Here's a surprise.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php? ... s_id=51528

Columbia Games just put up the scenario "Hârnic Christmas" by John Sgammato as a FREE DOWNLOAD on RPGNow.

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- Johan

"Some place needs to be the worst place in the world. Why not here?" -Brusselt Airmol

Thanks Gavigan,

Now I've had to create an RPGNow account!

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"...blogging is literary pole dancing."
Robin Hobb

IIRC, that adventure came out in a Harnic Herald many years ago (late '90s?) so some old-timers may already have it. It includes much (but not all) of the Geldeheim article, and the adventure.
The storyline may seem obvious, but in one of my groups, poor Dan went all the way to the end before figuring out the punchline. Some players, discovering it as events unfold, are in a whole different, non-Christmas space when they play it.
Other players figured out what was going on at various points and had a lot of fun playing along.

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Heroes should be uncommon. They just happen to be the PCs.

It's also appearing on the affiliated DriveThruRPG.com site:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_i ... s_id=51528

This is a wonderful move on someones part.

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'Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow,
The small raine down can raine.
Halea, if my love were in my armes
And I in my bedde again!'

Trad.

Just another episode of the CGI-KP war.

And a merry christmas to all.

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«Fair is what we see, Fairer what we have perceived, Fairest what is still in veil.»
—Nicolaus Stenonius

I have an original copy of this adventure from Shadis magazine, and I just ran it with my local group a couple of weeks ago. We had loads of fun! Making all manner of wild animal sounds, the woodsman in the group led the Ivinian guards on a chase through the wilderness outside the village, while the rest were able to accomplish the mission within the village.

I've used the adventure to introduce the group to Orbaalese politics, for the start of a Jarin rebellion campaign.

Cheers,
Brian

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Brian McNeilly
Burnaby BC Canada
bmcneilly@shaw.ca
http://members.shaw.ca/harngm/

See you at HârnCon 10th Anniversary, Vancouver, July 5-7, 2013

Shadis, that was a good little mag.

Anborn

Small (emphasis on the word "small") parts of it live on in KODT. Wish it was still around. It exposed me to a lot of different types of games, including Harn.

Well, it looks like after all these years of trying to get my group to try Harn, I am finally going to get my wish. We have decided to run the christmas adventure as a one off before the holidays. Wish me luck, maybe the guys will like Harn well enough to keep playing it

Make 'em laugh. It's all about having a merry time. Typically one or two players start to figure out what's going on ahead of another player...wink and keep the ball rolling and see how long it goes until the last guy catches on.
If a player is deadly serious about it, it won't give him what he needs and it will fall flat.
Then again, maybe he's not the Merry Christmas type, anyway.

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Heroes should be uncommon. They just happen to be the PCs.

I resemble that guy....if told ahead of time that we'll do a one-off adventure and told what to expect, I can play along and do my part. Use new characters, or we all have the same strange dream, or it's some parallel dimension - I can deal with this. Tell me we're doing a Paranoia style adventure in Araka-Kalai and we're all Ivashu, and I'll have a blast. But if I'm expecting a serious scenario that fits into the campaign and you spring something like this on me, I'll be disgruntled at the least. Don't tell me that gargun are irredeemably evil and must be destroyed, then expect me to react well when all of a sudden they are merely misunderstood and it turns out I'm the evil villain committing genocide. Don't change from a Deryni setting to He-Man cartoons in midstream. If you've been doing swashbuckling jokers with bad puns and lame quips, don't drop a grim and gritty storyline with torture, rapine, and emotional crisis in our laps without talking it over with the players first.

The campaign style is a contract between the GM and players. Some players don't care - they just want to show up, hang out, and goof off, and don't mind if a new ruleset, campaign, or genre is chosen each week. Others care very much, and need the consistency in play and campaign setting and style. For these players, you must let them know ahead of time that you plan a change, or the fun they get from it is lessened.

[/quote]The campaign style is a contract between the GM and players. Some players don't care - they just want to show up, hang out, and goof off, and don't mind if a new ruleset, campaign, or genre is chosen each week.[/quote]

This describes my group to a "T". They just like to hang out and socialize, and we change games often. I think everyone had a good time with this though. I would not want to be any of the Jarin peasents still in town when the Ivinians come looking for the PC's! They played in typical hack-and-slash fashion, and took the loot and ran. Actually they only took one bag of the toys, but they also caused a lot of mayhem and took off with the sleigh to points south. But being a one-off, what the heck, they had a good time