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High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy $20.00
Average Rating:4.6 / 5
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High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy
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High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy
Publisher: Iron Crown Enterprises
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/14/2024 18:02:32

This is a fantastic rpg in the tradition of Middle Earth Role Playing and Rolemaster. I run multiple home campaigns with it and it is a concise, dense ruleset, incredibly detailed and as light or heavy as you want to make it. I cannot recommend it enough!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy
Publisher: Iron Crown Enterprises
by Aaron H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/05/2017 19:48:03

The following review was originally posted at Roleplayers Chronicle and can be read in its entirety here: http://roleplayerschronicle.com/?p=48547

HARP Fantasy is an epic fantasy role-playing game system powered by the High Adventure Role Playing (HARP) mechanics from Iron Crown Enterprises. Although HARP is a d100 system, it is quite unlike the typical d100 system. Instead of a roll-under mechanic whereas your skill defines the target number, it is more like what d20 OGL would look like if you used d100 instead of a d20. For example, Character Stats area a value that translates into a bonus, as opposed to a value that is added to another value to create a base skill value. One of the biggest changes, however, from most d100 systems is that HARP is a roll-over system; not a roll-under system.

The HA in HARP means High Adventure. That’s a pretty big tag to carry as High Adventure signifies great, heroic deeds, plenty of action, and likely memorable adventures. The interesting thing is, when you look at the mechanics, they embrace the heroic style of high adventure in a sense of “go big or don’t go at all”. Characters are designed with certain stats significant enough to perform these heroic deeds. All other stats are not meant for heroic deeds, but they can be useful for utility purposes. Thus, your PC is designed to do amazing things and his or her stats will aid you in your d100 rolls. Just make sure you are thinking strategically; when it’s “all or nothing” (fail or success, no grey areas), you better have the right stats or tools. But when you do, amazing feats of role-playing can occur. To me, that sounds like High Adventure.

Getting back to the idea of d20 OGL using d100, HARP takes the fantasy genre and adds a level of granularity common to d100 systems. You have a greater range of penalties and bonuses to differentiate between races, cultures, and professions (+1/+2 versus +5/+10/+15/+20) and a larger collection of skills with baseline values calculated from your main stats. There are many rules-medium systems that go with a much-abridged list of skills, but HARP Fantasy sticks to a larger list of skills common to d100 systems. One disadvantage of fewer skills is that characters often feel alike from one to another at higher levels. “Oh, all five PCs have the exact same 10 Skills and only one that the others don’t have.” That type of occurrence is much more rare when you have more skills to choose from, hopefully without suffering from skill bloating (i.e. having way too many skills in a game system). Characters have unique abilities because there are simply more skills to choose from and more ways to create the unique character concept.

Magic in HARP Fantasy is quite unlike d20 OGL. In fact, it’s more like a rules-medium or d100 system whereas you have fewer spells to choose from, but those spells are scaleable (unlike d20 where you have to acquire 5 different Healing spells as you progress in rank). Although it’s a personal preference, I like scaleable magic that doesn’t require you to acquire the same spells, just at different levels, over and over again.

Those are really the major aspects of HARP Fantasy that set it apart from other gaming systems. Like most fantasy gaming systems, it covers a host of common aspects including races, professions, combat, equipment, poisons, treasure, monsters, and gamemastering. It’s all there though, making it an all-in-one core rulebook.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy
Publisher: Iron Crown Enterprises
by Larry F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/13/2015 11:37:18

I only gave this a 4 due to the quality of the book, many of the images are too dark or off in some other way. The game gets a 5.

The game itself is a wonderful streamline version of the rolemaster system. There are many things I prefer from Rolemaster and some things I prefer that are HARP.

HARP streamlined Character Creation making it much easier to create a character. For the most part the book is setup for character creation better than most other games as you can from page to page with out having to skip around.

I prefer the old way of doing training packages they were pre calculated and they had more than 5 and you got to roll to get some cool stuff. Here it is a small package of skills that you receive as a discount. For my campaigns I wrote a small book of pagackes and did the precalculations.

Professions feel more free in HARP than they did in Rolemaster I do wish there instead of just 2 points per rank for favored and 4 points per rank for unfavored that they have 6 points for a skill category or two that was unusual for the profession which would be more like Rolemaster.

The races are fun for the most part they added the race Gryx which is a peaceful Orc like race. They are an interesting race but the only monstrous humanoid offered. I converted some classic monstrous races for play.

The cultures are now for all races which is an added bonus over Rolemaster. They are very basic and free ranks that represent you growing up. I had added a few myself representing more cultures grabbing from many sources.

The skills are a greatly shortened version of the Rolemaster Skill system. I do not feel cheated for the most part as I do enjoy the vast skill list.

The talents section is fairly well made. I still prefer the way that Rolemaster Standard did the talents rather than this chopped down way. It does however fit with the system either way.

The 2 second combat system can be a little weird and really throw people off. I tend to run it as a 4 second or 6 second. Allowing for multiple actions to occur often making it easier on some players.

The game is over all a lot of fun and a great alternative to many of the popular systems that takes less time over all for character creation and combat.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy
Publisher: Iron Crown Enterprises
by Bruce M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/28/2013 12:04:43

Excellent game! It''s a complete and easy to learn RPG. You can be a variety of professions/classes and you can choose to be a mixture of more than one race. There are also excellent multiple supplements out for this game that give a variety of options to customize HARP as each GM sees fit. Great Product!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy
Publisher: Iron Crown Enterprises
by Frank M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/11/2012 09:00:51

Great product... Usually 5 stars worth... minus two for the missing print-on-demand option...!



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy
Publisher: Iron Crown Enterprises
by Michael S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/15/2012 10:36:14

Fantastic. The updated HARP adds balance and corrections to character generation. I like the new options, skills and talents. Well done.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy
Publisher: Iron Crown Enterprises
by Ward M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/23/2012 17:16:28

Disclosure: As a frequent ICE/GCP customer, I received this product at a reduced price. This has no bearing on my review, but it is worth noting.

This is the second edition (or third, depending on who you ask) of HARP, re-written to be compatible with HARP Sci-Fi. The changes are minor, but pervasive. Changes from the previous version include re-balancing of the races and professions, due to feedback from 8 years of playtesting.

Likes:
-The new typefaces are easy to read and there is new interior artwork. -Will feel familiar to Rolemaster players, but plays fast enough to hold the interest of other gamers. (This is a big plus in mixed groups) -A POD version is in the works. This might actually be the book that gets me to try print-on-demand. -Single roll combat resolution! (A big plus for people who are not fans of Rolemaster). -Very few typos or grammatical errors. (Because, as a matter of fact, I AM the grammar police. )

Dislikes: -No Hyperlinks or bookmarks in the PDF. -Because of balance changes, the new rules are not backwards-compatible with previously released products in this line. (Such as "College of Magics").

Overview: No system is perfect, but this one comes close. I can't wait for more monsters, spells, and professions in future releases. Generally speaking, any book that leaves me wanting more gets high marks.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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