Whether a GM or player, can you reveal what kind of adventures you've had in Harn? It doesn't have to be anything much, just a few lines summarising. I want to get a feel for the type of adventures you can have.

Mine for example, only the one to date; Talisman of Valon

Party were sent north across the Kald River to try to reclaim a penonian religious artifact which was stolem from the shrine at Jedes. There were encounters with the Gargun and Kath, and little to no magic was used.

Ha ha...you do not want to know and I am embarrassed to tell many

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

Suffice it to say that mile long sailing ships and the star ship enterprise cropped up many moons ago...youth,wine, too much Michael Moorcock...what can I say.

(I obviously lied about not telling.... )

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

In fact; it got so bad at one point we even played the 'curse of Hlen'

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

I used HarnMaster back in the 90's, but actually have played in Hârn only since 2003, and then only occasionally.

Victory, Destiny! strategy game. Not a role-playing game, and thus not an adventure in the classic sense. But the game essentially puts each player into the boots of a king, leading a military campaign, and in our group, some in-character action always happens as the border of simulation and immersion vanishes. I've played the General nominated by the Corani Senate, and the Gurim of Golotha. Both were ruthless, but the first one was unlucky. I've probably played the Kandian king also, but can't remember how it went.

Noble sons returning home to meet their mad father & discussing a potentially cursed inheritance. This happened in mainland Melderyn, and the holy war against the Solori loomed large in the background. We only played one prolonged session, during wich the father died and bad came to worse. There was more than "natural" there, but my character never understood what.

Western Harn grand strategy PbEM by Tuomo. (You can find some discussion about it on this forum.) This lasted some two months. An extremely dense & eye-opening play, completely made of realpolitik and simulating Hârn. My character (the Pesed in Kom) got bogged down big time by a Gargun incursion.

"No honour". A disgraced Melderyni knight leads a ramshackle mercenary band in Tharda. They get intertwined into local politics, used and sold big time, drink, brawl, try to find a cause to fight for, and accidentally bring into the world a two-headed calf. This was a very "Hârn is dirty and down to earth" campaign, without any magic. I was the GM, and this lasted two or three of months.

"Hectans". Hârn as a backward "feral world" in the WH40K Imperium, where odd psychers calling themselves "The Grey" have virtual power and manipulate people according to some thousand years old grand plan. Electricity failed a long time ago, so they have tapped other energy sources. The player characters sold the primitive feudals and barbarians weapons and drugs, played gods, bribed their way high, and carried through an increasingly dangerous program of tests to find out the energy source "The Grey" were using. They met some Mutants, Orcs and Eldar, lasgunned the first ones and fell under the spell of the last one. There was a mile-long stranded spaceship on bottom of the Lake Benath. After some ten sessions, they managed to escape the world through a godstone before completely losing their sanity. This campaign was very true to the idea of Hârn as an interdimensionally connected low-fantasy world with some potentially very high fantasy (or scifi) elements. I was the GM.

"100 Bushels of Rye". Running now. I'm playing a simple soldier. Madness!

-ile

Adapted "Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth" from 1st Ed D&D for Harn, set in the mountainous wilderness of Loala, partly taken from the Conan D20 adaptation, added in an Expert adventure called Temple of Death as a secret Agrikan cult in the region keeping watch over the tomb of a witch queen in enchanted sleep. Still going on. Pcs are about to break into the tomb.

Following this the players would like to have their characters have a turn in civilization going to Holegore. I'm planning for them to be involved with an inquisition to root out Agrikan influence in the region. (There isn't supposed to be any) as well as this there are a number of PC subplots I'm going to give them a chance to deal with that will ideally lead to mini adventures.

I like adapting old D&D modules and Call of Cthulhu adventures to Harn.

I've run a grand total of 3 adventures in Harn, and none had much at all to do with the actual world. In fact, all could have likely been run in just about any campaign world. One adventure was guarding a caravan on the Salt Route (barbarians and wolves attacked), the second was investigating an outbreak of low-level undead in an outlying manor, and the third was a dungeon crawl through an old abandoned castle.

As for adventures I plan to run someday that have a strong Harnic feel, here's a couple short summaries.
1. Something is killing and mutilating livestock. Does not appear to be wolves, and gargun are not generally in area. During investigation, 2 teenagers disappear and the parents are very worried. Rumors and stories of ogres, trolls, ivashu, and crazed Morgathian rituals start flying. As more sheep are killed, the stories get worse and the villagers work themselves into a panic. Eventually, yelgri are found to have moved into the area, and the teen runaways come back when their money runs out.

2. The players are traveling through Bujoc territory on the way to buy horses from the Hodiri. They do some minor trading with the Bujoc on the way, and the difference in Melderyni and Bujoc culture is played up. At some point they come across a group of gargun. After the fight, they find Bujoc totems on some of the gargun. Getting the totems back to the Bujoc would win them great favor. I may also toss in some Bujoc prisoners that just happen to be important people to up the ante.

3. Bandits have been taking travelers in the area. Most or all are commoners, and so are never ransomed or heard from again. A minor nobleman's daughter was just taken, and several retainers are injured, but escape to tell the story. The group just happens to be at the first manor they come to, and agree to ride off and investigate. They find the bandits, who are selling the captives to slavers.

4. A ghost is haunting the woodward's family. The ghost was the husband of the woodward's sister, and was lost 10 years ago. He died guarding his noble employer during a gargun attack when the gargun caused a landslide or cave-in that buried the group. Something or someone is about to uncover the bodies, and this disturbs him. If someone can talk to him, he will ask them to properly bury the bodies and take certain items (noble's sword and ring, his torc, etc) back to the heirs. Anything else they find they are welcome to have if they do this.

The Ambush and Bandit's Hideout adventures from Harn Pottage II will both be used. In fact, the Ambush scenario plays a pivotal role in the early campaign storyline. The three Harn Pottages are excellent, and all have great ideas in them.

Really interesting stuff, and bizarre too!

Seriously, where do you get your ideas from?

Chybisa "Fox & Boar" Campaign:

• Manor Administration including hall moots
• Tournaments
• Fights against Fairies (redcaps) and barbarians (Pagaelin)
• The Great Fair in Tashal, and the assassination of the bishop of Ledyne (I also tried to include a "Highlander" plot, but was too subtile)
• The Bastard of Prince Balesir, political intrigues between Kaldor, Chybisa and Melderyn with my players an independent fourth party
• The Royal Winter Hunt, high society and political murder (Thanks, Enki Bilal)
• The Silver Hoard, a treasure hunt based on Peter Watsons 'Landscape of Lies'
• The Quest for The Spear of Shattered Sorrow, a gral hunt including a lost valley and the departure of the last centaurs.

Ivinia/Menglana "Death in the Snow" & "The Ravens Cry":

• Scouting and fighting in Froyby against the invaders of Ibanvaal
• Pilgrimages to Lokis, Idjarheim and Mount Ilbengaad, including meeting some Elkyri
• Rogna: Fighting against pirates, The assault of Amavik and later the freeing of our robbed family members
• Seal hunting in the far north and fighting against a wyrm and an icebear (luckily not at the same time)
• High stakes political deals in the minefield between the paranoid king of Menglana and his ambitious sons, trying to save the Kingdom
• Ambassador duty trying to forge an coalition against an Ibanvaal-Rogna axis
• Ivinian weddings

Kaldor "Sword & Lute" / Post-Panaga

• The Sorcerers Grave, a treasure hunt for the remains of an advisor of Lothrim. BTW, ever married an animated mummy with his ghostly beloved? No? Well, now my Save-K'nor priest has really a reason to cultivate his fondness for beverages.
• Fire, Swords & Bullets; a Stargate-like Spycraft-Harnmaster-Crossover. Hopefully our last meeting with Panaga. First time ever I had to kill a fellow players character in cold blood.

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Michael - visit Tales of Chybisa.com.

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

I've run more that a few campaigns on Harn. All using HM in varius forms. I've had evil Agrikian PC's running wild. Noble Laranian PC's rescuing the Earl of heroth's ugly daughter, I ran a solo where a Noldor Elf (PC) and a Gargu-Khanu (NPC) became fast friends and cut a swath through the island... and my last 2 games. One is still running and the other is on hold. My job really cuts into my gaming these days. You can read the threads on them here & here.

Tharda rising is the current one.

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Ok, let me get this straight. These guys come in, trash the place, slap Agrik & Larani around, and the most intelligible thing they said was "Zog!"?

Did a 3 party linked campaign with Lothrims return, basic plot idea taken from C J Cherryh's Morgaige Saga (or some such name), with godstones, gods, even used AD&D's Slavers series. And lots of other bits from other games converted over (The Companions was one, major bits from one of the Kane novels by Karl E Wagner). It went for about 3-4 years. Ended under Araka Kalia with Lothrim having killed the God there and taken over his position, but the PC's stoped his grander plans.

Allan

For me, adventure ideas come equally from the setting, the character write-ups, and thin air.

As an example, my main storyline/campaign takes place in Holosi Hundred on the upper end of the Nuem River. I wanted to be near barbarians for the potential conflict, and the Lady of Paladins / Solori fighting gives interesting possibilities as well. So, trading with the Bujoc or at least interacting with them is an obvious possibility. Next, my main character is a manor lord, and is greatly interested in horses. Sure, he could just have a horse farm in the middle of nowhere and supply them to the local nobles or LoP at Cundras. I thought it would be more interesting if he regularly traveled to the Hodiri and bought their horses, then sold these as partially trained palfreys and rounceys. He now has a reason to be traveling regularly, which is an excuse for adventure. Because he's willing to get his hands dirty and do mercantile activity, he may get looked down upon by old money families, which is great for social roleplaying. I also gave him some psionic powers, and he's a rather junior member of my version of the Council of Eleven. Now the travel for horses is really just a cover to move around and gather intelligence for the Council, and maybe try to influence the barbarians in certain directions. Between the setting and the character background, I have several obvious adventure hooks.

I think yelgri are cool, and so wanted to use them somehow. But just telling the players that they've moved into the area, so grab yer bows and kill them is boring. It also only takes 15 minutes of game time and it's over. Peasants are superstitious, and players even more so. Tell them it's just a harpy and it's no big deal. Playing up some horrid monster that is killing livestock and people will worry them and make then nervous about hunting it down. If it's some horrid Ivashu never seen before, or a 10' ogre, they 'll be appropriate scared.

Coming up with adventure hooks and ideas is relatively easy. Filling these out in enough detail to occupy one or more game sessions is the tough part. Writing it up in a clear way so that others can also use it takes it to another level of difficulty.

This. A hundred times this.

If I can work out how to do the above, I'll be golden.

I played in two campaigns about 20 years back so the details fade but here's some:

Kanday:
Players were the newly appointed Baroness of Dunir, a protege of Prince Anaflas; myself her archer bodyguard who was still rather a romantic Jarin at heart though finding that the bandit she had run away with was no Robin Hood should have cured her of that; a Rethemi nobleman in exile for being Laranian but who would rather like his lands back from his dastardly brother; and a local knight.
Starting with a Laranian tourney in Sarkum where the announcement of the Lady's elevation was made by the Prince and the 2 knights started their ongoing friendship/rivalry; then the escort to Dunir; settling in; meeting the knight's family and the exiled noble accidentally insulting them; trying to sort out local problems though never quite solving the mystery of the Beast of the Heath; shopping in Aleath; the Lady's secret meetings with Anaflas; shipwreck on Anfla Island and some misty magics there and the return of something to Anaflas; return to Dunir and winter socialising; kidnap of the lady by the rest of us being derelict in our duty..well I tried but the local guards never took the 5' bodyguard/maid seriously and the long rescue that had a lot of failure in Golotha before we finally returned with her, largely due to the aid of the Checkered Shield; my trial for witchcraft (which was actually magic by a short-term player Shek Pvar that coincidentally seemed to emanate from me; sentence commuted as the Checkered Shield's involvement in the rescue had set off another round of war; the raids of the war, including our exile getting his keep back briefly before it was burned down; the defence at the siege of Dunir; foiling Agrikan assassination of our Lady. We ended with a trip to Orbaal at the behest of Anaflas to deal with a Crimson Dancer assassin.

Vikings
Players were the younger sons/brothers/cousins of an Ivinian clan leader, with myself as a Shieldmaiden. A ship large enough to trade/raid with so off we went a-viking after an altercation at home. The fun of different raids along various coasts till a final shipwreck in Azeryan and incarceration by a drylands lord... who then decided to use these barbaric foreigners. So off we were sent to the capital where we became the equivalent of the Varangian guard, ostensibly working for this lord but soon our waywardness broke out again and we had fun garnering riches and sneaking into the harem before heading for home via the inland route. A robbery gained us another ship. Portages and fur-hunting and defending our goods against other barbarians..... in fact we still are on our way home as the GM married a non-gamer and was lost to us.

As a GM I am currently running pregames for 3 players all loosely related though one character is unknown to the others and is currently a 6 year old agricultural slave in Byria having been shipwrecked there with his now dead father, so he has a long way before he reaches Kaldor aged 18.... well, he did say he would like to see how the character turned out....
No more shipwrecks after that though, well unless they decide to take to the sea a lot .

For me add in character background, player choices and random dice rolls.

One of the closest I can think that got to being a "usable by others" adventure but it was mostly developed by random dice rolls and just looked like I had developed something ahead of time.

It started with missing children and sheep in Chybisa area.


There were actually a number of possible suspects in the area.

• Searching out the area far to the north one suspect was a cave with "Dragon" in it.
• Guarding the fields during the night where things had happened before in the area the party managed to find something moving around at night in the far fields that left tracks they followed the next day.
• Also there was a ruined manor with an internal garden and crypt all locked up and boarded from the inside. The most unusual thing was the new strong well oiled lock on the crypt.

All of these were effectively random encounters rolled off the encounter charts from the party finding a town with missing children.



The cave with the "Dragon" in it was an Ilme who was frightened to death with a bunch of humans storming it's front door. Cornered it had no choice to fight but a "Dragon" was too much of an opponent for this party. Once the party escaped alive one or two of the party members escaped with the impression that the Dragon shyed away from bitting them at least twice. they had an exciting encounter with a dragon that they never understood but it was clearly not the creature silently stealing the children from houses in town at night.

The second suspect they investigated the missing sheep and found giant footprints sneaking up to the edge of fields. A giant one eye'd, one horned, Ettin that had been stealing sheep from far fields. They tracked the footprints back to it's lair but managed to catch it outside in daylight. A grand battle ensued like nothing anybody in the region had ever seen and they managed to kill the giant. They finished tracking it back to its lair and found the place shattered with the bones of sheep and the bodies of children in various stages of decomposition.

Instant heros!

And the whole thing could have ended there with all the disappearances stopping and the party celebrated and honored as heros.


Fortunately/unfortunately, one of the party members was psionic sensitive and a little too observant...

The big, clumsy ettin was guilty of grabbing and eating the sheep but actually didn't fit the suspect description for a creature sneaking into towns in the middle of the night and children silently stolen from their beds. The real culprit there was the female vampire holed up in the ruined manor with the fresh well oiled crypt lock. She would drain the children and leave the bodies at the etttin's lair knowing that the ettin would eventually be found and take the blame and she would move on with no one ever knowing better. The ettin would play with the little-doll-bodies for a few days until they became too decomposed and then toss them into the back of the cave.



Eventually finding tools and chasing the vampire who fled the sceen would dominate thier activities for many months after that.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

Thank you for the summaries of my campaigns.

Furthermore, I did the whole Panaga-trilogy from 1993 to 1998 with my players. E. g. it involved some serious travelling across Hârn and parts of Lythia, a real cool sneak into the Keep of Quimen, a bloodbath in a steam sauna in Orbaal (someone obviously stole my idea for the film "Eastern Promises" ) and some serious trouble for the PCs. And a visit to the High Court of a prince of the V'hîr, who talked with the group about the dealings of Panaga...

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Með kveðju, Thorvald
http://www.last.fm/user/hrafnsbjarg

I did start to do a summary of my current long running campaign; which is 'realistic' mid to occassional high adventure...(the PC's have had some godstone action, use/encounter powerful sorcery and have brought chaos to castles etc)...but mostly it got very long winded and was more a case of me trying to prove I am now a sensible and sane GM rather than providing any help. For another time and place maybe.

The thing I have found is that bizarrelly my inspiration travels geographically to and from published Canon and Fanon articles Especially those that have exciting artwork and maps

It helps that early on the players took sides in the Kaldoric succession crisis and civil war..and are 'dragged' around by hunting down a socerous amovrus (undead). Easy/lazy motivations for the bizarre and otherwise irrational perambulations from published article to article!!!!!!

Such cliched maguffins are less satisfying than character driven motivations..but imho a very useful glue that provides verisimilitude to the buffeting winds of 'session' led adventuring that we choose/are led to due to limited time.

However; if you have the time and inclination; developing story arc's from the ambitions of the characters can be far more rewarding and require less imagination than our method. (although often more work )

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

That is amazing. I have to steal that adventure. That's wonderful.

GMed 100 Bushels if Rye back in the day. Characters were common soldiers from Olokand. They quickly figured out that there must be a monster on the loose. They went off into the woods with Lord’s squire to watch over them. Following a heated argument as to relative social standing of them vs. the squire, all went to sleep. Characters rolled the squire up in a tent and kicked him to death.

They milled around the hill under which the monster lived. Having found a secret shaft in the opening on the hilltop, they tried to explore this. One fell down into the lake below and the rest went in as well. Yes, they had a very long rope. The shaft was forgotten for a time. When they got out and were drying by the campfire, monster stumbled in. Lucky random arrow got him straight in the eye – he run off and characters followed. They chased him down into a gully, shot him several times and slaughtered the poor wounded beast. They took the head and major organs back to the village.

Upon their return they said the squire was killed by barbarians. The end. Now a different campaign is under way…

I've run several campaigns in Harn over the course of the last 25 years or so (and just saying that makes me feel way too old). The most recent is our Lia Kavair campaign in which the players are part of the Thieves' Guild in Coranan. You can read all about it in Tavern Tales.

I am currently running a campaign set in Menglana - the game is played as a Play by Forum game.

The link for the game is here if you are interested:

http://menglana.forumotion.net/

The game is set around the Ibanvaal invasion of Menglana.

We are playing the Asolade Campaign.

A Shower of SIlver, Chewintin, the follow on Asolade adventures.
We have played teh Talisman of Valon, and a modified Warriors Grave.
We have explored Tuleme Island and Evael.
We have enjoyed the Annual Jedes Horse Fair.
We have engaged in the Larani Soylana Assembly.

I even adapted a scene from Shadows over Bogenhafen....

The players have entreated with Kath, Pagaelin Sindar and Navehans.

They have discovered ancient secrets, but cant solve the murders in Asolade.

They are pawns of an Earl, victims of a prophecy, and have knowledge of the return of a demon.

They know where the epic adventure leads, but are content to live in Asolade and pretend the great evils are myth and legend....Soon...darkness comes.

I try to adapt modules from DnD, WFRP, etc....I cut and paste and make them fit Harn.

So far so good.