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Product: HârnMaster 3rd Edition Boxed Set Published by: Columbia Games Inc, Blaine, WA (www.columbiagames.com)

This review focuses on HârnMaster 3rd Edition as a whole, without making any comparisons to previous editions. For those who have never read the rules, it is a detailed look at the game system, especially character generation.

HârnMaster allows you to play in a realistic, internally consistent fantasy setting without sacrificing playability. In HârnMaster this means a good deal of attention is focused on character creation, not on complex formula for combat, falling damage, and training times. Once character creation is complete, the game is similar in style to most d100 / BRP systems. This review is split into two sections: The Players and The GM.

Short and Sweet: HârnMaster is best for roleplaying in a near-mundane world. It is especially suitable for use with HârnWorld; for which a considerable amount of world-specific information exists. Hârn is a near-mundane world influenced by real-world history and cultures throughout. It uses a d100 mechanic for resolving tests. There are no character classes, but initial character creation is modelled on professions. Combat is similar to, and predates the style, of D&D 3e in terms of initiative, combat options, and threatened areas, but the similarities ends there. The game does not use hit points; instead characters experience a slow degrading of abilities when wounded, and may eventually pass out. Characters improve only in skills they actually use, and there is a simple training mechanism to pick up new talents.

The rules are printed on loose-leaf, three-hole punched, quality paper. All text and images are black-and-white. The rules are broken up into chapters, so page numbers are usually referred to as Combat 4, or Psionics 7. Because of the format, it is easy to organize the rules how you want, as well as remove and insert your own rules. Many people put individual pages into plastic sheet protectors to protect their investment. Page count is 160, and it retails at approximately US$40.

HârnMaster is optimized for use with HârnWorld, a lovingly crafted universe created by N. Robin Crossby with over two million words of background material. The rules and the world are not tied so closely together that you couldn’t use one without the other. In fact, original prints of HârnWorld were rules neutral, and new material differs only in that some character stats are presented.

For the Players

Characters are products of their environment, and the GM should know in advance where the campaign will take place. The character creation rules take into account whether the character is the daughter of an astrologer, or the son of a viking chieftain. Your first attempts at making characters should take between thirty minutes to one hour, but practice and some simple tools can speed this process up dramatically. Characters start out with moderate to good skills related to their starting profession, instead of being relatively weak neophytes.

Character generation typically starts with rolling attributes. All character Attributes have a range from 3-18 +/- racial modifiers. There are a variety of ways to determine these numbers depending on whether the GM wants gritty reality or heroic characters in the game. The types of Attributes generated are typical for most RPGs: Strength, Stamina, Intelligence, etc. HârnMaster has different attributes for Dexterity (hand-eye coordination) and Agility (flexibility, speed and overall reflexes). Surprisingly, characters have ratings for their eyesight, senses of smell and taste (a combined attribute as the two are closely related), hearing, and body type or frame. These Attributes actually mean something throughout the game, and are not a series of numbers for their own sake.

After rolling the Attributes, a family background is generated for the character. If the GM hasn’t made some decisions for you already, you can generate the parent’s social class, how many siblings the character has, how the family feels about the character, and who the character’s friends and enemies are. When you’ve completed this process you’ll have a wealth of information to write up a background, and the GM will have a lot of hooks to exploit. What’s nice is that your character will be able to relate to the world once you’re done rolling her up.

Characters have a Morality Attribute, which measures their overall attitude toward authority and society in general. This is the only attribute that fluctuates during the game. If the character acts like a pirate, then their morality will go down. Although the game does not specify any rules for using Morality, there are some suggestions about how Morality might effect the character’s religious affiliations. Mostly, however, this is a roleplaying tool. The game includes tables for randomly rolling physical afflictions, such as allergies, and mental afflictions, such as phobias. Again, these are optional. They may have an effect during the game, and there are further options that allow the player to gamble on the phobia table for a few extra points toward their attributes.

Now we get to the point where we start to use those attributes. Here’s where the process gets a little complex. HârnMaster has no classes, per se. You are not locked into a career path for the rest of your character’s life. There are however professions, almost 100 of them, ranging from Rat-catcher to Knight Bachelor. Your character starts the game having been trained to do something, and has all the typical skills associated with that profession. You also get a few option points to pick up some skills, or improve those you already had. From the day the character steps out of her master’s house, she’s free to learn anything that interests her. I’ll get back to this.

There are over 100 skills in HârnMaster, and more can be devised by the GM if they feel it’s necessary. Each skill has a base average of three attributes. Unarmed combat, for example, has a Skill Base equal to the average of the character’s Strength, Dexterity, and Agility. When the character chooses or rolls a profession, they are given a list of skills the character has learned. Each skill begins at a Mastery Level, which is a multiple of the character’s Skill Base for that skill. Knights, for example, learn Sword/6, which means that their starting skill, on a d100 scale, is equal to 6 times their Skill Base for sword. You will see immediately what interesting combinations of good and bad attributes will do for the character’s initial skills. Characters with poor attributes will start out relatively weaker than other characters; however, you can only get so good at a skill, so the limit differences are pretty narrow.

Another influence on Skill Base is the astrological sign the character was born under. Those born under Angberelius (Flaming Sword) will be better at some combat skills. This is another example of where the line between Game System and Game World is blurred. You could easily create an astrological table from your own world, or take it out of the equation altogether.

Now you’re all set to play. But how does the character advance; how do skills improve as time goes on? The mechanic for improving your character’s skills is very simple. If you use a skill the GM decides if that is worth an improvement roll. That’s it. In order to get better at picking locks, you have to pick locks, or get training. A Skill Improvement roll is made as follows: roll d100 and add the Skill Base. If this exceeds the current skill level (Mastery Level), then it increases by one. If not, it doesn’t increase. This has the effect that low skills are improved rapidly, and high skills improve very slowly.

Another method of improvement is to add new skills to a character’s repertoire. Some skills can be picked up right away. The first time you try it, you figure out what your natural talent is. Swimming is a good example. Even though you don’t know how to swim, the second you step into water over your head you begin trying. Quickly figure out the Skill Base and now write down Swim as a skill on your character sheet. Other skills, like Foraging can take about a month of practice, or training. There is also a routine for using free time, ie. hobby points, to improve some skills you didn’t use in game.

Now your character is ready to go out and explore the world!

For the GM

The three coolest things about HârnMaster is that (a) it is a simple system with a lot of options, (b) it makes minimal assumptions about what you intend on playing, and (c) there’s a loyal support group to give you a hand.

A simple game lets you keep all the information behind the GM’s screen. You never have to give the players the rulebooks. The whole system is simple enough to remember. Everything the player needs to know is right on their character sheet or in their adventuring log. There aren’t lists of abilities or options that affect character design and making advanced characters, or more mature NPCs is nothing more than a short extension beyond the original character creation routine, so the whole process is a snap. You can use this to your advantage to keep the game mysterious, and the player’s on their toes, but it’s not for everyone. You better talk it over with your group, and get their feeling about this, if enforcing rules-ignorance is why you want to move to a new system.

HarnMaster 3rd Edition is a set of rules primarily focused on playability over previous editions which focused their attention on portraying realism. Over 75 rules from previous editions have been updated and included in the side bar of each page as optional rules. You can start with the basic system, then add in options for family developement, specialization, weapon breakage, catching thrown missiles, or bleeding, until you achieve the level of playability and realism that you are comfortable with.

HârnMaster assumes that you plan to play in a near mundane world, in that you only get a minimum set of rules. Now all that means, really, is that the world usually obeys the laws of physics and the world is usually filled with regular men and women doing regular things. The game doesn’t assume that the world is rife with psionics, magic, nor gods. So HârnMaster has a lot room for your personal vision.

Let’s jump back to character creation for a moment. If the GM wants to, he can generate random psionic talents for the character. Sixteen talents are included with HârnMaster. Psionics are treated like skills, but can be tiring to use. The probability and strength of psionics is initially controlled by the character’s Aura, but the player wouldn’t even know that they have psionics unless there is a reason for the skill to manifest itself. You’ll enjoy the look of wonderment on your player’s face when you tell her that she got a weird vibe off of an ancient sword she picked up, or that she’s got a gut feeling someone is hiding behind the door, or that her enemy’s cloak suddenly burst into flames. If you want, you can play psionics up a lot, and make it a major part of the game, or keep it low key, the rules handle both approaches equally well.

The rules include some information for generating clerics and magician. If you as GM decide that the gods are not real, or do not have any magical power to give the faithful, then you have all the information necessary for creating clerics unique to each religion. If you want clerical magic, you’ll need to pick up HârnMaster Religion or tack on a suitable system. It’s an expansion to the basic rules I’m reviewing here. There are also rules for generating magicians, which are a summary reprint from HârnMaster Magic, but no spells are included. The magic system is peculiar to HârnWorld, and HârnMaster Magic is also an expansion volume.

The combat system is very simple. Combatants move in initiative order. Each combatant may choose one of several options, such as move-attack, move-move, very similar to d20 in this respect. This is not a clone of the d20 system, as the rules predate d20 by a number of years. On your turn, when you attack, the defender gets a choice of defensive options. They may block or dodge, or attempt a counterattack in order to strike you first. Each person makes a skill check and the results are measured against each other. If you succeed and he fails, you might do some damage. You could fail horribly, and fumble your weapon, slip and fall, or give your opponent a tactical advantage (HârnMaster speak for an attack of opportunity).

A bit about mechanics: There are four types of results in this system: Critical Success, Marginal Success, Marginal Failure, and Critical Failure. There is a 20% chance that a success or failure is a critical. Instead of calculating this probability to the low and high range of numbers, HârnMaster uses a very simple rule. A 0 or a 5 on the ones-die of a d100 is a critical. Put another way, if the result can be divided evenly by 5, the result is a critical. It takes some getting use to, but it saves a lot of math in the long run.

If you hit, you figure out where. You roll a d100 and compare the result to a hit location chart. You have the option, during your attack, to specify a high or low swing, and this moves the probability up or down on the chart. Hit locations are very specific. You can strike someone in the elbow, or the knee, the neck or the face. You can even determine if you hit someone in the cheek, ear, or eye, and even which eye, left or right. This results in some very graphic detail. If this isn’t enjoyable, you can easily remove this detail from the game, and it will speed up your combats considerably.

The amount of damage rolled is determined by the severity of the hit. If you critically strike someone who critically failed, you get to roll more dice, d6s in this case. This number is adjusted up by the aspect of the weapon and reduced by the location’s armor. A stab with a sword has a lower aspect than a slice with the long edge of the weapon.

Armor has a rating which blocks a certain amount of damage. It is rated for blunt, pierce, edged, and fire attacks. Whatever is left is referenced on a chart to see how severe the injury is. If 9 points get through to your hand, the resulting wound will be more severe than if 9 points get through to your elbow. Before you get the idea that there are a lot of charts in HârnMaster, let me assure you that all the combat charts fit nicely on one sheet of paper.

The severity of a wound reduces your ability to perform a task. This is cumulative. A minor wound gives you a 5% penalty to all your skills. Get a severe wound, and now your penalty is 20%. The more wounded you get, the more likely it is you will pass out. There is a small chance that a very well placed, high damage attack, can kill a character outright.

HârnMaster includes rules for mounted combat and jousting.

HârnMaster doesn’t handle scale between combatants very well. You might find it difficult to run combats between giants and men for example, because there is nothing in the rules that say a human-sized dagger attack to giant isn’t as dangerous as the same attack is to a pixie. This can be easily fixed, but let me finish talking about content.

So, there’s no magic, and no hit points, how do you heal? If you’re a cinematic gamer, you are not going to like this answer: Slowly. Even a minor wound takes a minimum of five days to heal. That means you carry around that 5% penalty I talked about earlier the whole time. Then there is a chance for infection; infection can kill you. Shock can kill you. A good physician (or a character with the Physician skill) can help battle infection, but even then, you don’t heal very fast. The character’s level of activity also affects healing, so resting in bed is optimal, while a force march might prevent any healing at all. A grievous wound might eventually heal, but permanent damage (that is, a reduced Attribute) might remain. Alchemy and psionic talents that can help speed the healing process.

The rest of the rules talk about movement, mapping, treasure generation, and artifacts. I’m not going to give a lot of detail because most of it is HârnWorld specific, and as such, should be covered under a review of the world and not the rules, since they are so closely related. I will mention that there is a wealth of information for generating random encounters. The tables are broad in range and cover everything from passing merchants on a busy street to coming across brigands in action on the road.

At the end of the rules is the creature section. The layout is reminiscent of early Rolemaster books: two pages of stats crammed into a table, with just enough information to run them in combat. Many mundane animals are described. Stats for Hârn specific beasts are included, and some, if I remember correctly, provide no clue to what kind of creature is being detailed. Griffon is an obvious entry, but asiri (spirits) is not. That’s ok though, because a major addition to HM3 over previous editions is an expanded section on Hârn’s beasts.

There is a reprint of information from the Columbia Games module Nasty Brutish & Short, which is a module detailing the orcs of Hârn. The inclusion of this information is enough for any reader to realize that the original d20 compatible module had a well realized, and intriguing ecology surrounding these creatures. Unlike Nasty, Brutish & Short, HârnMaster includes the actual stats for these monsters. Next is information on Ivashu; another HârnWorld specific idea. For the uninitiated, Ivashu are all the monsters of the world, created by the god Ilvir. There are many kinds of Ivashu, like gargoyles, trolls, giants, and acid spitting snakes, or any other strange creature of the GM's design.

HârnMaster has a large, dedicated, fan base that offers many utilities for speeding character generation, as well as house rules taken from previous editions of the game. There is a dedicated forum to the rules and the world at http://www.harnforum.com. Many fans argue that HârnMaster can suitably handle any style of gaming as well as any setting. Either attempt would take a little bit more work, but the results can be very satisfying.

I highly recommend the system to anyone who is looking for something more complex than d100 Basic Role Playing. It makes an excellent system for Cthulhu, modern or near future settings, and is a wonderful replacement for your aging, out of print, RuneQuest Rules. It is particularly suited to the HârnWorld, but I believe it is a far more versatile system.