MixRemix Radio - Creative Commons Jazz - 2026-03-13
Solxis-Gypsy Place
Solxis-Gypsy Place
Posted on 2026-03-13
MixRemix Radio - Creative Commons Jazz - 2026-03-13
MixRemix On Anonradio - From The Creative Commons Jazz Library - 2026-03-13
jazz.mixremix.cc
51:04
Gypsy Place - Solxis
https://www.jamendo.com/album/171651/gypsy-place
CC BY-NC-ND
40:08
Art Flower-All That Jazz
https://www.jamendo.com/album/494995/all-that-jazz
CC BY-NC-ND
23:38
Ten Years On: Live In London by Steve Lawson
https://music.stevelawson.net/album/ten-years-on-live-in-london
CC BY-NC-ND
1:01:43
Atlantis folk songs - Viktor Séthy
https://www.jamendo.com/album/175302/atlantis-folk-songs
CC-BY
47:05
Phi Yaan-Zek, Steve Lawson, Andy Edwards - Ley Lines
https://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/album/ley-lines
CC BY/NC/ND
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MixRemix Radio - Creative Commons Jazz - 2026-02-27
Lobo Loco-BOB
Lobo Loco-BOB
Posted on 2026-02-27
MixRemix Radio - Creative Commons Jazz - 2026-02-27
https://archive.org/details/ccj2026-02-27
MixRemix On Anonradio - From The Creative Commons Jazz Library - 2026-02-27
jazz.mixremix.cc
BOB by Lobo Loco
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lobo_Loco/BOB/
In Unexpected Places - Bruce H. McCosar
https://www.jamendo.com/album/52977/in-unexpected-places
Hairy Larry-Livestreams
https://archive.org/details/hairylarrylivestreams
Passages Into Beyond (for Joseph Jarman and Alvin Fielder) by Jeff Gburek Projects
https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/album/passages-into-beyond-for-joseph-jarman-alvin-fielder
Pastèque - Suerte
https://www.jamendo.com/album/1069/pasteque
DRDJEKILL-DRDJEKILL 1
https://www.jamendo.com/album/627/drdjekill-1
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Silver Wings At New Jazz In Jonesboro
Silver Wings
Silver Wings
Posted on 2026-02-26
Silver Wings At New Jazz In Jonesboro
Saturday, February 28, at 7:00 PM Central
In the Youth Building behind the Brookland Methodist Church.
301 West Matthews Street, Brookland, Arkansas
Enjoy the music of Jay Shepherd and Shane Chastain playing in their new band, Silver Wings. Admission is free.
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DJ Hairy Larry Presents Delta Legends Singing Hog Jowl Blues
Delta Legends-Hog Jowl Blues
Delta Legends-Hog Jowl Blues
Posted on 2026-02-22
DJ Hairy Larry Presents Delta Legends Singing Hog Jowl Blues
From The Archives Of Something Blue – 2026-02-22
https://sbblues.com/2026/02/22/dj-hairy-larry-presents-delta-legends-singing-hog-jowl-blues/
Thanks Marty, today we’re going to hear an original blues song written by two Arkansas musicians and played by an Arkansas band.
When I met Ben Ben Adler, way back in the nineties, he talked to me about bringing Mack Self and the Silver Dollar Band to Blues Fest. Well Mack was an American rockabilly singer, who recorded for Sun Records in the 1950s and that was a perfect fit for Blues Fest. It was great, Mack Self sang his rockabilly hits with his band including Ben Ben on drums.
When they came back again Ben Ben said he had a band too, and they would like to play, next year if posible. So I booked Ben Ben and when it was time for his set he got all spiffed up and came out with a guitar. After delivering a sizzling R&B set with his band and guest musicians I was a fan.
Well, I saw Ben Ben at the Levon Helm Down Home Jubilee last year and I talked to him about playing with Delta Legends. He was up for it and we got together at John Shepherd’s WhatEverLand studio outside of Wynne, Arkansas. We recorded in November and December and released two albums, “Mr. John B. Shepherd” and “Hog Jowl Blues”.
To close this circle, “Hog Jowl Blues” is a song that Ben Ben wrote with Mack Self. So we’re getting the Arkansas Roots all the way down. Just like turtles.
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Something Blue – Ring – February 21 2026
The Ringers-2014-01-31
The Ringers-2014-01-31
Posted on 2026-02-21
Something Blue – Ring – February 21, 2026
https://sbblues.com/2026/02/21/ring/
This is Hairy Larry inviting you to enjoy Something Blue every Saturday night at ten. This week we’re featuring The Ringers and The Nth Power. For more about the show visit the Something Blue website at sbblues.com.
Don’t miss Something Blue, Saturday night at 10:00 PM Central, at kasu.org.
The Ringers Live at The Grey Eagle on 2014-01-31
https://archive.org/details/Ringers2014-01-31.fob-schoeps-mk4.bell.ledwhofloyd.flac1644
The Nth Power Live at Blue Nile on 2019-05-06
https://archive.org/details/nthpower2019-05-06
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Fringe Review-High Adventure Role Playing-HARP
Posted on 2026-02-18
Fringe Review: High Adventure Role Playing (HARP) from ZDL's blog
Rolemaster
No history of RPGs would ever be complete without discussion of Iron Crown Enterprises' Rolemaster line of game products. Despite its many epithets (most notably Chartmaster)—whether justly or unjustly applied (and I feel largely unjustly!)—it is hard to deny the influence this game had on role-playing games in general and D&D in specific. First published in 1980 with the first component, Arms Law (a naming convention that set the table for all of the line), it began its existence as a replacement weapon/melee combat system for AD&D. (They couldn't state it that flatly, of course, for reasons of copyright, so it was "for RPGs".) It was rapidly followed with Claw Law (later packaged together) which added creature and unarmed combat to the mix. This was followed by Spell Law for magic and finally, in 1982, Character Law, turning Rolemaster from a set of supplements into its own independent role-playing game. 1984's Campaign Law was the final component (and one of the earliest guidebooks for world-building for GMs).
Also in 1984, a cleaned-up second edition of Arms Law to Character Law (but not Campaign Law) was published together with The Cloudlords of Tanara, a setting that grew over time into the Shadow World setting which was ICE's standard setting for many years thereafter. In 1995 the Rolemaster Standard System was introduced as a third edition and in 1999 Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying was released as a fourth edition.
Rolemaster was a polarizing game from the start. Some praised its verisimilitude and consistency while others scourged its complexity and maths intensiveness. Personally I believe the latter group were just flat-out wrong. They didn't play the game and likely didn't read it very closely and were thus caught flat-footed by the huge number of tables involved assuming (incorrectly) that large numbers of tables meant large amounts of complexity.
This was wrong.
Yes the game could seem daunting when first encountered, but those who actually read (and more importantly PLAYED) the game understood that, while character generation and advancement (usually offline activities) could be convoluted and complicated, the system in use was astonishingly regular and simple – if you prepared in advance. What this meant in praxis is that each player should have a copy of the attack charts for their weapons and a copy of the general charts for skill resolution, criticals, and fumbles. With those in hand, most things players did were right in front of them and the game flew by quickly and smoothly. There was a small number of systems you had to remember: attack charts for weapons (all the same table structure with different numbers), static manoeuvres, moving manoeuvres, critical rolls and fumble roles. That's five core mechanisms which can be taught in ten minutes and they all used the same general roll: an "open-ended" d100 roll.
Still, there were two forces in favour of Rolemaster that kept it at the top of the heap of influential games (if not necessarily at the top in sales). First, those who were fans tended to be big fans. (Self included.) Second, Iron Crown Enterprises held the license to Middle Earth-related role-playing materials for YEARS, publishing a large line of setting information, adventures, and even a simplified version of Rolemaster called Middle Earth Role-Playing (a.k.a. MERP). This Middle Earth material was published with Rolemaster stats and given notes for conversion to "other" games (read AD&D) and thus served as a gateway drug for full-on Rolemaster play.
None of this, however, is the topic of this review.
HARP
All of the above aside, as is usual in this industry for all games (even the D&D line for a while, despite its externalities), the candle started to burn out and the game didn't shine so brightly any longer. Long viewed (unjustly, again, in my opinion) as too complicated, too difficult, and imposing to get into (this may have some justice), and viewed as especially imposing in character generation, impetus started to form around making a simpler game that was Rolemaster-compatible. It's design was to be kept around two watchwords: simplicity and flexibility. (Where the two clashed, flexibility was favoured.) Another important goal was that it was to be a single book that could be used without any others needed.
In late 2003, High Adventure Role Playing (HARP) was finally released to solid reviews both by fans of Rolemaster and, more importantly, by people who were not such fans. There was, however, an embarrassing number of typos and other errors in the game, so since the first run of the game sold out so quickly, a second printing/revised edition was released in early 2004 to fix those up. (People who owned the first edition got a free errata book.)
After this publication history gets muddled as Iron Crown Enterprises went through several periods of enormous financial difficulty, changed hands at least once, possibly twice, farmed out publication of some of its game lines to third parties like Guild Companion Publications, bought back at least some of those and finally, in 2011, a second edition published by GCP was released. In between HARP Sci-Fi was published by ICE (2008), a second edition of that, HARP SF was published by GCP (2010) and then an extra supplement, apparently never published for the first edition though it was supposed to have been, was published in 2011 called HARP SF Extreme.
Then, just to muddle things further, all of these are now sold under the heading of Iron Crown (not Iron Crown Enterprises).
This review will cover the first, revised edition of HARP. This is partially because it is the only edition I'm familiar with, and partially because it is sufficiently special to me that when I made my big move to China and had to get rid of most of my games, this edition of HARP is one of the very few physical RPG books that made the cut. (Most rules that I own nowadays are PDF versions because of space issues.) A quick glance over a summary of rules changes tells me that the game remains mostly unchanged in mechanism, however, with tweaks primarily around balancing specifics.
So without further ado, here is the review of HARP.
Components
HARP is, in its entirety, a 192-page softcover book. It has a very attractive (though also very late-90s, early-00s) piece of full colour cover art. The book itself is purely black & white on plain, matte paper stock. I bought my edition almost as soon as it was published in early 2004 and here in early 2020 it remains in decent shape with only one slightly troublesome point that shows the binding may finally have started to give out. Internal artwork ranges from the fair to the very good. Nothing stands out on either end of the quality scale. About a third of it seems evocative of the text around it and the rest is just more general mood-setting to show fantasy tropes: weapons, sigils, magic items, characters, etc.
Layout is clear, with simple page-edge iconography to help you figure out where in the book you are. Text is in two columns, and is a decent size even for my elderly eyes. It is consistently formatted so that it is easy to tell at a glance, on any page, what you're looking at and how it relates to other pieces of text. Tables are plain, have thick lines on the outside, and alternating grey and white backgrounds to make tracking horizontally much easier (especially important for some of the page-wide tables). A two-page table of contents opens the text and an 8-page index closes it. As with most books of the era, the index is of mixed utility. The game really could stand an external index done by a professional in the field. (Unfortunately small-press publishers generally cannot afford the kind of rates a first-class indexer can charge.)
Characters
Character creation proceeds in six steps. First step is the selection of a profession, one of: Cleric, Fighter, Harper (read: Bard), Mage, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Thief and Warrior Mage. Professions are like classes in the D&D line, but rather than defining ability they define proclivity. All skills are open to all characters, but professions modify costs, grant free levels, etc. (That being said, if you're playing a fighter you'd have to be pretty stupid to pay the costs to learn magic skills…)
The second step is to generate statistics. There are several options for generating them, but in the end you have eight numbers, one each for: Strength, Constitution, Agility, Quickness, Self Discipline, Reasoning, Insight, and Presence. In D&D terms Agility and Quickness together would be Dexterity, Self Discipline and Insight together would be Wisdom, and Presence would be Charisma. Stats each have a bonus (which is the number used in actual play most times) and a number of development points they generate (the points used to purchase skills, talents, etc.). An unfortunate side effect of this is that someone who is lucky in generating statistics will grow more powerful more quickly as the game progresses.
The next step is to then select race and culture. Races are the usual mix of generic fantasy races: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling and "Gryx" (sort of like a mix of Klingons and Orcs). There's also the possibility of making a variety of half-blooded mixtures of these. The race you select may or may not limit what culture you choose. Cultures are Deep Warrens, Shallow Warrens, Sylvan, Nomadic, Rural, Urban, and Underhill. Races bring in special characteristics, abilities, advantages, and liabilities. Cultures provide initial adolescent skills.
Once stats are generated and profession, race, and culture selected, the first round of development points is used to buy skills and talents. (In D&D3 terms talents are something like feats. Unlike D&D3, talents are far simpler for the most part.) Skill bonuses from stats, race, culture, talents and skill levels are totalled and noted on the character sheet.
The final steps are buying initial equipment and rounding out the character to bring them to life.
General System
The HARP system, with a few minor exceptions, is largely based on percentile 1-100 rolls. In general higher is better. In some circumstances a variant called "open-ended rolls" is used in which a 1-100 roll is made, and if the result is 96-100, another 1-100 roll is made and added to the first. If this, in turn, is also 96-100, this is repeated until a number less than 96 is rolled. (For Rolemaster aficionados, this corresponds to an "open-ended high" roll. 01-05 is not treated specially as per Rolemaster "open-ended" or "open-ended low" rolls.)
Skills are rolled using an open-ended roll modified by the skill bonus calculated above. All-or-nothing rolls simply say that if the result is 101 or higher, success, otherwise failure. Manoeuvre rolls are rolled on a table and provide a percentage result that shows how much of the manoeuvre was completed (if applicable) or, for complementary skills, what bonus use of the skill applies to the next skill being tested. The same roll and table is used for spell casting. Resisted spells give a target number for resisting while utility spells show failure or success.
There are a couple of special values to keep in mind in all of the above. An unmodified roll of 1-5 results in a fumble while, in keeping with Rolemaster traditions without the excess complexity, a 66 may, optionally, be used as a "fateful" number: an unmodified 66 resulting in something above and beyond the modified results. A 66 that fails will have some extra bad attached while a 66 that succeeds might have an extra good applied.
So far this mechanism is almost identical to how Rolemaster worked. The table is more compressed, but almost all of the mechanisms described above using that table, plus the all-or-nothing roll, correspond exactly to how the parent game did things. The differences are subtle like the use of only a high open-ended roll instead of the full deal, plus the optional nature of the 66 result as opposed to the little break in the table results in the older game.
Fumbles, as mentioned, occur on an unmodified 1-5 roll. The roll is a failure and the result of the fumble is checked on the relevant fumble chart. Again, unlike Rolemaster, which had a full page table for each fumble type, this game manages to fit all fumble types into a single page. These have a little less of the comic brutality that made Rolemaster (in)famous, but still have little tastes of it here and there.
One little mis-step in this otherwise clean table is the role of skill vs. skill resolution. The table is, in my opinion, badly labelled because while the resistance roll is clearly labelled as being under spell casting, it is ALSO used in skill vs. skill rolls, where the attacking ability first rolls on the same column as an attack spell, then the number generated is used as the target number for the defending ability. It's consistent. It's sensible. But it's badly labelled and leads to some confusion at first glance.
So let's add some more confusion.
Attack
Notably missing from the above was attack rolls that weren't attack spells. This makes sense. Attacks deal with much more than simple skill rolls: not only hitting, but the amount and nature of the damage. Too bad there's also a notion of an elemental attack spell. Attack spells and elemental attack spells are handled entirely differently. Attack spells are resisted skill rolls. Elemental attack spells are treated like melee/missile attacks. It is unfortunate that names were selected that were so similar for such different resolution. At first reading attack rolls, attack spells and elemental attack spells are going to get confused. This was unnecessary.
Attack rolls (and elemental attack spells) are very different from Rolemaster, however. In Rolemaster, each weapon class has its own attack chart, one column for each kind of armour, that when rolled gives you "concussion hits" and possible critical results. Typically in that game, critical results are what did the main damage in the game. Reasoning that this is what people played the game for, HARP, as a simplification, bypasses the attack chart entirely and goes straight for the critical chart. Each weapon has a critical type that it generates and the attack roll is read on that critical table. Further, unlike Rolemaster, each critical table has only one column. Instead of having A, B, C, D, E class criticals, it has damage caps and critical modifiers based on weapon type. Thus a quarterstaff and a tonfa both roll on the Crush Criticals chart, but the tonfa, being a small weapon, gets a -10 on the roll and ignores any result above 90, treating it as 90. Meanwhile a quarterstaff, as a large weapon, gets +10 on the roll and caps at 110.
Results on the table give hits of damage, plus extra effects like stunning, bleeding, etc. up to and including, on occasion, instant death results. This game, as before, doesn't have quite as much comic brutality that made Rolemaster so memorable (because it doesn't have as many possible results!), but the flavour is there.
There are two special cases in this system. First, each weapon (or spell) has a fumble range. An unmodified roll in that fumble range results in a check on the condensed fumble table. (A streamlined version of the full result that has only the combat and magic effects listed.) Also, an unmodified 99 or 100 ignores the damage cap. Since an unmodified 99 or 100 is also open-ended, that practically guarantees some truly horrendous (and unexpected) results.
Magic
The mechanisms of using magic are straightforward application of skills or of attack rolls, but the mechanisms of applying it are very different. This is one area where a major overhaul was done on Rolemaster. The system here eye-rhymes with Spell Law, but differs in profound ways that are, to me at any rate, far more flexible, far more elegant, and far more interesting that Spell Law.
Unlike with Spell Law, in which spells were learned in lists, where character level and purchase levels combined to give access to spells at varying power levels, spells in HARP are learned individually. They are organized, however, into "spheres": Universal (anybody can learn), Clerical, Harper, Mage, Ranger, Warrior Mage. Spells from professional spheres can only be learned by members of that profession or by people with certain talents purchased at character generation.
Spells have a power point cost, power points being generated by stats according to profession, and a minimum number of skill levels equal to that power point cost must be spent on a spell to cast it at all. Power point costs can be scaled upward—each spell has ways of improving the spell in some form or another for extra PP costs—and naturally to cast such a scaled spell, the caster must have enough skill ranks in the spell to cover the increased cost. Scaling also accrues a penalty to the skill roll of -5 per extra power point over base cost.
Spells also have a casting time which can be reduced by one round per -10 penalty taken to casting it (and +10 to fumbles should the spell fumble). Similarly this can be increased by +5 to the casting roll for every round extra to a maximum of +30.
All of the other little tropes of magic use are supported as well, including foci, counterspells, various sources of magic, etc. provide ways of customizing a world's magic as part of the game's focus on flexibility.
An example should make all of this clearer. So let's consider the spell "Icy Mist Wall" from the Mage sphere. The basic PP cost for this spell is 4. That means the caster must have purchased at least 4 skill ranks in "Icy Mist Wall" to cast it at all. At that cost it gives a range of 100 feet, and a duration of 2 rounds/rank = 8 rounds. (Skill rank 4 × 2.) It generates a barrier 10×10×1 feet that causes a tiny cold critical to any who cross it. For 4 extra power points (now requiring a minimum skill of 8) the damage critical can be raised from tiny to small. A further 4 raises that to a medium, then a large, etc. Similarly for 3 extra power points an extra 10×10×1 segment can be created. Or for 3 the wall can be shaped. Or duration can be improved.
This is profoundly different from the way Rolemaster's much-vaunted "over 2000 spells!" works. In Rolemaster, there would be Icy Mist Wall I, then Icy Mist Wall II, then Icy Mist Wall III and so on in a spell list. Each version of Icy Mist Wall would have better stats, but you'd have only that restricted list to choose from. The HARP approach is a bit harder to wrap your mind around at first (but only a bit!) and in exchange provides, for my money, a far more flavourful and flexible magic system.
Other Material
One of the charming things of ICE products way back in the early days of their Middle Earth supplements, even before Rolemaster was a complete game, was a quirky focus on herbs and poisons. Every game, every setting, every campaign module, every adventure even, had a list of herbs and poisons ranging from the (relatively) mundane to the fantastical. HARP is no different. It has a whole chapter devoted to ICE's little fetish, classified by environment, rarity, and effect. It also has the usual monster and treasure lists that games of this type invariably have. Keeping true to the stated intent, there is enough in both segments to make this book usable all by itself. Indeed, although I own other HARP supplements (in PDF) from the ecosystem, I've rarely felt the need to use them because the book itself is pretty complete, and what it lacks it provides more than enough guidance to make my own from that supplements aren't something I use a lot.
Closing out the book is some pretty decent advice on setting up and running a campaign. It's no Campaign Law (not much is) but it's a very nice addition to the book.
The Broader Ecosystem
HARP is intended, by design, to be a one-book-does all game, and in this it is far better (and more honest) than most games that promise to be such. That said, it does have an ecosystem of products and this is a brief overview of those.
In rules supplements there is The Codex, a collection of extra professions, talents, guild rules, spells, etc. that can be used to enhance a campaign. There is Martial Law, a strange little supplement that includes more detailed combat and special combat styles, but also a long screed on how to play warriors effectively. This is contrasted with Hack & Slash, an alternative combat system that bridges the gap between HARP's far simpler system and Rolemaster's two-step system. There is also College of Magics which expands on the magic system.
For running the game there's the omnipresent GM screen of the era, as well as Monsters: A Field Guide and Loot: A Field Guide for expanded monster and treasure lists respectively. There's also the default setting implied in the rules (with things like the "Gryx") sold as the world of Cyradon.
Other, stranger supplements include combat cards, rules for commerce and trade, rules for non-adventuring professions, and then, because now all these options exist, checklists so that players can be informed up-front which options are active and which will be ignored. (This is a nice touch, if a bit comical.) There were also attempts to have various e-zines expanding on the world or the game, but because HARP's release coincided with the eventual implosion of ICE this all amounted to not much.
Conclusion
As with other game reviews, I'm unabashed here coming out as a fan of the game. HARP is one of my all-time favourites, and unlike many games I own (Space Opera maybe being an exception) it is one of the few that I use only the core rules for with little to nothing from anything else. It really is that unicorn: a one-book old-school game.
Loving it as I do, however, does not blind me to its faults. There are some bad choices of terminology that lead to confusion, and while overall it is a very streamlined and straightforwardly consistent system, it has some weird spots where it breaks with that in ways that feel jarringly unnecessary except, I suspect, as an attempt to be as compatible with its parent game Rolemaster as possible.
That being said, I think its benefits greatly outweigh those little warts. It is overall a very smooth, very regular system that still manages to make different things feel different. It has a very old school feel without the old school frustrations, in my book. There is a reason why it is one of the few games I have left in physical form.
Posted on 2026-02-18
Fringe Review: High Adventure Role Playing (HARP) from ZDL's blog
Rolemaster
No history of RPGs would ever be complete without discussion of Iron Crown Enterprises' Rolemaster line of game products. Despite its many epithets (most notably Chartmaster)—whether justly or unjustly applied (and I feel largely unjustly!)—it is hard to deny the influence this game had on role-playing games in general and D&D in specific. First published in 1980 with the first component, Arms Law (a naming convention that set the table for all of the line), it began its existence as a replacement weapon/melee combat system for AD&D. (They couldn't state it that flatly, of course, for reasons of copyright, so it was "for RPGs".) It was rapidly followed with Claw Law (later packaged together) which added creature and unarmed combat to the mix. This was followed by Spell Law for magic and finally, in 1982, Character Law, turning Rolemaster from a set of supplements into its own independent role-playing game. 1984's Campaign Law was the final component (and one of the earliest guidebooks for world-building for GMs).
Also in 1984, a cleaned-up second edition of Arms Law to Character Law (but not Campaign Law) was published together with The Cloudlords of Tanara, a setting that grew over time into the Shadow World setting which was ICE's standard setting for many years thereafter. In 1995 the Rolemaster Standard System was introduced as a third edition and in 1999 Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying was released as a fourth edition.
Rolemaster was a polarizing game from the start. Some praised its verisimilitude and consistency while others scourged its complexity and maths intensiveness. Personally I believe the latter group were just flat-out wrong. They didn't play the game and likely didn't read it very closely and were thus caught flat-footed by the huge number of tables involved assuming (incorrectly) that large numbers of tables meant large amounts of complexity.
This was wrong.
Yes the game could seem daunting when first encountered, but those who actually read (and more importantly PLAYED) the game understood that, while character generation and advancement (usually offline activities) could be convoluted and complicated, the system in use was astonishingly regular and simple – if you prepared in advance. What this meant in praxis is that each player should have a copy of the attack charts for their weapons and a copy of the general charts for skill resolution, criticals, and fumbles. With those in hand, most things players did were right in front of them and the game flew by quickly and smoothly. There was a small number of systems you had to remember: attack charts for weapons (all the same table structure with different numbers), static manoeuvres, moving manoeuvres, critical rolls and fumble roles. That's five core mechanisms which can be taught in ten minutes and they all used the same general roll: an "open-ended" d100 roll.
Still, there were two forces in favour of Rolemaster that kept it at the top of the heap of influential games (if not necessarily at the top in sales). First, those who were fans tended to be big fans. (Self included.) Second, Iron Crown Enterprises held the license to Middle Earth-related role-playing materials for YEARS, publishing a large line of setting information, adventures, and even a simplified version of Rolemaster called Middle Earth Role-Playing (a.k.a. MERP). This Middle Earth material was published with Rolemaster stats and given notes for conversion to "other" games (read AD&D) and thus served as a gateway drug for full-on Rolemaster play.
None of this, however, is the topic of this review.
HARP
All of the above aside, as is usual in this industry for all games (even the D&D line for a while, despite its externalities), the candle started to burn out and the game didn't shine so brightly any longer. Long viewed (unjustly, again, in my opinion) as too complicated, too difficult, and imposing to get into (this may have some justice), and viewed as especially imposing in character generation, impetus started to form around making a simpler game that was Rolemaster-compatible. It's design was to be kept around two watchwords: simplicity and flexibility. (Where the two clashed, flexibility was favoured.) Another important goal was that it was to be a single book that could be used without any others needed.
In late 2003, High Adventure Role Playing (HARP) was finally released to solid reviews both by fans of Rolemaster and, more importantly, by people who were not such fans. There was, however, an embarrassing number of typos and other errors in the game, so since the first run of the game sold out so quickly, a second printing/revised edition was released in early 2004 to fix those up. (People who owned the first edition got a free errata book.)
After this publication history gets muddled as Iron Crown Enterprises went through several periods of enormous financial difficulty, changed hands at least once, possibly twice, farmed out publication of some of its game lines to third parties like Guild Companion Publications, bought back at least some of those and finally, in 2011, a second edition published by GCP was released. In between HARP Sci-Fi was published by ICE (2008), a second edition of that, HARP SF was published by GCP (2010) and then an extra supplement, apparently never published for the first edition though it was supposed to have been, was published in 2011 called HARP SF Extreme.
Then, just to muddle things further, all of these are now sold under the heading of Iron Crown (not Iron Crown Enterprises).
This review will cover the first, revised edition of HARP. This is partially because it is the only edition I'm familiar with, and partially because it is sufficiently special to me that when I made my big move to China and had to get rid of most of my games, this edition of HARP is one of the very few physical RPG books that made the cut. (Most rules that I own nowadays are PDF versions because of space issues.) A quick glance over a summary of rules changes tells me that the game remains mostly unchanged in mechanism, however, with tweaks primarily around balancing specifics.
So without further ado, here is the review of HARP.
Components
HARP is, in its entirety, a 192-page softcover book. It has a very attractive (though also very late-90s, early-00s) piece of full colour cover art. The book itself is purely black & white on plain, matte paper stock. I bought my edition almost as soon as it was published in early 2004 and here in early 2020 it remains in decent shape with only one slightly troublesome point that shows the binding may finally have started to give out. Internal artwork ranges from the fair to the very good. Nothing stands out on either end of the quality scale. About a third of it seems evocative of the text around it and the rest is just more general mood-setting to show fantasy tropes: weapons, sigils, magic items, characters, etc.
Layout is clear, with simple page-edge iconography to help you figure out where in the book you are. Text is in two columns, and is a decent size even for my elderly eyes. It is consistently formatted so that it is easy to tell at a glance, on any page, what you're looking at and how it relates to other pieces of text. Tables are plain, have thick lines on the outside, and alternating grey and white backgrounds to make tracking horizontally much easier (especially important for some of the page-wide tables). A two-page table of contents opens the text and an 8-page index closes it. As with most books of the era, the index is of mixed utility. The game really could stand an external index done by a professional in the field. (Unfortunately small-press publishers generally cannot afford the kind of rates a first-class indexer can charge.)
Characters
Character creation proceeds in six steps. First step is the selection of a profession, one of: Cleric, Fighter, Harper (read: Bard), Mage, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Thief and Warrior Mage. Professions are like classes in the D&D line, but rather than defining ability they define proclivity. All skills are open to all characters, but professions modify costs, grant free levels, etc. (That being said, if you're playing a fighter you'd have to be pretty stupid to pay the costs to learn magic skills…)
The second step is to generate statistics. There are several options for generating them, but in the end you have eight numbers, one each for: Strength, Constitution, Agility, Quickness, Self Discipline, Reasoning, Insight, and Presence. In D&D terms Agility and Quickness together would be Dexterity, Self Discipline and Insight together would be Wisdom, and Presence would be Charisma. Stats each have a bonus (which is the number used in actual play most times) and a number of development points they generate (the points used to purchase skills, talents, etc.). An unfortunate side effect of this is that someone who is lucky in generating statistics will grow more powerful more quickly as the game progresses.
The next step is to then select race and culture. Races are the usual mix of generic fantasy races: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling and "Gryx" (sort of like a mix of Klingons and Orcs). There's also the possibility of making a variety of half-blooded mixtures of these. The race you select may or may not limit what culture you choose. Cultures are Deep Warrens, Shallow Warrens, Sylvan, Nomadic, Rural, Urban, and Underhill. Races bring in special characteristics, abilities, advantages, and liabilities. Cultures provide initial adolescent skills.
Once stats are generated and profession, race, and culture selected, the first round of development points is used to buy skills and talents. (In D&D3 terms talents are something like feats. Unlike D&D3, talents are far simpler for the most part.) Skill bonuses from stats, race, culture, talents and skill levels are totalled and noted on the character sheet.
The final steps are buying initial equipment and rounding out the character to bring them to life.
General System
The HARP system, with a few minor exceptions, is largely based on percentile 1-100 rolls. In general higher is better. In some circumstances a variant called "open-ended rolls" is used in which a 1-100 roll is made, and if the result is 96-100, another 1-100 roll is made and added to the first. If this, in turn, is also 96-100, this is repeated until a number less than 96 is rolled. (For Rolemaster aficionados, this corresponds to an "open-ended high" roll. 01-05 is not treated specially as per Rolemaster "open-ended" or "open-ended low" rolls.)
Skills are rolled using an open-ended roll modified by the skill bonus calculated above. All-or-nothing rolls simply say that if the result is 101 or higher, success, otherwise failure. Manoeuvre rolls are rolled on a table and provide a percentage result that shows how much of the manoeuvre was completed (if applicable) or, for complementary skills, what bonus use of the skill applies to the next skill being tested. The same roll and table is used for spell casting. Resisted spells give a target number for resisting while utility spells show failure or success.
There are a couple of special values to keep in mind in all of the above. An unmodified roll of 1-5 results in a fumble while, in keeping with Rolemaster traditions without the excess complexity, a 66 may, optionally, be used as a "fateful" number: an unmodified 66 resulting in something above and beyond the modified results. A 66 that fails will have some extra bad attached while a 66 that succeeds might have an extra good applied.
So far this mechanism is almost identical to how Rolemaster worked. The table is more compressed, but almost all of the mechanisms described above using that table, plus the all-or-nothing roll, correspond exactly to how the parent game did things. The differences are subtle like the use of only a high open-ended roll instead of the full deal, plus the optional nature of the 66 result as opposed to the little break in the table results in the older game.
Fumbles, as mentioned, occur on an unmodified 1-5 roll. The roll is a failure and the result of the fumble is checked on the relevant fumble chart. Again, unlike Rolemaster, which had a full page table for each fumble type, this game manages to fit all fumble types into a single page. These have a little less of the comic brutality that made Rolemaster (in)famous, but still have little tastes of it here and there.
One little mis-step in this otherwise clean table is the role of skill vs. skill resolution. The table is, in my opinion, badly labelled because while the resistance roll is clearly labelled as being under spell casting, it is ALSO used in skill vs. skill rolls, where the attacking ability first rolls on the same column as an attack spell, then the number generated is used as the target number for the defending ability. It's consistent. It's sensible. But it's badly labelled and leads to some confusion at first glance.
So let's add some more confusion.
Attack
Notably missing from the above was attack rolls that weren't attack spells. This makes sense. Attacks deal with much more than simple skill rolls: not only hitting, but the amount and nature of the damage. Too bad there's also a notion of an elemental attack spell. Attack spells and elemental attack spells are handled entirely differently. Attack spells are resisted skill rolls. Elemental attack spells are treated like melee/missile attacks. It is unfortunate that names were selected that were so similar for such different resolution. At first reading attack rolls, attack spells and elemental attack spells are going to get confused. This was unnecessary.
Attack rolls (and elemental attack spells) are very different from Rolemaster, however. In Rolemaster, each weapon class has its own attack chart, one column for each kind of armour, that when rolled gives you "concussion hits" and possible critical results. Typically in that game, critical results are what did the main damage in the game. Reasoning that this is what people played the game for, HARP, as a simplification, bypasses the attack chart entirely and goes straight for the critical chart. Each weapon has a critical type that it generates and the attack roll is read on that critical table. Further, unlike Rolemaster, each critical table has only one column. Instead of having A, B, C, D, E class criticals, it has damage caps and critical modifiers based on weapon type. Thus a quarterstaff and a tonfa both roll on the Crush Criticals chart, but the tonfa, being a small weapon, gets a -10 on the roll and ignores any result above 90, treating it as 90. Meanwhile a quarterstaff, as a large weapon, gets +10 on the roll and caps at 110.
Results on the table give hits of damage, plus extra effects like stunning, bleeding, etc. up to and including, on occasion, instant death results. This game, as before, doesn't have quite as much comic brutality that made Rolemaster so memorable (because it doesn't have as many possible results!), but the flavour is there.
There are two special cases in this system. First, each weapon (or spell) has a fumble range. An unmodified roll in that fumble range results in a check on the condensed fumble table. (A streamlined version of the full result that has only the combat and magic effects listed.) Also, an unmodified 99 or 100 ignores the damage cap. Since an unmodified 99 or 100 is also open-ended, that practically guarantees some truly horrendous (and unexpected) results.
Magic
The mechanisms of using magic are straightforward application of skills or of attack rolls, but the mechanisms of applying it are very different. This is one area where a major overhaul was done on Rolemaster. The system here eye-rhymes with Spell Law, but differs in profound ways that are, to me at any rate, far more flexible, far more elegant, and far more interesting that Spell Law.
Unlike with Spell Law, in which spells were learned in lists, where character level and purchase levels combined to give access to spells at varying power levels, spells in HARP are learned individually. They are organized, however, into "spheres": Universal (anybody can learn), Clerical, Harper, Mage, Ranger, Warrior Mage. Spells from professional spheres can only be learned by members of that profession or by people with certain talents purchased at character generation.
Spells have a power point cost, power points being generated by stats according to profession, and a minimum number of skill levels equal to that power point cost must be spent on a spell to cast it at all. Power point costs can be scaled upward—each spell has ways of improving the spell in some form or another for extra PP costs—and naturally to cast such a scaled spell, the caster must have enough skill ranks in the spell to cover the increased cost. Scaling also accrues a penalty to the skill roll of -5 per extra power point over base cost.
Spells also have a casting time which can be reduced by one round per -10 penalty taken to casting it (and +10 to fumbles should the spell fumble). Similarly this can be increased by +5 to the casting roll for every round extra to a maximum of +30.
All of the other little tropes of magic use are supported as well, including foci, counterspells, various sources of magic, etc. provide ways of customizing a world's magic as part of the game's focus on flexibility.
An example should make all of this clearer. So let's consider the spell "Icy Mist Wall" from the Mage sphere. The basic PP cost for this spell is 4. That means the caster must have purchased at least 4 skill ranks in "Icy Mist Wall" to cast it at all. At that cost it gives a range of 100 feet, and a duration of 2 rounds/rank = 8 rounds. (Skill rank 4 × 2.) It generates a barrier 10×10×1 feet that causes a tiny cold critical to any who cross it. For 4 extra power points (now requiring a minimum skill of 8) the damage critical can be raised from tiny to small. A further 4 raises that to a medium, then a large, etc. Similarly for 3 extra power points an extra 10×10×1 segment can be created. Or for 3 the wall can be shaped. Or duration can be improved.
This is profoundly different from the way Rolemaster's much-vaunted "over 2000 spells!" works. In Rolemaster, there would be Icy Mist Wall I, then Icy Mist Wall II, then Icy Mist Wall III and so on in a spell list. Each version of Icy Mist Wall would have better stats, but you'd have only that restricted list to choose from. The HARP approach is a bit harder to wrap your mind around at first (but only a bit!) and in exchange provides, for my money, a far more flavourful and flexible magic system.
Other Material
One of the charming things of ICE products way back in the early days of their Middle Earth supplements, even before Rolemaster was a complete game, was a quirky focus on herbs and poisons. Every game, every setting, every campaign module, every adventure even, had a list of herbs and poisons ranging from the (relatively) mundane to the fantastical. HARP is no different. It has a whole chapter devoted to ICE's little fetish, classified by environment, rarity, and effect. It also has the usual monster and treasure lists that games of this type invariably have. Keeping true to the stated intent, there is enough in both segments to make this book usable all by itself. Indeed, although I own other HARP supplements (in PDF) from the ecosystem, I've rarely felt the need to use them because the book itself is pretty complete, and what it lacks it provides more than enough guidance to make my own from that supplements aren't something I use a lot.
Closing out the book is some pretty decent advice on setting up and running a campaign. It's no Campaign Law (not much is) but it's a very nice addition to the book.
The Broader Ecosystem
HARP is intended, by design, to be a one-book-does all game, and in this it is far better (and more honest) than most games that promise to be such. That said, it does have an ecosystem of products and this is a brief overview of those.
In rules supplements there is The Codex, a collection of extra professions, talents, guild rules, spells, etc. that can be used to enhance a campaign. There is Martial Law, a strange little supplement that includes more detailed combat and special combat styles, but also a long screed on how to play warriors effectively. This is contrasted with Hack & Slash, an alternative combat system that bridges the gap between HARP's far simpler system and Rolemaster's two-step system. There is also College of Magics which expands on the magic system.
For running the game there's the omnipresent GM screen of the era, as well as Monsters: A Field Guide and Loot: A Field Guide for expanded monster and treasure lists respectively. There's also the default setting implied in the rules (with things like the "Gryx") sold as the world of Cyradon.
Other, stranger supplements include combat cards, rules for commerce and trade, rules for non-adventuring professions, and then, because now all these options exist, checklists so that players can be informed up-front which options are active and which will be ignored. (This is a nice touch, if a bit comical.) There were also attempts to have various e-zines expanding on the world or the game, but because HARP's release coincided with the eventual implosion of ICE this all amounted to not much.
Conclusion
As with other game reviews, I'm unabashed here coming out as a fan of the game. HARP is one of my all-time favourites, and unlike many games I own (Space Opera maybe being an exception) it is one of the few that I use only the core rules for with little to nothing from anything else. It really is that unicorn: a one-book old-school game.
Loving it as I do, however, does not blind me to its faults. There are some bad choices of terminology that lead to confusion, and while overall it is a very streamlined and straightforwardly consistent system, it has some weird spots where it breaks with that in ways that feel jarringly unnecessary except, I suspect, as an attempt to be as compatible with its parent game Rolemaster as possible.
That being said, I think its benefits greatly outweigh those little warts. It is overall a very smooth, very regular system that still manages to make different things feel different. It has a very old school feel without the old school frustrations, in my book. There is a reason why it is one of the few games I have left in physical form.
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Fringe Review-Mythic
Posted on 2026-02-11
Fringe Review: Mythic from ZDL's blog
Mythic is, to quote the game's introduction, "a universal, improvisational role-playing game". Designed by Tana Pigeon, a name you've likely never heard of (though you should have, because she makes some nifty stuff!), it is far more than what that unassuming little description says. This review is all about teasing out exactly what Mythic actually is.
Word Mill Publishing
Word Mill Publishing is the name of a small publishing company run by Tana Pigeon. It's first product (that I'm aware of) was Mythic itself, published first in 2003 and then again in 2006 (I'm unclear as to the circumstances for the two copyright dates, but I suspect one was individual publishing, the second under the Word Mill name). In rapid succession more games were published. Going with just the ones I own there's the Mythic Game Master Emulator (2006), Mythic Variations (2007), the Creature Crafter (2009), World vs. Hero (2010, by John Fiore), and the Location Crafter (2014). Other publications I don't (yet!) have include Mythic Variations II (2017), the Adventure Crafter (2019), and the Mythic Game Master Emulator Deck (2019).
(One of those above games will probably wind up in my Fringe Review series at some point in the future.)
All of these supplements and games have intriguing facets to them that keep me buying more. (If I didn't have the massive problems getting payments out of China I'd already own the three I don't currently have!) This intrigue, however, began with the very first book.
Mythic
As I said in the opening paragraph, Mythic is so much more than what its unassuming self-description says it is. In fact Mythic is several things:
1. It is a standalone, narrative-oriented, free-form, preparation-optional traditional GM+players role-playing game.
2. It is a standalone, narrative-oriented, free-form, GM-free role-playing game.
3. It is a cap system which can sit on top of other RPG rules to turn them into preparational-optional/GM-free role-playing games.
4. It is a standalone, narrative-oriented, free-form solo role-playing game.
5. It is a cap system which can sit on top of other RPG rules to turn them into solo role-playing games.
And, in general, it actually manages to pull off all of these with reasonable competency!
So let's look at these various uses and see how it pulls all this off!
Components
Mythic comes as a 146-page PDF (a printed book is also an option). The cover is garish and red and, in physical form on a shelf, would certainly stand out. Since it is not sold, to my knowledge, in brick and mortar stores I'm not sure why something so eye-catching is needed.
Layout inside the book is competent. Chapter headings get a red boundary (matching the cover colour) around the upper half to make them stand out. Too, the chapter titles are in an an eye-catching font that remains readable. (I wouldn't want to read a large block of text in it, but for titles it's actually pretty neat!) The table of contents is a single page that just lists chapters and page numbers, not breaking it down further. There is a single-page index in 4 columns with smaller type than the main body text. I threw a couple of things I'd read before that I might want to find again later (like "The I Dunno Rule") and, to my amazement, I found things. The index isn't master-class, but it does appear to be useful.
The art is …
Ugh. The art. Here's where I hate this thing in our industry of people thinking that you absolutely must have art or the game is terrible.
Don't get me wrong. I like art, even in my game books. But the art has to be somehow in service of the rules text, not just existing alongside it. Big professionally-produced games can hire artists to make relevant art. Very dedicated searchers of clip art can supply the same. Too often, however, art is just randomly slapped into the book without regard to surrounding text, or any kind of theme in the feel, and this art, in my opinion, can actually detract from a game.
The art in Mythic is of this latter sort. At its best there's some nice moody grayscale art. At its cringiest there's grotesquely distorted, "wrong"-seeming garishly coloured art that would make pretentious indy comic books sit up and say "Whoa, you might want to turn that down a notch or ten". The rest is black & white, cartoonish line art that isn't good and isn't bad. It's just there.
And none of the art is in service in any way, shape, or form to the text around it. To be fair, for a generic game this can be difficult, but the answer to that is to work harder at matching art to text, or ditch the art.
I really hate the art choices, I guess I'm saying.
Thankfully the rest of the book has me covered!
Standalone Mythic
Make no mistake: Mythic is a complete role-playing game. Its game mechanisms cover everything you need for play: character generation, action resolution, character advancement, and adventure/campaign management. (It may not be to your tastes as a complete role-playing game, but that is an entirely different issue.) There are two flavours of standalone Mythic: with GM or GM-free. And there are two approaches to playing it: freeform or point-based. All of these, however, are essentially mild variations of the same two core concepts and mechanisms: logic and interpretation.
Logic
Picture a normal game—say D&D. Do you roll for every little thing? The characters wake up in the morning: Do you roll to see if they can get out of their beds without spraining their ankle? Do you studiously do reaction checks on every NPC they interact with? Do you roll to check if they choke to death on a fish bone from their morning kipper? No, of course you don't! (I'm doing the courtesy of assuming you're not crazy. Work with me here!) What Mythic does is take this one step further. Usually you use the same kind of reasoning you'd use in the situations I've described for the D&D game to decide what happens next: you consider what's already happened, you apply any new twists and information that may have popped up, and from this you decide what the most logical outcome will be.
This isn't to say that you just do writing exercises or improv theatre drills, however. Not at all. There is a "Fate Chart" that you use for important outcomes which can lead to things going in several directions. The general approach is whatever is the most logical outcome is what is expected to happen, but the Fate Chart allows (and indeed, as the game progresses, often causes) the unexpected to happen. "Logic" is the baseline from which the unexpected twists of fate and adventure grow.
Interpretation
Logic drives the baseline, but the key differentiation of actions come from the asking and answering of simple yes/no questions. "Is there are guard behind that door?" "Can I find a key to the wardrobe?" "Do I fool the matron with my disguise?" The answers to these questions, although "yes" or "no" (as well as, effectively "HELL yeah!" and "Are you joking!?"), must be interpreted (using logic once again), however, to make them fit.
Improvisation
Improvisation is key to making logic and interpretation work. It is the single most vital skill in playing the game. Logic says what should happen next. Interpretation tells you what actually happens next when questions are asked. Improvisation is key to tying it all together. It acts as the axis around which logic and interpretation spin, driving the game's engine.
A simple example: "Is there a guard behind that door?" (Result: HELL yeah!) "There is not only a guard, there is a whole squad of them." This is chosen improvisationally because in the past there were signs of a large number of soldiers. Logically the "very yes" response implies that there's more than just one. Other answers could be "There is a guard, but it's the captain." Maybe even "There is a guard, but it's a dragon" if events up to this point in the campaign support that possibility.
Game Mechanics
Everything in Mythic is defined in terms of "details" and "ranks". Details are just important aspects of a character or object: Intuition for a character, Complexity for a computer program, Weight for a rock, Hardness for a gem. Every detail is rated in terms of a rank in everyday language (a concept players of FUDGE or FATE will be familiar with in a ladder from lowest to highest rating of Miniscule, Weak, Low, Below Average, Average, Above Average, High, Exceptional, Incredible, Awesome, Superhuman. Values outside of this ladder can exist two, but are just numbered: Miniscule 2, Miniscule 3, Superhuman 2, Superhuman 5, etc.
Ranks are a subjective measure of potency, so to use them, you have to know … relative to what? If a rank is "average" what is it an average of? In this game intrinsic details (like character attributes) are measured in terms of the "average person". Skills, abilities, and powers are relative to the average practitioner of said skill, ability, or power. So a rating of "average" in stonemasonry is the skill of an average STONEMASON, not of an average person. The rule of thumb is that a "professional" in a non-instrinsic detail would be "average" in rank. Real-world relationships between these word-based ratings and actual numbers, where needed, are created by establishing "benchmarks" where you'd say something like "an average strength person can bench 50kg with ease".
(This is where "logic" enters the picture….)
In the book, at this point, you're started into character generation, with these concepts being required to understand what you're generating. In this review I will postpone character generation to continue with the game mechanics. Specifically I will talk about the Fate Chart which is the beating heart of the game.
All action in Mythic that is not merely narrated is resolved by asking a yes/no question. Does the car start on time? Can I light my lighter on the first try? Are there guards in the warehouse? Does my shot kill the bad guy? Can I persuade the maiden fair for a favour in the tournament? Upon the question being asked, the GM (or in a GM-free game the players in aggregate) decide on how likely the outcome is going to be. The acting rank governing the action (say the seduction skill, or the character's strength) is compared against the established difficulty and this is compared on a chart to get three numbers. For a concrete example if someone with "Awesome" strength is trying to open a door of Above Average resistance, we get the numbers 16/85/97. Rolling d% between 1-16 is an "exceptional yes", 17-85 is "yes", 86-96 is "no" and 97-100 is "exceptional no". Thus 85% of the time the character will succeed (16% being even more favourable than a simple "yes") while 15% of the time the character will fail (with 4% of the time being worse than a simple "no"). Bonuses and penalties in this game operate by column and row shifts on the Fate Chart. A -1 shift of an Average rank, for example, would take it to Below Average. A +2 shift from Incredible takes it to Superhuman. The percentile dice aren't modified, just the row or column of the table is.
This simple mechanism is literally the core of everything in the game. There are some little twists here and there. For example for things that don't involve invoking details on characters or objects ("are there guards in the next room") you figure the odds and compare this to the current "chaos factor"--a mechanism that ratchets up tension in the game as the scenario progresses--and get your answer this way. These same kinds of "odds questions" are used in GM-free play to answer questions about the environment: "Has there been recent activity from the Yellow Turbans?" "Is there a staircase leading up from the foyer?" It is this way that a group of players can, by applying logic and improvisation, interpret the results of yes/no questions to build a world and an adventure. Naturally it takes some finesse to get the right balance of questions and interpretations to get a good feel. The rules provide guidelines for all this but none of this will satisfy a hardcore rules-player. This is not a game for that kind of operation. (At least not in standalone mode. This is called "foreshadowing"...)
Where the rules get a little more fixed, however, is, naturally, combat. While more free-wheeling than most games, it still has tighter rules here than in the rest of the game. In place of combat rounds and initiative rolls and to-hit rolls and damage rolls, however, it has a set of typical questions and answers. Questions like "can I attack now?" or "does she go before me?" are the replacement for initiative rolls, for example. Then maybe the next question, is "does my shot hit it?". Followed by "is it damaged?". This is repeated at need (which implies that unlike most games it is possible to get long strings of attacks unanswered by the enemy if the "can I attack?" questions roll in your favour!). It all sounds very alien, and this is with good reason: it is. But it works very well for most kinds of combats.
Character Generation
As mentioned above there are two kinds of characters: freeform and point-based. They're both simple enough, though obviously free-form characters are easier.
Freeform Characters
Step 1: Write a character summary in the form of a descriptive paragraph to give a brief impression of what your character is about. Think of it as the elevator pitch for your character
Step 2: Set the seven basic attributes (core details that all characters have): Strength, Agility, Reflex, IQ, Intuition, Willpower, Toughness. These are just details, set to ranks, and are otherwise in no way privileged in the game system beyond being mandatory for all characters to have ratings in. It is up to you, your GM (if present) and your fellow players to police whether these attributes match your summary.
Step 3: Set your abilities. These are roughly analogous to skills in most games, though they can also be powers, supernatural abilities, spells, etc. Since a freeform character is considered a kind of "work in progress" it's possible that in play an ability will come up that fits the summary but isn't on the sheet. With GM/other player approval it can be added in play, on the fly.
Step 4: Set your strengths and weaknesses. These give you rank shifts (the very ones mentioned above, hence my talking about the Fate Chart before character generation...) to abilities and/or attributes in specific circumstances. For example "quick draw" might be a strength that gives you a +2 rank shift for any situation involving drawing a gun and firing before an opponent. "Mechanically declined" might be a weakness that gives you a -1 rank shift for any circumstance involving the operation or repair of mechanical equipment. As with abilities, it may happen that a strength or a weakness arises in play, but it should be far rarer than abilities.
Step 5: Notes are used to sketch out more details. A pirate may have a ship and crew, for example. Or a knight may have a faithful squire and a set of armour. One special note that is carefully paid attention to is the favour points a character has. Favour points are directly applied at will (to a maximum of 25 at a time) AFTER the dice are rolled to move the value in a more favourable direction. Characters start with 50 of these and get them awarded for making progress on "threads" (adventure story lines).
Point-based Characters
These are made in a similar way to freeform. The summary, attributes, abilities, strengths & weaknesses, and notes are all there. What differs is that attributes and abilities have both a number of points available to buy them with, and a maximum rank purchaseable based on the style of campaign setting. "Real world" characters will have 30 attribute points, 10 ability points with a maximum rank of Exceptional, for example, while these may be 60/35/Superhuman for a pulp action game. Strengths are paid for either from left-over attribute/ability points or by taking weaknesses. Aside from adding a bit of arithmetic to the proceedings, there is little difference in characters made this way over freeform characters.
(Point-based characters may have undefined-at-generation abilities, strengths, and weaknesses as well, though these should not be as common and will likely be vetoed more often.)
The Rest of the Game
The rest of the game covers how to run a game of Mythic and here there is a detailed and very complete event system provided to help drive stories. It involves the creation of story threads, events that move threads along, and events that conclude stories. Time is divided into scenes--Mythic is unapologetically cinematic over simulationist--which can be of varying kinds including altered and interrupting scenes. While it is not difficult it is rather large and all-encompassing and will probably require a few reads before you get the hang of it. In the author's favour there are MANY examples, small and large both, that cover everything from how to record decisions to how to build worlds.
And that covers standalone Mythic. But that's only part of the game. Remember the list? Mythic is also usable as a cap system and a solo system. How does that work?
Solo Mythic
Let's first handle solo play. This is easy as pie. You're the GM and the player, and you use the GM emulator for building the world, running events, building and following story threads, and running combat. It's like GM-free with the added twist there is only one player. That's it. That's the whole secret. Nothing trickier is involved.
Cap System
So how do you use it as a cap system? That's easy. When it comes to resolving things that your favoured game resolves, use your favoured game. Mythic is then used only for its GM emulator stuff to do no-prep (and optionally no-GM) gaming. Use Mythic to deal with random events. To start and move along story lines. To build up setting information with questions. When it comes to combat or persuasion or such things which your favoured game does better in your opinion, just ... use it.
Evaluation
Going back to the intended use, is Mythic actually "a universal, improvisational role-playing game"?
The answer is … uh, let me check the Fate Chart. Now Tana Pigeon is an Exceptional designer and the task is Awesomely hard. Cross-indexing that's 7/35/88 … rolling, oh wait. That's a -2 shift for the sheer insanity of attempting the task in the first place, so it's actually 3/15/84 … And …
Yes.
But only yes. Not exceptional yes.
Mythic is a very good system that's amazingly clean at its core. It does provide everything it sets out to do. It is a complete RPG, both freeform and point-based being viable options. It excels at supporting low/no-prep GMing and even no-GM play. It's even quite good for solo play. Where it fumbles the ball a bit, in my opinion, is in its use as a cap system. It gives four pages of guidance there (predictably and understandably D&D-focused) much of it being very hand-wavy and closing off with what reads like "meh, if you don't like the guidance here, do it yourself".
Which is so very bizarre because this is the single best way to wean people into using Mythic! A cap system gateway would make people, I think, look more closely at Mythic and possibly then start incorporating more and more of the game beyond the GM emulator stuff. Later publications by Word Mill press do, in fact, exactly this, so perhaps this is something Tana Pigeon has caught on to, but it was a surprise to me that the first book glossed over this so quickly.
But this little misstep aside, Mythic is a very good addition to the toolbox of any GM. And it is one of the few games I've found that really does support solo play in a satisfying way (which is the primary use I put it to).
Posted on 2026-02-11
Fringe Review: Mythic from ZDL's blog
Mythic is, to quote the game's introduction, "a universal, improvisational role-playing game". Designed by Tana Pigeon, a name you've likely never heard of (though you should have, because she makes some nifty stuff!), it is far more than what that unassuming little description says. This review is all about teasing out exactly what Mythic actually is.
Word Mill Publishing
Word Mill Publishing is the name of a small publishing company run by Tana Pigeon. It's first product (that I'm aware of) was Mythic itself, published first in 2003 and then again in 2006 (I'm unclear as to the circumstances for the two copyright dates, but I suspect one was individual publishing, the second under the Word Mill name). In rapid succession more games were published. Going with just the ones I own there's the Mythic Game Master Emulator (2006), Mythic Variations (2007), the Creature Crafter (2009), World vs. Hero (2010, by John Fiore), and the Location Crafter (2014). Other publications I don't (yet!) have include Mythic Variations II (2017), the Adventure Crafter (2019), and the Mythic Game Master Emulator Deck (2019).
(One of those above games will probably wind up in my Fringe Review series at some point in the future.)
All of these supplements and games have intriguing facets to them that keep me buying more. (If I didn't have the massive problems getting payments out of China I'd already own the three I don't currently have!) This intrigue, however, began with the very first book.
Mythic
As I said in the opening paragraph, Mythic is so much more than what its unassuming self-description says it is. In fact Mythic is several things:
1. It is a standalone, narrative-oriented, free-form, preparation-optional traditional GM+players role-playing game.
2. It is a standalone, narrative-oriented, free-form, GM-free role-playing game.
3. It is a cap system which can sit on top of other RPG rules to turn them into preparational-optional/GM-free role-playing games.
4. It is a standalone, narrative-oriented, free-form solo role-playing game.
5. It is a cap system which can sit on top of other RPG rules to turn them into solo role-playing games.
And, in general, it actually manages to pull off all of these with reasonable competency!
So let's look at these various uses and see how it pulls all this off!
Components
Mythic comes as a 146-page PDF (a printed book is also an option). The cover is garish and red and, in physical form on a shelf, would certainly stand out. Since it is not sold, to my knowledge, in brick and mortar stores I'm not sure why something so eye-catching is needed.
Layout inside the book is competent. Chapter headings get a red boundary (matching the cover colour) around the upper half to make them stand out. Too, the chapter titles are in an an eye-catching font that remains readable. (I wouldn't want to read a large block of text in it, but for titles it's actually pretty neat!) The table of contents is a single page that just lists chapters and page numbers, not breaking it down further. There is a single-page index in 4 columns with smaller type than the main body text. I threw a couple of things I'd read before that I might want to find again later (like "The I Dunno Rule") and, to my amazement, I found things. The index isn't master-class, but it does appear to be useful.
The art is …
Ugh. The art. Here's where I hate this thing in our industry of people thinking that you absolutely must have art or the game is terrible.
Don't get me wrong. I like art, even in my game books. But the art has to be somehow in service of the rules text, not just existing alongside it. Big professionally-produced games can hire artists to make relevant art. Very dedicated searchers of clip art can supply the same. Too often, however, art is just randomly slapped into the book without regard to surrounding text, or any kind of theme in the feel, and this art, in my opinion, can actually detract from a game.
The art in Mythic is of this latter sort. At its best there's some nice moody grayscale art. At its cringiest there's grotesquely distorted, "wrong"-seeming garishly coloured art that would make pretentious indy comic books sit up and say "Whoa, you might want to turn that down a notch or ten". The rest is black & white, cartoonish line art that isn't good and isn't bad. It's just there.
And none of the art is in service in any way, shape, or form to the text around it. To be fair, for a generic game this can be difficult, but the answer to that is to work harder at matching art to text, or ditch the art.
I really hate the art choices, I guess I'm saying.
Thankfully the rest of the book has me covered!
Standalone Mythic
Make no mistake: Mythic is a complete role-playing game. Its game mechanisms cover everything you need for play: character generation, action resolution, character advancement, and adventure/campaign management. (It may not be to your tastes as a complete role-playing game, but that is an entirely different issue.) There are two flavours of standalone Mythic: with GM or GM-free. And there are two approaches to playing it: freeform or point-based. All of these, however, are essentially mild variations of the same two core concepts and mechanisms: logic and interpretation.
Logic
Picture a normal game—say D&D. Do you roll for every little thing? The characters wake up in the morning: Do you roll to see if they can get out of their beds without spraining their ankle? Do you studiously do reaction checks on every NPC they interact with? Do you roll to check if they choke to death on a fish bone from their morning kipper? No, of course you don't! (I'm doing the courtesy of assuming you're not crazy. Work with me here!) What Mythic does is take this one step further. Usually you use the same kind of reasoning you'd use in the situations I've described for the D&D game to decide what happens next: you consider what's already happened, you apply any new twists and information that may have popped up, and from this you decide what the most logical outcome will be.
This isn't to say that you just do writing exercises or improv theatre drills, however. Not at all. There is a "Fate Chart" that you use for important outcomes which can lead to things going in several directions. The general approach is whatever is the most logical outcome is what is expected to happen, but the Fate Chart allows (and indeed, as the game progresses, often causes) the unexpected to happen. "Logic" is the baseline from which the unexpected twists of fate and adventure grow.
Interpretation
Logic drives the baseline, but the key differentiation of actions come from the asking and answering of simple yes/no questions. "Is there are guard behind that door?" "Can I find a key to the wardrobe?" "Do I fool the matron with my disguise?" The answers to these questions, although "yes" or "no" (as well as, effectively "HELL yeah!" and "Are you joking!?"), must be interpreted (using logic once again), however, to make them fit.
Improvisation
Improvisation is key to making logic and interpretation work. It is the single most vital skill in playing the game. Logic says what should happen next. Interpretation tells you what actually happens next when questions are asked. Improvisation is key to tying it all together. It acts as the axis around which logic and interpretation spin, driving the game's engine.
A simple example: "Is there a guard behind that door?" (Result: HELL yeah!) "There is not only a guard, there is a whole squad of them." This is chosen improvisationally because in the past there were signs of a large number of soldiers. Logically the "very yes" response implies that there's more than just one. Other answers could be "There is a guard, but it's the captain." Maybe even "There is a guard, but it's a dragon" if events up to this point in the campaign support that possibility.
Game Mechanics
Everything in Mythic is defined in terms of "details" and "ranks". Details are just important aspects of a character or object: Intuition for a character, Complexity for a computer program, Weight for a rock, Hardness for a gem. Every detail is rated in terms of a rank in everyday language (a concept players of FUDGE or FATE will be familiar with in a ladder from lowest to highest rating of Miniscule, Weak, Low, Below Average, Average, Above Average, High, Exceptional, Incredible, Awesome, Superhuman. Values outside of this ladder can exist two, but are just numbered: Miniscule 2, Miniscule 3, Superhuman 2, Superhuman 5, etc.
Ranks are a subjective measure of potency, so to use them, you have to know … relative to what? If a rank is "average" what is it an average of? In this game intrinsic details (like character attributes) are measured in terms of the "average person". Skills, abilities, and powers are relative to the average practitioner of said skill, ability, or power. So a rating of "average" in stonemasonry is the skill of an average STONEMASON, not of an average person. The rule of thumb is that a "professional" in a non-instrinsic detail would be "average" in rank. Real-world relationships between these word-based ratings and actual numbers, where needed, are created by establishing "benchmarks" where you'd say something like "an average strength person can bench 50kg with ease".
(This is where "logic" enters the picture….)
In the book, at this point, you're started into character generation, with these concepts being required to understand what you're generating. In this review I will postpone character generation to continue with the game mechanics. Specifically I will talk about the Fate Chart which is the beating heart of the game.
All action in Mythic that is not merely narrated is resolved by asking a yes/no question. Does the car start on time? Can I light my lighter on the first try? Are there guards in the warehouse? Does my shot kill the bad guy? Can I persuade the maiden fair for a favour in the tournament? Upon the question being asked, the GM (or in a GM-free game the players in aggregate) decide on how likely the outcome is going to be. The acting rank governing the action (say the seduction skill, or the character's strength) is compared against the established difficulty and this is compared on a chart to get three numbers. For a concrete example if someone with "Awesome" strength is trying to open a door of Above Average resistance, we get the numbers 16/85/97. Rolling d% between 1-16 is an "exceptional yes", 17-85 is "yes", 86-96 is "no" and 97-100 is "exceptional no". Thus 85% of the time the character will succeed (16% being even more favourable than a simple "yes") while 15% of the time the character will fail (with 4% of the time being worse than a simple "no"). Bonuses and penalties in this game operate by column and row shifts on the Fate Chart. A -1 shift of an Average rank, for example, would take it to Below Average. A +2 shift from Incredible takes it to Superhuman. The percentile dice aren't modified, just the row or column of the table is.
This simple mechanism is literally the core of everything in the game. There are some little twists here and there. For example for things that don't involve invoking details on characters or objects ("are there guards in the next room") you figure the odds and compare this to the current "chaos factor"--a mechanism that ratchets up tension in the game as the scenario progresses--and get your answer this way. These same kinds of "odds questions" are used in GM-free play to answer questions about the environment: "Has there been recent activity from the Yellow Turbans?" "Is there a staircase leading up from the foyer?" It is this way that a group of players can, by applying logic and improvisation, interpret the results of yes/no questions to build a world and an adventure. Naturally it takes some finesse to get the right balance of questions and interpretations to get a good feel. The rules provide guidelines for all this but none of this will satisfy a hardcore rules-player. This is not a game for that kind of operation. (At least not in standalone mode. This is called "foreshadowing"...)
Where the rules get a little more fixed, however, is, naturally, combat. While more free-wheeling than most games, it still has tighter rules here than in the rest of the game. In place of combat rounds and initiative rolls and to-hit rolls and damage rolls, however, it has a set of typical questions and answers. Questions like "can I attack now?" or "does she go before me?" are the replacement for initiative rolls, for example. Then maybe the next question, is "does my shot hit it?". Followed by "is it damaged?". This is repeated at need (which implies that unlike most games it is possible to get long strings of attacks unanswered by the enemy if the "can I attack?" questions roll in your favour!). It all sounds very alien, and this is with good reason: it is. But it works very well for most kinds of combats.
Character Generation
As mentioned above there are two kinds of characters: freeform and point-based. They're both simple enough, though obviously free-form characters are easier.
Freeform Characters
Step 1: Write a character summary in the form of a descriptive paragraph to give a brief impression of what your character is about. Think of it as the elevator pitch for your character
Step 2: Set the seven basic attributes (core details that all characters have): Strength, Agility, Reflex, IQ, Intuition, Willpower, Toughness. These are just details, set to ranks, and are otherwise in no way privileged in the game system beyond being mandatory for all characters to have ratings in. It is up to you, your GM (if present) and your fellow players to police whether these attributes match your summary.
Step 3: Set your abilities. These are roughly analogous to skills in most games, though they can also be powers, supernatural abilities, spells, etc. Since a freeform character is considered a kind of "work in progress" it's possible that in play an ability will come up that fits the summary but isn't on the sheet. With GM/other player approval it can be added in play, on the fly.
Step 4: Set your strengths and weaknesses. These give you rank shifts (the very ones mentioned above, hence my talking about the Fate Chart before character generation...) to abilities and/or attributes in specific circumstances. For example "quick draw" might be a strength that gives you a +2 rank shift for any situation involving drawing a gun and firing before an opponent. "Mechanically declined" might be a weakness that gives you a -1 rank shift for any circumstance involving the operation or repair of mechanical equipment. As with abilities, it may happen that a strength or a weakness arises in play, but it should be far rarer than abilities.
Step 5: Notes are used to sketch out more details. A pirate may have a ship and crew, for example. Or a knight may have a faithful squire and a set of armour. One special note that is carefully paid attention to is the favour points a character has. Favour points are directly applied at will (to a maximum of 25 at a time) AFTER the dice are rolled to move the value in a more favourable direction. Characters start with 50 of these and get them awarded for making progress on "threads" (adventure story lines).
Point-based Characters
These are made in a similar way to freeform. The summary, attributes, abilities, strengths & weaknesses, and notes are all there. What differs is that attributes and abilities have both a number of points available to buy them with, and a maximum rank purchaseable based on the style of campaign setting. "Real world" characters will have 30 attribute points, 10 ability points with a maximum rank of Exceptional, for example, while these may be 60/35/Superhuman for a pulp action game. Strengths are paid for either from left-over attribute/ability points or by taking weaknesses. Aside from adding a bit of arithmetic to the proceedings, there is little difference in characters made this way over freeform characters.
(Point-based characters may have undefined-at-generation abilities, strengths, and weaknesses as well, though these should not be as common and will likely be vetoed more often.)
The Rest of the Game
The rest of the game covers how to run a game of Mythic and here there is a detailed and very complete event system provided to help drive stories. It involves the creation of story threads, events that move threads along, and events that conclude stories. Time is divided into scenes--Mythic is unapologetically cinematic over simulationist--which can be of varying kinds including altered and interrupting scenes. While it is not difficult it is rather large and all-encompassing and will probably require a few reads before you get the hang of it. In the author's favour there are MANY examples, small and large both, that cover everything from how to record decisions to how to build worlds.
And that covers standalone Mythic. But that's only part of the game. Remember the list? Mythic is also usable as a cap system and a solo system. How does that work?
Solo Mythic
Let's first handle solo play. This is easy as pie. You're the GM and the player, and you use the GM emulator for building the world, running events, building and following story threads, and running combat. It's like GM-free with the added twist there is only one player. That's it. That's the whole secret. Nothing trickier is involved.
Cap System
So how do you use it as a cap system? That's easy. When it comes to resolving things that your favoured game resolves, use your favoured game. Mythic is then used only for its GM emulator stuff to do no-prep (and optionally no-GM) gaming. Use Mythic to deal with random events. To start and move along story lines. To build up setting information with questions. When it comes to combat or persuasion or such things which your favoured game does better in your opinion, just ... use it.
Evaluation
Going back to the intended use, is Mythic actually "a universal, improvisational role-playing game"?
The answer is … uh, let me check the Fate Chart. Now Tana Pigeon is an Exceptional designer and the task is Awesomely hard. Cross-indexing that's 7/35/88 … rolling, oh wait. That's a -2 shift for the sheer insanity of attempting the task in the first place, so it's actually 3/15/84 … And …
Yes.
But only yes. Not exceptional yes.
Mythic is a very good system that's amazingly clean at its core. It does provide everything it sets out to do. It is a complete RPG, both freeform and point-based being viable options. It excels at supporting low/no-prep GMing and even no-GM play. It's even quite good for solo play. Where it fumbles the ball a bit, in my opinion, is in its use as a cap system. It gives four pages of guidance there (predictably and understandably D&D-focused) much of it being very hand-wavy and closing off with what reads like "meh, if you don't like the guidance here, do it yourself".
Which is so very bizarre because this is the single best way to wean people into using Mythic! A cap system gateway would make people, I think, look more closely at Mythic and possibly then start incorporating more and more of the game beyond the GM emulator stuff. Later publications by Word Mill press do, in fact, exactly this, so perhaps this is something Tana Pigeon has caught on to, but it was a surprise to me that the first book glossed over this so quickly.
But this little misstep aside, Mythic is a very good addition to the toolbox of any GM. And it is one of the few games I've found that really does support solo play in a satisfying way (which is the primary use I put it to).
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