Hkat!

[Evil_Dead_Jedi]

Did anyone play Hong Kong Action Theatre! (1st edition, not the travesty that Guardians of Order put out, although I DO love the tri-stat system for what it is, just not for that game)?

What kinds of conversions did you make for it or stories did you play?

 

[grodog]

Yes, I still remeber HKAT! (I was one of the principals of EHP before we sold the company to GOO in 1999), and I'm sure if you dig around a bit, you'll be able to find Gareth Skarka here or on his Adamant site, since he was the primary designer and author for it.

 

[Weregrognard]

I remember playing this back before HK action films were mainstream. As I recall, it made a great "beer & pretzels" game. I really liked the multi-role concept of playing an actor who is in turn playing a role in a film (and "bidding" for the best parts). I might still have the books somewhere. I should dig them out and run it for my group sometime.

 

[el-remmen]

We played a few times and had fun, but like most games that aren't D&D, it just didn't stick.

The bibliogrpahy really helped to introduce me to a lot of Hong Kong films I would never have otherwise heard of, let alone seen!

 

[jdrakeh]

I played it a few times, though my favorite Epitaph games were Age of Empire and Periphery. I really wish I hadn't parted with all of those books, as GoO did a poor job handling the acquired properties, while the other properties simply disappeared

 

[grodog]

FWIW, I still own half of Swords of the Middle Kingdom, with Matt Harrop, one of the other designers. We've talked about re-publishing it at various times, I just haven't made any time to seriously consider it.

Heaven & Earth is now being published by Abstract Nova, who picked it up again after GOO failed. I have no idea what happened to HKAT!---I had tried to get in touch with GOO after the melt-down to see about buying the rights (if they were cheap), but never heard back from them.

Matt may still own the rights to Age of Empire; I don't recall offhand on that one. I imagine that Periphery (both AoE and Periphery were originally published by Epitaph, which EHP later acquired) is still owned by Matt/Gareth/Aaron Rosenberg and whoever else wrote it.

When I've looked, I've seen relatively cheap copies of all of these on eBay or at NobleKnight/etc. Of them, H&E and SMK would be the rarest books, since we only printed 750 of both (perhaps H&E was 1000; I'd have to check). In fact, I still have a some copies of Triad Sourcebook (my only significant contribution to the HKAT! line) up in the attic.

 

[Evil_Dead_Jedi]

I hardly ever have time to play RPGs anymore, and I have never ran HKAT! 1e, but I would love to. Heck, I even considered trying to run it in either Star Wars (probably easily do-able) or one of the D&D worlds (probably not very do-able) since I am not real fond of any "d20" system after AD&D 2e. Too many mechanics that just seem to get in the way of roleplaying. Or even the old Dragon Fist rpg by WotC. That was the coolest AD&D varient system ever. So basic and so easy to understand. I really like the level 10 limit to classes. For the genre it really kept everything in scope.