Retrospective: Cities of Hârn

The issue of White Dwarf I discussed this week included a review of 1983's Cities of Hârn, the first major supplement for the Hârn fantasy setting published by Columbia Games. Written by Hârn's creator, the late N. Robin Crossby, Cities of Hârn is one of only a handful of Hârn materials I owned until relatively recently. I did so at least in part because of the ads I saw in the pages of Dragon, which highlighted its wonderful maps. I also did so because I find the mere idea of cities in a fantasy setting absolutely captivating. I blame Lankhmar.

Cities of Hârn begins with an overview of cities in general before offering up specific information on each of the seven cities of the setting. The overview focuses on the kinds of "realistic" details that are the hallmarks of Hârn's Anglo-Norman-inspired fantasy. There are discussions of guilds, markets, governments, and of course taxes and fees – lots of taxes and fees. I probably make this sound less appealing than it is, because most of these discussions are brief and add to the verisimilitude of the setting rather than getting bogged down in minutiae. 

The real meat of Cities of Hârn lies in the sections that treat each of the seven major cities of the island of Hârn: Aleath, Cherafir, Coranan, Golotha, Shiran, Tashal, and Thay. Though there is some variation between the write-ups, each section follows the same pattern. There's information presented on each city's history, government, and economy, followed by two keyed maps of the entire city, one in color and one in black and white. In addition, each city includes a keyed map for a single important location within it. For example, the section on Aleath includes a map of The Sword & Sceptre, a three-story tavern, while the one on Shiran includes the Pamesani Arena. These location maps are quite useful, both because they provide the referee with a potential setting for a scenario or an encounter and because they offer some insight into the city in question. The aforementioned Arena highlights Shiran's role as "the pleasure capital of Hârn," where all manner of entertainment is available to those with the money to afford them.

The keyed maps are the main draw of Cities of Hârn. Though perhaps not as lovely as the large-scale maps included with the original Hârn, those in this product are still quite attractive, especially in their colored versions. More than that, they are useful, showing the locations of all the important places within a given city, as well as the area in the immediate vicinity of the city itself, such as rivers, roads, fortifications, and the like. Sometimes, extra detail is provided, like the sites of the underground tunnels beneath Tashal. 

The map keys are of the same spare and utilitarian style that is typical of Hârn. The individual entries usually consist of only a line or two, with only the most important details given much space. The entries all include information on the number of typical inhabitants in a given building, the quality of the goods available there (if applicable), and their prices (again, if applicable). This is all presented in a system-neutral way, since the Hârn line was originally presented as a series of "generic" supplements for use with any fantasy roleplaying game system. Consequently, Cities of Hârn does require some work on the part of the referee to use effectively. Even leaving aside the matter of rules, there are many buildings and other locales in each city that are not keyed. Mind you, this leaves plenty of space for the referee to personalize the cities, which I consider a boon.

In the end, Cities of Hârn is, I think, pretty typical of the early Hârn products in being more like a "sketch" the referee is expected to fill in according to the needs of his own campaign rather than a fully fleshed out product ready to be used "out of the box." At the same time, its lovely maps and their keys are precisely what I wanted out of a product like this and more than justified the cost and relative difficulty it took to obtain a copy. Even though I never succeeded in running a Hârn-based campaign, I made good use of some of the maps in my own setting, which is about as high praise as I could have given a RPG product in those days.

White Dwarf: Issue #56

Issue #56 of White Dwarf (August 1984) features a cover by Chris Achilleos, who's probably most well-known for his contributions to Heavy Metal magazine. This particular illustration doesn't do much for me personally, but it's very much in keeping with the brash tone of the magazine during this time. In his editorial, Ian Livingstone sees a possible silver lining in the troubles of US game companies like TSR, namely, the emergence of "a thriving British RPG industry." Games Workshop certainly benefited from the decline of TSR in the mid-1980s; whether any other UK companies did so is an interesting question.

Speaking of the mid-1980s, what could be more appropriate than an article about ninjas? "Night's Dark Agents" by Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards is fairly typical of this surprisingly resilient genre of article. Rather than focus on how to include ninjas into any specific RPG, the authors instead talk about the reputed training, skills, weapons, and attire of ninjas in history and legend. It's fairly well done for what it is, but it's hardly groundbreaking in an era when nearly every gaming periodical published multiple periodicals of this sort.

"Open Box" reviews Games Workshop's "Battlebikes," giving it 7 out of 10. This game piqued my imagination at the time, but I never saw it in stores, let alone owned it. Also reviewed is "Turbofire" from Auto Ventures, a product and a company of which I've never heard. The product, which is given 8 out of 10, is apparently a multi-system adventure/campaign scenario designed for use with Car Wars, Battlecars, and Highway 2000 – how strange! Hârn, Cities of Hârn, and three installments of the Encyclopedia Hârnica are all reviewed together, collectively scoring 8 out of 10. The reviewer (Simon Farrell) speaks well of all the products; his main critique seems to be that, because they are presented in a system-neutral fashion, the referee will have to do a lot of work creating game stats for NPCs, monsters, etc. Finally, there's a review of Mayfair's The Forever War game, which garners a 7 out of 10.

For a change, Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" includes discussions of books I've actually read, like Donald Kingsbury's Geta (released in the USA under the title Courtship Rite, which is how I know it). It's a strange work of imaginary socio-anthropology about a colony of humans who survive on a hostile planet where only a handful of Earth plants can grow and whose diet must be supplemented by cannibalism. The book is better than it sounds! Langford also reviews Jack Vance's Lyonesse, which he likes less than The Dying Earth and its sequels, an opinion I share. Later in the column, Langford offers his opinions on the best, worst, most pretentious, and most sexist SF authors.

It's an idiosyncratic list to be sure.

Since we're on the subject of bad writers, the next article is devoted to translating the fantasy novels of David Eddings into Dungeons & Dragons. Predictably entitled "The Belgariad," the article by Peter Ransome is thankfully short. Much more worthy of one's time is "The Last Log," a science fiction Call of Cthulhu adventure by Jon Sutherland, Steve Williams, and Tim Hall. Set in the early 23rd century, the scenario involves checking in with a corporate mining planet whose colonists haven't delivered any reports in over seven months. Naturally, something eldritch is afoot and it's up to the player characters to deal with it. I liked this adventure so much that I used a version of it in my college Traveller: 2300 with great success. Even now, I consider it one of the most original things ever published in the pages of White Dwarf.

"Mortal Combat" by Dave Morris is a collection of rules alterations and additions to the RuneQuest combat system. While I have no doubt that articles of this sort were of great interest to RQ fans, it was precisely this obsession with adding complexity to an already complex combat system that has long prevented my wholly embracing the game, which is a pity. Part 1 of "The Sunfire's Hart" by P.G. Emery is an excellent kick-off to an extended AD&D scenario for low-level characters. The initial premise is that the PCs are hired by the Guild of Sages to travel by boat a series of volcanic islands to find out why contact was lost with the last group to travel there – a common theme in many RPG scenarios, it would seem! The islands were once ruled by the defunct Solarian Empire, which maintained power through the use of an artifact called the Sunfire's Heart. The scenario involves not only discovering what happened to other inhabitants of the island but also the secret history of the Solarian Empire. It's far from a perfect adventure, particularly in terms of its presentation, but I am a sucker for adventures where ancient history plays a role.

"Plying the Spacelanes" by Paul Vernon is an alternate take on random starship encounters in Traveller. Vernon does a good job, I think, of expanding on and rationalizing the original tables without complicating them unnecessarily. The next time I referee a Traveller campaign, I might well make use of these. "To Boldly Go" by Joe Dever and Gary Chalk takes a look at sci-fi miniatures, including those produced by Grenadier for Traveller. "High Planes Drifters" is a collection of four D&D monsters from the planes beyond the Prime Material. As you'd expect, they're a mixed bag, with none of them really standing out as must-use additions to the game.

"Don't Touch That Dial!" by Phil Hine is an odd little article, in that it's ostensibly about the introduction of high technology into a D&D but is in reality simply about the introduction of two specific types of high technology: gunpowder and mechanical flight via ornithopters. The former is a perennial topic of interest to fantasy gamers, while the latter seems to stem largely from Moorcock's Runestaff series and Herbert's Dune. It's a mostly forgettable article, much like "The Psytron!" by Carol Hutchins, which reviews a 48K Spectrum game of the same name. I say that not because the game in question is a bad one – the reviewer gives it 9 out of 10 – but because it doesn't seem to have been a particularly successful or influential product. I'd much rather read the latest installments of "Thrud the Barbarian," "The Travellers," and "Gobbledigook," all of which I enjoyed more.

White Dwarf continues to trudge along solidly. At this point in its run, most issues were decent enough to hold my attention without much complaint and would often include one or two articles that I still remember even now. This is one of those issues, largely because of "The Last Log," which is a genuinely clever take on Call of Cthulhu. I look forward to seeing more like it in the issues to come.

Retrospective: Gods of Hârn

As a general rule, I am very much opposed to the common practice among RPG hobbyists of buying products solely for reading purposes. I feel that game books should be bought with the intention that they be used in play, which explains why I buy so few new game books these days. I've only got so much free time in my life and, between refereeing two weekly campaigns and playing in a couple more, the odds of my making use of anything new I buy is limited. I realize this puts me at odds with a lot of my fellow gamers, who make a habit of picking up new gaming materials solely out of interest in their subject matter or because they're a collector to some degree. 

That said, I am a hypocrite on this matter when it comes to Hârn, a fantasy setting I've never used but whose support products I've nevertheless bought in surprising amounts. Everything I've purchased for Hârn is very well done, both in terms of content and presentation. There's an obvious love in these books that's almost infectious and I've often found myself picking them up over the years, despite my avowals not to do so. We all have our weak spots, I suppose, and the richly detailed fantasy world of Hârn is one of mine.

Of all the Hârn products I've bought (and never used) over the years, perhaps my favorite is Gods of Hárn. Originally published in 1985, the book is an overview of the ten gods of the setting's pantheon, along with information about the religions that worship them. For me, this is the most important part of what makes Gods of Hârn so special. There have been plenty of RPG books published about deities and divine beings, but few of them provide much in the way of useful information about the structure and activities of their mortal worshipers. Cults of Prax comes to mind, but, even there, the focus is more on the mythological role of the various gods of Glorantha than on the faiths of their followers.

Each god in Gods of Hârn receives a description of his or her personality and role in the pantheon, but more detail is heaped on their church. The theological and social missions of the churches is discussed, along with information about their holy days, symbols, history, and clerical organization. Each of these categories is fleshed out in sufficient detail that both the player and referee would find them useful in play. Though there's plenty of detail in Gods of Hârn, the book doesn't luxuriate in detail for its own sake; nearly everything here is presented with the goal of enhancing play, which is particularly useful for players of priests or zealous devotees of a particular god. As a fan of Tékumel, believe me when I say that I adore setting detail. At the same time, I also recognize that there can be such as a thing as too much detail. I believe that Gods of Hârn strikes a good balance between leaving everything up to the referee's imagination and overloading him with needless minutiae.

There are no game statistics for the gods of Hârn's pantheon to be found here. The emphasis is more on the mortal side of religion, which is how it should be in my opinion. Throughout history, religions have played an important role, for good and ill, in human events. Often those roles were a direct consequence of the beliefs and structures of the religions themselves, a fact that Gods of Hârn clearly recognizes. The historical sections of the book detail many instances when one or more of the churches influenced events on Hârn and elsewhere. Likewise, the sections detailing their hierarchies and present activities provide plenty of scope for the referee to make religion matter in a way it sometimes doesn't in fantasy settings.

If nothing else, Gods of Hârn is a good model to emulate for creators and referees looking to present gods and religion in their settings and that's why I'm glad I own it, even though I've never played a campaign set on Hârn – at least that's what I keep telling myself.

Retrospective: Ivinia

I feel about Hârn the same way many feel about Tékumel or Glorantha: it's a great setting to read about but I don't think I could ever run a campaign there. 

I don't mean that as a criticism of Hârn – far from it, in fact. Rather, it's simply a statement that, for the kind of fantasy roleplaying gaming I enjoy, Hârn isn't now nor has it ever been a particularly good fit. What I mean by that is that, as much as I admire and appreciate the work of its creator, the late N. Robin Crossby, it's a bit too grounded a setting for my tastes. I prefer my fantasy worlds a little weirder and, well, fantastical. (Yes, I am aware of the Gargun and, yes, they are weird, but that's simply not enough for me.)

Nevertheless, the overwhelming quality of the materials produced for Hârn has ensured I've bought a number of them over the years, a few of which I think very highly. One of these is the Ivinia regional module, which was originally released as a boxed set in 1985. Ivinia is the name of an area to the northeast of the island of Hârn, one that's home to a collection of petty kingdoms that bear some similarity to those of early medieval Scandinavia.

If there's one thing fantasy roleplayers like, it's Vikings and Ivinia definitely scratches that itch. The book included with the boxed set gives this northerly region the same treatment as Hârn. There's an overview of Ivinia's history and culture, including religion, law, and military capabilities. There are also descriptions of the numerous Ivinian kingdoms and their rulers. What strikes me about this material is the way that Crossby presents something that feels very much like one's imaginings of Viking era Scandinavia without simply copying it. This was the same approach he took with Hârn itself, which feels like Anglo-Saxon England without duplicating its specific details. 

That might not seem like an impressive feat but it is. Too often, in my experience, fantasy settings are little more than copy-and-paste reproductions of medieval Europe with elves, dwarves, and magic added to them (and, to be fair, even Hárn suffers from this to an extent). Ivinia tries to avoid by varying the details of the local cultures from the real world ones that inspired them. For example, the Ivinians practice formal polygamy, which has far-reaching consequences for the way their society is structured. Changes like this, along with unique Ivinian names and words, go a long way toward making the region feel unique and distinctive.

Like Hârn, Ivinia includes an absolutely beautiful map of the region. Maps are one of those aspects of Hârn products that has always set it apart from most other fantasy settings. The map style reminds me a bit of those from National Geographic or a historical atlas. 

I'm a sucker for maps of all kinds. That probably explains why I've bought as many Hârn products as I have. Whatever else one can say about them, the maps are gorgeous and almost worth the price of admission alone.

I really like Ivinia and wish I could say that I've made extensive use of it over the years. Of course, that's true of all of the Hârn products I own. It's very well made, filled with lots of interesting details and artwork. I've enjoyed reading it many times, but I've never quite felt inspired enough by it to make use of it in a campaign. That probably says more about me and my own preferences than it does about Ivinia and thank goodness for that. 

First Encounter

Speaking as someone who has struggled to produce a fanzine on a regular basis, I have nothing but respect and admiration for those who attempted to do so in the days before computers and the Internet made it a far more complex and onerous proposition. Take, for example, First Encounter, a Canadian fanzine whose eight issues were published between June 1982 and August 1983. Of particular note is that the 'zines feature the artwork of Eric Hotz, best known for his iconic work on Hârn. I love seeing "before they were famous" work of this sort. It's a useful reminder of the remarkable talents that our hobby has fostered over the decades.

In Praise of Vanilla

In normal years, Gamehole Con takes place every year in late October/early November in Madison, Wisconsin. At the urging of my friend, Victor Raymond, I first attended the convention in 2017 and greatly enjoyed myself – so much so, in fact, that made a decision to come back every year, if I were able. One of the pleasures of the con is being able to sample all of Wisconsin's glorious dairy delicacies, such as Hook's Cheese and the Chocolate Shoppe's ice cream. One day, a friend was enjoying some of the latter and he commented on how good it was, adding, "People say vanilla ice cream is bland but that's only because they've never had good vanilla."

I thought about this comment the other day after I'd finished refereeing the most recent session of my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign. Tékumel has a reputation – largely undeserved in my opinion – of being impenetrable and, therefore, unusable as a fantasy setting by anyone unwilling to devote untold hours to delving into its minutiae. However, I can't deny that it's an acquired taste, which is to say, something that won't be to everyone's liking. If you're not comfortable with a setting that eschews most of the staples of Western medieval fantasy, Tékumel definitely isn't for you (and that's OK).

Yet, for all the flak that Tékumel often catches for being too "weird," there are settings, like the Forgotten Realms, that are criticized from the other side, namely for being too boring. Settings of this sort are often derided as "vanilla fantasy" or some variation thereof. My difficulty in taking such criticisms seriously is that "vanilla fantasy" is a very elastic concept that changes with the user. Some notions of it are narrow and specific, singling out certain elements, such as Tolkien-derived races or fireball-flinging mages, as hallmarks of vanilla. Other notions, meanwhile, are so expansive as to include nearly everything found in Dungeons & Dragons. (In this case, I rather suspect that's the point; some of the most vociferous critics of vanilla fantasy I've ever known were quite down on D&D.)

Speaking only for myself, vanilla fantasy is fantasy that is easily, even intuitively understood by almost anyone with even a passing familiarity with the genre. It's built upon well known and widely shared assumptions, such as the existence of multiple intelligent species who go off on adventures that involve fighting nasty creatures and perhaps even a Dark Lord™. In short, it's the popular conception of the plot of The Lord of the Rings filtered through decades of knock-off novels, movies, and video games. 

I realize this description of vanilla fantasy probably makes it sound awful to many people, but that's not my intention at all. There is great value in something that's immediately understood and requires very little explanation. Truly, that's not nothing. Let's go back to Tékumel. Because there are almost no direct connections to popular fantasy concepts, almost every aspect needs to be explained to newcomers. It's not impossible to do, but it takes time and care. How many people not already versed in the setting know what a Pé Chói or a Shén is? Conversely, how many people know what an elf or a dwarf is? I don't think anyone would disagree that vastly more people know what the latter are and that basic level of understanding makes introducing a neophyte to, say, the World of Greyhawk easier than doing the same for Glorantha, another famously idiosyncratic (and non-vanilla) fantasy setting.

Because their assumptions are readily understood even by newcomers, vanilla settings can often introduce imaginative and distinctive twists on those same assumptions. For example, because everyone more or less knows what an orc is, Hârn can offer up its weird, insect-like version of the same (the Gargun). In a similar vein, the titular Forbidden Lands presents equally unexpected takes on halflings that play with expectations, something that could only be done if there's already a widely accepted baseline understanding. That's one of the real strengths of so-called vanilla fantasy: it's the standard from which all deviations can be measured, even deviations within itself.

Finally, there is such a thing as weirdness fatigue. Settings like Glorantha or Talislanta or, yes, Tékumel can overwhelm one's imagination with so many deviations, changes, and replacements of standard fantasy elements that it can be exhausting. A key to immersion in a fantasy setting is being able to imagine what it would be like to be there oneself. If too many of the setting's elements are utterly unlike our own experience, it can be genuinely hard to enter fully into the setting and enjoy it. Even if immersion isn't one's goal, simply having to ask something like "The Hlutrgú are the amphibian guys, right? Or is that the Ahoggyá?" is a rarer occurrence when one is playing on Oerth. 

None of this is meant as a criticism of exotic, quirky fantasy settings, which I adore. Even more emphatically this post is not intended to praise genuinely banal and unimaginative settings. My purpose is rather to make it clear that vanilla need not be synonymous with boring or hackneyed. Ingenious and engaging vanilla settings abound and the hobby would be poorer without them. Good vanilla can be every bit as tasty as the most rarefied flavors. In our zeal to laud the outré, we would be wise to remember that.

Free RPG Day Haul

I never had much use for Free RPG Day in the past. I didn't have anything against it, but the start of the promotion coincided almost exactly with the beginning of my disinterest in what "mainstream" publishers were producing, so I never had any reason to give it any heed. This year was different, though, because I knew Goodman Games was producing a 16-page booklet containing two adventures for Dungeon Crawl Classic Roleplaying Game and I wanted to snag it.

So, I set off to a couple of local game stores and succeeded in my quest. I also grabbed a copy of Columbia Games's map of Hârn (which, to be fair, I already owned, but I can never get enough maps), as well as some funky dice from Q-Workshop. I didn't find  anything else that was of interest to me, but I'm very happy to have gotten the map and the DCC RPG module.

The Ads of Dragon: Hârn

Issue #73 (May 1983) contained the following advertisement:

Is this the first time Hârn appeared in the pages of Dragon? I think it is. Even if it's not, it's the first advertisement I remember seeing and the one that pretty well encapsulated my thoughts on it. While most gamers who speak highly of the late N. Robin Crossby's fantasy world do so on the basis of its depth and "realism," for me, it was always the setting's maps that appealed to me. That little snippet of Melderyn we see in the ad captivated me more than anything else in it and I bought Hârn solely for its maps.

Even after all these years, I still consider Hârn's maps among the finest ever made for a fantasy roleplaying product. I've never actually used Hârn as a campaign setting, however. I find it a little off-putting in many ways and a little too closely tied to Anglo-Saxon/Northern European history and culture for my tastes. On the other hand, I've long admired the fact that all Hârnic materials are set in an "eternal present" whose timeline never advances outside of events in one's own campaign. To me, that's the ideal model for any campaign setting -- which makes it an even greater pity that I've never used Hârn or any of its support materials in play.

Retrospectve: Hârn

Like Skyrealms of Jorune, Hârn is a product that any reader of Dragon during the early to mid-1980s should remember well, as it was regularly advertised in those hallowed pages. Also like Jorune, it was a product that was, in my limited experience anyway, more admired than actually used in play. The brainchild of N. Robin Crossby, who died a year and a half ago, Hârn has long been associated with the tagline "A Real Fantasy World," by which one is meant to understand that it is a highly detailed setting whose creator has given much thought to matters of history, culture, and social dynamics in order to produce, in his words, "an environment that is fundamentally rational."

First released in 1983, Hârn describes a single large island about three times the size of Britain. And, like Britain, the island, which gives its name to the product, is located to the northwest of a larger continent, with which it shares history and culture. Hârn is home to nine civilized kingdoms, as well as many barbaric tribes. The setting is reminiscent of Norman England, in terms of society and technology, but it's not a one-for-one correspondence. The real genius of Hârn is the way that it manages to blend real world influences with a wide variety of fantastical ones, including perhaps the strangest "orcs" ever to appear in any fantasy game (the gargûn, as they are called, have a hive-based social structure akin to ants or bees).

At the same time, Hârn suffers, I think, from being a little too detailed, particularly nowadays, after more than 25 years of development. Like Tékumel and Glorantha, newcomers might rightly fear that it's impossible to get into Hârn without investing untold hours in absorbing its minutiae. That's not true, of course; Hârn is probably no less accessible than most well-developed fantasy settings, but it gives the impression that this isn't the case. The original release and its supplements have a dry, even academic tone to them that can be off-putting to those expecting writing with more zest. Likewise, the smallness of the island of Hârn itself means that, almost literally, every square mile of the place has been fleshed out in some way, often with pages of supplementary material and maps. Little wonder that Hârn has the reputation it does among those who know of it.

I mentioned maps above and no retrospective about Hârn would be complete without discussing its maps. In its day, the poster map of Hârn was probably the most impressive piece of cartography to come out of the gaming world, being attractive and at a scale to be very useful in play. I'd argue that the map (and the others that followed) remain solid competitors for the best gaming maps ever made. Indeed, the maps alone have tempted me on more than one occasion to try and run a campaign set on Hârn.

But I never have. For some reason, I've never managed to take the plunge and use Hârn in any way, despite owning several Hârnic products. Part of it, I guess, is that, for all my admiration of Hârn's "realism" and attention to detail, I generally crave more fantastical worlds for my roleplaying. I suspect too that the accumulation of little things I dislike about Hârn, particularly its direct importation of Middle-earth's elves and dwarves, rubs me the wrong way enough that I can't bring myself to use it. That's not a knock against Hârn so much as an acknowledgment of my respect for its imaginative unity. Like many of the best fantasy settings, Hârn benefits from the powerful vision of its creator and I worry that pulling at any of the loose threads I see dangling might unravel the whole beautiful tapestry. Oddly I don't feel that way about many other equally intricate settings that others view as I do Hârn, so perhaps it says something about me that I don't yet fathom.

Regardless, Hârn is a classic product and one that has regularly inspired me even though I have never actually used it. How many other gaming creations can say that?

Campaign Map, Hârn-style

Courtesy of cartographer extraordinaire, Rob Conley, here's the Dwimmermount campaign map, re-done in the style of Hârn.

RIP: N. Robin Crossby (1954-2008)

Today, N. Robin Crossby, the creator of Hârn, died at the age of 54 in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada. His death is the fourth of significance to the hobby to have occurred this year and it's a reminder of just how old roleplaying actually is. I first encountered Hârn through ads in Dragon in the very early 80s, but it wasn't until years later that I ever actually purchased a Hârn product. The level of detail -- and the gorgeous maps -- impressed me and you could tell that this fantastical world was a labor of love by Crossby. Although I never really got into Hârn (for reasons that aren't important here), I always regarded it as a fine example of world creation. I had a few passing dealings with Mr Crossby and he always seemed to be a very polite, thoughtful individual and his creativity was clearly of the highest order. His death today is a great loss not just to fans of Hârn, but to fans of fantasy roleplaying generally.

Here's hoping 2009 comes before we see the loss of any more of the hobby's great ones. We've already lost too many as it is.