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I got this copy of HARP for free in exchange for this review, though Tim Duggert certainly didn’t make any particular demands of me otherwise.
Just to make it clear, this is the revised electronic edition of the game, not earlier editions that have been floating around. I can’t tell you what that means because I didn’t see the old edition.
What You Get
In the revised .pdf edition of HARP you get 192 pages, not counting full black and white reproductions of the front and back covers. The .pdf edition reads easily on my computer. I used both Adobe 6 and the Foxit .pdf reader with no problems at all. Images come out cleanly and text reads well, even on my primitive machine.
Visuals
HARP’s border has a stony Celtic motif. The interior’s black and white. It’s generally of good to excellent quality. Going by the beginning chapter pieces and much of the interior work, you are forced to accept two things:
1) The typical HARP character has a big-ass beard.
2) He wants to kick your ass for even looking at him.
They ease up on this later on, but remember. Beard. Anger. HARP. This isn’t a dis or anything though. As I said, the art’s pretty good.
How to we run things with these Celtic, bearded asskickers? What the hell does HARP stand for? Let’s stop wasting time and get to the meat of it.
Abstract Impressions
HARP (High Adventure Roleplaying) is a generic fantasy game – one with many of the same assumptions of Dungeons and Dragons. However, the introduction makes in clear that the fantasy background is really a showcase for the game’s systems and concepts. All the same, there are elves, and wizards, and your PC probably uses words like “Ye,” or especially, “By my beard, I will have your lilly-liver’d flesh cooling on me trusty poingard!”
In many ways, HARP is perfect for someone like me. I dived into Rolemaster head first in the 80s because I was lured by those Angus McBride pics. Then I read the damn thing. It was just too much for me, but the core systems behind it all were interesting enough that I wanted, well, Rolemaster, but not so much.
HARP takes the systems structure of Rolemaster as I know it (3rd Edition) and pares it down into something intuitive and eminently manageable for folks who, like me, liked ICE system concepts but couldn’t stomach their full-blown iterations.
I’ll stop being self-referential now. God knows there are at least five gamers who were still teething in the 80s and don’t know what I’m talking about. Now I’ll get into it
Character Creation
HARP chargen starts with your profession (a character class). There are nine available: Fighter, Harper, Mage Monk, ranger, Rogue, Thief and Warrior Mage. Profession gives a character a bias toward certain skills (you get a starting package of favored skills), but anybody can select any skill, with the exception of magic, which requires either an arcane talent or levels in the right profession. Some professions have special perks (Monks get multiple attacks with their martial arts, for instance). Characters may multiclass as they improve in HARP’s level-based system
Then players generate stats (they range from 1 to 105) and assign them accordingly. Tied to stats are Development Points, and this is where I’m a bit suspicious of the system Development Points get spent on extra goodies and stats, but you get more of them with higher stats. I don’t care for this kind of double advantage. Development Points are spent immediately at each character level. Characters start off with twice as many at 1st level. Stats also have an associated bonus that figures into character skills and other traits.
HARP has six races. There are your basic elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings and humans. In addition, there are the Gryx, who resemble a cross between Half-Orcs and Klingons. They’re big and strong and they look like they have lobster parts glued to their foreheads. The Gryx are described as peaceful folks who devote time to crafts, but they have inherent bonuses to fighting traits to reflect their size and might. All races except for humans have adjustments to stats and other traits, including their magical power and endurance. Nonhumans also have three specific special abilities.
Instead of futzing about with who can have babies with whom, HARP uses Blood talents to reflect mixed parentage. These come in lesser and greater varieties.
Even better, race does not determine culture in HARP. Instead, players select a culture package. Thus, it’s possible to play an urbane dwarf-elf without weeping and gnashing one’s teeth. Culture determines language and adds appropriate skill ranks.
Players spend initial class-based ranks and Development Points on skills. These are purchased in ranks, which equate to a base adjustment to a d% roll. This is further modified by circumstances until we get to the point where I stray off topic and want to get to this later, when we talk about systems. Since HARP is a skill-based system, though, players need to be careful to manage their points to properly reflect their professions.
Optionally. Players may purchase Training Packages that offer several related skills at a discount. Several are offered (from a martial arts school to the barbarian woodlore), and these are picked up in an all or nothing fashion, level by level. In some ways, this resembles Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay’s career system (a complement, in my view), but is more open-ended and not the be-all and end all of character development.
Characters can also have talents. These are somewhat like treeless feats, but some of them are outright supernatural abilities. Players pick these at 1st level.
Systems
HARP’s core mechanic is pretty simple: You roll d%, add modifiers for skill ranks and difficulty and consult the appropriate table. Unlike Rolemaster, there are not lots and lots of tables. Some rolls are All Or Nothing, and you don’t have to bother with a table at all, but hit a threshold. Others, though, are maneuver rolls. Players roll and check the table to determine whether they suck or rock. The power of a spell is corss-referenced on the table to determine its potency (how hard to is to resist).
Combat uses a similar set of rolls. Players roll their modifiers as an Offensive Bonus, with the enemy’s Defensive Bonus. If the character succeeds, the enemy takes concussion hits, but the real meat in an injury is a critical, which is determined by cross-referenceing the total roll with the weapon’s attack type.
If you’re familiar with the rules, this is all straightforward, one-roll stuff. You will have to photocopy the tables and have them on hand, practice a bit and generally get into the grove of it. I admire one-roll systems for the way they don’t jar narration, and you never have the “big hit, sucky damage” problem endemic to a few other systems.
Magic
HARP has a workmanlike point-based spellcasting system with most of the adventuring spells you might need. Spells are not “fire and forget,” though. Players can fiddle about with their parameters. This replaces the idea of spell levels. If you want better zap, you just learn how to zap better instead of researching a new spell. This removes many of the arbitrarily-slotted spells and gaps in HARP’s ancestors. In many ways, each spell is a distinct path of power.
Combat spells have nasty critical effects as well, charring bad guys to gory effect. Players can choose whether or not to make their mage dependent on an external focus, trading power for the possibility that the GM is a jerk who will nick the focus. I am a jerk, so I thoroughly enjoy such systems.
Spells are split by profession, but there is a nice list of universal spells that cross these boundaries. Gone, however, is Mentalism, so there are no pseudo-psionics.
Anything Else
Among other things, there are magic items herbs, poisons and mundane equipment. There’s also a modest selection of monsters (again, generic fantasy creatures) and guidelines for camping and overland travel.
What’s Good?
HARP impressed me with its one-roll mechanics and character-centered system. Characater creation and development is divided up logically, so that you can break stereotypes without leaving the system behind. Tables are central but sparse and easy to track, and magic is customizable enough to let players apply their own flavor to ostensibly generic spells (though some, like Moving Ways, represent a distinct approach to magic).
It would be very easy indeed to use parts of HARP to supplement another system. You could divide rolls by 5 to adapt parts to D20 games. The concussion hit scale would need to be reduced a touch (perhaps by half).
Really though, this is the game you want if your game emphasizes character history and background, because it uses so many tactics to back up any decision you might make.
Combat gives players and GMs alike good narrative hooks upon which to describe what’s happening. That’s what makes critical hits valuable, and I appreciate that detail.
What Could Be Better?
I really wish there was a distinct implied world in here. Sometimes HARP feels a little dry without some sort of setting – even a starting village – to support characters that are going to be so richly drawn. I would have liked more unique approaches to the races, too. Most of all, I wanted extended examples of the kind of characters I could make and what they can do. This game practically begs for iconic/signature characters to show us how cool we can make ‘em.
I’m suspicious of the way development points are calculated, too. It’s always troublesome to provide yet another ongoing reward for high traits, and this serves as a partial disincentive to play a weakling or cretin. HARP is really about high fantasy protagonists cut after the mold of Aragorn.
Finally, the game could stand a more concentrated organization: terse boxed summaries for combat, magic and skills where I can find them easily. This isn’t to say things are all over the place, but that some clever layout and verisimilitude would improve it.
The Final Analysis
This is a good game for folks who want blood and guts, unusual backgrounds and epic protagonists. You’ll want to bring your own world to the table though – and give it a couple of reads first. I know I’ll be hacking the system a bit for the next fantasy game I run.
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