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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lwmarti" data-source="post: 2011144" data-attributes="member: 15912">HackMaster is a game that continues the evolution of the AD&D game where the 2nd Edition of AD&D stopped. It kept lots of the more complex features that you might remember from the earlier versions of AD&D, like attack rolls and saving throws that you need to use both your class and level to look up in a table. Then it added a few more tables that you need to use, like the critical hit table, where you roll a d10,000 for the location and a heavily-modified d8 for the severity, or fumbles and mishaps, where you roll a d1,000, and so on. To play this worthy successor to AD&D you either need to keep track of dozens of charts and tables, or just have the HackMaster GameMaster's Shield in front of you. (You also need to improvise the results of the d10,000 and d1,000 rolls using multiple d10 since Lou Zocchi apparently hasn't focused his efforts on filling this small niche for a specialty gaming product yet, but that's probably straying too far from the subject at hand.)The HackMaster GameMaster's Shield has 32 panels that are cleverly folded so that you can reveal only the ones that you need at the time, although this does indeed take a bit of getting used to, sort of like folding a road map does. The outside is covered with art that is oddly reminiscent of the art of the very first AD&D screen, but that's only when you're not in combat. What you enter combat you flip over four of the panels to reveal the charts and tables that you need for combat, different art on the outside panels is revealed. Instead of seeing a bold adventurer holding a sword or gazing in wonder at a chest full of treasure we now see the same adventurer dying a horrible death as the spear from his lizard-like opponent impales him! That transformation, plus the sound of dice rolling for initiative, and you know that the game's getting serious.Besides all of the charts and table that you need to run combat in HackMaster, the other pages contain all sorts of information that comes in handy for a HackMaster GameMaster running a game: potency of alcoholic beverages, random tavern names, how to calculate experience points, random dungeon furnishings, and more. To make it easier to use, the numerous charts are even cleverly color coded to help you locate the information that you need quickly. Plus it's all nicely covered with a layer of durable plastic that lets you write note on it with dry erase markers. You can even download special skull stickers from the Kenzer & Company web site that you can proudly display your HackMaster GameMaster's Shield to demonstrate your proficiency as a HackMaster GameMaster: one skull sticker for each player character death that you cause. It certainly sounds like the HackMaster GameMaster's Shield is about as close to perfection as a gaming product can get. No annoying typographical errors and the like. Sure, they priced it a bit too low, so that Kenzer & Company actually took a loss on making it, but to paraphrase Milton Friedman, I'd rather buy something too cheaply instead of selling it too cheaply, so that's fine by me. Is it perfect? Sadly, the answer is that it is not: as long and hard as I've looked I can't manage to find the tables for clerics turning undead. D'oh! But if you can overlook that slight flaw you'll find that the HackMaster GameMaster's Shield is going to be one of those products whose fame grows with age, much like the old AD&D Combat Wheel; so even if you're not going to run a HackMaster game, there's still a good reason to pick up a copy.</blockquote>

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