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In Harnmaster, chapters have their own page numbers; Introduction (3p), Character (12p), Skills (18p), Combat (28p), Religion (10p), Shek Pvar (aka Magic, 24p), Mercantyler (2p), Prices (4p), Campaign (8p), Encounters(4p), Bestairy (10p), Treasure (14p), Index (4p). Not surprisingly, there isn't a table of contents and thankfully, the Index is not recursive. The excellent cover art by Michael Codd is a scene reminiscent of Norman England; knights on horseback with Kite Shields and crucifix-bearing monks. Interior art is fairly sparse, of good quality, and is contextually appropriate. It also comes with two cardstock colour combat charts. The lithographed typeset justified serif font in two column throughout and the writing is quite dense but readable throughout and manages to pack in a lot of information for 144 pages. The book's binding is not the best; I am yet to find a used copy that has survived the rigours of actual play.
Players choose humans or roll for species (90% human, 7% Orc, 1% Elf, 1% Dwarf, 1% Other), roll or choose sex, roll for birthdate, derive zodiac sunsign from birthdate, roll parental occupation (a hefty list of some 80 medieval occupations with authentic distribution and an additional roll for rural/urban), derive occupation and social class, roll sibling rank, roll estrangement, roll clanhead, roll medical problems (approximately 67.5% of the population). Roll height, roll frame, derive weight. Roll complexion, roll hair colour, roll eye colour, roll comeliness; GMs may expand features as desired. Physical attributes are Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Agility, Speed, Eyesight, Hearing, Smell/Taste, Touch, Voice. Personality attributes are Intelligence, Aura, Will and Morality. These are rolled on 3d6 (or 4d6, keep 3, or with a point allocation system. Morality can optionally be chosen). Roll Psyche (psychological problems; 60% chance). Choose deity (limited in range by Morality), roll Piety.
Players and GM must also work out family ties, social freedom, membership to guilds etc. and assign skills. Skills are defined as Automatic (Climbing, Awareness, Language etc), Family skills, based on the parent's occupation, gives 1 occupational mastery in the skills allocated to the profession, with the base level being 3 stats modified by star sign in most cases. An apprenticeship can also follows, usually in the family's occupation, although this a further d100 random roll can be used as an offer. Note that the parental occupation is not the same as the appenticeship occupation. The number of skills varies significantly during apprenticeship; A Pilot receives some 18 total skill levels across 7 skills whereas a Cook receives only 7 levels across 2 skills. As the game is writ, accepting a different apprenticeship to one's parent provides not only a greater range of skills, but also a small number of additional skills levels to characters who take the family path. There is also a problem of numerous skills being opened the first time a character attempts them, leaving those who trained in them in their apprenticeship feeling a bit cheated. Characters begin with 1-3 months of a journeyman's wages as savings, typical clothing and armour, tools and family resources.
With thirty-plus random die-rolls in chargen, Harnmaster is arguably simulationist to a fault; it seems to be quite an act of overkill to have separate stats for Eyesight, Hearing, Smell/Taste and Touch instead of a general Perception stat, likewise for the Agility/Speed distinction. It is a somewhat cruel with the percentage of characters with physical or psychological problems. There is very little narrativist intervention for players, not even for matters which have little or no direct influence on play; this is the game where one doesn't even chose their characters own eye colour! The rules of medieval realism dictate that 2 out of 3 characters will be slaves or serfs. Despite this very non-heroic approach, some joy however is also from the same; the medieval occupations, their distribution and skill-sets are a very welcome change from RPGs which defined people as merely Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric or Thief.
As mentioned previously, skills are initially determined by a Skill Base (SB), the character's natural affinity. The total of their occupation is a multiple of the base, initially derived from a multiplication of the Skill Base. Modifications to skill chances determine an Effective Mastery Level (EML), a multiplication of the base, rather than an absolute modifier as applied to many other percentile-skill based games. Skill use is a roll under system; any success roll ending in a 5 or 0 is a critical success, any failure roll ending in 5 or 0 is a critical failure. Knowledge/lore skills have very precise accuracy ratings depending on result, and craft skills have their own table for value enhancement. Some skills may be specialised when the character has an ML of 60%+, which gives them an additional 10%. Skills are improved by development rolls (roll over existing level, as per RuneQuest), which derive from Practise/Study (three development rolls per month), Training (bonus improvement roll), and bonus experience from high stress situations. Compared to the improvements achieved during apprenticeship, the rate of gain during play is significantly faster.
Like character generation, combat tends heavily towards a simulationist agenda. The sequence for the ten-second combat rounds is ordered into surprise, movement and engagement accorded to Initiative Ratings. Weapon strike chances are modified by a attack/defense table and resolved according to the relative success of attacks (critical success, success, failure, critical failure) versus the relative success of various defenses (block, counterstrike, dodge, grapple, ignore). The result includes tactical advantages, fumbles, holds, blocks, wild shots (for missiles), misses and attacker/defender strikes. These generate an "Impact Rating" in d6s which, after being modified for a weapon, are applied to a detailed hit location, minus armour which, if there is any positive results, is then compared to an Injury Table. Apart from accumulating injury points, representing minor nicks, scratches and bruises which can eventually wear down a character, the inpact can lead to shock rolls, fumbles, bleeding wounds, stumbles, amputations and automatic kills. The defensive value of armour is different according to whether the attack is blunt, edged, tears, point, fire/frost, or squeeze. The injury table is similarly differentiated.
In general it's a good system, albeit too crunchy (with an average of six rolls per successful strike), but with a couple of serious glitches. The core element of defining Impact on the basis of strike result does mean that at times the system doesn't scale very well; an amusing article in the Harnlore newsletter many years ago referred to a small dog biting off a character's leg as an example. Strength modifies for weapons is capped at a mere 14, which is quite odd to say the least. The default Dodge ability also seemed a little high as well (Agility*5) compared to starting weapon MLs; I found that one method to speed up combat significantly was to use the Acrobatics skill from default instead.
The rest of the combat chapter, provides some good notes for mounted combat, four pages of weapon descriptions, several pages of weapon and armour manufacturing and armour descriptions and the gradual and rather realistic slow process of healing various wounds. Like other aspects of the game it tends towards the specific rather than the abstract with particular healing treatments and probabilties of success specified; infection can be a real character-killer of the game, even more so than the wounds themselves.
The religion chapter provides a brief description of pantheon of Harn. There's a pretty clear distinction between the "good guys" (Larani, Peoni), the "bad guys" (Morgath, Agrik etc), the "weirdos" (Siem, Save K'nor) and the sensual (Halea). Church hierarchy is determined by "circles" with occupational classifications. Acolyte training provides a small set of skills according to church. Characters are also provided Piety Points which, not surprisingly, results from engaging in pious acts and whose prime purpose is to subtley invoke divine intervention, which has a variable chance of success and may come with retribution or conditions. Further there are some thirty Invocations (Awe, Battlelust, Healing etc) which can be achieved by various priests according to their rank and deity which also cost Piety Points.
Shek-Pvar are the elementalist magic-users, who divide themselves into air, fire, water, earth, metal and spirit. To say the least, becoming a member of the order is a diffuculty in its own right; only 1 in 1000 people start with the family occupation and only 1 in 100 apprenticeships are of this path which, strictly speaking, makes the utility of the chapter somewhat moot. This said, the Shek Pvar accord themsleves with a strict code of ethics, with increased difficulty levels for magic that belongs to successive or diametic convocations. Each spell is treated as its own skill, with a convocations alignment, a difficulty level. Spell-casting accumulates fatigue, and critical failures result in misfires. Some seventy spells are described, differentiated by convocation (and with a section of common spells), and with bonus effects in most cases with high mastery levels.
The Mercantyler, Prices and Campaign chapters (really, they should be one and the same) begin with an excellent discussion on currency, taxes and the like, a listing of goods and where they can be found before moving on to describing the caledar, environs, mapping, time, movement rates. This is followed by Encounters, Bestairy and Treasure chapater. I quite liked how the encounter tables distinguished between Lawful/Lawless on Urban encounters, Night/Day on Wilderness Encounters erc. The Bestairy chapter was a little short, but gave sufficient concentration on the Ivashu, the "created monsters" of the Harn world. Finally the fourteen page Treasure chapter whilst starting with personal possessions and mundane items, spends much of the page-count on the relatively rare magical treasures.
I note from the HarnForum that very few people actually play Harnmaster 1st edition anymore, having moved onto one of the numerous new (2nd, 3rd, Gold) editions or alternate systems (GURPS, Hero, RQ, TRoS seem popular options). This is quite telling; Harnmaster 1e has a lot of good ideas, and is to be congratulated for the effort of trying to replicate medieval society in detail but in many ways it seemed to try too hard. The lack of narrativist input from players signifantly reduces enjoyment in actual play. This, combined with a couple of serious rules glitches, reduces the Substance rating which could have been higher. With regards to Style, even forgiving the unusual rules organisation, neither the layout nor the physical quality the book is below average, do justice to the external and internal art. This said, Harnmaster was a fair introduction to the extensive line of Harn products and attracted great interest in those who wanted an "authentic and realistic" medieval fantasy world.
