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Title pretty much spells it out. Saw the Leather-bound edition of the players guide, and I am a sucker for leather-bound editions, but I was hoping someone might have some first hand experience with it, either from playing ro jsut reading through it.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
HackMaster 4th was incredibly fun to play. It's based off 1st edition D&D and AD&D. If you've played AD&D, just add a 20 hitpoint kicker to everything, add "exploding dice" (roll a 6 on a d6? roll it again), and honor tracking from the Oriental Campaigns (I think). If you've read Knight of the Dinner Table comic, it's they primary RPG they play. Some of the monsters are based on encounters covered in the comic, and are over-the-top silly.
We ran successful tournaments in Houston for 3 or 4 years, some of them rivaling the GenCon tournaments run by Jolly Blackburn and David Kenzer. I could go into more detail about this version if you'd like.
I assume you're talking about this book?
Unfortunately, I can't speak to the newest incarnations of HackMaster. You might check out the KenzerCo forums, though. When they stopped supporting 4th edition HackMaster, Pathfinder had conveniently started taking off. My group switched to it. Their Kalamar Campaign setting was very well written, though. Nothing silly about it, and it made much more sense than the campaign in the D&D Cyclopedia or Hollow World or Dragonlance.
Jolly Blackburn is a great guy, and they add a lot of humor (tongue-in-cheek) to their core rule books. But I was ready to move on to Pathfinder and we haven't looked back. Also, the monster and character sheets for the new game look a lot like HazMat labels...
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/06/10 15:11:27
It is my understanding that they no longer do anything for 4th edition. They had a license with WotC to publish HackMaster and to "Hack" old modules like Keep on the Boarderland, Against the Giants, and so on.
As to why they stopped, short answer: David Kenzer wanted to make his own RPG. He didn't want his only successful RPG to be "that game based on AD&D."
IMHO, of course.
This is what the 4th edition player's guide and GMG looked like:
Edit: My group "Hacked" Ravenloft 2 for them, I'm an author!
We also play tested some of their splat books for 4th ed, and a couple of modules.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2013/06/10 15:43:38
Ran across an extremely frustrating review of the new game. I think he hates old school style RPGs, and since this is in that mold, he gets upset about a lot of the content. He also seems to call any game using a d20 part of the Open Game License system.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Yeah, from what little I know about 5th edition, it is NOT OGL. They made up their own rule set.
I don't know that guy from Adam, but a lot of people were upset with KenzerCo for stopping support for 4th edition and switching to 5th. Maybe he has an axe to grind, or maybe not.
However, if he hates old school D&D, then he would have hated and most likely never played 4th edition. It literally was AD&D with some add-ons.
Ahtman wrote: I think he hates old school style RPGs
That's Tetsubo, aka James. He certainly hates the idea of retroclones (of which Hackmaster is not one) but I don't think he really understands what they are trying to accomplish. I wouldn't put too much stock into any of his reviews of mechanics. Also, as you may note, his reviews are highly (and inappropriately) ideological.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/06/12 18:34:59
Just had a quick chance to look it over as it arrived and some early thoughts:
Beautiful production values. This thing is gorgeous, with full color pages, lots of time spent on format, and tips on each page. The binding is thick and luxurious, as Ron Burgundy demands.
Character creation seems to be extremely involved and time consuming.
Similar stats to D&D but also has a looks stat separate from Charisma. Thieves are physical naughty fellas, rogues are social naughty fellows.
Attack bonus is found by using Intelligence and Dexterity, which is pretty cool, and gives Fighters a choice of being swift, smart, or both.
Paladins are really rare (only human and must start as fighter at level 1, then become a knight at 5, then a Paladin at 10). Paladins can be rebuked by evil Clerics. lawl
K&C wanted to make a straight RPG and not a parody, but left some questionable humour in the game. Making a joke here and there isn't terrible, but often it comes across as being a dick, which goes against the tone of the rest of the book. Explaining the rationale behind a design decision is good, but the instances I've run across it usually is unwarranted and self righteous. Where they could have said 'we wanted this to be a lowered powered style game' they say something like 'only kiddies want to play gawds' or some such nonsense. I found it distracting, and hopefully if they want to make other editions they can ween themselves off of it. What works for characters in KoDT doesn't necessarily translate well to designer notes and tips.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
kronk wrote: That's David Kenzer's humor, without question.
Which is fine when the work is supposed to be a comedy, but it completely goes against the tone of the book, and imo, cheapens it a bit. It is akin to saying you are writing a serious novel and then every third page page drawing a dickbut. Someone should have reminded him that this wasn't a parody. It just really clashes with the rest of the book, and doesn't make him seem friendly or humurous, but like a dick, and someone no one would actually want to play with. It is very jarring, and makes the reading unpleasant, and I enjoyed KoDT.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
That sucks, actually. It sounds like they were stuck with some of the 4th edition parody humor and inserted it. You can certainly play the game without it, but it's hard to ignore it if it's always in your face.
kronk wrote: That sucks, actually. It sounds like they were stuck with some of the 4th edition parody humor and inserted it. You can certainly play the game without it, but it's hard to ignore it if it's always in your face.
It isn't overwhelming in the amount of it, probably every 2-4 pages (it is a 400 page book though so....) but when it pops up it is so out of tune with everything around it is like a speed bump. Everything I like, but he needs to learn that you don't have to make a joke every time you put pen to paper. I would still recommend it to anyone that likes RPGs, especially old school ones.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Ahtman wrote: I would still recommend it to anyone that likes RPGs, especially old school ones.
Really? It sounds kind of heavy from your description (i.e., chargen being involved and time consuming). Caveat: to me, "old school" is more about Basic D&D than AD&D.
Character creation seems to be extremely involved and time consuming.
This also seems like a hold-over from HackMaster.
Do the character creation rules still include things like rolling for the class size of your wizards school or (for fighters) events that happened to you while on the front lines after basic training?
Ahtman wrote: I would still recommend it to anyone that likes RPGs, especially old school ones.
Really? It sounds kind of heavy from your description (i.e., chargen being involved and time consuming). Caveat: to me, "old school" is more about Basic D&D than AD&D.
As I haven't had time to really seriously sit down with it I should have been a bit more clear that the tone is much more in line with 2e and 1e then 3+.
kronk wrote:Do the character creation rules still include things like rolling for the class size of your wizards school or (for fighters) events that happened to you while on the front lines after basic training?
No, nothing like that.
You roll for 7 stats just like D&D, but you have a % for each one you roll as well, like the Fighter's exceptional Strength. You also start with Building points you use to buy your class, skills, traits, and abilites. You also use them to boost your skills. There are flaws and talents which modify those points. You roll 3d6 for stats and if you keep them in the order you roll them you get bonus Build Points, if you just swap 2 of the scores you gain less. If you change the order beyond that you get no bonus points. It isn't as bad as, say, Champions, but it isn't far off with all the Build Point spending.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Other than the ability to swap stats, those are all mechanics from Hackmaster 4th edition.
Do you get to pick the number of Quirks and Flaws to start? Can you accidentally roll additional quirks and flaws? In 4th ed, if you rolled high on a chart, you'd be forced to roll again on the same chart or on a similar chart.
Thanks, Ahtman. It sounds like they kept and refined a lot of the in-house mechanics that they added to AD&D for HackMaster 4.0 and put them in this new game.
Penetrating die rolls? If you roll a 6 on a d6, roll again with a -1 modifier to the next die?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/06/17 19:41:54
Ahtman wrote: As I haven't had time to really seriously sit down with it I should have been a bit more clear that the tone is much more in line with 2e and 1e then 3+.
Sure but my point was, "1E" is in the same continuity with 3.X and 4E.
Here, I made a chart for this back when 5E was announced and I was trying to express my (largely dashed) hopes:
