Off the Shelf: HARP

HARP is another I just saved from the sell boxes.

For one, the long out-of-print bestiary is now available in print-on-demand, so we can have a hardcover monster book. The game is a simplified Rolemaster, and I recommended this to a friend who plays Rolemaster, but she does not have time to sort through all the rules.

HARP offers 90% of the Rolemaster experience with a fraction of the complexity. But what's truly exciting is the reintroduction of the expanded crit charts in the Martial Law book. These charts can serve as a springboard for your own creative results, allowing you to truly shape the game to your liking. It's like the B/X version of a Rolemaster game, offering more freedom than the full AD&D or 3.5E experience.

I still have Rolemaster Classic here, and while it's a nice set of books, the rules take more time than I have and far more time than she does. She was playing Rolemaster more loosely and making most of it up, which isn't bad, but there is a difference between winging the rules and actually playing the actual game with the correct characters and powers. I hope she likes the HARP rules, and they both simplify her experience and offer the full game.

HARP is the Rolemaster for everyone.

They are working on a new streamlined Rolemaster, but it feels early. We don't have an updated bestiary, and three books in the series have been released. At this point, HARP is a complete game.

Is HARP worth playing these days? Well, it is still supported; you can get PoD books for everything, and the game is solid. The last publication date was 2022, and an adventure was published recently. One big difference is that there are no psionic magic types, though psionics are in the HARP sci-fi books.

Why HARP when I have so many other great fantasy systems? Runequest, Dungeon Fantasy, Open Quest, Mythras Classic Fantasy - these are all fantastic games. None of them are Pathfinder or 5E, which gets me out of the d20 rut I have been in for the last year. HARP is the easier Rolemaster, and since my friend plays, I might save this game so I can play with her.

Also, the game has this very retro 2000s feeling, and it is strange to highlight that since these are now retro games. The "ages" of tabletop RPGs can be roughly split into 10-year periods:

• Golden Age: 1975-1985
• Silver Age:  1985-1995
• Bronze Age: 1995-2005
• Copper Age: 2005-2015
• Modern Age: 2015+

So, starting in 2003, HARP is more of a Bronze Age RPG born out of the MERP split from ICE.

But again, why play? HARP feels like a character-designer game, much like a GURPS. You put time and effort into building a character, something cool you can invest in, and that becomes your experience throughout the world. I like games with character creation that takes, time, thinking, planning, and a knowledge of the rules. Games with simple character creation seem disposable to me.

We will see where this goes, but I was happy to find these so quickly and get them back on my shelf.