Yesterday I had my second session playing HackMaster, ever.

I feel a bit torn about the system. According to some online writings it is derived from AD&D, but whew! There's a thousand and one skills ranging from fire-building to about a hundred different social skills (or so it feels).

Of course Listening is a separate skill from Observation and Search skill obviously has nothing to do with Scrutiny. To me the skill list seems worse than D&D 3.0, if at all possible.

Then there's the whole "grittyness" thing. A whole bunch of convulted math and recordkeeping is required to track the healing of different wounds. Aaaaand it all will be obsolete if you have a cleric in the party. Yeah, cleric is kinda mandatory to have in the party, as the good old oldskool rules pretty much requires you to have one.

Task resolution is a bit of a nightmare. Sometimes you roll d20, sometimes d100. Sometimes you need to score a high number, sometimes low. Sometimes you roll d12 for initiative, sometimes some other dice. As I play a ranger, if the GM says that players should roll d10 as initiative, I roll a d8, because of a class feature.

I kinda like that the beginning characters are poor. I rarely have the opportunity to count copper and silver pieces. Luckily the ratios are the good old 10 to 1, instead of some obscure 12 to 1 or 24 to 1, that for example Warhammers 1&2 use.

Before this we played E6 D&D 3.x. You know the one that has a level cap at level 6. We played in Golarion, I was the GM, and the players jokingly named the system "Mathfinder".

Math in that seems pretty trivial when comparing to Hackmaster, so I am therefore naming the system "MathMaster", from hereone, until the end of times.


Have you guys had any experiences with this system?

I picked up HM Basic quite some time ago. I really liked what I read. But I don't think I could get a game of it going. Not because of the system, or the game itself. But with 5E and my interest in old school I just don't see it happening.

I have many of the same problems with it that you have. It's simply too complicated for my tastes, and its skill system is really bad. When I saw there was an entirely separate skill for making a fire, I knew there were issues. That level of granularity in itself isn't a bad thing in itself, but it is a problem when certain classes get very few points to spend on skills. I've never played HM, but on my read-through it seemed to me like it would be almost impossible to make a character who was broadly competent in a lot of areas. The sheer number of skills meant that you would have gaping holes right from the start in your abilities which really wouldn't get any better as you leveled up.

Quote from: Moracai;834545Yesterday I had my second session playing HackMaster, ever. I feel a bit torn about the system. According to some online writings it is derived from AD&D, but whew! There's a thousand and one skills ranging from fire-building to about a hundred different social skills (or so it feels). Of course Listening is a separate skill from Observation and Search skill obviously has nothing to do with Scrutiny. To me the skill list seems worse than D&D 3.0, if at all possible. Then there's the whole "grittyness" thing. A whole bunch of convulted math and recordkeeping is required to track the healing of different wounds. Aaaaand it all will be obsolete if you have a cleric in the party. Yeah, cleric is kinda mandatory to have in the party, as the good old oldskool rules pretty much requires you to have one. Task resolution is a bit of a nightmare. Sometimes you roll d20, sometimes d100. Sometimes you need to score a high number, sometimes low. Sometimes you roll d12 for initiative, sometimes some other dice. As I play a ranger, if the GM says that players should roll d10 as initiative, I roll a d8, because of a class feature. I kinda like that the beginning characters are poor. I rarely have the opportunity to count copper and silver pieces. Luckily the ratios are the good old 10 to 1, instead of some obscure 12 to 1 or 24 to 1, that for example Warhammers 1&2 use. Before this we played E6 D&D 3.x. You know the one that has a level cap at level 6. We played in Golarion, I was the GM, and the players jokingly named the system "Mathfinder". Math in that seems pretty trivial when comparing to Hackmaster, so I am therefore naming the system "MathMaster", from hereone, until the end of times. Have you guys had any experiences with this system?

Quote from: Brand55;834554I have many of the same problems with it that you have. It's simply too complicated for my tastes, and its skill system is really bad. When I saw there was an entirely separate skill for making a fire, I knew there were issues. That level of granularity in itself isn't a bad thing in itself, but it is a problem when certain classes get very few points to spend on skills. I've never played HM, but on my read-through it seemed to me like it would be almost impossible to make a character who was broadly competent in a lot of areas. The sheer number of skills meant that you would have gaping holes right from the start in your abilities which really wouldn't get any better as you leveled up.

That sounds like the 'old' HackMaster (2001) to me. The new edition is much more streamlined - or at least it was when I last worked with it in 2011. I honestly haven't really done more than a quick flip through the new Player's Handbook. I hope the Fire-Building skill didn't transfer from the old edition.

Quote from: Mark Plemmons;834560That sounds like the 'old' HackMaster (2001) to me. The new edition is much more streamlined - or at least it was when I last worked with it in 2011. I honestly haven't really done more than a quick flip through the new Player's Handbook. I hope the Fire-Building skill didn't transfer from the old edition.

I'm afraid it's still there. See the table on page 156 or its entry on page 171. It has a cost of 2 (making it twice as expensive as other skills like Gambling and Jumping) and is a Universal skill, so anyone can use it even if not trained (test against Wisdom).

Doing a quick count, it looks like there's 77 skills (technically more since skills like Craft are a whole bunch of skills in one). Roughly half are Universal and can be used untrained, but your odds of success will be very poor when using those to do anything above Average difficulty.

It has a short learning curve. Once you get past that, it plays as easily as any other D&D like system.

The combat system is the best part of it IMHO. It keeps everyone engaged all the time. It favors tactics and smart thinking. Most importantly it's just FUN. Also the "penetrating" rolls are interesting.

Create a quick crib sheet of your most used skills.

We played 5e for a handful of sessions. I really liked it. My players missed being super-heroes. It was not a good match for the group, but the game is solid IMHO.

Any game that requires you to pore over an exhaustive skill list and spend all your points on differently named versions of "observant" to not get screwed because a roll vs observation instead of perception was called for isn't worth the effort.

Rolemaster syndrome.

Fair Warning:  I love compicated systems.  I find games like Living Steel/Phoenix Command to be charmingly engaging. So much so that I revisited  the system and wrote my own way of using that and inflicted it on my gaming group.

I've been running HM5 for my family game for about a year now.  My 10 year old daughter still has to be reminded to take her DR off the damage she takes, but she's perfectly able to differentiate the difference between a roll and a check when I call for skills.

Overall, I haven't had much problem with the skills list, it's not as exhaustive as, say, Palladium.  I find that most of the time the characters are just using observation rolls (so roll high and add your skill to it).  They're the easiest to just call for without giving an indication of their overall success (I invert the dice on them sometimes without telling them to keep it mysterious).  Even someone with just a novice rating in a universal skill will still have an average of almost 50% success on a check (Average modifier for a check is -40%)

The damage and healing is slightly wonky, I suppose, but it's not so ingrained into the system that you can't ignore it if you want to and just use the running total method.  I find that it actually helps the characters to use the by-wound system when there isn't magical healing available though, which has happened.  With each of the small wounds healing a little bit every day, a couple days of resting up can do wonders for a party.  Most of the time, none of them go for the quick healing talents either, which would have a pretty hefty effect.  To track the healing, I have them just make a tick mark next to the line of the wound for every day it's healed.  When the ticks match the wound, it heals by a point.

Clerical healing isn't as awe-inspiring when you make them roll randomly for the spells, and since they only ever get one (or maybe two, if they have bonus spells) spell per level per day.  If someone has Great Honor, I let them pick one of their spells for the day.  It goes quite a ways towards making divine magic feel different from arcane.

First Aid is about the most useful skill around, almost all the characters take a purchase or two right from the get go.  You can heal a point from each wound during the golden hour and reduce the healing time for wounds with it.  

I love the combat system, with its opposed to hit rolls and DR armor, but it leads to kind of a 'plink plink plink OMGCRITDEAD' feel to the damage.  It makes it hard to guage the level of threat to send after the characters.  Sometimes they'll be right on it, other times it's hard to watch.  The effects are pretty interesting sometimes, like when my daughter's fighter nearly lost an arm to a really nasty spear hit and wound up with a permanent wound that reduced her by .75 STR and gave her a -1 to hit with her primary hand.  She's dealt with it well though, pretty much accepting that she's going to be waiting for a while to get it healed (they're nowhere NEAR civilization).  The 'counting up the seconds of the fight' system is a fun novelty, and as they mentioned earlier, it's great for keeping people involved in what's happening from moment to moment in the game.

One of the things I really enjoy is the spread of combat effect that the stats have.  STR is only for damage bonus in combat, and for the occasional power use, like opposed STR Feat rolls for grappling.

INT affects your to hit modifier.

WIS affects your initiative and defense.

DEX is the most useful all around, affecting your to hit, defense, and initiative.

CON affects your Threshold Of Pain (TOP) Save, which is pretty much the Massive Damage rules from D20 Modern (take this much damage, then save or go sans combat)

Overall, while I normally don't like % based skills in my system, I've enjoyed the HM5 experience and I have every intention of continuing to run it.  I haven't experimented with any of the published material for HM5 outside the three main books, although I did run a pretty fun game using the Little Keep on the Borderlands for HM4, which had a much more snarky feel to it than HM5.  I've been thinking about picking up the HM5 edition of the same, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Quote from: Panzerkraken;834727Overall, I haven't had much problem with the skills list, it's not as exhaustive as, say, Palladium.

True, but Palladium's skill list is kind of an afterthought, slapped onto a already (somehow) working system. Last time I played using Palladium system it was Heroes Unlimited. I wasn't the GM, but I was the one having most experience with it.

Other players asked me what skills to pick, and I answered that if even a single skill roll comes up during the (short) campaign (I knew the GM and his style from before), I'll be a monkey's uncle. Exactly one instance came up where the GM called for a skill test. Perhaps it was for balance, the one that can be gained from Acrobatics or Gymnastics. So I guess that I am an monkey's uncle now.

Also basic Palladium system does not even have anything resembling an observation check! We houseruled that being a straight up d20 roll, modified by one basic attribute, I forget which.

But those are beyond the point of this thread. I am very good at derailing my own threads

Thanks for all your insights. keep'em coming

Quote from: Mark Plemmons;834560That sounds like the 'old' HackMaster (2001) to me. The new edition is much more streamlined - or at least it was when I last worked with it in 2011. I honestly haven't really done more than a quick flip through the new Player's Handbook. I hope the Fire-Building skill didn't transfer from the old edition.

Like someone already pointed out, yup, it's there alright.

Incidentally, we are playing Frandor's Keep, which lists you as one of the authors.

Cool!

Quote from: Moracai;834732Like someone already pointed out, yup, it's there alright.

Incidentally, we are playing Frandor's Keep, which lists you as one of the authors.

Cool!

Yeah, Frandor's Keep (which looks awesome, btw) was written for Hackmaster Basic, not 5th Edition. They're perfectly compatible, as far as I know, but that's why the cover has the Basic logo on it instead of the normal HM5 one.

I haven't read the Basic version of the game, but I suspect if I was ever to do anything with it I'd start with HMB instead of HM5.

Hackmaster (i.e., 4.0) is odiously complex... yes, but... I believe Hackmaster is the game used by the characters featured in the Knights of the Dinner's Table comics. As such I guess it was not written to really be used at the gaming table, but just to be read for entertainment, in relation to the comics.

In any case there later was a stramlined Hackmaster new OSR game that is intended for actual play.

About natural healing.

I took the first blood. My character tried to climb, but fell from about 30 feet or so. I took 23 points of damage, leaving me with 6, which translates to (if I get this correctly) 276 days of natural healing!

Quote from: Moracai;834834About natural healing.

I took the first blood. My character tried to climb, but fell from about 30 feet or so. I took 23 points of damage, leaving me with 6, which translates to (if I get this correctly) 276 days of natural healing!

30 feet is a hell of a long way to fall.

Quote from: Moracai;834834About natural healing.

I took the first blood. My character tried to climb, but fell from about 30 feet or so. I took 23 points of damage, leaving me with 6, which translates to (if I get this correctly) 276 days of natural healing!

Yep, that sounds about right. That can be sped up a little bit through mundane care, but it's a good example of why you need to know where to find a cleric that can heal you. Or be in the sort of campaign that has massive downtime between each adventure.