hackmaster

[rounser]

It amuses me to see complaints that seriousness and goofiness is an "either or" thing in D&D. Have you people actually ever played an actual game of D&D with real gamers, or are you just yanking our chains? Just about every campaign I've ever played in has a serious pretence, and people periodically start having a laugh or indulging in OOC silliness and goofiness, making bad puns, making fun of NPCs by "what you should have said" to the other players etc.

I've heard rumour that this is so natural to the way the game ends up being played in real life that some folks even go so far as to institute a "pay the pig" type system to combat it...this doesn't fit with your accusation of Hackmaster not knowing what it is. It merely runs with the grain of how a lot of D&D is actually played, rather than pretending it's simulating a highbrow tabletop drama or some unpublished literary fantasy novel.

 

[MerricB]

I'm curious...what did you find to be awful about the skill system?

Expanded initiative system? There isn't much added to initiative, other than accounting for readied weapons and the difference in spellcasting initiatives...

:fathead scratches his enormous monkey noggin

*pulls out Hackmaster rulebooks to check*

Hmm - you're right. Initiative is not a problem. Apologies - I've got too many initiative systems bouncing around in my brain. (Maybe I was thinking of the one in Eldritch Wizardry?)

I'm still not fond of the skill system, though. Way, way too many skills, though that is part of Hackmaster, both I also dislike percentage systems as a matter of principle, and I really dislike systems that begin with too low chances of success for commonplace tasks.

Add to that the arcane calculation of skill ranks, plus how you increase your ability in them... and you have a very clunky system indeed.

Cheers!

 

[Mouseferatu]

It amuses me to see complaints that seriousness and goofiness is an "either or" thing in D&D. Have you people actually ever played an actual game of D&D with real gamers, or are you just yanking our chains? Just about every campaign I've ever played in has a serious pretence, and people periodically start having a laugh or indulging in OOC silliness and goofiness, making bad puns, making fun of NPCs by "what you should have said" to the other players etc.

I've heard rumour that this is so natural to the way the game ends up being played in real life that some folks even go so far as to institute a "pay the pig" type system to combat it...this doesn't fit with your accusation of Hackmaster not knowing what it is. It merely runs with the grain of how a lot of D&D is actually played, rather than pretending it's simulating a highbrow tabletop drama or some unpublished literary fantasy novel.

In my experience...

A game written seriously allows for humor, and less-than-serious play.

A game written comically does not easily allow for serious play.

I want my humor to come from the players, not the game. (That doesn't mean it can't have funny comments or puns; just that they should be in the author's voice, not in the game material, or at least only very rarely from the game material.)

But I have to be able to take the game seriously to start with, or I'll never be able to get into at all, since the humor is the spice, not the main course. If I can't take the game seriously from day one, it's useless as a game, although it might be very funny as reading material. (Witness the game HOL.) However, Hackmaster takes itself too seriously to be read as a parody game.

That's what I meant about it not being able to make up its mind. Sure, my games are full of snide comments, puns, jokes, etc. But the events of the game, and of the world, are solid enough to take seriously. There are funny moments in Lord of the Rings or the tv series CSI, but the foundations of both are perfectly serious, and neither could even remotely be called parody.

 

[Breakdaddy]

We dont get to play Hackmaster much these days, but when we did play every so often it was a nice way to get a nice nostalgic feeling for the "good old days" when we were kids and played D&D one-offs just for fun. These games had little continuity or "realism" but damn, I have never been able to get the same great feeling as those old D&D games back in the day. Hackmaster comes closer for me than 3e. Having said that, 3e/3.5e allow for better game continuity with more fleshed out rules for a wider array of situations. My primary game will remain 3.5e, but for a bit o' nostalgia and the occasional foray into a one-shot killer dungeon I will wipe the dust off of my Hackmaster tomes and gladly delve into an adventure.

 

[Voadam]

I am looking for some info on Hackmaster and was wondering if anyone could tell me anything about it. I really would appreciate any info on how ot compares to d&d and how it came into existance, etc.

How it came into existence. Comic strip Knights of the Dinner was a strip about gamers who played Hackmaster, an over the top version of D&D. Kenzer made the game real and got a license from WotC to use old D&D rules and setting materials.

As a game it is very similar to 1e/2e with some more rules thrown in. Everything has +20 hit points (both characters and monsters) to encourage hacking. There are critical hits and a character traits/benefits/ and flaws system. Character creation is long and involved.

There is humor throughout the material. Lots of juvenile bathroom humor, anachronisms, and some mean spirited humor. The game encourages DM harrasment of players and fairly won high PC body counts. Some of the humor is also very funny.

Many neat D&D elements, classes, monsters, magic are developed in neat ways.

 

[rounser]

A game written seriously allows for humor, and less-than-serious play.

A game written comically does not easily allow for serious play.

Oh come on, it's not Toon. That's a game which refuses to shift gears even if you wanted it to. Neither does it emphasise absurdity to anywhere near the same degree as Paranoia. One of the stated design goals of Hackmaster was so that you can run serious campaigns with it. What I think you're really trying to say is simply, "It's not for me," which is fair enough.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Oh come on, it's not Toon. That's a game which refuses to shift gears even if you wanted it to. Neither does it emphasise absurdity to anywhere near the same degree as Paranoia. One of the stated design goals of Hackmaster was so that you can run serious campaigns with it. What I think you're really trying to say is simply, "It's not for me," which is fair enough.

That's just it, though. I'd prefer if it did go the Toon/Paranoia route. I prefer a game that has a solid identity. I know that if I want a goofy game, I go to Paranoia or Toon. I know that if I want a serious game (at core, not in details), I go to D&D or Kult or WoD. It's not an issue of closed-mindedness; I've just found that a game that cannot keep its focus in the books rarely makes for good game-play.

But yeah, ultimately, that's just my view of it. Isn't that all anybody has, really?

 

[Imperialus]

The big problem I always had with Hackmaster is the absolutly rediculous amouts of work that the DM has to put into it, from tracking the most insignificant of alignment violations to two or three hours it may take to roll up a fully statted NPC. I mean even rolling on the percentage chance for every barmaid that the PC with the Male Pattern Baldness flaw encounters to determine if she finds him more or less attractive takes time.

 

[rounser]

Agreed Imperialus, I think it suffers from the same thing 3E D&D does, in that because it layers on the customisation goodies for players, there needs to be abbreviated set of character generation rules for NPCs. DMs do that anyway by ignoring skills and feats and whatnot because they have to, but the rulebooks should support it explicitly a lot more fully (beyond those tables in the front of the DMG, for instance) because That's The Way The Game Is Played.

 

[Dirt]

The big problem I always had with Hackmaster is the absolutly rediculous amouts of work that the DM has to put into it, from tracking the most insignificant of alignment violations to two or three hours it may take to roll up a fully statted NPC. I mean even rolling on the percentage chance for every barmaid that the PC with the Male Pattern Baldness flaw encounters to determine if she finds him more or less attractive takes time.

That is true, but there are ways to mitigate that, just as there are with other game systems. How many of us, as DMs, actually track encumbrance or spell components of PCs? I barely have time to properly flesh out the next adventure, let alone hassle with mundane crap that doesn't affect the story. The point is that, if you want the rules, they're there! In Hackmaster, I don't even track PC alignment during the game...but if they do something that I feel is an alignment infraction, I write it down and consider it later. As for making fully statted NPCs, it does take a long time...unless you have the Hackmaster Toolkit. It's a program created by a fan, and for 10 bucks, it was mine. I can create a fully statted NPC in minutes flat. In truth though, making a fully statted NPC takes me only slightly less time in D&D than it does Hackmaster, without the program. The only significant difference in Hackmaster for character creation is the character background info, and quirks & flaws (which doesn't really take much more time).

I think the game system can seem a little overwhelming at first. I had a player of my own (Tewligan, a long-standing player in my regular weekly D&D campaign) join us for the monthly Hackmaster session. After the 2nd game, he got discouraged with all of the rules and poo-ed his drawers about it. So, we changed his dirty diaper, slapped some talcum powder on his rump, and sent him home.

Seriously, Tewligan still games with us for the weekly D&D, but he just didn't like all of the rules in Hackmaster (I think he was put off with the extensive background charts in character creation).