HARP

HARP or High Adventure Roleplaying was Ironcrown Enterprises' first release of an entirely new RPG after its reorganization in the aftermath of its bankruptcy in 1999 - and has since become an established game well worth to be considered a fine alternative for roleplaying in a Middle-earth setting. HARP particularly owes this quality to its very adaptable magic system. Gavin Bennett, creator of Cyradon (the first world detailed for HARP) describes this flexible approach as follows: "HARP is a generic set of rules. They allow you to have a high or low or medium level of magic. It simply gives you a balanced way for magic to work. It depends on the GM or the setting to express how much magic there is, or how common, or how powerful".

We didn't care much about coming up with loads of house rules for the campaign in which we use HARP - luckily, this isn't necessary anyway because the rules work quite well the way they are for our sporadic game sessions. Consequently, we've only created a Microsoft-Excel-based character sheet which can be downloaded here.

Middle-earth Gaming Rules for HARP

Of course, a more thorough adaptation of HARP for roleplaying on Middle-earth would be most desirable – and fortunately, Pedro Baumann has written several chapters of house rules which adapt some of the best parts of Decipher's The Lord of the Rings RPG to fit the HARP rules. The material Pedro generously shares with us contains (amongst other things) a long list of additional talents and flaws, an adaptation of Decipher’s magic system, detailed descriptions of the Peoples of Middle-earth, and various options regarding character professions. Moreover, Pedro provides us with a remarkable Microsoft-Excel-based character sheet tailored for his set of house rules.

You can download a package (file size 2.45 MB) containing all of these house rules and the character sheet here. If you wish to contact Pedro, please drop him a line by writing to ondoheer@gmail.com.