AnthonyRoberson
First Post
Greetings Hack fans. Without further ado is my review of the latest HackMaster adventure, Little Keep on the Borderlands. Feeback is as always appreciated.
Little Keep on the Borderlands is an adventure and mini-campaign setting for 4th Edition HackMaster. The book is a 144-page perfect bound softcover with black-and-white interior and color cover (including color overland maps inside the front and back covers). It’s priced at $17.99 (US). Interior line art is well executed and attractive. Dungeon maps are simple and easy to reference. I found them a welcome change from the Photoshop excesses I have seen of late, but you might be disappointed by their lack of detail. The cover painting of an owlbear decimating an adventuring party is a nice spoof of the picture on the first page of Keep on the Borderlands, the original D&D module that this one parodies and is based upon.
Little Keep covers much of the same ground as the original module, albeit in much greater detail (and of course in classic HackMaster style). If you are not familiar with the original, Little Keep describes a frontier keep and a handful of nearby encounter areas. The largest of these are the so-called ‘mines of chaos’, a labyrinth of caves inhabited by a variety of monsters, including several competing humanoid groups. A likely campaign scenario will see the PCs use the keep as a safe base while they make multiple forays to clean out the nearby mines and cart back the loot.
Unlike the original module, Little Keep actually has a back-story and information about the area of Garweeze World in which it is located. An appendix provides complete statistics and background information for more than fifty notable NPCs that call the keep home. The NPCs detailed stories (not to mention their interesting quirks/flaws) should give the GM plenty of material to keep the players engaged and plenty of opportunities for their characters to get themselves into trouble. One surprising bonus is the hooks that tie Little Keep back to Quest for the Unknown. I won't provide any spoilers, but players that have been adventuring in Quesqueton might have a good idea why the keep prefect seems so glum…
The sprawling mines of chaos take up the biggest portion of the book. The mines are divided into two main levels with each level further divided into five sublevels. Each sublevel is dominated by one humanoid race. The individual rooms’ contents are loving detailed (the better for the PCs to loot them) and that crazy HackMaster humor is much in evidence. Just reading the various ‘inspirational’ wall hangings that can be found in the hobgoblin caves had me laughing out loud. The authors also thankfully take some pains to address the uneasy relationships between the neighboring groups and also the PCs’ probable impact on the balance of power in the mines.
Little Keep is a pretty thick book on first inspection, but this is somewhat misleading. Nearly forty pages are taken up with battle sheets and another twenty or so with maps and ImageQUEST illustrations. All sixty odd pages are perforated for removal. The battle sheets are very handy as a quick reference for the monsters' statistics and to keep track of hit points and armor damage, but I don't want to rip them out and I don't want to crack the book's spine with photocopying. I wish that Kenzer would follow in the steps of publishers like Necromancer Games and post the pages in PDF format on their website. I would much rather burn printer ink than mangle the adventure.
I was pleased to see some of the new features introduced in this module like the lists of 'potential yield' in GPs and EPs at the beginning of each encounter. This just encourages a 'shoot and loot' mentality you say? Well, remember that this is HackMaster. If you want a deep roleplaying experience, I hear that the 2nd edition of Nobilis should be in stores now. In a similar vein, the various buildings that can be found inside the keep's walls are in a format that provides useful information like the number and identity of the occupants and physical dimensions of the building. All of this information is presented right at the beginning of each building's entry. A great idea that makes the GM's life easier.
I do have one other disappointment with Little Keep beside the aforementioned problem with tearing out so many pages. I can't believe the number of magic items the players can get their dirty little hands on. Just the haul in magic weapons and armor is excessive in my opinion. Every GM's campaign is different, but take a close look before turning your players loose in the candy store. There are also a few typographical errors like the spelling of Farzy/Farzey. All this said I liked Little Keep quite a lot. It won’t break any new ground, but it is a well crafted dungeon crawl for the discriminating HackMaster player.
Little Keep on the Borderlands is an adventure and mini-campaign setting for 4th Edition HackMaster. The book is a 144-page perfect bound softcover with black-and-white interior and color cover (including color overland maps inside the front and back covers). It’s priced at $17.99 (US). Interior line art is well executed and attractive. Dungeon maps are simple and easy to reference. I found them a welcome change from the Photoshop excesses I have seen of late, but you might be disappointed by their lack of detail. The cover painting of an owlbear decimating an adventuring party is a nice spoof of the picture on the first page of Keep on the Borderlands, the original D&D module that this one parodies and is based upon.
Little Keep covers much of the same ground as the original module, albeit in much greater detail (and of course in classic HackMaster style). If you are not familiar with the original, Little Keep describes a frontier keep and a handful of nearby encounter areas. The largest of these are the so-called ‘mines of chaos’, a labyrinth of caves inhabited by a variety of monsters, including several competing humanoid groups. A likely campaign scenario will see the PCs use the keep as a safe base while they make multiple forays to clean out the nearby mines and cart back the loot.
Unlike the original module, Little Keep actually has a back-story and information about the area of Garweeze World in which it is located. An appendix provides complete statistics and background information for more than fifty notable NPCs that call the keep home. The NPCs detailed stories (not to mention their interesting quirks/flaws) should give the GM plenty of material to keep the players engaged and plenty of opportunities for their characters to get themselves into trouble. One surprising bonus is the hooks that tie Little Keep back to Quest for the Unknown. I won't provide any spoilers, but players that have been adventuring in Quesqueton might have a good idea why the keep prefect seems so glum…
The sprawling mines of chaos take up the biggest portion of the book. The mines are divided into two main levels with each level further divided into five sublevels. Each sublevel is dominated by one humanoid race. The individual rooms’ contents are loving detailed (the better for the PCs to loot them) and that crazy HackMaster humor is much in evidence. Just reading the various ‘inspirational’ wall hangings that can be found in the hobgoblin caves had me laughing out loud. The authors also thankfully take some pains to address the uneasy relationships between the neighboring groups and also the PCs’ probable impact on the balance of power in the mines.
Little Keep is a pretty thick book on first inspection, but this is somewhat misleading. Nearly forty pages are taken up with battle sheets and another twenty or so with maps and ImageQUEST illustrations. All sixty odd pages are perforated for removal. The battle sheets are very handy as a quick reference for the monsters' statistics and to keep track of hit points and armor damage, but I don't want to rip them out and I don't want to crack the book's spine with photocopying. I wish that Kenzer would follow in the steps of publishers like Necromancer Games and post the pages in PDF format on their website. I would much rather burn printer ink than mangle the adventure.
I was pleased to see some of the new features introduced in this module like the lists of 'potential yield' in GPs and EPs at the beginning of each encounter. This just encourages a 'shoot and loot' mentality you say? Well, remember that this is HackMaster. If you want a deep roleplaying experience, I hear that the 2nd edition of Nobilis should be in stores now. In a similar vein, the various buildings that can be found inside the keep's walls are in a format that provides useful information like the number and identity of the occupants and physical dimensions of the building. All of this information is presented right at the beginning of each building's entry. A great idea that makes the GM's life easier.
I do have one other disappointment with Little Keep beside the aforementioned problem with tearing out so many pages. I can't believe the number of magic items the players can get their dirty little hands on. Just the haul in magic weapons and armor is excessive in my opinion. Every GM's campaign is different, but take a close look before turning your players loose in the candy store. There are also a few typographical errors like the spelling of Farzy/Farzey. All this said I liked Little Keep quite a lot. It won’t break any new ground, but it is a well crafted dungeon crawl for the discriminating HackMaster player.
