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These remind me of the old Judges Guild products, such as the Village Books, or the Castle Books: you get maps of cities, good sized ones at that, but you have to flesh them out, and populate them. For me, these are wonderful to use for the cities on my world map: I may not know everything about a given city, but at least I've got maps for them, so I can wing it, if I need to, as to who owns what shop, where. With a map done for me, the rest is much easier. Definitely for the do-it-yourself types, but the maps are gorgeous, A very good deal, at a very good price. Highly recommended. Cheers!
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First off, the look of it. I thought the mini table of contents at the start of every chapter was very useful and made finding information within chapters quite easy. Each chapter is full of easy to read tables with tips and hints of playing noted on the side of each page. One minor quibble was they could have used a rehash of rolling up honor points at the start of the honor chapter, instead of having to flip back a few chapters to find this. Another small issue I found in the Priors and Particulars chapter. In the earlier edition of Hackmaster, they included several tables concerning parent's social standing, amount of money left to player character, etc. which were oddly left out in this edition. In a game that excels in character creation complexity, these were glaring in their omission.
Like it's earlier incarnation, this edition of Hackmaster user quite a long and in depth character creation method, utilizing Building points to slightly change parts of the creation process you don't like. Skills and proficiencies are listed as well and quirks and flaws, which can flesh out a newly created character a little more. However, some of the background rolls might force you to have one or more.
There are the normal character classes - fighter, knight, paladin, ranger, barbarian, thief, rouge, assassin and mage, plus a few multi classes - fighter/mage, fighter/thief and mage/thief. Greatly expanded however, is the cleric character class. This class has been expanded akin to the old specialty priests from Forgotten Realms. Each church (one for each of the nine alignments) has its own spell list and powers/restrictions/skills/preferred weapon(s) for its priests. By far the most interesting in my opinion, was the Church of Chance, where each cleric gets their spells for the day at random. This would certainly encourage characters to think on their feet!
Spells in the hackmaster universe are a combination of the memorization method and spell point method. Mages and clerics can only case a certain number of spell per day as one would expect from Vancian magic. However, the mage has to use from his pool of spell points to cast spells. He can even cast spells he does not have memorized for double the spell points. Luckily, spell points regenerate after a full 8 hours of sleep. In addition to using spell points to case spell, a mage can add his spell points to any spell to enhance any of the characteristics, such as additional power, duration, range, area of effect, etc)
Combat is handled a little differently for those who might not be familiar with Hackmaster. Each roll to hit is an opposed roll, meaning the attacker rolls to hit and the defender rolls to defend. Likewise, combat order is handled differently as well. In a lot of other systems, once initiative is determined, each participant moves once during the round. In Hackmaster, often (if not usually) the character can do multiple things during the round, which is measured in seconds. For example, once your initiative comes up (or 2 seconds after you are attacked by a melee weapon assuming you are still standing and not stunned, you can perform any of various actions. Luckily, a fully illustrated Knights of the Dinner Table comics strip and diagrams are included to walk you through a typical combat scenario. Or at least a typical one for the Knights. :)
Overall this is Hackmaster in all its complex glory, laid out in a well put together weighty tome, coming in at over 400 pages.
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Released for the fourth edition of Hackmaster in 2007, this module departs from the parody of the early HM line, and presents mini-dungeon full of undead that’s – sorry! sorry! – dead serious. The trade dress evokes mono era TSR, although the interior follows a style with more detailed stat blocks and Hp/AC boxes (armour damage is a feature of the game), as well as decent-looking cartography and illustrations.
The premise of the adventure is interesting, outlining the history of a tribal vampire cult whose successive generations excavated the interior of a large stone outcropping named Sleeping Bear Rock. There is ample historical and geographical justification for what we are going to see, which pretty much sets up the tone of the following product: meticulously logical, slightly over-explained. After the obligatory adventure hook, we have the description of what is essentially a dungeon with 15 areas (although some of these have multiple sub-areas). As tomb adventures go, this fare is solid, playable, but far from outstanding. Most are what I would call obvious encounters – there is a tomb, an undead monster is slumbering inside, it animates when the burial place is disturbed, and it has some treasure or grave goods. Or the burial place is protected by a magical trap. Or it is “an unremarkable crypt that was never used” (there are too many of these).
For all the TSR flourishes, the whimsy is missing. The design is mostly too straightforward, too (eco-)logical. It is a David Attenborough vampire lair. Here is where they rest. Here is where they were unleashed by foolhardy adventurers. Here is the evil temple full of evil-looking statues where they worshipped. Great place, but it turns out it has been looted and the statues are just statues. There is a mass tomb filled with thousands of human skeletons and piles of skulls, which is just a mass tomb. A treasury holds a sword +1, silver arrowtips, some gold bars and lots of useless rotted weapons. “A weaponsmith can fit the spearhead to either a spear or great spear for 4 sp. A fletcher can fit the arrowheads to either flight or sheaf arrows for 3 cp each”, David Attenborough explains, very calmly. Why doesn’t something interesting happen at these places?
Then there are three or four scattered encounters which are somehow way better, and you wonder why the rest of the module isn’t like this – a creepy battle with a massive amount of slowly awakening undead, the body of a high priestess preserved at the height of her beauty which explodes into poisonous dust, etc. The area descriptions are vivid and interesting. The undead have cool names like Janir Kodajy, Ranjar the Great or Jarbyr Raji. There is environmental damage. Mud. Bas-reliefs. Cryptic inscriptions. A room “suffused with a crimson tint”. This is wonderful imagery that should be exploited to the fullest by a module worthy of The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan or at least the crypts found in Judges Guild classics like The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor and Citadel of Fire; instead, you mostly get to fight a bunch of undead vampire things in a pretty place. Playable? Playable. Fun? It should be. Average? Yes. It is an average module that didn’t quite reach for the great potential it had in itself. And that’s a pity.
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Do you remember when the new HackMaster Basic came out? They stripped out the over the top funny from the old HackMaster and were working on a new game. The original HackMaster Basic (I bought a bunch of copies of the paperback at $5 a pop) covered levels 1-5. The New HackMaster Basic Plus covers from levels 1-10. Thinking back on the vast majority of D&D campaigns of run over the years, this would have covered all but two of them.
I would gladly play in a HackMaster campaign, but there is now way I could ever run one. It feels to rules heavy for me to be comfortable running with minimal referring to the rules, and that for me is a deal breaker. Maybe if I had 6 months of steady gaming of the system weekly as a player - but the odds of that happening for me are minuscule to nil. I just don't have the time.
For those willing to put the time into the system, the customization of the PCs is damn near amazing. I'd probably need a spread sheet to follow along, but that's why we have computers. The crunch I'm willing to deal with in a system is much greater when I'm not running the system ;)
Interesting - Giant Rats don't get the HP kicker that most monsters do in HMBP. They get abuse in every system.
I may just have to steal borrow the disease section for my own AD&D campaign. You know there have to be some kicking diseases in Rappan Athuk ;)
The HackMaster Basic Plus PDF is $9.99. The HackMaster Player's Handbook is $39.99 for the PDF. I suspect you can get a lot of mileage out of that $9.99 PDF, as it includes both the Player's and GM sections for levels 1-10.
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Hackmaster is an extensive set of rules. I am rating it based on this fact. While the five star and four star reviews will rate the game based on what it can do (and, in a detailed fashion), it also shows one important fact: if you are going to make THIS particular set of rules your ONLY set of rules to play a fantasy genre, then Hackmaster can be a very good choice. (You should just be aware of the time involved in learning this game.) The price makes up for the fact that it is a very intricate and detailed game experience; otherwise, a lower star rating would have been more appropriate. In my opinion, it gets three stars for recreating the wheel and making things too complicated, where other games have simplified certain game mechanics, but it is free after-all... until you want to upgrade to the next level of Hackmaster, that is...
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Excellent for the lonely gunslinger, this is a solo adventure with no GM required, complete with both basic and advanced pre-generated characters: just pick up and play when the mood takes you. For those who are unfamiliar with Aces & Eights (or who just wish a simple game), the basic version is explained clearly, even a greenhorn role-player should be able to work out what they need to do to play. Potential players who already know, or wish to learn, the full game can either use a character generated using the full rules or play the pre-generated 'advanced' character provided. There's a note warning those using a character of their own that they should discuss this book with their GM if they want his exploits in these pages to be a part of his ongoing story!
There's a brief overview of the Shattered Frontier as a whole and a more extensive introduction to the township of Buena Roca, a company mining town founded but a year ago. This comes complete with additional notes for GMs who fancy including the settlement in their games: it's got considerable potential as somewhere characters might visit or even settle.
Next comes an atmospheric start to the adventure itself, placing the character as the local lawman in Buena Roca and dropping him straight into a violent encounter with some trouble-makers... and then it's over to you, with the standard format of solo adventuring: read a paragraph, select one of the options then proceed to the appropriate numbered paragraph, rolling dice as and when indicated. There's a good plan of the town to help you get oriented, and plenty to do as you work your way through the adventure.
Mechanically, it's sound - if sometimes a bit confusing, and sometimes you cannot find what you might think is the most likely option given the situation... or find assumptions have been made about your actions when their might have been scope for offering a choice. However, it's a shame that the scope for hyperlinking inherent in a PDF document has been neglected, so that you have to page laboriously down or up to find the next paragraph that you want.
Overall, though, it provides good Old West entertainment for those times you cannot round up your posse and run a proper game.
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A stupendous treasure of three books rolled into one, with comics and colour pages found therein.
Don't let the term 'basic' fool you: material for players, game masters and on monsters alike are richly detailed.
Feels ready to play with so much depth already.
Thank you, Kenzer, for making this free product available.
Disclosure: None.
I have no relation with this company, other than years ago, I bought their Kingdoms of Kalamar setting books, and was treated to such similar enriching content.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/09/13/tabletop-review-hackmas
ter-basic/
I think Hackmaster falls pretty firmly in the retro-clone category. Seeing as it basically began as a parody of Dungeons and Dragons and then grew from that, it’s kind of hard to classify it as anything else. If retro-clone has negative connotations for you, it shouldn’t! Hackmaster seems like a great take on classic fantasy-based roleplaying.
The Tome of Hackmaster Basic
Hackmaster is known for having a lot of material available, and sometimes that material comes in strange shapes and sizes. This particular volume is over 200 pages of free game that feels like someone ripped the important parts out of several 2nd and 1st ed. D&D books and then bound them together. Basically what the book does is give you a little introduction to the game, then it thrusts a bunch of character sheets in your face with pre-gen characters on them (which is great, I am a huge proponent of pre-gens). After multiple (and I mean multiple) pages the basic attributes are explained. If you’ve played any standard RPG, I don’t have to explain these to you at all; you’ve got your standard Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, etc. The only novel and cool addition is Honor. Honor is tied to several things, enough so that it actually has its own chapter. How you role-play your character, your bravery, adherence to your alignment, and so on is all honor.
Ok, bring on the character adornment. Pick a class, then pick your stuff. You’ve got weapons and armor, spells for every magic class, abilities for other classes, all the fun stuff that makes character creation interesting (and also makes it take up a full session, remember how I liked pre-gens?). This takes up an enormous chunk of the book. And guess how much I care to relate it all to you? Not at all really. Spell and item lists concern me very, very little.
How to Hack
Jack knew how to hack. He hacked a track back to his shack, then he whacked a plaque celebrating the birth of his nephew Mac before tripping on a crack and falling in a sack. Combat, do you speak it?
Imagine you are playing Hackmaster with your golf team, and suddenly Benjamin gets a wild hare and decides to take a swing at some Orc you’ve been sweet-talking into letting you through the gate. Does he just role-play the event out and let everyone at the table decide how he did? Heck no! He’s got to roll the dice like everybody else. But in Hackmaster, he’s also got to decide his move and then when the GM “counts up” to his initiative, take it. Yes, the GM literally counts from 1 (the first second, as the action moves in seconds) and goes on up until the initiative roll for each person in the encounter is reached. If you are attacked by someone or something before your initiative is counted to, consider yourself surprised. I expect it will hurt. But what does Benjamin roll? A d20 of course! This wouldn’t be a decent retro-clone if you didn’t roll d20s.
Once you’ve been attacked, you get a defensive roll, imagine that. If you don’t have a shield or some defensive item, you’ll be rolling at a disadvantage. Even if you do have a shield, if you fail to defend well enough, the attacker is going to get through and smack you, hard.
Ok, all irreverence aside, combat feels like a more elegant Dungeons and Dragons with one of the differences being your weapon’s speed being taken into account for how many times you can attack in a battle (i.e. on how many “counts” you get to take a shot). The second-by-second action really feels tactical. At this point the combat is explained by an awesome Knights of the Dinner Table comic. I must say, it is quite enjoyable, and it’s a nice combat example.
Included near the back of the book are two low-level adventures, which are a bit short and not terribly fleshed out, but they’ll service. You’ve got your GM advice, monsters, treasure tables, and such all crammed into the back of the book with ads and various other inserts. Which brings me to my next point…
This book has been hacked
The book is a gosh-darned mess. However, that’s not really detrimental to its usefulness. The sections are nice and self-contained, usually not too long. It has a bit of a “wall of text” feel to it most of the time and I get the feeling that if I had to look for a specific rule I would be lost reading paragraphs for a while until I found it. You’ve got full-color Hacklopedia of Beasts mixed in with the basic monsters; various color inserts, comics, and what look like the back covers of various books at the end of chapters or sections; a general tossed-about feeling; and no index! But hey, this is the free version so you get what you pay for. Real fans will pay, and who knows what you might get then? More classes, character advancement, races, heck there’s a nice spreadsheet on page 18 letting you know what cold, hard cash gets you.
Retro-what? Why do I care?
Listen, I’ve been a bit silly with this book, and it’s partly because it all seems so familiar to me (and I don’t want to exhaust you, the reader, with all of the countless details in such a large volume). I’ve played enough D&D and enough RPGs (tabletop, computer, whatever) to where this is another variation of the same ol’ thing. And that’s fine. I think there are some really cool ideas in here, and things that would be great for the person looking for a classic feel with some nice crunch that isn’t ridiculous to churn through. Have you played classic D&D? If not, and you are interested, this is pretty darn close. For the price of free, it’s definitely worth a look.
One of the reasons I’m not really interested in it is because it is another combat-centric, loot-acquiring platform. I mean, that’s pretty much what classic RPGs are about and that can make them really enjoyable, I’m just saying I’m not really interested.
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This is an EXCELLENT introduction to the Hackmaster mindset. The FREE Basic download provides an extensive ruleset to this game, so if you decide to upgrade, then you'll know what you're getting. So that means no more hard-earned cash wasted on a fancy boxtop. Thanks K&C.
Sadly, the author takes the haughty approach of insulting other games (and those who play them) while arrogantly bragging about how great his rules are in comparison. If he was attempting to re-write the original AD&D hardbacks, along with Gygax's conceited opinions, then he certainly has succeeded. This is the only blemish in an otherwise exemplary introduction to a wonderful game.
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This is FRICKING AWESOME SO FAR. It is HUGE.... The Whole FRICKING BOOK HUGE. I am still reading and studying it. 200 pages. HOODIE-FRICKIN"-HOO.... GAME ON DUDES!!! This RAWKS.
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Hoodie Hoo! Hackmaster for free!! What's not to like? Sure there is a fuller rules set with the full product and they want you to try this so you will buy Advanced, but this is actually a complete game on it's own!
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How did Hackmaster get by me all these years without me playing any of the previous editions?! If this new edition (5th) is anything like the past games then I have certainly missed out on a GREAT GAME. I like what I have read so much that I am going to try to get my gaming group to play this instead of our regular 2nd ed D&D game we play. The game system is quite interesting with the "Combat Rose " and the hybrid spell system that uses both spell levels and points for mages. Even the basic abilities make 3d6 seem ok. who needs 17s when 12s will do just fine! Over all HMb seems to be a well-thought out game system that will provide YEARS of FUN
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I find the system overly complicated. Needing to multiply by 2/3 (for example) rather than just roll a die and look up a result is a nuisance, as is needing to move/manipulate minis every second (especially annoying due to intention tremor from my MS). I was also annoyed by not being able to easily find basic information like what to do when two people have the same initiative roll. I'd be interested to see how long seconds take, and how long combats tend to run. It seems that with mny combatants on the goard, it could take quite a long time, and/or get incredibly confusing.
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A lot of love and pride went into this product, but it isn't approachable to newcomers. Even experierenced RPG'ers will be confused by some of the lack of clearly defined rules. This may be a product of the overly dense formatting. It's not really different enough from regular D&D to be appealing.
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I was hoping for a simpler fantasy rules. If you are too, don't look to Hackmaster.
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