HârnWorld

HârnWorld (often shortened to Hârn ) is a fictional role-playing world for fantasy role-playing games . Its creator is the Canadian N. Robin Crossby . HârnWorld was first published in 1983 by Columbia Games Inc. (CGI), where it is in print to this day. It is one of the oldest and longest in print commercial game worlds. The vast majority of Hârn's publications were only in English, but in the 1990s there was a German translation of some of the titles. There have never been translations into other languages.

Description of the world

HârnWorld is a classic fantasy world that is based on the feudal European Middle Ages and borrows heavily from JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth . Magic exists just like the non-human intelligent races of the elves , dwarves and gargun, the harren variant of orcs . However, these typical fantasy elements are used comparatively sparingly. Magic is rather subtle, magicians are very rare and only very few of them have powerful powers. Overall, HârnWorld tries to remain as "realistic" as possible. This means that the influence of supernatural fantasy elements is deliberately kept so low that the description of the world would hardly change if they were deleted entirely. There is no simple classification into “good” and “bad”. In addition, great importance is attached to keeping the physical and social foundations of the world as consistent and plausible as possible. The form of society in the majority of the officially described kingdoms is based on the principle of manorial rule , which is described in detail in the publications.

The religion of Hârn is based on a pantheon of ten gods and the associated churches . The churches are not monolithic organizations, but are divided into many orders and sects . The different cultures of Hârns sometimes have different ideas about the individual gods. What is unusual about the concept of Hârn's world of gods is that it remains open in the publications whether the gods really exist or whether these are mere ideas of the inhabitants of Hârn. Every game master can decide this question for his version of the game world.

Hârn is actually the name of an island on a planet called Kethira. The geography of Kethira resembles that of the earth in some respects . There are three continental masses, which roughly resemble the corresponding land masses on Earth: Lythia (Eurasia and Africa), Kamerand (North and South America) and Mernat (Australia). Hârn is an island northwest of the largest continent, Lythia, roughly the same as Great Britain in terms of location and climate , but about three times the size. The island and some nearby areas of the continent of Lythia are by far the best-described parts of HârnWorld.

Hârn itself is very sparsely populated and is viewed by the continental Lythians as provincial and backwoods. There are a total of nine state structures (of which one each is inhabited by dwarves and elves), but these are only islands of civilization. By far the largest part of the country consists of wilderness (mainly forests and mountains), which are inhabited by several, sometimes nomadic, barbarian peoples and the Gargun already mentioned.

Characteristics and reception

The HârnWorld publications are characterized by a very high level of detail. Together with the large number of source books that have existed since 1983, Hârn is one of the best-described role-play worlds. Special emphasis is placed on a high consistency in the world. It is one of the firm principles of the authors of Hârn that nothing that has already been published should never be changed in a later publication. The frequency with which new source books appear is traditionally very low at Hârn, which is particularly due to the very lengthy consistency checks with all publications that have already appeared. This gives the game master and players the advantage that all previous publications always remain officially valid and are not changed by later editions or new source books.

Until 2003, N. R. Crossby and Columbia Games jointly published Hârn products. In July 2003, Crossby unilaterally terminated his contract with Columbia Games and founded the online publisher Kelestia Publications Inc. , which has since published material on HârnWorld in electronic form. Columbia Games did not acknowledge the termination of the contract and also continued to publish Hârn material. The legal dispute in which the two parties accuse each other of breaching copyrights has not been resolved since then. The dispute is of little practical importance for the user of HârnWorld because the two parties have so far only published material about each other's areas of HârnWorld. There have therefore not yet been any contradictions with one another or with articles published before the dispute.

The setting of HârnWorld generally appeals mainly to players and game masters who expect a high level of detail, logic and consistency from a role-playing world, but who tend to forego spectacular fantasy effects. This only applies to relatively few role-players, which is why Hârn, despite its long history, was only ever able to serve a very small part of the role-playing market. As is typical for such niche products, there is a small but very committed community of fans. What is rather unusual about the Hârn fandom is the high output of free fan products (background articles and adventures), which are practically indistinguishable from the official products in terms of content and layout. The reason for this is that both Columbia Games and Kelestia Productions employ freelancers from the fandom as authors and illustrators. Some of these freelancers also write many of the merchandise and publish them on the Internet. Occasionally, articles (or parts of them) that were intended for official publication are not published after all for economic or technical reasons. These articles can usually be found very quickly as a free download on a fansite.

HârnMaster

From the beginning, HârnWorld was designed independently of any set of rules. To date, the majority of publications contain no information on game values ​​for any system. However, N. R. Crossby found that none of the commercial systems that existed in the 1980s met his claim to "realism". Therefore, he published his own system, HârnMaster, which is specially tailored to Hârn. The first edition was also published by Columbia Games in 1986. It was published in 1991 by Mania Productions in German translation. There are now several recent English editions from both Columbia Games and Kelestia Productions.

Publications

Almost all Hârn publications have been published as individually numbered articles (or chapters).

Columbia Games publications

Columbia Games logo

In 1996, Columbia Games began releasing its products in the form of loose, punched sheets. These can be stapled in folders, which are also supplied with larger articles. The point of this rather unusual form of publication is that each user can implement his own classification system. In addition, the game master, in particular, can only take precisely those items to the game that are actually needed. Since 2008 some articles can also be obtained online as PDF .

The following list of publications is not complete; it only gives a few important individual publications and the names of the publication series.

• HârnWorld (1983) - The basic work on Hârn with an introduction to society, history, geography, etc. In 1990 there was a second edition, hardly changed.
• Encyclopedia Hârnica (1984–1985) - A series of publications in which several, not necessarily related articles on various aspects of Hârn appeared in each of the 16 issues.
• Gods of Hârn - The Libram of the Pantheon (1985) - A description of the ten gods of Hârn and their churches and followers.
• Lythia (1985) - overview module about the largest continent Kethiras
• Castles of Hârn (1987) - Detailed description of six Hârn fortresses, their inhabitants and the surrounding settlements.
• Kingdom Modules (1980s – Present) - A series of modules, each describing one of the kingdoms on the island of Hârn. A second edition of some modules is now available.
• Hârnlore (1987–1992) - The follow-up series to the Encyclopedia Hârnica , which is held in the form of a magazine. There were eleven issues in total.
• HârnPlayer (1994) - An introduction to HârnWorld especially for gamers.
• HârnQuest (since 2002) - A series of publications in which, similar to the older Encyclopedia Hârnica and Hârnlore , several articles are published which are not necessarily related. Unlike the previous series, the loose-leaf structure means that the articles can also be purchased individually. HârnQuest appears around four times a year.
• Electronic Atlas: Kanday (2007) - 69 maps of the Kingdom of Kanday as vector graphics on CD-ROM.

Releases from Kelestia Productions

Most Kelestia Productions products are only offered online in PDF format. The previous publications are:

• Evánekin (2003) - Description of a fortress with the surrounding town on Chelemby
• Atlas Keléstia: Folio 1 (2004) - General maps of the island of Chelemby and the nearby mainland coast of Lythia
• Kolâdis (2004) - description of a fishing port with a small town and a fortress on Chelemby
• Kingdom of Chélemby (2005) - Description of a small island kingdom between Lythia and the island of Hârn
• Kéthîra (2005) - overview module over the entire planet
• Chélemby Interactive (2007) - Interactive maps of the city of Chelemby
• Kingdom of Lédenheim (2008) - Description of a powerful, feudal empire to the west of Lythia
• Hârn Regional Map (2008) - general map of the island of Hârn (also published as a printed poster)
• Chelemby City (2009) - city description of the capital of the kingdom of the same name

Even before the establishment of Kelestia Productions, N. R. Crossby had self- published some smaller background texts in small editions . Two of them appeared again in 2003 at Kelestia Productions:

• On Divinity - A 20-page essay on the implications of polytheism in an RPG world
• Lost Gods: Libram of the Nushénic Pantheon - The description of the original pantheon of the gods HârnWorlds

Auran's publications

In 1998 Columbia Games and Crossby jointly awarded the rights for the electronic publication of Hârn products to the Australian game producer Auran. The business relationship was ended again in early 2002, not least because of massive criticism of Auran from the fandom.

Auran only released one product during this time, Web of the Widow , which came out in 2001. Web of the Widow is an adventure module on CD that not only contains game values ​​for HârnMaster but also values ​​for the d20 system . Also on the CD are 3D computer graphics of nine key scenes of the adventure, which can be shown to the players with music and sound during the game.

Novels

In 2005, the first and so far only HârnWorld novel was published under the title The Fragment - The House of Kand: Book 1 ( ISBN 0-9769950-0-X ). The author is Lance Bond, a hitherto practically unknown Canadian fan whose first work is The Fragment . The book was published by Argon Publishing Inc. , a publisher founded in 2004 by the owners of Columbia Games.

German publications

In the 1990s, the Düsseldorf publisher Mania Productions published a few translated source books in German under the license of Columbia Games. This was the only foreign language translation of Hârn publications that existed. Mania Productions has since ceased operations.

• Book of Castles (1990) - The translation of Castles of Hârn
• Book of the Gods - The Libram of the Pantheon (1992) - The translation of Gods of Hârn , which has been supplemented by HârnMaster rules for priestly miracles.
• Die Toten des Winters (1993) - An adventure module written by German authors, which was abridged in 1997 and translated into English with slight changes.
• HârnWorld (1997)

There was also a fan- released magazine called Var-Hyvrak under the Lantern Productions label . A total of seven issues were published between 1993 and 1996.

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ The name was given by N. R. Crossby probably in ignorance of the German meaning of the word urine . In German, unlike in English, the accent circumflex is very rarely left out in Hârn.
2. ↑ Auran.com
3. ↑ Argonpublishing.com ( Memento of the original from October 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

Weblinks English

• Columbiagames.com - Homepage of Columbia Games Inc.
• Kelestia.com - Homepage of N. Robin Crossby self-published
• Hârnlink - A collection of links with almost all websites related to Hârn
• Lythia.com - Central entry page with a Hârn FAQ, a brief introduction and numerous downloads, some by the official authors HârnWorlds
• Hârnforum - The central fan forum, u. a. with all publicly available information on the rift between CGI and N. R. Crossby directly from the parties involved

Weblinks German

• HârnMaster.de - German fan site for the role-playing game HârnMaster with FAQ, blog, reviews and many downloads