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Saturday, June 19th is Free RPG Day and with it comes a slew of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are tasters for forthcoming games to be released at Gen Con the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera. Amongst the slew each year there will always be one or more hotly anticipated titles, the stalwarts, and then there will be something that comes as a surprise. This year, the surprise is Dead Weight, an Adventure Module & HârnMaster Quickstart from Columbia Games.

Dead Weight comes in a folder that contains a sheaf of single sheets of paper punched for three ring binders. To me this is an odd format, but I am told that this is the standard format for HârnMaster. The sheets can be divided into four sections: the adventure itself; description of the vessel used in the adventure, the Sea Hag; four detailed, ready to play adventurers; and the HârnMaster Quickstart rules. Having a handful of sheets to handful does make Dead Weight a little awkward to handle and read, but that is a minor hurdle when tying to get at the wealth of information presented here.

The adventure highlights the nature of some of the faiths in the setting of Hârn. It begins with the adventurers press ganged and taken on as the crew of the ship, the Sea Hag. Given little choice but to co-operate, the new members of the crew find themselves with some interesting new duties, including having to deal with a dead passenger. And not just any dead passenger, but one who has died of the Red Death! Dead Weight is relatively short, but it is detailed and it should provide two good sessions of play.

Dead Weight is well supported, though. Both the Sea Hag and her crew are fully detailed, as are the four pre-generated characters. Each one comes with an interesting background, an illustration, and full statistics. None of them are anything other than self-interested, perhaps even to the extent of actually being evil. Indeed in the suggestions given on how to adapt the characters to another very popular fantasy RPG, most of them would actually be Neutral Evil! In HârnMaster terms each of them has a relatively low score for his Morality attribute – and yes, characters have a Morality attribute, which feels a little odd.

The HârnMaster Quickstart rules are easy to read and understand, introducing the reader to a fairly gritty percentile system. Combat in particular is quite detailed and quite deadly. One or two more examples would have been useful, but a more careful read gets around that.

Dead Weight is my first encounter with HârnMaster and purely on the strength of this Adventure Module & HârnMaster Quickstart, I like what I see. This fantasy setting will appeal to anyone who likes their genre to be gritty, and you can almost feel the grime in this adventure. Some gamers might find it all a bit too dry, as there are no elements present that you might find in more traditional fantasy. Otherwise, Dead Weight: Adventure Module & HârnMaster Quickstart is decent package, providing both a good scenario and an excellent introduction to HârnMaster.