Hackmaster and its Uses

I thought I'd speak about Hackmaster for a moment.  There have been 2 editions of Hackmaster.  The first was called Hackmaster 4th edition.  It was brought out when D&D was in its 3rd edition phase and was a licensed parody of AD&D first and 2nd edition.   It was meant to be "the game the Knights of the Dinner Table actually play."   As a piece of writing it's true genius.   It really took everything that was AD&D and turned it up to 11.   It blew everything way over the top.   It's character flaws and quirks system made the characters into physical and emotional cripples, if you weren't careful, and it's alignment tracking and honor system were mind-numbingly fiddly and impossible.

Nevertheless, there are 3 things of real use in the books.  First, the spell list.  It contains all the AD&D spells, plus a bunch of more entertaining spells that are fully compatible with AD&D  (skipping betty fireballs, sidewinder fireballs, and of course "Hurl Animal" spells all come to mind).   Second,  there are the magic items.  Again, the GMG contains all the magic items from AD&D, but also a host of additional ones.  I've used several of them as inspirations already, and plan to use some more.   Third, there are the monster books, of which 9 separate volumes were published (I have about half of them, I believe).  The good thing is that the monster stats are pretty much completely compatible with AD&D use, so they can be ported over with no trouble.   There are a huge number of monsters in the books, and a large number of variants to standard monsters.  So there aren't just orcs, there are Highland Orcs, orcs of the southern league, slaver orcs, orkin bandits, gibbering orcs and so forth.   The monster selection can really get the creative juices flowing for adventure ideas.

In addition to the things that are actually useful for an AD&D campaign directly, there are some interesting features that I find interesting from a rules perspective.   The central combat difference from AD&D was the "kicker", which was the process of giving every single monster, NPC, and character 20 extra hit points.  So a Hackmaster bandit would have 20+1d6 hit points, an Ogre (common), would have 20+4d8+1.    To balance this, there were several ways to increase damage inflicted:  first of all there was "penetration damage", whereby anytime you rolled max damage  on a die, you'd get another damage die (minus 1 point), much like Savage Worlds.   Second, on a natural 20, you'd score a critical hit (now, the critical hit system required rolling a d10,000, and adjusting it with a crazy series of modifiers, and 9 times out of 10 in practice you'd end up doing double damage, but the other times, watch out).

I like the idea of the kicker, and used it a few times, because I wanted some way to make level 0 guys actually worth having around, and actually be able to stick around for more than 10 seconds.  I think we've achieved that better in this campaign with the gang-up bonus and the "wound effect" roll for when people go below 0 hit points, but the kicker is an interesting method too.

The races and classes are a bit wilder too.  They have a bunch of sub-races (from Grunge Elves to Gnome Titans) and a variety of classes, from Berserkers and Barbarians, to Battlemages.  But, the thing I don't like is that the old AD&D "training for levels" is so darn integral to class balance (barbarians don't have to train, but have a hideously slow XP advancement rate) that you've got to use it.

The second edition of Hackmaster (5th edition), is what is coming out now.   So far, they've issued Hackmaster Basic, about which I've written before, and just now the Advanced Hackmaster Hacklopedia of Beasts.  I've gotten the PDF of the Hacklopedia, and have found it less useful than the older Hackmaster monster books.   The 5th edition Hackmaster is scrubbed free of parody and of impossible systems, (although not of attitude), and is meant to be a straight, playable game, but likewise is not directly convertable to AD&D like 4th edition.