Medieval Castles As Adventure Locations

I've been searching around, trying to find a suitable nexus floor plan for a mega dungeon entrance, without much success. However, in the course of my wanderings, I came across a website with a plethora of imaginary castles, many designed in the Harn-esque fashion of Castles of Harn. Sadly, the author of the website passed away in 2006. Someone has maintained the site, presumably in tribute to his creativity and imagination. I did a google search for "castle floor plan", and came across several other castles, including some really huge modern homes.

I like to use real castle and catacomb maps upon which to base my own dungeons and adventure environs. Doing so gives me some assurance that the environments are structurally sound and believable. Now, the castles from the above site are not real, but they are designed in such a way as they could be.

What I also like is when the layout appears to have been added to over time, giving the map a labyrinthine feel. This tends to give me an opportunity to have several areas that are more difficult to access. If the map has secret passages, staircases and the like, so much the better.

Medieval Castles As Adventure Locations

I've been searching around, trying to find a suitable nexus floor plan for a mega dungeon entrance, without much success. However, in the course of my wanderings, I came across a website with a plethora of imaginary castles, many designed in the Harn-esque fashion of Castles of Harn. Sadly, the author of the website passed away in 2006. Someone has maintained the site, presumably in tribute to his creativity and imagination. I did a google search for "castle floor plan", and came across several other castles, including some really huge modern homes.

I like to use real castle and catacomb maps upon which to base my own dungeons and adventure environs. Doing so gives me some assurance that the environments are structurally sound and believable. Now, the castles from the above site are not real, but they are designed in such a way as they could be.

What I also like is when the layout appears to have been added to over time, giving the map a labyrinthine feel. This tends to give me an opportunity to have several areas that are more difficult to access. If the map has secret passages, staircases and the like, so much the better.

Harn Weapons And Armour

In the 1990's, I was briefly in love with Harn. For those who have been smitten, you'll know what I mean. Gorgeous maps. Intricate world-building. Complex character generation. Detailed combat. Harn seemingly promised those two holy grails of game design, granularity and verisimilitude.

My Harn materials are mostly gone now: lost in a garage fire. But a couple of items remain. The amazing maps, from Cities of Harn and Son of Cities, survived, as they were placed in a binder that followed me on several moves. I also have one or two Encyclopedia Harnica folios.

Some Harn-related notes and characters also survived, in the same binder as the Cities of Harn materials. Among the notes are lists of melee weapons and armor.

Melee weapons in Harn had three potential damage aspects. Every weapon is rated on how much damage it inflicts, if used to do blunt, edge or point damage. This system is not unlike the three weapon types in 2nd Edition AD&D: bludgeoning, slashing and piercing.

But while the AD&D 2E system gave each weapon only one (or at most, two) damage options, many weapons in Harn allow you to do damage with any of the three weapon aspects.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

The Handaxe is rated as Blunt 4, Edge 6, and Point 3. The Shortsword: Blunt 2, Edge 4, Point 4. The Glaive: Blunt 6, Edge 7, Point 7. The Falchion: Blunt 4, Edge 6, Point 1.

However, some weapons only do damage in one or two aspects. The Mace is only rated as Blunt 5. The Warhammer: Blunt 6, Point 4. The Throwing Dagger: Point 4.

Obviously, the benefit of having a weapon that can do damage in any of the three aspects is that the weapon is more versatile. All of the swords fit in that category, as do the Handaxe and Battleaxe. The flails and clubs do significant damage as well, but are limited to blunt damage only.

Armour, at least in the version of Harnmaster that I possessed, was needlessly complicated. Every type of armor was broken down into the types of armor pieces available for each of the 16 locations of the body. I might buy a short chain hauberk, combine it with some plate greaves, a ringmail half-helm, hardened leather vambraces, and quilt gambeson, and then need to figure out my coverage, for each of the 16 hit locations. What you gained in realism you lost in endless record-keeping.

I did like the Harn shield rules though. Different shields were more effective against different classes of weapons. Light shields were better against light weapons, while heavy shields provided more protection against heavy weapons.

Coming back to my favorite out-of-print boardgame, Avalon Hill's Magic Realm, the three weapon aspects of Harn combat (Blunt, Edge and Point) nicely line up with Magic Realm's three attack directions (Smash, Swing and Thrust). Like most of my half-formed ideas, i've long wanted to find a way to combine the Harn weapon aspects and Magic Realm matrix into a diceless or near-diceless combat system. My quixotic quest continues.

Harn Weapons And Armour

In the 1990's, I was briefly in love with Harn. For those who have been smitten, you'll know what I mean. Gorgeous maps. Intricate world-building. Complex character generation. Detailed combat. Harn seemingly promised those two holy grails of game design, granularity and verisimilitude.

My Harn materials are mostly gone now: lost in a garage fire. But a couple of items remain. The amazing maps, from Cities of Harn and Son of Cities, survived, as they were placed in a binder that followed me on several moves. I also have one or two Encyclopedia Harnica folios.

Some Harn-related notes and characters also survived, in the same binder as the Cities of Harn materials. Among the notes are lists of melee weapons and armor.

Melee weapons in Harn had three potential damage aspects. Every weapon is rated on how much damage it inflicts, if used to do blunt, edge or point damage. This system is not unlike the three weapon types in 2nd Edition AD&D: bludgeoning, slashing and piercing.

But while the AD&D 2E system gave each weapon only one (or at most, two) damage options, many weapons in Harn allow you to do damage with any of the three weapon aspects.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

The Handaxe is rated as Blunt 4, Edge 6, and Point 3. The Shortsword: Blunt 2, Edge 4, Point 4. The Glaive: Blunt 6, Edge 7, Point 7. The Falchion: Blunt 4, Edge 6, Point 1.

However, some weapons only do damage in one or two aspects. The Mace is only rated as Blunt 5. The Warhammer: Blunt 6, Point 4. The Throwing Dagger: Point 4.

Obviously, the benefit of having a weapon that can do damage in any of the three aspects is that the weapon is more versatile. All of the swords fit in that category, as do the Handaxe and Battleaxe. The flails and clubs do significant damage as well, but are limited to blunt damage only.

Armour, at least in the version of Harnmaster that I possessed, was needlessly complicated. Every type of armor was broken down into the types of armor pieces available for each of the 16 locations of the body. I might buy a short chain hauberk, combine it with some plate greaves, a ringmail half-helm, hardened leather vambraces, and quilt gambeson, and then need to figure out my coverage, for each of the 16 hit locations. What you gained in realism you lost in endless record-keeping.

I did like the Harn shield rules though. Different shields were more effective against different classes of weapons. Light shields were better against light weapons, while heavy shields provided more protection against heavy weapons.

Coming back to my favorite out-of-print boardgame, Avalon Hill's Magic Realm, the three weapon aspects of Harn combat (Blunt, Edge and Point) nicely line up with Magic Realm's three attack directions (Smash, Swing and Thrust). Like most of my half-formed ideas, i've long wanted to find a way to combine the Harn weapon aspects and Magic Realm matrix into a diceless or near-diceless combat system. My quixotic quest continues.

Encyclopedia Harnica 8

As I had some rather uncomplimentary things to say of Harn here, I thought it would only be fair to post a little of what I do like about the Harn system.

First, I no longer own the Harn system (burned, lost or tossed), but I do own a couple of Harn supplementary items, so I make these comments mostly from memory, but I recall being impressed with the level of detail that went into the rules. At the time, I liked the Harn skills and combat systems.

What I do like about Harn though is the world-building material, the town, castle and city maps, and other supplementary material. If you are happy to jettison most of the flavour and background of the Harn materials, you will likely get value from these products.

Case in point is the wonderful little map (above), which is a player's map of the Kingdom of Kaldor. Hand-drawn, showing the major roads, rivers, towns, mountains and other terrain features, it is the perfect handout to provide players who purchase a kingdom map from a cartographer. This map appears in Encyclopedia Harnica 8, EH being a periodical published by Columbia Games during the 1980's.

The EH series was a fantastic little resource. EH 8 contained maps of different areas of Kaldor, geneology of the current ruling family of Kaldor, relationships between the various Earls, the Royal household, the Coats of Arms of the various Earls (in full color), and a section on Astrology. The background itself? Jettison. But the templates, the coats of arms, the concept of constellations and superstitions you can add to your campaign. Invaluable.

I understand that much of the materials that appeared in the Encyclopedia Harnica series eventually found its way into newer Harn publications. For example, Trobridge Inn, which appeared in Encyclopedia Harnica 4, was reprinted as its own adventure. I purchased the adventure, and would happily use the Inn setting as an outpost from which the players might foray to a dungeon, something like the Keep in B2. But I don't think i'd use the Trobridge Inn adventure itself, as the background is too "particular" to Harn to fit into any world I would like to adventure in.

Encyclopedia Harnica 8

As I had some rather uncomplimentary things to say of Harn here, I thought it would only be fair to post a little of what I do like about the Harn system.

First, I no longer own the Harn system (burned, lost or tossed), but I do own a couple of Harn supplementary items, so I make these comments mostly from memory, but I recall being impressed with the level of detail that went into the rules. At the time, I liked the Harn skills and combat systems.

What I do like about Harn though is the world-building material, the town, castle and city maps, and other supplementary material. If you are happy to jettison most of the flavour and background of the Harn materials, you will likely get value from these products.

Case in point is the wonderful little map (above), which is a player's map of the Kingdom of Kaldor. Hand-drawn, showing the major roads, rivers, towns, mountains and other terrain features, it is the perfect handout to provide players who purchase a kingdom map from a cartographer. This map appears in Encyclopedia Harnica 8, EH being a periodical published by Columbia Games during the 1980's.

The EH series was a fantastic little resource. EH 8 contained maps of different areas of Kaldor, geneology of the current ruling family of Kaldor, relationships between the various Earls, the Royal household, the Coats of Arms of the various Earls (in full color), and a section on Astrology. The background itself? Jettison. But the templates, the coats of arms, the concept of constellations and superstitions you can add to your campaign. Invaluable.

I understand that much of the materials that appeared in the Encyclopedia Harnica series eventually found its way into newer Harn publications. For example, Trobridge Inn, which appeared in Encyclopedia Harnica 4, was reprinted as its own adventure. I purchased the adventure, and would happily use the Inn setting as an outpost from which the players might foray to a dungeon, something like the Keep in B2. But I don't think i'd use the Trobridge Inn adventure itself, as the background is too "particular" to Harn to fit into any world I would like to adventure in.