Hârn
November 3, 2009 – 11:16 amYesterday, in my weekly RPG-round I transferred my Hârnmaster 3.01 character to Hârnmaster Gold. Puhhhh … :O Took 3-4 hours. Lot of stuff to write and calculate.
Hm, since Hârn is the other big RPG besides GURPS which countered the predominance of AD&D in the last century I’m quite curious. However, the main aspect of Hârnmaster is realism and simulation. There are many, many aspects in a middle-ages daily live of a peasant to be … rolled. Keeping an eye to get as close as possibel to reality, things start out rather disappointing, since the average people in the middle-ages were clearly not knights and kings but farmers and fishermen, often serfs or bound to other feudal rules.
Life in Hârn seems hard, cruel, with a terrible amount of opportunities to get sick, poor or dead. Sounds a like a lot of fun, eh?
Still I prefer GURPS, since in GURPS you can play whatever you want, whereever you want. You wanna fly? No problem. A Ghost whose afraid of the dark? A gay Hobbit with Bloodrage, addicted to Heroin, driving a Harley Davidson, fond of his collection of unique 200 Barbie dolls and failed painter of cubism, who constantly believes King Arthur is his cousin and still living (!), on a quest to free the great Zorksqqq’l on Planet H’ghmn12 imprisoned by mad scientists of 18th century after a real bad, bad New Year’s Eve party? Gee, takes 30 minutes in GURPS to set it up. Have fun. Not very realistic, but .. fun!
But in Hârn I’m Mysiline, a female Yoman. Very strong (STR 15) and capable of combat skills … but astonishing ugly (CML 5), but - thank Goddess Larani - I got no relevant middle age medic penalties, like worms (Yikes!). I wonder how Hârnmaster Gold keeps up when we enter a storyline. Oh, by the way: 7 players + GM (!). What a party! I hope the gameplay and story have a nice pace even with such a complex system and this number of people.
