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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There are plenty of red herrings (one that cleverly plays on the events of 100 Bushels of Rye, even) and complications and changes and such. If you’ve read Name of the Rose, you’ll know enough to recognize the references but not enough to unravel the plot. It’s the best kind of homage.

And I don’t have much else to say about it! If you like Name of the Rose, you’ll dig this, and it is system and setting neutral enough that you can plug it into whatever game you are playing and have it work pretty good without too much trouble.

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It starts with a curse situation not unlike Staff of Fanon and leads the party to a nexus between worlds. To proceed after their quarry — an evil mage with ambitions to found a multi-dimensional empire — they find themselves in a dreamland where they have to pass seven mystical trials that are likely to kill most of them off (only to be resurrected at the end, should at least one character survive). After that, they journey to an entirely different place, a strange city under siege by many factions, several of them straight up demonic. There they have to navigate those factions and the morality of their intervention (attaining their goals is likely going to hurt innocents in this world) in order to kick the bad guy’s butt.

It is pretty ambitious and honestly rather Planescape-y a year before Planescape — different realities, factions, moral decisions. The really interesting thing for me is the contrast between the high weirdness of the magic and the reality hopping compared to the nitty gritty medieval existence of Harn. There is a bit of this in the relationship between, say, Forgotten Realms and Planescape that makes Planescape’s weirdness feel all the weirder, but here, the weirdness seems to almost glow white hot, if that makes sense. I don’t know if it really works for me. It is such a wild swerve! But I definitely appreciate the attempt.

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This one is a fairly non-traditional structure, in that the bulk of the material details, sourcebook-like, Kiraz as a general adventuring site. It’s a dwarven city abandoned after a horrible war depopulated it and thus is sort of a riff on Moria (no balrog here though). There is a lot of opportunity to have history come to life in the ruins and no shortage of halls to explore. The inclusion of the necessary artifact for the larger story seems almost an afterthought. I kind of like that though, as the sequence is meant to be slotted in among other adventures, not played through with dedication like a Temple of Elemental Evil sort of thing. The real story of the trilogy takes of in the final volume.

I have to say, this cover by Eric Hotz is one of my absolute favorite pieces of 80s RPG and definitely my favorite piece to come out of Harn. I was delighted when I finally got my hands on it and discovered that inside are page after page of gorgeous maps and cross-sections. Some of the best maps I’ve encountered, I think. And some additionally lovely art. That makes this a super attractive candidate for some non-Harn adventuring, I think.

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The whole series is curious. If you’re me, when you think of Harn, you think of a setting that is deeply interested in simulating a kind of fantasy version of medieval Europe. Yes, there are monsters and magic, but the baseline world, its cultures, its social structures and so on reflect something essentially historical in nature. Similarly, the HarnMaster system, which this adventure is nominally written for, is a realistic system in the spirit of a RoleMaster or a Chivalry & Sorcery. But then this module goes to weird places.

It is, essentially, a straight forward adventure. Villain curses a town, villain disappears (to appear in later adventures), heroes show up to lift the curse. Lifting the curse requires getting the titular staff back. Finding it, though, requires going through a passage in a nearby cave that deposits the characters on an entirely different world. The transition is subtle and most players will probably not realize it, but for the GM, this feels like some proto-Planescape vibes. There is an imprisoned demon, a subterranean garden and a bear-headed gardener. Not so medieval realist anymore, huh!

Love the mage on the cover in his terrycloth robe — getting some very “confused old codger” vibes from him. Art throughout is evocative, as are the maps and other schematics.

Oh, one more thing. Around this time, new Harn setting material was hard to come by, so fans started creating their own. They called the official material canon and, inspired by the name of this adventure, combined “fan” and “canon” into the word “fanon,” making it maybe the first instance of a word that is now an important term in fanfiction. Which is neat, if true!

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First, Rye uses the setting well. The story is very much invested in the workings of the feudal system, its economic pressures and how the people of Loban are in an ongoing culture clash with a nearby tribal group (inspired by Celts and decidedly un-feudal). All these sort of big picture problems and systems conspire to create a situation in which villagers keep winding up dead, likely murdered.

Getting to the bottom of this situation requires investigation. There is very little opportunity to swing a sword. Most of the adventure is going to be spent charting out local economic obligations. When the mystery leads outside the village, it winds up at a nice little adventuring site that combines natural caverns, man made ruins and perhaps a monster. There is definitely a villain of the piece, but they’re spurred on by a series of events that no one could have calculated the consequences of — I find that kind of story satisfying and rare, as they usually result in situations that require difficult decisions. Not bad for a first outing!

The module looks nice, too. I appreciate the general Harn aesthetic and this one embraces it to good effect. Lots of good maps and places that are sort of recognizable without being boring. And, bonus: it is nominally intended for HarnMaster, but recognizing that lots of folks use Harn as a setting for other game systems, it is also designed to be easily adaptable, which I appreciate

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“Messed up” is a bit, but you just know from Crossby’s approach to intricate, realistic world-building that he’s going to embrace intricate and “realistic” in his mechanics. It uses 18 hit locations – more than RuneQuest, but far less than Aftermath, if that gives you some gauge. A lot of folks say it is derivative of RuneQuest (and I guess the framework of abilities and a percentile skill system supports that), but I feel like spiritually, it is more in line with an Aftermath or Rolemaster style game. There are lots of fiddly bits.

I am generally not into fiddly bits, but with HarnMaster…I understand it more. A realistic, nitty gritty world deserves a realistic, nitty gritty system. Not for me, but I get it. Still, working on the system took Crossby away from working on the world, and I very much wish that hadn’t happened.

The most interesting thing for me, I think, is the skill based magic system, which consists of six elemental attunements, arranged in opposition to one another. A mage begins attuned to one element, gets bonuses for spells involving it, penalties for the opposite and diminished effects for the rest. There are also both common and neutral spells filling out the options. If a mage grows powerful enough, they can go grey, transcending the bonuses and penalties of elemental opposition. This is a clear forerunner of 2E D&D’s schools of magic.

One very nice thing about HarnMaster is Eric Hotz’s art. As much as I enjoy his faux-medieval work in the generic Harn books, and as much as that works to visually unify the world, it is a nice change of pace to see him do straight illustration work. The subjects of many of these illustrations are mundane – soldiers, farmers, craftspeople, everyday objects – and I find that to be a strangely compelling aesthetic choice.

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