Orcs are not a product of the natural world of Harn. They were either created somehow, in an earlier age, by an evil sorcerer, or imported from a different dimension. They are alien in a couple key ways — somewhat hive like, they are born from eggs (ew) laid by a single queen and share an innate tribal memory. Thus, they inherit learned behavior from the generations before, which informs and reinforces their actions, sometimes irrationally. This seems to indicate both an awareness and wariness of the idea of a type of monster existing as monolith. These orcs are still sort of a monolith, but an attempt has been made to explain why, and it works well enough because they are surrounded by various other cultures that are, for game purposes, somewhat monolithic on the surface.

It’s maybe not ideal, but I also don’t really know how you handle orcs differently in the context of Harn, and for what this is, I think it’s rather well done (at one point, in an explanation for a scenario involving helping wounded orcs, the author suggests rolling up the module to “thrash them soundly about the ears” if the players seem inclined to meet requests for mercy with violence). Brutal as most orcs are, it’s the plotting of humans and dwarves that most often uses them as instruments of violence, usually for political gain. The scenarios, for the most part, put players in the way of those schemes.

As usual for Harn, the visuals of the book are in good hands with Eric Hotz, who did all the illustrations and maps. I think the maps are particularly sharp and the cover art stands as one of the line’s very best.

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HarnMaster: Magic (1997) collects all that earlier material into one set of loose leaf pages (heavy stock, full color, droooool) and makes everything delightfully modular. Even in the zine form, I liked the Harn magic system and found it surprisingly usable, but here even more so, thanks the inclusion of the humble check box. Basically, every mechanic is accompanied by one, and if the GM wants to use it, they check it off. Unchecked boxes are ignored and if whole pages are unchecked, they can simply be removed from the rules entirely. I haven’t given a close look to the binder version of HarnMaster 3E (1996), so I don’t know if this is a something the entire ruleset employs, but it strikes me as a very clever and usable way to present a system that can scale to the desired complexity of the players.

The downside of the magic system is that while the spells are novel, interesting and useful, they are all named using in-world logic. I think Dream of Galega (which evokes a powerful healing coma) is a more interesting and evocative name than “Heal,” but on a mechanical level I prefer the latter as I know what it does without having to memorize or refer to the text. Boring though that may be. But that kind of balance between the fiction and utility is a challenge something like Harn is always going to face.

Eric Hotz on the art throughout. I like the cover a lot. It’s very cheeky.

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HarnMaster Barbarians (2000) introduces another layer of detail: eighteen tribal nations that coexist (tensely) with Harn’s feudal kingdoms, each with their own customs and magic systems and religious practices. This really solidifies, in my mind, how Harn uses Britain as a basic template, with wave after wave of culture groups arriving (often being pushed out of their original homelands) and supplanting the folk who are already there. The tribal nations very much remind me of the Celts who were subjugates by the Romans, who left Britain to the Cymru, who were eventually subjugated by the Saxons, who then mingled with invading Norse before being overrun by the Normans, and so on.

Harn’s tribal nations have echoes of these various real world groups. But more importantly, they contrast strongly with the feudal people of Harn, who have traded much of their individual freedom for safety and civilization. The tribes are not bound by laws, but rather by blood and friendship. There is little they are required to do, but their lives are more precarious in the wilderness. Being pressed by Orcs and scarcity of resources and other dangers tend to bind the community together. And to have these tribal groups living alongside the feudal peoples, in the deep forests and wild lands the civilized people refuse to go, is just such a wonderfully believable detail, both because it feels realistic and because it immediately injects more friction into the world. 

All the art is by Eric Hotz and this might be his final work for the line. Not entirely sure about that.

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Anyway, this is Inns of Harn (2008), a wonderful pile of loose leaf in a folder. Don’t let the shoddy PhotoShop silhouetting the cover turn you away! Inside, the art is great (all by Richard Luschek, who took over art duties for the line from Eric Hotz in the late ‘90s), the floorplans detailed and the layout crisp. Five inns are detailed without any mechanics — a dangerous local dive, a riverside inn, a pilgrim’s respite, a high class haunt and a caravanserai. Each boasts information that makes them easy to use in play and provides a wealth of opportunities for diversion — detailed maps, profiles of staff and possible clientèle, adventure seeds, food for sale and so on. Just enough for them to come alive, not so much that it takes any effort to use them. Perfect little things. I swear, modular stuff like this is so useful and entertaining when done well, I don’t understand why there isn’t more of it laying around the hobby.

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This takes the HarnView and HarnDex material (in entirety, I think) and adds a deeply informative Common Knowledge section (I am not sure if this section is original to Player, as there are a confusing number of configurations of the stuff put out by Columbia, but I think it is). That section is very noteworthy. It’s a collection of legends and songs and historical sketches and it does an excellent job of quickening the static world information into something living and breathing. I’ve been a fan of Harn for a while, but I never really looked at this book as anything more than an afterthought, but when I finally dug in, I was surprised at how essential these 20ish pages now feel.

Worth noting that I own this book for the same reason I initially dismissed it: because the cover (as ever, by Eric Hotz) delights me. It is somehow a perfect distillation of the Harn experience. But because it was cartoonish, well, I judged the book by its cover and never really looked beyond it. Silly me.

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