Intro

HARP (High Action Fantasy Role Playing) is the latest offering from ICE and is an intriguing entry into a game market that, anymore, is primarily focused on D20.  HARP has many similar elements to the D20 game system, but it has a Rolemaster feel as well.

In this review I decided to eschew from covering every chapter in a linear way, rather I grouped related chapters together to try and give a better feel for the flow of the game.  Some of the perceptions in this review are from a long time Rolemaster player.  Some of the comparisons and contrasts might be a little unfamiliar with those not indoctrinated in the Rolemaster RPG.

The more I read HARP the more I come to appreciate its strengths and slightly different take on the venerable, customizable and flexible Rolemaster engine.  This is an RPG I instantly liked and one of the few I have picked up in recent years that I want to go out and play right away.

Character Creation

The organization for creating a character is straightforward and a refreshing.  I would have put the sequencing different as choosing a profession, then statistics and finally race seem a little jumbled.  This nitpick aside a player should have no problems whipping out a HARP character in a modicum amount of time.  Once the free PC generation software comes online from the HARP website, this should be an even easier process.

Statistics are a slightly curtailed version of statistics that Rolemaster players are familiar with: 

• strength
• constitution
• agility
• quickness
• self discipline
• reasoning
• insight
• presence

All are straightforward stats, even for those not baptized in Rolemaster.  There are a few options for generating statistics: random, point buy and a hybrid of the former two.  Stats generate a basis for skills from a bonus or penalty perspective, but also all stats generate development points to be used to by skills and talents.  Stats can be bought up during the course of game play for development points, the higher the stats the more points are required to bump it up.  This is a nice design change from the old Rolemaster base rules which left room for improving statistics, but in a very arbitrary manner that left little in the way of flexibility.

The usual fare of fantasy selections are in HARP, though there are a couple additions inserted to differentiate itself from other fantasy games. Each race has a generic write up about its members, culture and special abilities.  The new race that is presented in HARP is the Gryx, which are large fearsome looking peoples who also happen to be peaceful.  As read in the forums for previous reviews it is used as an alternative to the half-orc and it’s negative connotations like rape, pillage and murder.  Think more like the Ogrier from Wheel of Time.

The unique addition to the races section is the ability to tweak your character by having them be partially of another race (greater being half blooded, lesser being less than half).  A character must spent development points, at a marginal cost, to gain these abilities.  A character may choose two lesser or one greater.  Either will get two abilities from another race or one from two different races.  This is a great way to mechanically differentiate half blooded characters, e.g. half elves, from one another.  Each race’s culture selections also have an impact as they receive adolescent skills based on this selection.  So a character from an urban culture will have different adolescent skills than one from a sylvan culture.

The professions (character classes) are the standard selections, but what looks generic is really an ability to create a wide breadth of characters within basic templates.  This was always a great strength of the Rolemaster game system so it is good to see it applied to HARP.  The only differentiations to the standard fare are the harper and the warrior mage.  The harper is basically a bard and a slightly clever play on words with the game’s title.  The warrior mage is an interesting addition as it focuses on combat and magic and little else.  As a special note, monks get good treatment in HARP as martial arts does get some perks in skills and combat rules that other classes probably would avoid due to none of them being favored skills.

Each class has favored skill categories, which allows them to buy skills from those categories for two points instead of four.  In turn the characters starting out get skills to start with in those categories.  All classes get 20 points, so starting out no classes get an advantage in the quantity of skills offered.  Skills oriented characters will get their perk because they get a breadth of skills for cheaper  as they have more favored skill categories to use development points in as their characters advance.  The thief is about the only class that gets short shifted in HARP.  A thief has four favored categories and their only special perk is to improve one subterfuge skill by ten every five levels.

A character also has the ability to multi-profession.  A character must spend development points to gain access to a new class to advance in, but once the initial points are spent they may choose which class to advance in as it is a one time cost per additional class.  Choosing to multi-profession requires a talent to be purchased for 40 development points, which is a good piece of a character’s points earned during a level or two.

Talents in HARP are akin to feats in D20, the key difference is you pay development points to acquire them.  This leads to an interesting decision to buy talents or skills, so good character planning is a must.  Most talents cost between 10 and 45 points depending on the benefit of the talent.  Many talents are very good for tweaking what path you want a character to take.  An example of this would be succor, which allows a character to lay hands upon another (including themselves) to do healing of some types of damage.  Thus a stereotypical Gygaxian paladin could be made with a fighter profession with this talent.

Skills are the bread and butter of HARP and is definitely reflective fo the Rolemaster design.  There are a fair amount of skills, with a few being very important to all PC’s.  HARP.  With the diversity of skills comes the ability to design a character to your vision for them, especially with easy multi-profession rules.

Unlike an edition or two of Rolemaster, HARP does a good job to point out the skills that are very important to the average adventurer.  Endurance (or body development for ole RM fans) is clearly stated along with perception, weapon skills and power point development.  The writers also were good enough to point out a few other handy skills, such as swimming.  I mention this because in my first go around with Rolemaster, circa 1988, we had a ranger in the party who didn’t have anything but the base hit points and had trouble around water.  The player did not know to buy the concussion hit enhancing skill (body development) or swimming. 

Skills are broken into categories, and what profession a player chooses will dictate the costs.  All professions have certain categories they are better in, skills in these categories cost two development points per rank.  Points outside a character classes preferred are four development points.  For multi-profession characters, the skill costs are dictated by the class they advance in.  Skills are capped out by level ( +3).

In the area of skills there is the option to buy training packages.  A training package can be acquired at any time, the character however must spend the development points on the next level advancement.  As well only one training package per level may be learned.  Each package (e.g. bounty hunter or jade dragon) provides a 25% discount to the skills contained in them.  A nice touch would have been to have a small chart calculating the cost for each profession rather than having to do the arithmetic every time.

Game Play

HARP’s game play is very familiar territory to Rolemaster veterans: percentage rolls.  Most rolls are open ended, in that a 96-00 result lets the player roll and add another percentage roll.  Fumbles are slightly different in that a 01-10 or 01-05 are fumbles, for skills/maneuvers and combat respectively.  The resolution of for skills, maneuvers, contests of skills and the like are clearly written and presented.  When bad things happen there is a rudimentary fumble table, which is functional. 

The usual perils facing an adventurer are covered in HARP very well. 

Combat is relatively straight forward, the aggressor sums up his offensive bonus (skill, stat, talent, weapon, position and special) versus the defensive bonus(quickness bonus x2, armor, shield, talent, cover, maneuver, magical, special).  It sounds like it is a lot of things, but most of these save special, positional, maneuver and cover should be static.  If the net result is 1 or more then it is a hit.  The sum of the hit roll is then modified by weapon size (the bigger the weapon the more favorable the modifier).  This end result is then consulted on the critical hit table. 

The critical hit tables are a misnomer, they are also the one thing I do not enjoy about HARP.  They should just be called hit tables, because technically every hit is a critical hit.  The charts themselves are boiled down versions found in Rolemaster in both quantity and variation.  Instead of degrees of criticals (A-E) Harp has one column that is consulted.  This leads to a slightly repetitious results in combat and magic over time. 

One the plus side, a hit and its critical effects are relational to each other, thus the better the hit the more devastating it will be to the recipient.  On the negative side the critical tables are so simplified that they are less fun and random the RM was.  ICE representatives have suggested a GM can modify HARP to use the RM critical tables, but given the presentation in the core rulebook I found this part of HARP a little lacking and perhaps my only serious point of contention with the entire game.

Magic

Spells in HARP are a new tack and a refreshing one.  The usual fare for ICE has always been spells were bought from progressive lists.  Now spells are considered skills and must de developed independently by type and then by element (where necessary).  The usually types of utility, offensive and elemental spells are present.  To keep play balance, a magic using character may only cast spells equal to or less then their ranks in power point development (which also dictates their pool of magical energy).  Most spells are open at their most rudimentary level a few levels into a characters spell casting career.

However all spells may be scaled to add in benefits to a spell (better range, damage, bonuses, etc).  and these scaling options cost more power points.  Thus a character must be more advanced and acquire more power point development ranks, should they hope to really make their spells have some real gusto.

All spell using professions have spells they specialize in, though the cleric has the option of picking half their spells outside the cleric sphere (so long as it matches up with their deity). 

Stuff / Monsters / Treasure

This is a catch-all section covering the material found in several chapters and focuses on equipment, herbs, treasure and encounters.  The equipment in HARP is rudimentary, but not lacking either.  I would recommend picking up the ICE equipment book, “…and a 10-foot pole,”  for those wanting a comprehensive book on the subject (heck that is a great supplement for any game).  One great equipment option in HARP is that armor can be used piecemeal or in full suits.  This ads a whole new layer in customizing a character to a player’s needs and does it with simplicity and elegance to boot.

Herbs have always been a strength of the Rolemaster system and it is great to see that it was not forgotten in HARP.  Poisons for those included are also included in this section.  A variety of herbs that heals, kill, preserve and boost a character are presented in a simple tabular format.  This chapter is comprehensive in not only herbs but the rules to use and find them too.   The only knock for HARP’s herbs chapter is that the flexibility in spell selection and talents might lessen the need for herbs slightly.

Monsters are a generic sort of affair, but ample enough to provide a wide array of encounters for characters.  The creatures are presented in tables and then a corresponding short entry later on in the chapter.  GM’s expecting something as details as the Monster Manual for D20 might be let down, but given the fairly generic selection of creatures most seasons gamers should have no problem filling in the gaps.  Included in this chapter are encounter tables that are very comprehensive for generating encounters in a variety of locals.  As with the equipment section, supplementing one of the Rolemaster “Creatures and Treasures” books for a HARP campaign would not require too much work for a GM to adapt.

Treasure is a very short chapter, but does contain some very useful information.  Not only the magical and valuable is covered here, also more mundane treasures are covered as well.  I thought this was a great idea as many creatures may not be toting around anything magical.  The only hit this section of HARP takes is that the list of magic items is slightly curtailed and the old Rolemaster “Creatures and Treasures” books might be helpful to flesh out a campaign’s treasure.

Production Values

HARP is a perfect-bound book weighing in at 160 pages.  This is a great accomplishment and almost unheard of in today’s RPG market:  an entire RPG in one book.  The page layout is generally good, so there is a large amount of information squeezed into the pages.  The only knock with the layout is in a couple of spots the internal art is awkwardly placed, most noticeably in the combat chapter.

Artistically HARP has some good pieces inside and a very good cover.  Some of the internal art is little better then what can be found in a high school art class.   Luckily, the glaringly bad examples are sparse.

Conclusion

HARP is a solid game and offers an interesting option in an RPG market flooded by D20 products.  Its design and flexibility are hallmarks of the Rolemaster system, but offers a streamlined game engine that can appeal to gamers looking for something different. 

The more I read HARP the more I like it, especially its character generation and magic sections.  The character generation chapters offer the kind of flexibility I came to enjoy from Rolemaster, but the magic section is entirely different then almost anything I have seen to date as the spells are learned individually and can be scaled to the caster’s desire and skill.   The combat section has a few problems, but that is mostly due to stylistic issues rather than strictly mechanical ones.  It works and does offer a good way to tie the quality of a hit with the amount of damage dealt.

A few of the sections suffer slightly from the relative low page count of HARP, but they only require supplemental information should the GM want it.  With a couple supplements on the horizon those might expand what is lacking in a few of the abbreviated chapters.  A HARP GM also has the option of converting, with only a little effort, the “Creatures and Treasures” supplements from a couple editions of Rolemaster to add new encounters and loot for a HARP based campaign.

HARP is a great game and in many surpasses it’s big brother Rolemaster in regards to ease of play, magic and character building.