"Inns of Hârn"
Project

Writer's Guidelines



Index to this page: The legalities | Why we are here | How to use this site | How to submit and Inn or Tavern | Reserving a site for development | Fancy Stuff | Maps | and finally

First, the legalities

This Website is an unofficial site for source material to be used with Columbia Games' world of Harn. The material on this site is freely contributed by the many writers for use by Harn GMs around the world. There is no remuneration of any kind for material submitted to this site.

All submitted materials herein remain the respective copyrighted works of the individual authors. The name "Harn" and all related names published by Columbia Games are registered or unregistered trademarks of Columbia Games, Inc. of Blaine, Washington, USA. No part of this site may be reproduced for profit without the express written consent of the author and Columbia Games Inc. (CGI), and Harn creator N. Robin Crossby. No intention to break existing copyright is intended by this site.

Second, Why we're here:

PCs stay in inns and taverns all over Harn and Lythia all the time. Often, we as GMs just gloss over the inn setting unless it is important to the adventure. But many GMs have detailed an inn somewhere that could be used by other GMs. This website is an opportunity to share our work, and to make our lives easier. The next time your PCs want to stay at an Inn, check out this site; you may find a fully detailed, populated, and integrated inn ready to use!

This site is being run as a joint project between John D Sgammato and Jonathan M Davidson.

Third, How to use this site:

This page points to every inn and tavern that we could find in all of the printed Harn material, and a few that people just made up. Inns are sorted geographically and by author. When you need an inn in a certain town, look up the town and pick an inn.

If there are no inns detailed in that town, feel free to do it yourself, and then send it here (see below). We would be interested in submissions of either totally new taverns and inns not hitherto described, or "write-ups" of the taverns and inn mentioned in the official CGI source material (cities, kingdoms, regions etc.), but which have not been detailed.

Fourth, How to submit an inn or tavern to this site:

This site, like any web page, is written in HTML. If you can write in HTML, then my job becomes much easier. If you cannot, then please save your text in simple ASCII format as a .txt file.

If you do write in HTML, you have more control over appearance. Please do not set the background colour and bitmaps, link colours, etc. (we wish to keep the colours consistent on this site). But do feel free to add links, in-line images, and tables etc.

Secondly, if you down load an existing inn or tavern description which you like the 'feel' off, you can delete the main text, but use the existing titles and format as a framework for describing your inn or tavern.

For the complete novice, the easiest way to write an inn or tavern is probably to use the blank html format document (inn-html.txt) which contains recommended headers and layout. An example inn is given using this template which may indicate how it can be used. An example NPC is also given. The same template, without the html code can be found at inn-text.txt.

The specification of the posted taverns and inns does not need to be followed, but please try and present all the required information in a consistent way. Obviously submissions which exceed the this specification will be gratefully received.

If like me, you are hopeless at thinking up names, there is a random name list (generated by a simple program). Please feel free to select names from this list for your staff, or whatever. Please select the names randomly from the whole list; since if everyone chooses the first few names then this will lead to boring inns ("Not Jarameld the Innkeep again" groans the PC).

Email the finished file to Jonathan at sablefox@globalnet.co.uk, which is also the address for any queries about file formats etc. If the complete description contains more than one file, please either archive the files using zip, or simply send each file with a note saying which inn it belongs to.

Columbia Games Inc has agreed to look over submissions to see if they wish to reserve them for publication. This process might take a couple of weeks. If the are interested they will contact the submitter directly. If you are not interested in your submission going to CGI first, please say so with your submission and we'll skip this step.

We reserve the right to edit your submission's layout to reflect the look and feel of this site. However we will not edit the text content of the submission.

Fifth, No room at the inn:

To ensure that we don't have two people writing the same inn or tavern, the first person that volunteers to do the inn or tavern gets it. You can tell if someone is working on an inn because their name will be in the credit column, even if the inn is not yet finished.

To reserve an inn or tavern, please email John D Sgammato at Sgammato@gis.net, stating which one you are interested in. He will add you name to the register, or let you know in the unlikely event someone beats you to it.

Please note: You should feel free to submit inns which are not listed on our index, for instance in cities which have not yet been detailed by CGI or along the trails (such as Trobridge).

General queries about the "Tavern of Harn" site should also be addressed to John.

Sixth, Fancy stuff:

Feel free to detail NPCs, especially the staff, and mention known stories from HarnPlayer, the HarnPage, or other sources. Please try and keep information generic to all gaming systems, but feel free to include information relevant to your game system as well as a prose description.

If those sources are on the Web somewhere, create a link, or request the site maintainer to by including "[link here to http://url]" in the text. Links to the Harnic NPC database and to adventures published on the HarnPage are especially useful.

Please note: Though links to all forms of multimedia (e.g. images, sounds, movies etc.) will be permitted, the idea of this site is to allow the material to be downloaded and used in peoples games. Please keep file sizes small (less than 50 kb ideally) and where possible use links indicating the size of a resource, rather than surprising people with a long download time. Please also remember that most people can view .gif and .jpg files, but many can not use the more proprietary formats such as .png, .tiff, .wav and .avi. Also please remember that most people have black and white printers and design your graphics with this in mind

Seventh, Maps

If you can create your own electronic maps, feel free. Please submit them as .gif or .jpg files rather than in the drawings native format. A good file conversion, editing and screen capture program is Paint Shop Pro (which is shareware - please respect the authors rights) which can be downloaded from www.jasc.com.

If you prefer, there are some generic inn and tavern maps on this site; you can simply refer to them by their reference number. I will be happy to detail (and make minor modifications) to these maps and include them with your description.

If you need a specific layout but cannot create it electronically, draw it neatly in black ink on white paper with scale marks and snailmail it to:

Jonathan Davidson, 20 Quinn Way, Letchworth, Herts, UK, SG6 2TX

rembering to include your name, email address and the name of the inn or tavern. Since I believe that plans are of particular importance, I will be happy to assist in any way I can, please email Jonathan.

And finally

This will be most useful to all concerned if it stays faithful in style, appearance, and spirit to the printed HarnWorld material. To that end, please avoid including anachronisms, elements that require hard-to-explain magic or abilities, and dragons in the loft. GMs can add those as they need them. If it worked wonderfully in your own adventure, include it in a section of Tips For Play at the end. Above all, let's make this a useful and fun resource for Harn GMs everywhere.


Copyright ©1997-98 Jonathan M.Davidson Mail JMD and John Sgammato mail JS, 05/05/98