Turanil said:
Aaargh!!! All you are doing is teasing my curiosity, not quenching it! I will not buy a single book of this game, I swear!
In order to really understand what Hackmaster is, you have to be a fan of KoDT. The confusion so many people have about this game indicates to me it was perhaps not properly marketed.
Knights of the Dinner Table is a comic strip about 5 gamers who spend most of their time playing an RPG called Hackmaster. Hackmaster is a transparent kludge of AD&D and Rolemaster. However, and this is the tricky part, it assumes that this imaginary game 1/2 AD&D and 1/2 Rolemaster dominated the industry in the 80's and 90's and has gone through more and more complex and detailed editions.
So, as to "what is the Hackmaster RPG?" the answer is; take that game that's 1/2 AD&D and 1/2 Rolemaster that you're imagining, and then imagine people played it for 20 years, constantly making the rules more and more detailed and byzintine. Imagine 20 years of a Dragon-type magazine for it coming out every month. Imagine guidebooks and conventions.
That's the Hackmaster RPG. In one sense, it's totally serious. It's a real RPG you can really play, and people do. On the other hand, it's very hard to take it seriously when you see some of the tables and rules. Mind you, looking back on original AD&D, it's hard to take some of THAT seriously in this day and age.
And that's the point. Hackmaster hates "this day and age." The idea of "systems" for RPGs is antithetical to Hackmaster. Hackmaster, like AD&D, isn't a system, it's a mismash of dozens of different rules, each with their own paradigm, ignorant of the other rules.
Many AD&D players yearn for this kind of game, harkening back to AD&D and imagining what it would have been if there'd never been a Lorainne Williams or Wizards of the Coast. Many don't like D&D3, particularly because of the sense it makes.