harn using burning wheel system

Treasure Trove
mediafire.com/folder/xxbrbv2b8n5z9/Harn


Will try this one more time..

1E player here. How does the current edition differ from the original one?

1st -> 2nd

Character pre-game generation and some appearance characteristics are not included in HMC (but could be added trivially).

HMC has an optional rule for creating characters on a point system.

The Touch and Speed attributes are removed, and Stamina is added.

Endurance is now the average of Strength, Will, and Stamina.

Players are now encouraged to select professions from a short list; the full table of professions is still available.

Easier bookkeeping and less table lookups

Magic changes

1-> gold

Detailed rules for family development
Aging rules
revised shock/injury/healing rules,
More rules on combat

You could play HM1 with Gold with little problem. HM2 there are a fair bit of changes.

never played HM3


HM2 was a attempt to make the rules more simple by columbia games, the guy who created it didn't like it, and went his own way to make HM Gold, and they fought about legal rights till he died.

>revised shock/injury/healing rules
less deadly?

one thing I always disliked about HM (though I love the system A LOT) is unarmed combat damage. it never seemed very realistic to me.

To be fair, I not sat down and really calculated if it more or less deadly, and I only played gold once. I normally played 2nd edition as it more simple and thus easier to get someone new to try it.

all the versions are in the trove.

i think the game would have had more success if it had better (and more) interior art.

For the era the art was not bad quality, will agree more of it would have been nice.

>Reminder that General threads are for game lines that are so popular that they would get dozens of threads about them every day without a General.
>Not for game lines that all of 7 seven people in the world have heard of.

General in the sense that you can speak about anything about Harn, It was a major game along with MERP in the 1980s and 1990s, and still has a active development. But it does not fall under OSR since it basically the anti-OSR game.

or the TL:DR - this is "Lets talk about Hârn and Hârnmaster thread"

Sell me on Harn. I know I could find the information online, but I want to hear it from people that played it.

No Khorne, go hate something else

Hârn in a nutshell.

Hârn (and Hârnmaster, the system), is a very realistic, low magic setting and system that is not the usual RPG.

A strong Norman England Feel
There is no "Good vs. evil" arc.
It is one of the most detailed settings made (think Tekumel levels),
lastly, and perhaps the biggest charm, is that the setting of Hârn is well established up to a date, and they never have "moved it forward" in time with more releases, instead new releases provide more details to the world.

it's the game that TROS and SoS derive from
Harnmaster > The Riddle Of Steel _> Song of Swords

it's realistic and it's brutal. you can have limbs amputated and eyes disabled. you an bleed to death. you are as likely to die of wound infection as in combat.

it has very realistic armor stats.

system is d100 roll under, skills are attribute based, has a sweet crit system where every roll ending on x5 or x0 is a Critical Success/Failure

...

Awesome possum anons. Thank you for the information, because I've got something new to run for my group.

how does a harn campaign goes?

Think of D&D as the late middle ages (say 1325) with dragons.

Harn is more 1100 with dragons. It very high middle ages but without a church.

I'd say D&D borders more on renaissance.
Also, since it's so deadly you either introduce some meta-currency or you make combat pretty rare. or the characters are all well-armored.

Yep, Harn can be quite deadly, even more so then old school D&D, and death seems more random.

bumping for morning.

So which edition is best edition for a newbie?

Any stories about games you played?

You're doing the Lord's work, OP. I love me some Hârn and I wish I had more chances to play.

Would probably use gurps were I to run another game.

Harn literally means urine in German.

seriously? Kek

Be poor, well armed brute comes after us, I have shit armor but figure "why not" and defend the other players and NPCs. (Fighting is deadly in Harn, and even if you live, you can easily die of a infection)

2nd round I get lucky and chop off the bad guy arm. I pick up the arm and beat him to death with his own arm. Half the plyers thought it was hilarious, other half though I needed mental help.

------------------------

Be playing first game, meet priest that seems evil with messed up fingers. Get into fight, he turns into a snake and I get rekt.

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Yes, I think the setting is great, Harn Master is klunky. I Prefer 2nd edition since it a lot simpler. GURPS would be a good way to port it over, and a GURPS Harn would be a logical way for the two companies who publish harn stuff to earn some cash.

I can assume combat is fast in this game

Not as fast as you think. There is a fair amount of table lookup that slow till you figure out which tables need to be referenced. A good Table reference sheet speeds things up fast.

so do you recommend me to start with 2e or 3e?

I played 1st, 2nd, and Gold. (Not played 3rd)

1st is very crunch, 2nd is less crunchy, third is even less crunchy (but lets not pretend that it not rule heavy)

Gold makes Advanced squad leader players go "Damn this has rules for everything." and is the most crunchy and rule heavy thing out there.

Forgot the recommendation.

I would say 3rd for most folks. If you want it to be more realistic, then go to gold.

Also note - 2nd edition source books are usable for 3rd edition.

go with 1st edition - all the rules in one book and once you get used to it you can decide if you want to go with the 2nd or Gold style of play.

Page 10 bump

Harnmanor is the greatest RPG book ever written. If you play medieval fantasy RPGs and want to generate realistic towns and villages, or want players to manage territory, or just are curios about a medieval villages demographics, harnmanor is THE book.