[Illiad] ONI: "D&D 4TH EDITION" A MISNOMER (or, a look at another Way of Fantasy Gaming) 
D&D 4th Edition is badly named. It's not D&D in the sense of carrying forward the spirit of earlier D&D versions. It's not D&D in the sense of the kind of crazy, unbalanced but fun characters one could play. What it is, this 4th edition, is a brand-new ruleset that bears little if any resemblance to the originals or its descendants up to 3rd edition. (3.5 is, to me, like Highlander 2...it never existed, and I'll keep telling myself that so I can sleep better at night).
But this isn't about bashing 4th edition. Lots of other people are doing that and pointing out the obvious (WotC is versioning its core ruleset as an Excellent Way to build a recurring revenue stream) and the less-than-obvious (4th edition is a paper system for a computer RPG). To be fair, there are also lots of folks who are really enjoying the change. More power to them.
This Opinionated News Item is about an RPG world and system that has received little attention since its inception, "little" being relative here. It has a thriving community of players and a pretty decent production calendar. It's small potatoes compared to the D&D franchise, but it also serves a different kind of player. D&D (and so many of its imitators) is optimally designed for heroic, cinematic gameplay. The PCs are all heroes of some flavour or stripe, and they can all do pretty amazing things compared to the hapless cookie-cutter commoner. Treasure is generally plentiful, low-level magic items often become mundane (by 5th level, how many PCs on average don't have at least one or two +1 or +2 weapons on hand?) and monsters are EVARYWHERE. And why not? It's fun! There's much to be said for being the star character in an epic fantasy novel.
(By the by, please don't come back with that tired remark of "any system can be made more realistic and magic-poor and and and..." -- I'm talking about what a given system is optimally designed for and I don't really give a flying ball of greek fire about the house rules you use to make combat extra deadly for the sake of this point. So thanks.)
Hârn is an island that is the home to several kingdoms, set in a time that parallels 11th-13th century England. This was the time of knights and swords and feudalism and pretty much the ideal setting for medieval fantasy. What sets the gameworld apart from all of the others is threefold: the detail, the internal consistency, and the grittiness.
For starters, Hârn offers beautiful cartography. Many who have played the game noted that the maps were at least as beautiful as what National Geographic has to offer. Here's a part of the main map as an example. Less impressive, but only in a relative sense, is the official poetic map of the island, which is the kind of map adventurers would possess.
The real impact of the detail comes in to play when you discover the Encyclopedia Harnica, which covers a whole range of subjects from local tribes to religion to politics to trade. Every major city and castle and many small towns and sites of note are also covered at large scale level, down to rooms in specific cases. Reading the entries is like studying a compendium of knowledge from the past, which is the point. Thanks to the detail, politics play a major part in the game world. Economics too, as the game info covers commerce, trade routes, manorial management, crop yields, and the cost of daily living.
The consistency of all of this detail is superb. As a result, the narrative that blankets the gameworld is smooth and filled with believable colour. Hârn is not a world of superlatives. The various PCs aren't "deadly" or "awesome", the tribes are not all "fearsome savages" and monsters -- as in dragons and the like -- are rare. It's more likely that you'll run into human ruffians looking to knife you in the ribs for your purse or shiny sword than a gleaming firedrake with a penchant for sophistry.
And the world is gritty! Much of human existence in the Middle Ages was miserable, difficult and filthy. "Nasty, brutish and short" in other words, as per Thomas Hobbes. This is reflected in the true-to-history feudal system that largely holds sway throughout the island. Medical knowledge is abysmal, the dark hours are truly dark, and disease is the serial killer of the time.
Most experienced RPGers know that in D&D, an archer is no real threat to a PC past a certain level. If you're accosted by an average thief in a dark alley, a 7th level fighter will probably make ground beef out of him. PCs in D&D (and most cinematic RPGs) launch themselves into combat with wild abandon.
You won't want to do this in Hârn. Even an experienced, skilled fighter can be brought down by a couple of hungry vagabonds with crude weapons and surprise on their side. Remember that in the Middle Ages, knightly weapons and armour were expensive (not to mention verboten to all who weren't actually knights or nobility), so a well-heeled fighter will be a prime target for robbery. That mail hauberk you're wearing will fetch enough coin to feed a peasant family of four for two years! And even a good fighter won't enter combat without some caution. You may win the scrap, but you're likely to leave with any number of wounds that will get infected and ultimately kill you!
The game system supports a low-magic world; magic is rare, powerful, but very narrow in application. It's also not trusted by the majority of the populace. Cast a spell in a village and you might end up on the business end of a burning stake. Magic items are rarer still, but are monumentally powerful. Most any quest involving magical loot will be epic in scope and legendary in the re-telling. Just the ticket for players looking for a change of pace.
Hârn and all of its supplements offer players a world and system that are markedly unlike the far more common cinematic fantasy gaming you'd find on store shelves. It is a game about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, against the backdrop of a harsh, dirty, brutal world reminiscent of our own Middle Ages.
I was not given any sort of consideration for this article. I did many many years ago write some material for the game world, but that's the extent of my relationship with CGI. Even though I'm not likely to pull Hârn out of the closet again any time soon, I do look back on those days wistfully. For a dark and realistic medieval fantasy game, Hârn makes for a very nice change.
Columbia Games Inc.'s Hârn product line.
