Football Season Is Over...

...for another year. Congrats to the Saints.

Hopefully this means the end to weekend distractions from my writing...

HackMaster Basic (Review Part 2)

Continued from here. Sorry, this took so long to get out...I was interrupted yesterday by exercise (back to the yoga studio) followed by dinner and a movie.

So, anyway...the BAD and the UGLY.

I call HackMaster Basic a "fantasy heartbreaker," which is not of itself a "bad thing." It's only bad if your game is a commercial venture...which I presume is the case for Kenzer & Co.

It is certainly possible to create fantasy RPGs that are NOT derived from Dungeons & Dragons, and find a niche with those people that enjoy fantasy and dislike the original "granddaddy game of them all." Pendragon and Stormbringer are both exceptionally different from D&D, and very different from each other despite having Chaosium's BRP system as a base (I'm talking about the 1st edition versions). Ars Magica is a vastly different animal, despite having swords and spells and many of the same mythic/historic fantasy animals that populate D&D. And The Riddle of Steel, is even MORE different, and on many levels. John Wick's Orkworld has all the standard D&D races, but so twisted as to feel completely different from D&D...and its system, including tribal/group play is at the opposite end of the gaming spectrum from the individual achievement/character advancement of D&D.

By contrast, HackMaster Basic is clearly derived from Dungeons & Dragons. Got class, race, and level? Check...all the usual, expected ones. Characters advance through gaining "experience points?" Check. Long, derived weapon lists with damage and combat abilities determined by weapon type. Check. Spells divided into limited access levels? Check. Monsters as obstacles/adversaries? Check. "Saving throws?" Check. Premise of dungeon delving/adventuring? Check.

Now here's the thing: D&D has a large following of people. It's style of game play (pick options from class/race/equipment/spells now "Go!") appeals to folks. But if they're going to play a D&D-style game, why would they invest in something other than D&D? If they already know the rules and such.

The short answer: they won't. Which is why fantasy heartbreakers tend to be poor commercial ventures.

Now HackMaster (the original "4th edition") was not really a "heartbreaker." It was AD&D with a couple of add-ons. I have no idea how successful it was or how much money it made for Kenzer, I can only tell you why I bought it...'cause I did buy it and would have purchased many of their modules as well (I only got two) if they hadn't stopped printing them. I got it because I wanted AD&D...and AD&D was no longer on the shelves. I wasn't looking for a heartbreaker, I was looking for the original, and HM4 was pretty much the original game, albeit with some additional add-ons (pixie-fairies and anti-paladins and such). Humorous or not, once WotC started publishing DND3, HM4 became the only game in town for AD&D play. And humorous or not, it still beat the pants off 2nd edition AD&D as well.

HMB is NOT AD&D (and I draw the conclusion that HM5 will not be, either). It is its own game, though a derivative one:

- the standard coin appears to be the silver penny instead of the gold piece (hello, Dragon Quest!)

- combat counts up seconds instead of using rounds/segments (shades of DQ again, and 1st edition Shadow Run)

- ability scores, races, classes, levels, etc. are clearly D&D (though races especially are starting to look D20ish)

- skills...ugh, skills. Good thing they included Pottery and Lip Reading. Oh, and Torture! Because if I use a branding iron on someone and fail my "torture roll" the guy is just going to sneer at me, right? Skills also included: Interrogation AND Intimidation. Also, Glean Information and Current Affairs. A 30 page "skills" chapter.

- mage spells use spell points to cast (like BRP, cast until your "out-o-juice"), though mages only know a limited number of spells based on level

- monsters, despite a slightly different stat block set-up, are clearly modeled off the standard Monster Manual (though with the HM bonus hit points to offset penetration damage and critical hits)

So...the first big Bad is the commercial value of a fantasy heartbreaker (i.e. "not much"). The second big Bad (in my opinion) is also a commercial consideration: just who the hell is this game aimed at? Who's the target audience?

Despite being a 200 page "Basic" book, there're no instructions or introductions about what is an RPG or how the game is to be played. HMB falls prey to the great conceit that "anyone that buys this game must already be familiar with role-playing and will know how to play." Which, in addition to NOT growing the hobby (i.e. being accessible to new folks), isn't always accurate with respect to gamers anyway...if I have no prior background in Dungeons & Dragons or HM how the hell am I supposed to know what the game is supposed to look like? How am I supposed to know how the game is to be played?

Let alone how is the game to be run...there are no instructions to the Game Master as to how to run the game. Oh, there's a GameMaster Only section that includes 3 chapters: a Monsters chapter, a Magic and Treasures chapter (one of the "uglies;" I could not make heads or tails of this chapter), and one chapter called The GameMaster. This last chapter has NOTHING about how to run the game (or design an adventure scenario), being instead comprised of the HackMaster-specific "GM Code of Conduct" Oath (Articles I and II). Those familiar with HM4 know about this...a humorous attempt to codify GM behavior (shades of Synnibarr).

Strangely, the introduction to HMB says that this edition of the game is trying to excise the parody and silliness from the game; that the original HM4 required the parody as part of their licensing agreement and the new edition will be losing that while "keeping the fun."

And then they include an 11 page chapter on dice. How to choose them, how to roll them, how to make them luckier, procedures for isolating poor rolling dice so they don't "infect" your other dice, dice etiquette, etc. Eleven pages...and not a single page on how to run a game or craft an adventure.

Okay, so now we're starting to get into the Ugly parts of the game, and there IS some decided ugliness here, including the aforementioned skills chapter. Character creation is too long, in my opinion...at least for a quick-moving adventure game where death lurks around the corner. The inclusion of BUILD POINTS is the real ball buster here; while attributes are rolled, Build Points (or BPs) are used for all sorts of customizations of your character: buying re-rolls, buying skills, buying special talents (call 'em "baby feats"), buying weapon proficiencies, etc. Including BPs takes one of the simple beauties of the original D&D game (roll stats, choose race/class/gear/spells, now Go!) and turned character death into an excessive punishment with a protracted procedure for character generation.

Combat is excessively fiddly, what with counting seconds, penetration, defensive rolls (hey, it's Palladium!), and armor reducing damage. Oh and shields...don't even get me started on the shields...there's over a page-and-a-half of rules for shields including an additional separate sidebar. Trying to "realistically model combat" in an RPG is a crazy, Quixotic exercise, one that HMB decides to stick a big, fat foot into.

Hit points are done interesting in HMB, being practically a throwback to OD&D as every other level a character re-rolls the last level's hit points rather than adding new ones. While interesting it turns ugly at the prospect of having to track prior levels hit point rolls...but this is a just minor ugly.

One thing I miss from HM4 is the "yield factor" of individual monsters...there's no yield in the descriptions here. There's also no "treasure type" or treasure found in lair. Instead, treasure is awarded based on EPV (Experience Point Value) of monsters. So a yeti (EPV 417) cross-referenced on the Encounter Levels table of the Treasure chapter, provides a "Silver piece equivalence of treasure" of 146. Intuitive, right? Then the GM chooses treasure for the Yeti equivalent to 146 silver pieces...so maybe a great sword (30sp), a large shield (60sp) and a piece of jewelry worth 56sp. I guess.

[by the way, said Yeti with an EPV of 417 is an 8th level encounter, being suitable to challenge a 5-person party of 8th level characters. A yeti is roughly a 4HD creature that has two claw attacks ("staggered every 5 seconds") each doing damage as a dagger being wielded by someone with 18/51 strength. Their math about encounter levels seems a little iffy to me]

[did you catch the part about a great sword costing 30sp and a large shield costing 60sp? For 65sp I can pick up ringmail...and a shield can be splintered and destroyed by a heavy blow in combat]

There's no set chance for the appearance of magic items, but one special item should be included "for half or two-thirds of encounters." And "roughly half" of these should be of the non-permanent variety (potions and such). That's it as far as treasure selection guidelines, though there are some random tables dependent on level of encounter. However, in HMB these only go up to level 5 (so you'll have to make up your own chart for an 8th level encounter like the yeti).

Ugly.

And did I mention no dragons (nor purple worms) in the monster list? Well, I guess it's not called Dungeons & Dragons even if it is derived from the game.

Anyway, that's all the stuff I wanted to specifically note about the game. In case you can't tell, I am a bit disappointed. NOT because I was totally enthused about the publication of HackMaster Basic in the first place...in all honesty, I had not expected to purchase it at all, having become completely enamored of B/X D&D for all my dungeon delving needs. However, I thought it would be more than this, better than this.

HMB is too smug, too arrogant. I'm not talking about the snarky humor and authorial voice throughout the game...THAT I enjoy. But the conceit that the people who are going to buy it already know how to play it (without instructions from the authors) is a gross assumption, especially for a "basic" game that is to be a precursor for a more "advanced" edition. It's laziness...unless you mean your game to be a humorous curiosity meant to be included in a gamer's collection rather than actually played. But if that's the case, it takes itself far too seriously and is far too heavy on rules.

And the page count...oh, hell. When I saw the Otus cover, I half-expected HMB to be a humorous/parody treatment of Moldvay's Basic set...a HackMaster version of B/X. THAT would have been cooler than what they gave us. I can scarcely imagine what the extended version (HackMaster 5th edition) is going to be like. Despite certain cool innovations, I have little interest in playing some 400+ page monstrosity, when B/X (or even HM4) is just fine and dandy.

Cheers, folks. Thanks to Kenzer for the nice .pdf...sorry if my assessment seems harsh.

HackMaster Basic (Review Part 1)

All right, let's give the good news first:

HackMaster Basic isn't terrible.

As I'm writing this, I'm making an assumption that readers are already familiar with the original HackMaster game. In brief, HackMaster is AD&D (mainly 1st edition), organized into an over-the-top parody format...and yet a bit more coherent than the original 1st edition books. Called "the 4th edition" it was published 'round about 2001 by Kenzer, making it pretty much the earliest "retro-clone" to hit the market.

Not that Kenzer would call themselves a retro-cloner. However, when I was first disenchanted with D20 and Wizards of the Coast, HM4 was the first game that actually brought me back to Old School fantasy gaming. I loved it. I own both the PHB and DMG and if the monster manuals had been published in fewer than EIGHT BOOKS, I might still be playing HackMaster.

HackMaster Basic (hereafter called HMB) isn't terrible, but my first impression was that it was an unreadable mess. I have since revised my opinion. It is simply radically different from its predecessor game.

Part 2nd edition AD&D, part D20, part DragonQuest, and with some parts Palladium and GURPS, HackMaster Basic (a precursor to their "Advanced 5th Edition") is very, very different from HM4. It is no longer a parody; while still humorous (or at least irreverent), it has taken great pains to be its very own game.

It has truly become a fantasy heartbreaker.

HM4 wasn't a heartbreaker...it was an AD&D clone and parody, but it wasn't trying to eat into the fantasy RPG market, nor "fix" problems with AD&D. HMB (and presumably HackMaster 5) is most definitely a capital "H" Heartbreaker, trying to fix (or improve) all the things about AD&D that aren't done the way it likes.

And as I said, HMB isn't terrible. Neither is it gibberish (in my defense, my first impression came in part from trying to follow the "Quick Start" rules at the beginning of the book...once I skipped them and started with Chapter 1, things made a lot more sense). Is it unnecessarily over-complicated and over-burdened with rules? Well...

For a "basic" game, it's close to 200 pages long. That's pretty massive...far more than my 64 page interests. Sure, a lot of this can be attributed to monster and treasure descriptions, a ten page FULLY ILLUSTRATED combat example (more on that in a bit)...but even so, MASSIVE. And excessively fiddly in parts (do I care what my rate of "drag" is for dragging a body along the ground? No, not really).

So where to start with my analysis...the good, the bad, or the ugly?

I guess the good...after all, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, right?

The artwork is nice, though much of it is the usual (for HackMaster) recycled and tweaked TSR stuff. Some of the new rules I REALLY like. I'm a fan of dice mechanics that "blow the tops off" and the penetration dice are neat, though I wish there was more consistency to their use (that's not a back-handed compliment, just a plea for less search & handling time memorizing which mechanics use penetration dice and which ones don't).

I am a fan of the Honor System though I recognize it was certainly the clunkiest, most subjective part of the original HM4. In HMB it feels a bit more stream-lined, and it's still an arbitrary way for the GM to hand out "role-playing awards" (which I'm not a fan of). HOWEVER, Honor IS a reward system that affects behavior (especially with regard to alignment and class) far more than 2nd edition AD&D's f'd up XP system or 1st edition's XP penalties for poor alignment play. I suspect it would bring a lot of fun to a game...plus it eliminates any need for the GM to "fudge" dice rolls, given its use as a metagame mechanic (in fact, HMB is very explicit on the subject). Plus the whole concept of "Honor" feels more at home in HackMaster and its over-the-top-ness than in any other game I've ever read, including the myriad westernized "Oriental" games that have been published over the years. Putting an honor system in a samurai game makes it feel contrived...putting it in HackMaster is part of the game's wacky fun!

Quirks and Flaws are great for a similar reason, every character gets one of each at random. Not so debilitating that they'll ruin your character's day, these mandatory negative characteristics fit great with the HMB game world...who are these dysfunctional folks heading down into the dungeons to loot and pillage anyway? Less-than-perfect "heroes" for certain!

In the character class section, we find HMB only has four character classes: fighters, thieves, mages, and clerics. This is fine...it IS a "basic" game after all.

[note to all: folks who have been checking out the recent info on WotC's "Red Box" B&D will find some eerie similarities between it and HackMaster Basic, including the same four character classes, the same four character races - human, dwarf, elf, halfling - and the same limited level selection (HMB stops at 5th level; Red Box was supposed to stop at 5th level). Why these games seem to parallel each other is a mystery I don't care to solve right now]

Of the changes to the classes I very much like the thief's Luck ability which allows a thief character to use a metagame ability to avoid calamities. Basically the thief gets 20 luck points (+1 per level) that can be spent to save his bacon as long as the player can come up with a suitable reason for the thief to avoid his o-so-richly-deserved fate. It sure makes it easier for a guy to be disarming poison traps and such when you're packing "get out of jail free" cards!

Magic-user spells are NOT Vancian in nature (one of only many radical departures from AD&D) to which I say: uh, so? But they still have spell books the addition of Apprentice and Journeyman skills seem good...but even AD&D let an MU pack four spells in their starting spell book (here you get three). I guess what I like is the new way in which spells are categorized in HMB...you'll find different spells at different levels than are familiar based on their tweaks and usefulness in the game. In the end I guess this is just "interesting."

Clerical spells, on the other hand, are great! Clerics gain ONE SPELL PER DAY PER LEVEL. Period. If their 3rd level, they have one first, one second, and one third level spell. Wisdom still gives them bonus spells, but since "deities consider it wasteful to grant the same spell twice" each spell must be different. Man, I love this...it certainly makes clerical spells feel more miraculous and divine. Most clerics have the potential to use any weapon and they have the second best hit dice and full armor, so they don't feel under-powered. Again, the cleric becomes the paladin.

Skipping through most of the rest of the book, we find a 28 page monster section, containing a great many monsters with fairly brief stat blocks (there's no attempt by HMB to stat monsters like characters a la D20). Like Holmes Basic the list includes some monsters that will be deadly to lesser (i.e. HMB level) characters: trolls, vampires, hill giants, etc. Some especially notable absences include such D&D standards as the purple worm and the dragon. No, there is not a single dragon of any color in HMB. People who hate "level drain" will be pleased to note its absence from the game rules, with negative-energy undead draining Constitution points instead.

Okay, that's about it for "the Good." Part 2 will concern the Bad and the very, very Ugly.

: )

Top Secret Project & Companion Update

So what the heck have I been doing the last couple weeks, since I haven't been blogging/writing? Well, while I have been a little busy with "normal" life, the truth is that I've been a little lazy.

I mean, that's how I see it. Certainly, I've had the time to do things (if I'd taken the time to do it), but I haven't been organizing my life as well as I feel I should, letting things slide here and there, watching too much TV, listing to too much sports talk radio, napping in my truly free time, and just living a bon vivant lifestyle rather than being productive.

Not that I haven't done SOME stuff. I am currently working on an O-So-Very-Secret-Writing-Project that I am not quite ready to reveal the details of...in fact, unlike the B/X Companion I don't intend to say anything AT ALL about it until it's completely written...well, other than the following:

- it's a 60-64 page RPG

- it will probably NOT be a boxed game

- it is NOT "post-apocalyptic" (at this point)

- I am going to be much less ambitious with the artwork than the Companion

- I am working on it in collaboration with my buddy Kris

The good doctor is pretty excited about it, which is cool, and even though I'm guessing I'll be doing most/all of the writing it is still great to have a PIC (Partner In Crime) to bounce ideas off. Writing the B/X Companion in a Void was (and to a degree still is!) greatly frustrating at times.

Now onto news about the Companion...I have been holding off on writing anything for a couple reasons recently, the main reason being that I've been on a bit of hiatus from the project. For which I got a little chewed out by the good Doctor (Kris) just last night. "You've done too much work on the damn thing to let it slide!" He's right, of course.

And like I've said, I feel like I've been lazy on the matter. One of the biggest pitfalls of this kind of thing (other than "analysis paralysis" and "waiting for things to line up perfect") is "resting on one's laurels." I wrote a book...yay. But writing it ain't the same as publishing it for others; time to do the rest of the work.

I was just down at Gary's Games today, talking about local designers, conventions, and networking. Unfortunately, while Seattle apparently has a thriving design community (too many smarties, I guess) there seems to be nada in place as far as organization. Hell, I hear the Big Name Publishers don't even bother showing up to the big local convention (Dragonflight) as the thing is generally put on around the same time as GenCon and they are too busy preparing/recovering from THAT to worry about the local yokels. Guess I'm on my own (still).

So today I'm cutting breakfast short and getting back to what I need to do: first, some chores around the house (!!), and second getting some REAL writing done. Yes, I will also get the Hackmaster Basic review posted, too (talked about THAT at the game shop, too...mm-mm), and hopefully AT LEAST ONE MORE MAP for the damn module. Ugh, I wish I was as talented in that regard as some of you bloggers (you know who you are!).

And oh yeah: artists? I need your artwork to keep coming in. February is a short month, but this is going to be the Big Push, as far as I'm concerned. I haven't been getting on anyone's ass because A) I'm not paying you, and B) I can criticize folks for not working when I haven't been doing what I need to do myself. But I need those pieces, folks. Everyone who asked for ideas/assignments got different ones from me...if you don't think you'll be able to do something, let me know so I can give the piece to someone else.

That being said, I think I may need to offer an "incentive program." How about this...anyone who contributes more than four pieces of art will get a free .pdf copy of the Companion when it's finished. Hell, I might be willing to give it away for THREE pieces of art (and large pieces, like the cover leaf, will be considered two or more pieces)...as I said earlier, I'm less concerned with making money on this thing than with getting a quality project into the hands of the public.

People who are interested in contributing art (that haven't contacted me yet) can email me at bxblackrazor AT gmail DOT com.

All right...now, back to work.

: )

What the F?

Is this seriously going on still?

Slow Week...

...at least for blogging.

Sorry, folks...I haven't even had a chance to catch up on my blog reading let alone writing.

Of course, tomorrow's my day off so I'm sure I'll be throwing up a post or three. I have completed a read-through-and-a-half of Hackmaster Basic, and I've got some notes for my review post. It's tough because there's so MUCH to discuss: the good, the bad, and the really, really ugly. I will probably need to break it up into a two or three part post...but I know, I know, you folks will believe it when you see it. Tomorrow, no later, I swear.

(O Fickle Readers! I even lost a follower this week dammit!)

There is other RPG news on my front as well, but I'll get to that later as well. Hope everyone's been having a good one! For my part, the rain's been back in full force up in the Pac NW and my post-apocalyptic itch has stopped itching...other things, they are a-rising!

Later, gators...

B/X Companion Poll Closed

Well, the poll is closed and I'll be taking it down. For reasons of posterity, I'm posting the results here:

Out of 95 people that answered:

31% are interested in buying my B/X Companion (29)

49% are waiting to see the price of the finished product (47)

20% are probably not going to purchase it (19)

Considering I've done no advertising for this thing except on my blog, I'm rather pleased. Hopefully, it'll end up being a nice enough package that more folks will be interested.

Mmm...sorry, that's it for tonight. I am really beat and am going to bed.

P.S. My wife is bugging me to review the HackMaster Basic book. Jeez! She's never even played AD&D! Ah, well...this week folks, I promise!