Using Published Settings

Not long ago I'd considered starting up a campaign in the Hârn Setting. I was a huge fan of Hârn in the day. I even played HârnMaster for awhile before returning to my HouseRuled RuneQuest 2. I had everything published including the Ivínia and Shôrkýnè Regional modules. I never used those module and I may have only gotten the map of Shôrkýnè without any kind of Hârndex on the thing. My gaming ended about that time.

Poetic Players map
Used without Permission

So years later I got interested in gaming again and looked at the pile of Hârn stuff as a good place to jump in again. The place had beautiful maps of the environment, the kingdoms, every major city and a number of castles so it would save a lot of time staring there. 

But the vast amount of data to re-absorb was daunting. It wasn't so bad initially as it was provided in books that appeared all too seldom but now it was all there in one giant pile. A pile I was vaguely aware of but felt compelled to re-read to run Hârn right, but...

First I thought, although I wanted to run it right I kept thinking why? Hârn is like Anglo-Saxon England with no plate mail. Back in the day this was appealing, now I liked the idea of plate armor. They have plate on the mainland if I remember correctly but the Wizards in Melderyn wouldn't allow it on Hârn for some reason. But what is running it right? It's my game. I bought the stuff, I'd be the one running the game. I can do what I want.

Second I thought, players have access to all the info as well. This has benefits and negatives. It can take away surprises but also they can learn the background of the world using Google without my doling it out bite by bite. They don't even need to buy the thing. 

This is a problem that is not unique to Hârn. In fact it's thousands of times worse for some settings that have novels and far more backstory. Some even had cataclysm to temporarily fix the problem and get folks to buy everything again. And that's the fix I was looking for but the idea of a cataclysm? Well that wasn't right.

Why not just advance the timeline? Everything published for Hârn takes place in the year 720. After that the world is owned by the GM, so why not bump up the timeline to 820 or 1520 and invent some of my own history. Don't like the Elves, well they left. Yes they were there but now are myth. Want plate? Without the Elves the pressure to keep plate off the island disappeared and it came in naturally through trading and spread of knowledge. And the wars? Oh the wars. Western Hârn is a balance of three powers, that can be mixed up any which way. Don't like the Roman Republic aspect of Tharda, write a change into the new timeline.

I guess the point is the Publish setting is the GMs, so why not truly make it yours, including outright creating some additional history on top to ensure the place retains secrets and to cement the idea that it is yours now.

The funny thing is when I first got the Hârn setting I was far less slavish about following things. I imported characters from Greyhawk and used Gods from some Dragon Magazine article and ignored the plate restriction. It was only as I got a bit older that I got wound up in the purity of the location which became a straight jacket later.