Topic: Top 5 worst things about HARP

[Arioch]

If used like this, the XP system motivates players to make more input to the story helping the gm in turn to make the plot more interesting for everyone.   

Yes! I completely agree with you, and as I've said in my original post, I like the goal-based xp system. Actually, I think it's HARP's most interesting feature.
The reason why I put it in my "top 5 worst things" list is that imho the way the system is presented makes it difficult for GMs and players to understand its true potential.
A small paragraph with a better definition of what a "goal" is, and some guidelines for the players, to help them choose their character's goals, and for the GM to give him an idea of how linking together the personal goals of the PCs to form party goals would probably solve the problem. As they are described in the book personal and party goals seem to be in conflict with each other, while is should be clear that they are not.

[Raf Blutaxt]

Yes, the explanations could be better. I personally have some difficulties deciding which kind of ahem... difficulty to assign the goals...

[Ecthelion]

I personally have some difficulties deciding which kind of ahem... difficulty to assign the goals...

In my group we have created some examples for the different difficulties. You can find this in the HARP house rules document on my homepage, if you are interested.

[Raf Blutaxt]

Oh, thank you! I'll give it a look. But now I'll have to read through the Dragon Age rpg I just bought...

[Right Wing Wacko]

Oh, thank you! I'll give it a look. But now I'll have to read through the Dragon Age rpg I just bought...

<evil chuckle>

Now you will become one of us...

<evil, maniacal laughter>

[Raf Blutaxt]

I'm affraid so It looks very good so far. I'll try to post a short review or something like it in the apropriate thread as soon as I've finished reading.

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Something that just came to me about your original complaint with the XP system is that most personal goals, when they become more important in the campaign shift to being party goals anyway.

I've always considered this part of a good GM's job. The more everyone's personal goals are related to the party's goals-- one way or another-- the more dynamic the story is and the more involved all of the players are. Of course, it plays Hell on a campaign like this when players and/or their characters are shuffled in and out on a weekly basis.

[enoch]

I only really have two gripes with HARP, but the second one really bothers me:

1) As others have pointed out, the concept of levels and DPs tied to stats. I guess that could count as two.

2) The lack of decent, modern, GM and character creation software. I find it appalling that it's nearly 2010 and ICE has no solution for any of its product lines. The various spreadsheets and interactive PDFs for character creation are adequate, but I've found them slow and clunky. Plus, I've been unable to get any of my players to embrace these. With work and family I don't have the time any more to create dozens of NPCs, so I either just wing it or re-use the same tired NPCs year after year. I should be able to choose the parameters I require (race, class, level, particular skills or spells, whatever) and after a few moments of number crunching an NPC is spit out. With a little tweaking you can do the same for PCs. And a combat tracker would be a god-send! I pick my NPCs or monsters, select which PCs are in the fight (because the app already has their stats, abilities, and skills), and just enter rolls each round. Cover, movement, and other modifiers can be changed easily, and bleeding, stuns, penalties, and the like are kept track of for me. Did I mention it should be intuitive? I've looked at the various virtual tabletop solutions, but they seem to be very user unfriendly.

    Wireless is ubiquitous wherever I game, so I'd prefer an online solution. That way my players could update their characters at their leisure and we don't have to worry about losing or remembering a sheet. If it were a "real" application I'd prefer a cross-platform app, but I can run Windows on my Mac so I'd be happy with even a Windows-only solution. I'd gladly pay a monthly subscription for online, or a reasonable amount ($20-$50) for a standalone application. I've often attempted (or planned to attempt) to create such solutions, but my programming skills aren't up to the task. I'm the only one in my gaming group with a shred of computer skills, and my experience is limited to Unix shell scripting and web development (PHP, Perl, Javascript). It's a huge project for one person, and I'd love to help out on such a project, but unless it's coded in something I know I'd be left with just telling people what I think is best. And the world is full of enough people that are more than willing to offer up their opinion.

Other than those, I love HARP. I do miss RM from time to time, though I like how HARP took many of the strengths of RM and streamlined a lot of the rest. I started with that not-licensed-anymore-RPG in the mid '80s, switched to RM2 in the early '90s, and then to RMFRP for a couple of years before HARP came out. Keep up the great work!

Happy Christmas-Hanukkah-Kwanzaa-Winter Solstice-other holiday to all!

[johnkzin]

I find it appalling that it's nearly 2010 and ICE has no solution for any of its product lines.

It's especially bad when you consider that, back in 1990ish, there was a very GOOD RoleMaster character creation program.  It was even expandable for the companions and such (and I think it had source data files for SpaceMaster as well).  It was created by a fan, free, and you could download and build it for most platforms (was command-line and written in C, with no major frills, so I seem to recall people had it running on both DOS and Unix systems).

I have no idea what ever happened to it.  (the old) ICE never picked it up, and it eventually disappeared.  But, it was written by someone in their spare time, so it's not like it required a full time software engineer to write the core logic.

I've been looking for a part time programming project ... I've just finished a round of learning python for a job project.  Maybe I should think about duplicating that old program for HARP, and turn it over for community development when I get to a certain point.  Assuming the HARP folks wouldn't object on copyright or trademark grounds.

[Ecthelion]

There is a lot of character creation tools, spreadsheets for combat tracking and other utilities to be found in The Vault. I don't know whether it's nowadays necessary for a company creating an FRPG game to also supply such tools as you requested. IMO the fans can as well create such stuff themselves - as is the case already for HARP and RM.

[enoch]

There is a lot of character creation tools, spreadsheets for combat tracking and other utilities to be found in The Vault. I don't know whether it's nowadays necessary for a company creating an FRPG game to also supply such tools as you requested. IMO the fans can as well create such stuff themselves - as is the case already for HARP and RM.

As I said, I've found the current collection of spreadsheets, etc. in The Vault to be clunky and slow and not what I'd like. And I remember on a number of occasions in the past, whenever some fan mentions the creation of a combat-helping application, the ICE party line is "it can't contain any of the tables." Without the tables a combat app is useless, and I don't know many people who would go to the bother of recreating those. And if I have to keep flipping through the combat tables then what's the point?

Most other FRPGs are a bit more basic in both combat and character creation than good old Chartmaster and Chartmaster-Lite. Those other games may not benefit as much, but it certainly would help my games and my players. Eight or ten years ago you could buy a CD-ROM for whatever version of D&D was out at the time, and Warhammer FRPG has a very cool online character creation tool. It's fan-created and can be found at http://www.malleus.dk/NpcGenerator/Default.aspx.

I know it's not necessary for ICE to create anything like I'm envisioning, but computers excel at number crunching and the number crunching is what tends to bog down ICE games. I've stuck with their games because I value the realism, but if all of the numbers were hidden behind the computer screen I could spend more time on the storytelling than keeping track of five veteran PCs and their foes. Basically, I would enjoy running the game more.

[John Duffield]

They could invest time in a product like Hero Lab where you can extend the product with your games line.  It has a built in editor and so forth which makes it very easy to customise.

I have played with the product for Pathefinder and find it very good.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

ICE has actually tried to get CharGen software done several times. And something went wrong every time. Here are a couple of examples:

In one case, the programmer flaked out (on his business partner as well, leaving her high and dry, not to mention us). In another, a fan who was working on a chargen program got mad cause none of the other fans who were acting as testers would help him make a html version of a character sheet, so he quit and disappeared. And in another, very sad instance, the programmer committed suicide (not because of what he was working on). Somebody else has since tried to continue with that app, but it was Windows only.

After that suicide, ICE has essentially just given up trying for a while...

Now, what ICE would eventually like to have is an online app. Where folks could log in, create characters, and come back later and level them up, and where each level is stored as a distinct character. Where others could come, search through all of  the characters, and and can view/use whatever ones that they want. (i.e. what Joe creates for his game, becomes a potential NPC/character for Fred's game, or Jack's game, etc..). Where the character could be exported in a standardized XML format so that they could be imported into other computer based apps.

[RandalThor]

The on line app sounds cool, but as someone with limited internet connection (none at home), I would appreciate a fully downloadable version.

[Ecthelion]

As I said, I've found the current collection of spreadsheets, etc. in The Vault to be clunky and slow and not what I'd like.

So perhaps the issue is not that ICE (or whoever) does not offer the tools, but instead that the offered tools don't suit your needs. That might as well be the case with an "official" character creation or combat tracker etc.

[masque1223]

The on line app sounds cool, but as someone with limited internet connection (none at home), I would appreciate a fully downloadable version.

Have you tried the Open Office chargen template?  It is downloadable (as is Open Office, free, open source software FTW) and I know I personally love it.  If ICE were to provide chargen software I'd certainly try it out, or even buy it (like I did with GURPS Character Assistant), but I'm personally hard pressed to think of functionality for chargen purposes that I can't currently meet with the fanmade OOo template.

[RandalThor]

I have gotten the Open Office before, and I always have conflict with which app to use (OO or Microsoft Office) when I go for a new word, excel, etc.. project. I kind of need my computer stuff to be pretty simple, the less complication there the better as I can get frustrated with it pretty quickly.

In the past I have used one of the excel sheets offered in the Vault and it worked out OK - I was even able to add new races and skills and such. Don't remember exactly which one it is off hand, will have to look into it. But the Sheet definitely needs to be editable, somewhat.

[masque1223]

I have gotten the Open Office before, and I always have conflict with which app to use (OO or Microsoft Office) when I go for a new word, excel, etc.. project. I kind of need my computer stuff to be pretty simple, the less complication there the better as I can get frustrated with it pretty quickly.

I solved that for myself by deleting M$ Office.

[jasonbrisbane]

ICE has actually tried to get CharGen software done several times. And something went wrong every time. Here are a couple of examples:

In one case, the programmer flaked out (on his business partner as well, leaving her high and dry, not to mention us). In another, a fan who was working on a chargen program got mad cause none of the other fans who were acting as testers would help him make a html version of a character sheet, so he quit and disappeared. And in another, very sad instance, the programmer committed suicide (not because of what he was working on). Somebody else has since tried to continue with that app, but it was Windows only.

After that suicide, ICE has essentially just given up trying for a while...

Now, what ICE would eventually like to have is an online app. Where folks could log in, create characters, and come back later and level them up, and where each level is stored as a distinct character. Where others could come, search through all of  the characters, and and can view/use whatever ones that they want. (i.e. what Joe creates for his game, becomes a potential NPC/character for Fred's game, or Jack's game, etc..). Where the character could be exported in a standardized XML format so that they could be imported into other computer based apps.

I think this would be a great idea for someone to develop.... especially with the new Fan Sites that ICE is promoting from their homepage (short form: $3/month = ironcrown.com, harphq.com or metal-express.com subdomain...)



I am thinking about getting one but dont know what to call it... (darkeen? battlefield? jasonbrisbane?...)

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Now, what ICE would eventually like to have is an online app. Where folks could log in, create characters, and come back later and level them up, and where each level is stored as a distinct character. Where others could come, search through all of  the characters, and and can view/use whatever ones that they want. (i.e. what Joe creates for his game, becomes a potential NPC/character for Fred's game, or Jack's game, etc..). Where the character could be exported in a standardized XML format so that they could be imported into other computer based apps.

I think this would be a great idea for someone to develop.... especially with the new Fan Sites that ICE is promoting from their homepage (short form: $3/month = ironcrown.com, harphq.com or metal-express.com subdomain...)

If somebody actually approached ICE with good solid design specs for creating such, ICE would be quite willing to provide space to them (for free) for the development.