Topic: Combo Game of HARP and HARP Sci-Fi?

[markc]

  Has anyone done a combo game of HARP and HARP Sci-Fi? If so are there any problem areas? Or anything that came up that someone should look out for?
MDC

[Marc R]

From RM/SM crossover days, even low level magic combined with technology can allow super absurdity.

[markc]

From RM/SM crossover days, even low level magic combined with technology can allow super absurdity.

 That is sort of what I a afraid of. My group is in the planning stage of our Space Game and we/I am trying to see what setting options we will allow. Some choices are easy to exclude as HARP Extreme in not out yet but it might be before we/I get all the stuff done for the universe and game.


Thanks.


Can you think of any specific examples? I have not played HARP in a log time and have not used CofM at all in our game.


MDC

[GrumpyOldFart]

I've been trying to come up with something sort of in the middle, but while the systems are almost perfectly compatible, at this point they are not quite so.

The biggest problem mechanically is that even if "civilization has fallen" such that there is no purpose to Vehicular and Technical skills, there is still the Scientific skill category, which isn't in HARP Fantasy at all. Moreover, characters developed in HARP SF had 3 more categories they had to spread their DPs out among, which affects how much power/skill/etc. is "enough" for a beginning character. Thus either HARP SF characters start slightly more powerful than HARP Fantasy characters, or they start feeling slightly "underpowered" for their own "native" setting/mechanics assumptions.

The other major issue is as Marc R noted, trying to get a balance between technology and magic. It gets worse still if you include psionics and magic both. The way around that as a GM is to tweak the setting to where technology is difficult and dangerous, tweak the magic/psi mechanics so that magic/psi/both are difficult and dangerous, or both. This way you can get powerful magic/technology in the game, but you won't get it unless people are really desperate.

 

[Marc R]

Generally it's if one of the players knows some science, and makes some variation of the " Wow, with Heat Solid I can build a fuel free engine." or the "With Chill solid, a computer has a perfect heat sink and can operate at levels way beyond what it should be capable of."

Generally, any long duration or large mass effecting spell that can be added to a scientific process and get a major boon. . .with HARP the generally reduced durations will help, but I suspect with some scaling ingenuity they can find something to combo off of.

[Eisenmann]

My HARP/SF mashup will consist mostly of fantasy critters moved over to the SF setting.

[Maelstrom]

Generally, any long duration or large mass effecting spell that can be added to a scientific process and get a major boon. . .with HARP the generally reduced durations will help, but I suspect with some scaling ingenuity they can find something to combo off of.

Or simply cast the spell as a ritual and set duration to permanent.