Friday, July 22, 2011

Now that is service

I been a regular buyer of Harn material for nearly 25 years. A couple years ago I decided to subscribe to Harnquest to get the latest articles at a price break. The way it works is that they put together a package of harn related articles every quarter or so. Send an email to let you know what the charge is, bill you, and then two or three week you get the latest harn articles.

For the gaming industry this approach has failed more often than it succeeded. But Columbia Games has been doing this for years and earned my trust. Harn material is uniformly excellent in quality. There is a sense of pride and craftsmanship that goes into them and it shows at Columbia Games and in the community over on the Harnforum.

However they do have premium prices, which can be off putting to many gamers who wonder if they are worth the price. However they do have a great $10 deal on the core Harnmaster rules. Also they make cool wargames that uses wooden block for unit counters, which allows them to incorporate fog of war into the game.

In the spring I updated my credit card info with them and changed my email address. They missed a letter so sent email to another Robert Conley. So how they handled it?

The vice president of Columbia Games,Grant Dalgliesh, called me to get it straightened out. How cool is that! We chatted for a few minutes and I thanked him for all the good work they done over the years and for being the main inspiration for me getting into cartography.

Now that is service.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's nothing more old-school than Harn!

James said...

I recently picked up a copy of Harnworld 2nd ed. What Harn stuff would you suggest I get next?

Dangerous Brian said...

Now that IS service.

@ James: Buy a kingdom book (such as Kaldor) for a general setting and Trobridge Inn to provide a starting adventure location/home base. It's a joint Harn/D20 supplement and worth every penny (just ignore the D20 stats like I did) and functions more or less as Harn's answer to Hommet.

It is, in my opinion, one of the best campaign base/initial adventure supplements on the market.

Robert Conley said...

I concur with Brian,

Trobridge Inn, Kaldor, Tashal in that order.

Then the articles fleshing around Kaldor. I will do a more detailed post soon.