Why isn't HARP more popular?

[MisterK]

As I said, I don't think there is value in deciding what you don't like about the system. The value is in finding what are its selling points and highlighting them to the people who will be interested. No game is going to appeal to everyone, if HARP happens to not be your game, that's fine, but I'm not sure you have much of value to offer to the conversation, unless you are going to suggest ways to change that. Otherwise it's just pointless bashing.

Actually, I do, because I think that's something that is also missing from RM and basically ties in with the above.
If the game is to be sold as a generic system, increase this feature. Provide rules to design spells (a la HERO, Ars Magica, or others); provide rules to design character classes/archetypes and balance costs. You get my point; make it so that GMs and players can use the rules to make a dictionary that fits their own game setting to a T.
If the game is not to be sold as a generic system, then provide a setting and make the setting the selling point - make it unique in some way and have the rules fit the setting flavour and theme. I don't provide examples since, as you said, I'm not part of the target audience (for the record, I do own HARP and a few supplements, I'm not completely talking out of my behind). Decide on a theme and emphasise that theme in the rules and in the setting. Publish one micro-setting (once again, Vog Mur comes to mind: it's small, it gives an idea of what the greater world is about, and it is readily usable) to use as a starting point.

I also wish to point out that the thread topic is not "what can be done to make HARP more popular ?", but "Why isn't HARP more popular ?". I believe I was right on point in criticising the game, since it was basically what was asked :p

[LordNikon]

As I said, I don't think there is value in deciding what you don't like about the system. The value is in finding what are its selling points and highlighting them to the people who will be interested.

This is absolutely well said. Thank you for stating this.

[pastaav]

I think the major problem for HARP has always been the lack of a steady stream of new material. If you look at for instance, Dragonbane RPG there comes lots and lots of material. Not every part of it is good, but you can be rather sure that even if you pick the gems you will not have time to play them all. If you use HARP you need to have time to create lots of content between the releases from Ironcrown. Not everyone has that time available.

As for what Ironcrown should do I think Harp Steampunk is a great idea. There might be some games of this kind out there, but none that really has captured the market. As a fan of the genre I been thinking of running such adventures. The only worry is the art...steampunk is defined by the aesthetics so Harp Steampunk need to look like something done by Free Leauge (that makes Dragonbane RPG etc) in quality or you will not capture the Steampunk fans. 

[Ecthelion]

I am not looking to start wars here, but I am wondering, why isn't this game more popular. When I was at Gencon this past August, there was a lot of interest in HARP from the people I saw coming up to the table and chatting about it while I was there. They even sold out on the Creatures books and I think the core book. I bring this up, because lots of people who play Rolemaster or MERP, often talk down this game saying it's like drinking lite beer. I personally think it's a great game, and I've played it many of hours with a few family members. We all really like it. Just throwing it out there for a nice discussion.

We tried HARP several years ago and ran quite a lot of sessions. In the end there were some things we didn't like, e.g. none of the combat systems worked really well for us, the multi classing seems easy to abuse, spell durations seemed much too short for a lot of spells, at least compared to what we were used from Rolemaster. So we returned to RMSS/RMFRP after some time. Perhaps we got very much used to RMSS/RMFRP already because it might happen again that another system we try doesn't convince is, this time RMU.