Harp high adventure role playing book Ice RPG boek

Production Values
HARP is a perfect-bound book weighing in at 160 pages. This is a great accomplishment and almost unheard of in today’s RPG market: an entire RPG in one book. The page layout is generally good, so there is a large amount of information squeezed into the pages. The only knock with the layout is in a couple of spots the internal art is awkwardly placed, most noticeably in the combat chapter.

Artistically HARP has some good pieces inside and a very good cover. Some of the internal art is little better then what can be found in a high school art class. Luckily, the glaringly bad examples are sparse.



Conclusion
HARP is a solid game and offers an interesting option in an RPG market flooded by D20 products. Its design and flexibility are hallmarks of the Rolemaster system, but offers a streamlined game engine that can appeal to gamers looking for something different.

The more I read HARP the more I like it, especially its character generation and magic sections. The character generation chapters offer the kind of flexibility I came to enjoy from Rolemaster, but the magic section is entirely different then almost anything I have seen to date as the spells are learned individually and can be scaled to the caster’s desire and skill. The combat section has a few problems, but that is mostly due to stylistic issues rather than strictly mechanical ones. It works and does offer a good way to tie the quality of a hit with the amount of damage dealt.

A few of the sections suffer slightly from the relative low page count of HARP, but they only require supplemental information should the GM want it. With a couple supplements on the horizon those might expand what is lacking in a few of the abbreviated chapters. A HARP GM also has the option of converting, with only a little effort, the “Creatures and Treasures” supplements from a couple editions of Rolemaster to add new encounters and loot for a HARP based campaign.

HARP is a great game and in many surpasses it’s big brother Rolemaster in regards to ease of play, magic and character building.