What is High Adventure Role Playing (HARP)?
High Adventure Role Playing, more commonly known as HARP, is a tabletop role-playing system. HARP is distinguished by other popular games, such as d20, by its flexibility in character creation, and a fairly rules-light approach. HARP is produced by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE), a gaming company founded in the 1980s. Although ICE began by creating supplements for other popular games, it eventually released a game system of its own: the Rolemaster system. Rolemaster was somewhat popular, but ICE still remained a lesser-known company until it acquired the license to produce a role-playing game directly based on Tolkien’s Middle Earth. This game, Middle Earth Role Playing, was at one point second only to TSR’s Dungeons and Dragons in popularity.
