Topic: Do many people find themselves simplifying Harp with House Rules?

[SamwiseSeven]

I think I'm a strange bird... well, actually, I know I am, hehe.

When I run games, I prefer more rules-lite games, as I tend to shoot from the hip more when I run.  But then again, I love having a detailed crunchy game when I'm a player.

Anyway, do you find yourself simplifying HARP with house rules, or do you stick to the core rules or optional semi-official HARP rules?

[kreider204]

I just recently bought my HARP books and haven't actually run a game (and may never -- but for reasons unrelated to HARP itself . . . ), but I know what you're saying.  That's how I felt about MERP, which I did play years ago.  As a player, I loved all the character generation detail, but I tended to gloss over some of the game mechanics as a GM.  For example, I didn't pay much attention to activity percentages during combat rounds, and tended to use common sense for how much a character could do in any given round.
Of course, the reason I bought HARP is that it looks like it has the detail I liked about MERP but rules closer to how I simplified MERP.  So, as I learn the game, and make note of which optional rules to use or not, and what house rules I might impliment, I find I'm not thinking about simplifying it much.

[John Duffield]

I tend to add rules depending on what my group is used to.  For example, I extended the dice based combat from one of the HB as my group were from DnD and it fit better with their expectations.

I use spells, skills, etc. pretty much straight from the book.  To be honest I think most people play with the combat side of HARP more then any other aspect.

This is a strong point of HARP, from my perspective, as I can, as a GM, modify it to fit with my groups and still be playing HARP with all the benefits.

[Ecthelion]

We have added a few House Rules (you can find them on my homepage) to adapt HARP to our needs. But simplification was not our motivation since HARP was "simple" enough for our taste.

[Right Wing Wacko]

We play as close to RAW as possible.

[munchy]

I guess we have played RM for too long to just take HARP as it is. So we have made some minor adjustments in the game I run and will have some major adjustments in the game Ainadan is going to run. Those are, however, not aimed at making it simpler, faster or easier but to sort of make it more "realistic".

[Karizma]

When I first ran HARP, I did so using a bunch of modifications.  I learned a useful General GM Lesson that it's best to run a game as-is before hacking away at it.  The more I leaned back to the core rules, the more I liked it.  Right now I'm pretty much running it as-is with Hack & Slash to make combat take up less time.  There are some little tweaks that I'll have to leave in place, but my group is generously allowing me to figure the game out as I go.

The closest I've come to that is ignoring some details due to incomprehension or ignorance.  I'll get around to them.

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Not really. The only "simplification" I use is changing opposed skills to a direct roll-off.

Other than that, I use a few optional rules from Martial Law and College of Magic, but they're more about adding detail than simplifying anything.

[janpmueller]

As I believe easy modification is one of the biggest strengths in HARP: Yes, I house-rule a lot. Especially combat is something where so many different tastes exist, that it was very necessary for us to change a few things (simple combat system is what we ended up with, but even before we played around with damage caps, critical charts, 2nd rolls etc).

Apart from combat, there are very few things that need tweaking, in my eyes.

Jan

[Witchking20k]

I am fond of shifting rules around to better suit the campaign that we are playing.  I am currently running a Subterfuge based campaign with a pair of players, whom have been playing HARP for a couple of years now, and we all talked at the beginning of the story about the skills that would be important to it and how I was going to enforce them.  Subterfuge, Influence, and General Skills dominate the dice rolls; so we all had to be on the same page as to how they would effect the story.  Combat is a last resort, and again tends to be modified by Subterfuge.  But, the players love being able to play a couple of stealth based characters and fully exploit their abilities without a clanking knight rendering their Skills futile.

[Right Wing Wacko]

If I use "house rules" at all, I either ask advice about mine here (and usually discard the idea after comments from the members) or I use good, well-thought out "house rules" proposed by some forums members...

...but I don't know if the "house rules" we use "simplify" the game... maybe the opposite!... or at least doesn't make it any harder...

[jasonbrisbane]

I think most people's "House Rules" are simply a matter of their own interpretation of the rules...

When our group got together and reas the rules it was amazing how many ways we interpreted some of the rules... So we made "House Rules' to decide on a common way we would interprete them..

Plus some house rules are simply "We use HARP Core combat tables" or "Martia lLaw adjustments", etc...

[Right Wing Wacko]

Plus some house rules are simply "We use HARP Core combat tables" or "Martia lLaw adjustments", etc...

Yay, that's more or less most of our house rules too...
and some of the things we use as "house rules" are not "new" rules, but rather an expansion or clarification of existing rules... or, as you say, an agreed upon interpretation of a particularly difficult or ambiguous rule.

[Witchking20k]

One house rule that we use is Profession bonuses are applied by level, like in RM2, soa fighter gets +3/Lvl to combat skills, +1 to athletic, +1 to General, and +3 to Endurance.

We also use a standard cost of 3 for General Skills.  As for simplifying, as mentioned before we tend to shift focus on certain aspects based on the type of campain we're playing.

[GMLovlie]

I rather add than subtract to a game, it makes me feel creative and smart

So, to your question my answer is no, I don?t simplify harp through house-ruling. I usually keep within the guidelines and the spirit of RAW and RAI, then I add and sometimes complicate things.