The journey is more important than the destination.

I’m still very excited about the newest version of HârnMaster from Kelestia Productions that came out last summer. It’s a joy to read and a full game in a single tome. It has things that were sorely missing from previous editions, like actual Alchemy rules, Astrology, Runecraft, Astral travel and shamanism, to name a few.

The character creation process is interesting and produces characters with lots of depth. There is a phase during character creation where you spend development points (DP) in stages. To help me with this step, in particular, I decided to build myself a tool. The idea was to have a way of seeing the strengths of the character (his Skill Bases, or SB) and to be able to change my mind on where to invest DPs, i.e., to be able to go back to a previous stage and make changes without losing track. To do that, I built this interface.

Of course, for that to work (and make sense) I also needed to build a character model ¹ and a way to visualize that. In other words, I needed to make a character sheet interface as well.

I started this project last October (2024) and, as I was working on it I thought it’d be fun to share pictures of my progress on the Kelestia Productions Discord. The response has been very positive; people were asking me if I would release that. At the onset, I didn’t make this for others, it was just a tool for myself, but there were repeated inquiries as to when I’d make this available.

So I started discussing with the author of the rules, Walt, and found out he’s also on macOS. I sent him a copy and we started discussing. We ended up deciding that I’d make two versions of the app, one “public” and one for myself, which has more things, but things that are not so easily sharable in a free format, as it includes too much copyrighted material.

So I worked on making a “public” version in addition to my own. Polishing it so that it’s useable by others, and also building extensive online documentation for it. I shared the app with a few members of the KP team that are on macOS as well, to get their feedback and validate that this was within the scope of “fanon” material and didn’t cross the line.

And last Monday I released the first public version of the app to everyone…

And I have received, except for Walt who has been very enthusiastic and very supportive, a grand total of one feedback on the app, and this was a complaint that it didn’t work (yet) in dark mode… And this was before the public release by a KP team member, who made no other comment since.

Most of those on Discord who had expressed their interest apparently had missed the (clearly) stated fact that this was for macOS. And aside from the complaint about the missing dark mode, I got various forms of “when is the Windows version coming?”

Aside from Walt, four people joined the Discord that I created for discussing the app. None gave feedback on it. And since the initial release, Walt and I have discussed some options on how best to display a character’s languages. None of the others participated.

In conclusion, I am very happy and proud with the application that I made, and I am more than happy that Walt is also enjoying it. This public version will stay available, and I will continue to support it and fix bugs, should they occur, but it’s now time to return to work on my own (full) version. I’ve learned a lot along the way, but it’s also “a lesson learned,” as they say.

You can check the documentation for the app here if you are curious.