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.