WarFlail's Archives - September 2001

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All right! Auran just awarded me a silver medal for my contributions to the Jousting competition. That was completely unexpected - very nice. :-)

It's been amusing and highly entertaining to read your comments, banter, petitions and questions regarding the tournament on the Hârn Forum. I really think that the boys at Auran had underestimated how popular this contest would turn out to be. I'm truly honoured that I've been allowed to contribute in a major way.

The results of the second half of Round 1 of the Jousting competition are now up at the Project Hârn site! Just scroll down to the bottom of that page to read my blow-by-blow commentaries. :-)

Look for the results of Round 2 next week.

Further to the Jousting competition, in case you are interested in seeing to whom the participating knights owe fealty, I have available for your download pleasure a colour-coded scorecard:

Tournament Scorecard (with Allegiances) (PDF, 10Kb)

I have to say that I am delighted with how the participants are getting into the spirit of the tournament over at the Hârn Forum. The feedback is making it all worthwhile. Thanks for your support, everyone! :-)

This results for the first half of Round 1 of the Jousting competition are now available! Just scroll to the bottom of that page to see the commentaries. Luckily, Auran have saved you the anguish of having to wait for only one result per week, by instead posting 8 in one hit. Good idea.

Interested in keeping track of the scores? This is the scorecard of how the jousts are lined up:

Tournament Scorecard (PDF, 9Kb)

You can print it off and fill it in as the tournament progresses. :-)

I had a couple of my players (thanks, Ned Kelly and Chadwyn) over today for some jousting mayhem as we started to resolve the Jousting contest. May the best knight win! :-)

BTW, in case you are wondering, we are using the HMC rules "as is", without any modification from house rules except for those stipulated in my jousting article. This means that characters fall unconscious, drop items and fall over much more quickly than with my house rules, but for the purpose of this contest, using just the core rules have helped to speed up combat, so no complaints there.

The blow-by-blow commentary and result of the first bout will be made available at Project Hârn. I will of course be linking to these from here.

Speaking of which, the guys at Auran told me that they will be putting up the result of one bout every Monday. This strikes me as being rather protracted. With 36 knights competing and the way I have set up the jousts, there are 35 fights in all. Seems like a very long time (35 weeks = 2/3 of a year!) to announce the results. Perhaps I misinterpreted what they said... I hope so.

I've finally completed all the preparations needed to kick-start the Jousting contest so many of you are hanging out for. Sure, it was easy for you to create a knight - but recording the data in a usable form to keep track of everything accurately as injuries mount up and weapons break, well, that's a different matter altogether... :-)

My first big task was to design an Excel workbook that does just that. It's taken a fair bit of tweaking, and it's fairly large, but it comfortablly keeps an accurate record of the current status of each of the 36 competing knights. Although I reckon I'm a heavy Excel user, I'm far from being a guru with it, so all things considered, I reckon I knocked together a pretty decent spreadsheet. I won't post it just yet, though - you'll have to wait until after the contest.

My next job was to work out all the statistics for each contestant's armour on another spreadsheet (you will find the armour worksheet on my House Rules page, of course). This is a large file for an Excel workbook, about 6Mb in size in all!

After that, it was a lot easier. I designed a system that is as fair and equitable as I could make it to get 36 knights to fight it out. To see the line-up for the First Round of the tournament, have a look at the list at Auran's site.

Now that we are ready for action, I'll be recruiting a couple of my scaly mates... er, I mean, players, over for some heavy-duty dice rolling. That's where I sit back and act as scribe. Results of the matches will be published every week on WarFlail's Armoury and Project Hârn, with a blow-by-blow narrative by me. Keep watching this space... :-)

This is quite spooky - if you have Microsoft Word, then give this a go:

1. Open Microsoft Word.
2. Type NYC in caps, then highlight it.
3. Change the font to Webdings. What do you see?
4. Highlight the characters again and change the font to Wingdings. Now what do you see?

Thanks, Gryphon, for pointing this one out to me.

My old friend Spectre sent me a link to some amazing satellite pictures of the terrorist attack sites, taken from Space Imaging's IKONOS satellite. They give an excellent indication of the magnitude of damage caused by the crashing passenger jets.

I've managed to speak with a number of my friends and clients in America. Thankfully, none of them was directly affected by the recent atrocity. But sadly, they have relatives, friends and/or acquaintances who would have been in or in the vicinity of the World Trade Center when the planes struck, and they have so far been unable to learn what has become of them. My thoughts go out to all those who have lost someone dear to them.

I really hope that those responsible are caught soon, and brought to justice. While they roam free, noone is safe.

As more reports flood in about the mass terrorist attacks in America, the whole world appears to be shocked and stunned by what had occurred. The audacity and precision of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon look like they belong in a Hollywood movie, not real life. A truly dark day for civilisation.

The death toll at the WTC is expected to run into the thousands, all civilian. Pentagon deaths are thought to number in the hundreds. None of the crew and passengers of the four hijacked jets could possibly have survived. This sort of warfare - deliberately targeting civilian targets and receiving maximum media exposure for it - is probably the essence that will make the next World War so different from the last two.

Although no organisation has officially come forth to claim responsibility, accusing fingers are stabbing at Osama bin Laden, the multi-millionaire Saudi dissident and notorious anti-American terrorist leader, who is apparently hiding in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Certainly, he has the motive and the means. It remains to be officially proven whether he is the mastermind behind the attacks, however...

Sorry, I'm acting like a news site when I'm not! If you want more information (in case you aren't watching television - seems like every channel is broadcasting nothing but the terrorist attack), then I direct you to the pros:

• CNN
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation
• News Interactive
• BBC News
• MSNBC
• ABC News
• CBS News
• Fox News
• 7am.com
• Guardian Unlimited
• FAZ.net
• Spiegel Online (this one's in German)

(Thanks to Hrafn for the last three links.)

UNBELIEVABLE. Two American Airlines passenger jets have slammed into both towers of New York's World Trade Center, destroying both. Both appeared to have been hijacked from domestic flight routes. Another commercial jet has crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C., causing part of it to collapse. There are also reports of a United Airlines 757 going down near Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. This has got to be the most coordinated and effective terrorist attack ever made in history. Absolutely sickening.

News is all a bit sketchy, many of the news sites are down. One report I can reach is at ABC News.

By the reports still coming through, this may only be the beginning...

I'm delighted to announce that today I received the data for all of the entrants for Auran's Jousting Tournament. I'm currently collating the data and am aiming to have the list of participants ready later this week. Looks like there are about 30 or so valid entries. This should be fun! :-)

It's the end of the week and I still haven't received the list of participants for the Jousting Tournament from Auran. So, unfortunately, it appears that the tourney will have to wait another week. I realise that all of you who submitted a knight (I heard that there are at least three dozen of you) are champing at the bit to get started - all I can do is ask for your patience...

Hey, this site has had over ten thousand hits since the beginning of the year! I reckon that's pretty amazing for a Hârn fan site. Thanks for stopping by! :-)

BTW, congratulations to Mark Winkelman for being the lucky Ten Thousandth flail-hitter!

Say, an update at Columbia Games' homepage! That's something you don't see every day. :-) CGI have given us a sneak peek at their upcoming Hârn releases. Check them out:

Tip-off courtesy of Jeremy Baker, a fellow (Other) Hârn-List member.

Well, that thread about the future of Hârn DE I was telling you about yesterday has been confirmed by Auran as a definite discontinuation of Hârn DE. What a shame - the project showed such promise... :-(

However, I can tell you that the Jousting Tournament is definitely going to take place - I will be receiving the list of contestants in the next day or so, after which splinters will fly! :-)

Hey, my first Father's Day! This is so cool... :-)

The Hârn Forum has been ablaze with comments this weekend as a result of a bombshell that Auran dropped on everyone last Friday (31st August). This is the message that has sparked so much controversy:

We have been reviewing our plans for the d20 adventure modules taking into account the broad range of feedback that we have received to "Web of the Widow". Many of you have expressed understandable concerns about taking Hârn in the direction of d20. These concerns include potential problems involved with maintaining the traditional Hârn (consistency with existing Hârnic published material) while seeking to move in the direction of d20 adventure modules. Some of you have commented along the lines that while being a great d20 module, you have reservations about "Web of the Widow" as a Hârn module.

We agree with your concerns and with this in mind have decided that the d20 modules we have in development will not be set in Hârn. They will be generic d20 adventure modules that can be placed on any campaign world (including Hârn). Any future electronic products for Hârn will be reference based and strictly and totally consistent with the existing Hârnic material.

With this decision in mind we will shortly be releasing a new section for the Auran web site that supports the d20 RPG Adventure Modules. We will keep the current Hârn site and forum open and available for your use and enjoyment. We have listened to your concerns and passionate commitment for maintaining the traditional Hârn.

I don't think a forum post has had so many responses in such a short space of time. Much of the reaction in the beginning was confusion and stunned disbelief. Many forum members seemed to think that the message meant Auran were going to abandon Hârn altogether - perhaps "Web of the Widow" didn't sell as well as planned, I don't know.

Unfortunately, someone fired from left field and ranted about the general "hostility" and "elitism" apparently running "rampant" in the Hârn community. Talk about waving a red flag to a bull. The posts that followed soon degenerated into an angry melee with some sniping involved. Needless to say, things spun off topic fairly quickly after that.

As for whether Auran has actually meant to say that they will shelve Hârn for a while and go down the generic d20 path, I guess we'll just have to wait until Monday for a clarification.

Regular visitors to WarFlail's Armoury would know that when there haven't been any updates to this page for over a week, the likeliest reason is that I've been away. This time, I was in Hong Kong.

While I was away travelling, it appears that my ISP's (Doteasy) email server had crashed with some unrecoverable errors. I have not received any email that was sent between 20th and 26th August - if you sent me anything during this period, could you please re-send?

I reckon I should be looking for a new service provider... Grrr! >:-(

Go to WarFlail's Archives - August 2001

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