This brings me to what I've learned in business about marketing. If you learn the cognitive biases then you are more likely to catch yourself when I'm exhibiting the flawed logic. Marketing is all about exploiting cognitive biases.
Knowing who I am, what I want, and what I believe in gets better and clearer with a pursuit for knowledge and introspection. This is usefull because it helps me judge my own feelings and Ideas if they past several tests of rationality and consitency.
What has this got to do with Harn? A good product is not based on how much work people put into it, but how much a marketing person can add value to the product. Compared to some other products, Harn is VERY well researched. What I mean by well researched, is that I've tried reading up and finding those facts where they base their ideas on and they take up a lot of resources and a lot of books. Those things cost money and TIME, but not everyone will want to pay for those things.
Looking back at the TON of Errata DnD 3.X had gone through because their production design is to capitalized in user compulsions, short attention span, and escalating demand for power. I don't mean to imply people are Irrational, in the contrary when you purchase something you like, that is very rational. What is strange or peculiar is how we build up value.
If you follow Psychology of Video games, a book they love to quote and I also like to read is Predictably irrational. My brothers and I spent a lot of Money and DnD 3.X. and after it all, the material is very hard to use without having to bring in all the other books to "balance" each other out. Again, I like to remind people I used to run Epic Games and had really bad acid attacks because of the work involved (it was more stressful than work!).
My 3ed GURPS books far out value the usability of my DnD 3.X books. This is because they fluff can is always free for the system to adapt to it. The write ups matter more than the crunch, and because of the logical narrative and descriptive, I'm free to adjust the system to fit the "reality".
As for the DnD 3.X it only works in the context of DnD.
Harn, would have been awesome with GURPs as the System gets better in reflecting reality while resolving things much faster and logically. I mean, after reading the intro and borrowing some of the copies to check out, Banestorm? whats that?
I remember when I studied Forgotten Realms for my players. I didn't like the setting but I needed an epic setting for a game with established characters I can just move around. Fantasy is so subjective, compared to History. Each nation, keep saying they are the mightiest but there is no real way to measure. History and Real world data, there is an OBJECTIVE way to measure and because of that arguments are easier to put down.
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