Sounds like a beginning of a joke, but nope, that's my new Harn character. After reading Rob's exploits with his last Harn game I asked if I could roll up a Harn character because it sounded like fun. And if was for the first couple of hours. The third hour I was wondering if it was going to make me roll my shoe size and nose hair length. My concept going in was to play a soldier turned priest. In Rob's game you need someone who can fight or you won't last long. My rolls were underwhelming. My soldier ended up being the size of a nine year old, but did have some skills. Then I rolled four times on the (I forget the chart name) chart where you get 2 points to add to attributres but there is a good chance your going to get slammed with something. First two rolls nothing. Next roll, leper. Okay. Hmm. That might be interesting. One more time I tell Rob. Alcoholic. Rob seemed pleased with the combo and I thought this should be cool to play.
I have to say my first experiences with Hard were not fun. This time around it was a lot more enjoyable. Josh and managed to save a village from a big mean rock troll. Took us about an hour and half to collect the information we needed. We weren't sure what we were going to face and I know Harn can kill you with a stub toe. The combat was different and exciting. Any one hit can end you. It added a lot more suspense than subracting hit points and knowing healing surges were there just in case (okay one shot at 4th ed).
The strongest aspect of the game was the depth of the character that allowed me to role-play my drunken, leper priest who used to be a soldier character. I was able to conceal my condition from everyone so far including my Josh whose character fails every awareness roll. There is a depth here that I find lacking in most systems. Granted, it can be tedious and the extensive rules can bog down a game, but overall I am glad I gave Harn a second chance. I'm not sure when we will get another chance to play Harn again, but you can be damn sure I am transfering my character into what ever system I am playing.
7 comments:
*sighs at the superfluous 4e shot*
Not to walk in and be all grumbly on your blog but...
You can role play in any system really you know. It's only an issue if you feel a need for there to be rules regarding certain aspects (which in the case of something like leprosy may be the case).
I've never dealt with Harn so I don't really know the details of which you speak... but from what I gather the character generation requires a lot of rolls on tables for your background traits. I've really not much of a fan of such things, mostly because in general I have a concept for a character going into the generation process. Rolling randomly kinda tends to mess with that. And it's hard for me to get into playing a character I don't create so going into the process with no concept and allowing random tables to decide the entirety will undoubtedly end up leaving me cold.
And lethality wise... I understand thee needs to be risk or there's no reason to even roll. However, personally, I tend to prefer something a bit more forgiving in my systems.
*ends his grumping and wanders off*
*laughs at 4e shot* you didn't need it but it was funny
I ask characters development questions during the campaign - they have to answer a new one every game session. It's pretty helpful to the ones who don't really come up with much personality early on.
Sounds like fun! I love charts & tables and it sounds like Harn has some doozys.
hey anonynos,
Yes, you can RP with any system, but some just lend themselves to it more. And I did have a character concept going in, but I thought the randomness added some flavor. If he ended up being blind with a peg leg I probably would have passed on playing him. And those of you who have read my past entries will know I took a lot of shots at Harn to. 4th ed has some qualities I like, but one of the things I don't like is the healing surges. It the old time equvilent of having extra lives in a video game. I've played 4th ed and like how they made even kolbolds a challenging encounter. But since my experience with 4th ed is limited to a few single game sessions I don't know how it works in the long run. I've been gaming, oh man, it will be 30 years this month, and I just don't see 4th ed being a fun system to run for the long term. For me at least. But just to be fair I take shots at 4th ed, all the variants of 3rd ed, GURPs, Harn, even Monopoly, but I only take shots at the games I have played and know something about.
Viriatha, sounds good. What Rob and I have done in the past is if there was a part of his culture or section of city he wanted to develop then I would make a character say for the theives guild or mages guild and one time ran a series of games as the players being city guards. But I like that idea. What kind of questions do you ask?
Zachery the 1st edition, in the past I never used the tables because I didn't want my character crippled before I got a chance to use him. Harn is unfogiving. But this time I wanted to explore all the harshness that is Harn and had fun.
When is your birthday? Do you like parties? Presents?
What's your favorite color? Do you have any special item in this color?
What's your favorite food? Why? How often do you get to eat it?
It's a huge list...
*sigh*
So, one of the problems with this whole network of blogs is that for people like me who just randomly pop in and out of peoples blogs you have no context to see what peoples general tone is. I do try to remind myself of that before I get riled up, sometimes I fail.
No worries anonynos,
It's good to hear from you even when you are all riled up. We are a community of gamers and we all have our favorites and passionate about the games we like. Your comments inspired a blog ida for Rob. And I was just happy that someone commented. You are welcome to get riled up here any time. Its when people question us that we have to think and work harder. So thank you for your comments and come back frequently.
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