WarFlail's Archives - February 2002

Go to WarFlail's Archives - March 2002

Seeing as the Project Hârn site is now offline, I have received permission from Auran to post the commentaries of The Royal Chelebin Tournament 2001 here at WarFlail's Armoury. Check it out:

For those of you who don't already know, this tournament was the first ever online contest for Hârn. Prizes were awarded by Auran. It proved to be so popular that it quickly sparked another series of Hârnic jousting contests on Matthias Janßen's fine site, The Hârnic Jousting Page.

A new addition to HÂRN LINK is this fabulous site by Christopher Golden:

Aedificium: Living History in England, 1190 A.D. <http://www.aedificium.org/>

There is an enormous wealth of information in here that is useful to Hârn. Absolutely staggering. Want to give your game a more authentic, medieval English flavour? Then visit this site now! Be sure to check out ManorGenerator while you're there - completely command line driven, but it isn't as difficult to use as it might first appear.

Topic change. Auran have lived up to their promise and torn down their Project Hârn site. Such an abrupt end was most unexpected and I must say unwelcome. :-(

What the...?! I go away on business for a short while and what should appear on the Hârn Forum but this message from Auran:

Project Hârn Site and Forum to close as from Monday.
(21st February 2002)
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Hi everyone,

As a gesture of good-will to the Hârn community we initially decided to leave the Hârn site and forum up for your use. However, based on recent feedback from many of you here and requests to move the forum we have decided that it is in everyones best interests that we simply take the site and forum down.

We had considered moving the forum content over to another Hârn community site, unfortunately recent consideration of our legal position regarding our privacy obligations in relation to posts made on our site makes it difficult for us to do this. We cannot just transfer peoples content without their permission and approval and this would be a lengthy process considering the number of posts made. Additionally, there may well be technical problems involved in transferring the posts between different forum software. We therefore have reconsidered our position and decided to take both the Hârn site and forum down as from this coming Monday (25th February). We wish you all well and thank many of you for your support over the period of our involvement with Hârn.

Cheers,

John Banks

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That's Monday, as in tomorrow! I may be completely wrong about this, but reading between the lines, I sense that Auran must be bloody annoyed about something that was said on their forum, particularly for them to decide to shut down everything in such a short time.

Whatever the reason, it looks like the http://www.harn.com/ site is going down for good. Best to download all you can from there while it is still up.

Fortunately, an alternative forum is up and running, which a lot of the old forum members have quickly jumped across to:

HârnList Forums <http://www.harnlist.com/forums/>

This discussion forum has already been hailed by Swords and Shields as a "forum being run on a server that has dedication, run by people who loves Härn and are dedicated, and by the fans themselves..." - the inference here is that you can be assured that it is not about to be scuttled like Auran's one.

Another news update: since Auran no longer hold the Electronic License rights to Hârn, Columbia Games have taken back the reins and will be offering electronic versions of their articles:

News: Electronic Publishing

We have some exciting developments in electronic publishing coming soon. Columbia Games will offer some products for sale via download.

Hârn articles presented electronically will be PDF format and will contain more color. Electronic files will cost the same as their print counterpart. Download files have no shipping charges and offer instant delivery to your computer via a unique website address.

Thanks for the heads up, Dwarven Forge! :-)

The third news update is an addition to the HÂRN LINK, a new site by Ralf Achenbach:

Dicefullness <http://dicefullness.hux.de/harn.html>

A small site so far, but looks very promising! Do check it out.

I was sufficiently impressed by Milieu Simulations' WeatherMaster that I did end up forking out the exhorbitant sum to pay for it (I still think it is too expensive, but what can you do...). Actually, it is an excellent GM tool, and I've set up the world data to match the planet Kethira as closely as possible - with plenty of assistance from fellow HârnGamer Tim Falkenberg (of Laban of Tyart fame), Milieu Simulations' extremely helpful Martin Briswell and the very detailed Nolomar Solar System article.

The biggest hassle was inputting all the Hârnic holidays. Took me ages! So, to save you the trouble, if you are already using WeatherMaster, simply unzip the following file into the Milieu\WeatherMaster\Data\ folder:

• Kethira Data for WeatherMaster

Tim suggests that when you generate weather for Hârn, you should use 'Temperate - Mild Rainy' as the default climate. That seems to give the most appropriate results.

BTW, if anybody is willing to draw up a world map graphic of Kethira for WeatherMaster, please let me know!

The latest ground-breaking news from Greg Lane, CEO of Auran, just in today:

As you are aware Auran has for many years held the Electronic License rights to the World of Harn.

Recently this license fell due for renewal and for a variety of reasons we have decided not to renew at this time.

As a lot of people here at Auran are fans of Harn we have decided to keep the web site and forums open as an active fan site for Harn.

However due to our concentration on our d20 range of products we will not be able to spend the time here we would like to and as a result I'd like to call for volunteers to become moderators for this forum.

Over the past year this web site has grown to be one of the most popular on the internet for Harn and we would love to see some community members step up to the plate and take the reigns.

If you have an interest in becoming a moderator please post your interest here and we will be in touch.

It is sad to see a major proponent of HârnWorld drop out of the game, but it was terrific while it lasted. These guys did a fantastic job of supporting the electronic version of Hârn - it was obvious that they had their hearts in it. Too bad it didn't work out from a business point of view.

And, although they are far from obligated to do so, they are keeping the extremely popular Hârn Forum going. Thank you! :-)

I was very pleased to see that Evael had finally arrived at my doorstep today! This is the latest Hârn module to be published by Columbia Games. At 64 pages, it is twice as big as CGI's previous offering, Trobridge Inn.

The first thing I read was the adventure module contained within. Hmm, interesting, although there are many holes in the plot that basically require the GM to rewrite the adventure to make it work for their particular campaign. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you are expecting an off-the-shelf adventure that you can simply run without much preparation beforehand, well, I think you'll have a very bland adventure.

I haven't had a chance to read the kingdom module itself yet, but the illustrations look good (way better than the sketches in Trobridge) and so do the maps. The regional map is intriguing with its new style - I think it is useful, but my one gripe against it is that it makes it difficult to determine the type of terrain (e.g. flat vs hilly) as far as movement rates are concerned.

Yet another update at Bill Gant's HârnMaster House Rules is version 1.2 of my anachronistic HMG firearms combat system:

• GunMaster Gold (v1.2)

So, what are the changes in this version? Well, aside from a (completely unintentional!) font change for the headers, the only significant changes have been to pages 1, 2, 6, 8 and 16. That should save you from having to re-print the entire document.

The most significant change has been to remove recoil as a factor from first shot accuracy. Many say that recoil affecting first shot accuracy is a myth. Others say that from a scientific standpoint, there must be some effect before the bullet exits the barrel. From a game system perspective, it really makes no difference, because it affects PCs as well as NPCs.

BTW, since HMG is out of print, I am considering producing a HMC conversion supplement for GunMaster Gold. Would you be interested in seeing something like this? Please let me know.

The latest download available from Bill Gant's HârnMaster House Rules is the following armour profiles summary for HMC:

• HMC Armour Profiles Summary

If you make use of my HMC Armour Calculator, you're going to like this! What this Excel workbook does is keep track of up to 16 different armour profiles, and can let you see 8 profiles at a glance per page. This is especially handy for GMs (like me), who like to have the armour profiles of the PCs and any important NPCs within easy reach. It also features some new artwork - illustrations by the master artist, Richard Luschek! :-)

Go to WarFlail's Archives - January 2002

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