So the last thread I found here on Hackmaster 5E is about four years old along with a review. If anyone is playing it, how is it holding up? If I invested into it today, would I be glad four years from now? And what is up with the price of the PDFs?
I see that a lot of Hackmaster is OOP including Frandor and the Kalamar setting (I actually have the box set) and the HackMaster Association (whatever that is) appears to be dead. But the main books are available along with PDF adventures (which strangely enough are not overpriced). And maybe a monster manual two will be here this year?
So the game is semi-alive and with some digging you can find stuff to run it. Is it worth it?
Yes I have the Basic download. I like the combat. But dropping $40 on a PDF to see if I like the full system is not possible (I can't bring myself to do it) but then I have to drop nearly $60 to get the book. I can't browse through it as no one around here carries it. And I don't want a $60 book if I don't know I'll like it. The no reasonable PDF option is killing me (I missed the awesome Bundle of Holding).
Any responses would be great. Tell me about the classes. The spells. How your campaign went. What adventures are good. Anything. Did you actually buy the PDFs or are you struggling along with the 5E model of no PDFs? Is that frustrating?
The 5e "monster manual" looked gorgeous. I know nothing of the game with the new system, but kind of wanted to pick up the bestiary book just because of the layout
Release schedule is currently glacial. The company has poor communication, and they have no idea how to manage a pre-order or customer expectations. System is solid, but there's a lot to keep track of with larger fights (I have a group of 8 players). I couldn't do it without the very handy pdf encounter manager, which helps make combat flow fairly smoothly. The classes are well balanced and useful. I've found that most of the official adventures vary from decent to good. The design team have some assumptions about what makes for good gaming that I don't agree with, but it's pretty easy to just ignore that stuff (although some people may have an issue with the way the author's tone is used to express their presumed inherent superiority, in places).
My game's been running for getting towards 2.5 year, so far.
If you like Hackmaster basic, I can't see any way you'd be disappointed with the full game.
The hardcopy books (especially the hard-cover core books) all have extremely high production values.
The most recent thread I can remember is this one from a bit over a year ago: http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?32746-How-s-Hackmaster-5e-doing (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?32746-How-s-Hackmaster-5e-doing)
I'm afraid I can't be a huge help to you as I have all the books but haven't played it. I love a lot of the ideas behind Hackmaster 5e but it is far too crunchy for my tastes. If I ever did try to tackle it, I would leave off most of the advanced rules. I really like the character classes and the way advancement works with one major exception: skills. There are way, WAY too many goddamn skills and not enough points to buy them, which means certain classes get utterly screwed over. So that would be the first thing I'd houserule.
The books are gorgeous and well worth the price if you do choose to get into it. There is supposed to be another Hacklopedia of Beasts (yay, finally we get dragons)... someday. Maybe this year, maybe next. Delays aren't unheard of with this line. I will say that that the Hacklopedia of Beasts is hands-down the single best bestiary I've ever seen. The way monster entries are done is packed with useful info that no other game does. Want to know where a creature is found, or what its tracks look like, or if certain body parts have monetary value (or can be used for other purposes)? All included in their own sections, and the combat stats take up a neat little box that I think is pretty easy to reference and leagues ahead of the text blocks of some other games.
Played it for a good ten session or so. Wouldn't go back to it willingly.
I mean like five different skills for observing stuff. Different skills for building fires and general survival. It's a mess and the publishers know it. Basically it is a troll system, don't feed it...
Quote from: Moracai;957557Played it for a good ten session or so. Wouldn't go back to it willingly.
I mean like five different skills for observing stuff. Different skills for building fires and general survival. It's a mess and the publishers know it. Basically it is a troll system, don't feed it...
The skill system isn't perfect, but it's certainly not as bad as that. The only significant issue
in play is that fighters who want to concentrate on getting really good at fighting don't have the build points to go around for skills as well. It's most certainly not a troll game, and it was most certainly not intentionally designed to be flawed.
There are a few skills that are absurdly highly priced to enforce traditional niches (eg, Detect Traps and Disarm Traps, which you can't feasibly get good at unless you're playing a thief or similar).
There are four "observing stuff" skills - Scrutiny, for close examination and study; Observation, for taking in the big picture or looking at a distance; Listen, for listening; and Detect Traps. I suppose that you could also class Tracking as an "observing stuff" skill. Detect Traps should really be covered by Scrutiny but, again, it's there specifically for traditional niche protection. If you don't want that niche protection, it's as simple as dropping the skill.
Any game tied to Classes and Levels that also has a Skill system is going to be kinda wonky with regards to buying skills. You're also always going to have the same problem 3.x does: any given character of Level X who specializes in a skill will have it at a Skill Level appropriate to Character Level - anyone who dabbles will have it at a Skill Level so low as to be irrelevant. It's not as bad as 3.x, but the problem is endemic to that type of system.
Hackmaster is kind of Rolemaster-like in that they massage the buy costs for things classes can spend Build Points on in order to create class specialties.
Everyone at Kenzer has a full-time job and family and the release schedule being on geological time is no joke. They game way more than they work on games, which shows in the products, but comes with a price. But, if they released content every week, they'd get blasted for supplement treadmill, so...
The system is crunchy but easily dialed between Basic and Advanced.
For the claim about superiority, a little history...Kenzer publishes Knight of the Dinner Table, a parody comic of RPGs and the RPG industry. The players in this comic play Hackmaster, written by Gary Jackson.
When Kenzer got the license to AD&D First Edition, they were under contract by WotC to keep it a parody game. So in tone and writing style, they went Full Throttle, which made the game entertaining to read, but you had to be in on the joke otherwise it would be annoying as hell I suspect.
Hackmaster 5th edition keeps the same framing device, that this game is the game played in the KoDT comic, but dials down the parody from a 14 to about a 9. If you've read the thread where people talk about DM Gary vs. Company Man Gary, the author's tone is definitely Company Man Gary. This is intentional, and a joke.
Right now I am leaning towards Mythras Classic Fantasy. Less support so far, but adventures are on the way and hopefully higher level rules. Hackmaster is expensive and more of a gamble.
My local used book store. Actually a flea market stand which acreated so much junk and "treasure" that it finally collapsed under its own wieght and stopped its nomadic existence. Has a copy of one of the editions of Hackmaster. Players hand book and maybe a couple other things. Sounds like it might be worth getting. I am unlikely to run it, but I might canabalise it. Any editions better than others? Anything I sould skip? Any supplements recommended or reviled?
Quote from: Headless;957655My local used book store. Actually a flea market stand which acreated so much junk and "treasure" that it finally collapsed under its own wieght and stopped its nomadic existence. Has a copy of one of the editions of Hackmaster. Players hand book and maybe a couple other things. Sounds like it might be worth getting. I am unlikely to run it, but I might canabalise it. Any editions better than others? Anything I sould skip? Any supplements recommended or reviled?
There are two editions of Hackmaster.
Hackmaster 4th is basically AD&D First Edition as seen through the lens of Knights of the Dinner Table comic. Tons of material was published for it.
Hackmaster 5th is a different game. It's a recognizably D&D-like game with a combat system and skill system heavily influenced by Aces and Eights, Kenzer's Western game. There's a Basic version, a campaign module called Frandor's Keep and the Advanced version which is three full-color hardbounds.
What they are selling has to be 4th Edition.
I played in a game of it, and it didn't really work for me. It's a pretty deadly system, which I don't mind all by itself, but it also has very involved character generation. It was just too much work to make a character who might not make it through the next session.
I think it was a big mistake for them to move away from the OSR rather than closer to it.
Once you get to where you can keep track of the Count Up initiative well (took us a few fights), the combat is really fun. Exploding damage, Nat 19s and 20s, rolls for defense as well as attack...all this works together to get people into the fight watching and rooting for every roll. Never seen anyone tune out of a Hackmaster combat. You know how soldiers always talk about armies rolling up the flank? That shit happens in Hackmaster, it's awesome.
Let's face it, as slow as Kenzer puts stuff out, they're never gonna have much Buzz, but the game is damn fun, and I'd rather that was out there than one more version of D&D. Hackmaster isn't full compatible, but it's damn close, not much harder than converting a Pathfinder product to B/X.
Crkurger. Are you coomenting on 4th edition or the new 5th?
Quote from: Headless;958837Crkurger. Are you coomenting on 4th edition or the new 5th?
I'm talking about 5th.
4th is basically AD&D 1.5. That's a good game too.
Quote from: CRKrueger;958733Once you get to where you can keep track of the Count Up initiative well (took us a few fights), the combat is really fun. Exploding damage, Nat 19s and 20s, rolls for defense as well as attack...all this works together to get people into the fight watching and rooting for every roll. Never seen anyone tune out of a Hackmaster combat. You know how soldiers always talk about armies rolling up the flank? That shit happens in Hackmaster, it's awesome.
Let's face it, as slow as Kenzer puts stuff out, they're never gonna have much Buzz, but the game is damn fun, and I'd rather that was out there than one more version of D&D. Hackmaster isn't full compatible, but it's damn close, not much harder than converting a Pathfinder product to B/X.
The combat is a whole lot of fun. I'd play again if someone streamlines the character generation.
While Hackmaster 5th edition is beautiful, between that and Mythras I run with Mythras and I've run both. Mythras is a little front heavy however it runs very smoothly and is so modular you can just use the components that you want to.
Yeah, Mythras is definitely my "goto" game for all things fantasy at this point.
If I were going to do some form of D&D, I'd probably use an AD&D 1 variant like Astonishing Swordsman and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, or Hackmaster 4e with the parody cut back.
If I were going to so some other form of OSR-like D&D I'd use ACKS or Hackmaster 5.
Now that Adventures in Middle-Earth line is becoming more fleshed out, I'll take a closer look at it to get a better feel of how much flex 5e really has.
But, my tastes these days move away from Class/Level systems.
Coincidentally, I'm trying to get rid of my Hackmaster 5E stuff. Trying to pick up the rest of the D&D4E stuff I don't have.
Quote from: Imaginos;959219Coincidentally, I'm trying to get rid of my Hackmaster 5E stuff. Trying to pick up the rest of the D&D4E stuff I don't have.
That's ok, not everyone likes Roleplaying Games. :D
Quote from: CRKrueger;959228That's ok, not everyone likes Roleplaying Games. :D
If you set it up on Roll20, it almost catches the realism of real roleplaying like WoW. :D
Quote from: CRKrueger;959228That's ok, not everyone likes Roleplaying Games. :D
KA-POW!!! Right in the kisser!
Dude, that made me laugh, thank you:)
Hackmaster 5e has become our go-to RPG over the past year. It's extremely crunchy, but after learning it's combat system every other combat system feels boring. It feels like it's taken us hostage, because sometimes we want less crunch but no other game can satisfy our thirst for tactical combat.
I ordered all three core books (plus an extra PHB) this summer and ran a handful of games this fall. The books are gorgeous and while combat is complex it is very dynamic and interesting. The count up does keep people very engaged, we were just starting to get used to the game when I got fed up with trying to heard the rabbits that were my players schedules.
The kenzerco forum is pretty active and if you have specific questions about the rules you are bound to get quick and solid advice. I'd certainly run the game again, but some of my players may not have been up for that level of crunch. Character generation is certainly complicated and time consuming.
I might have actually been better off trying a few sessions with pregen demo characters first. There's a lot of decisions and until you've played it's hard to know if your decisions make any sense.
How are you guys finding the wound system to work in play? Besides the skill system, the one thing that makes me leery of trying HM is the thought of how finicky it would be to track healing times for injuries. I do like that it's more a more realistic take on HP than most games that use such health systems, but I can see some of my players balking at the bookkeeping involved.
Quote from: Brand55;1030364How are you guys finding the wound system to work in play? Besides the skill system, the one thing that makes me leery of trying HM is the thought of how finicky it would be to track healing times for injuries. I do like that it's more a more realistic take on HP than most games that use such health systems, but I can see some of my players balking at the bookkeeping involved.
It certainly feels realistic. But it can get quite complex. Someone made an excel file for this, but personally the last thing I want to do is use something like that at my table.
For those who don't know the system:
Each wound is recorded individually, which is the easy part. If you take a 6 point wound you just write 6 on a handy part of your character sheet.
Healing happens to all wounds simultaneously. Healing spells are usually applied to a single wound, and you can heal faster with a first aid provider and a particular talent.
With none of that stuff:
Each wound heals by 1 after a number of days has passed equal to the damage.
A 3 point wound heals by 1 in 3 days, reducing to a 2 point wound, after another 2 days it reduces to a 1 point wound, and after one more day the final point of damage is healed. So a three point wound takes 3+2+1 = 6 days to heal.
A 5 point wound takes 15 days to heal completely.
All wounds heal simultaneously.
Given healing spells and such this can go much faster and thus gets pretty complex. You can spend quite a bit of time on it.
I've run through it in full twice after a retreat by players from a significant series of injuries. Once with players, and once after a session on my own. I've been tempted to just pick a handful of the worse wounds and see how long those take. It seems like if you have a cleric around anything longer than 2 weeks to recover would be unusual, as you'd focus healing to reduce the worse wounds first.
I, like Brand55, would be interested in what anyone else does.
Quote from: Thondor;1030461It certainly feels realistic. But it can get quite complex. Someone made an excel file for this, but personally the last thing I want to do is use something like that at my table.
For those who don't know the system:
Each wound is recorded individually, which is the easy part. If you take a 6 point wound you just write 6 on a handy part of your character sheet.
Healing happens to all wounds simultaneously. Healing spells are usually applied to a single wound, and you can heal faster with a first aid provider and a particular talent.
With none of that stuff:
Each wound heals by 1 after a number of days has passed equal to the damage.
A 3 point wound heals by 1 in 3 days, reducing to a 2 point wound, after another 2 days it reduces to a 1 point wound, and after one more day the final point of damage is healed. So a three point wound takes 3+2+1 = 6 days to heal.
A 5 point wound takes 15 days to heal completely.
All wounds heal simultaneously.
Given healing spells and such this can go much faster and thus gets pretty complex. You can spend quite a bit of time on it.
I've run through it in full twice after a retreat by players from a significant series of injuries. Once with players, and once after a session on my own. I've been tempted to just pick a handful of the worse wounds and see how long those take. It seems like if you have a cleric around anything longer than 2 weeks to recover would be unusual, as you'd focus healing to reduce the worse wounds first.
I, like Brand55, would be interested in what anyone else does.
Natural healing only really comes up for us between adventures, so we just calculate how long each player's worst wound will take to heal and say that's how long their downtime is. Or, if we don't even want to calculate that, we just say "you all rest for 2 weeks and are fully healed".
Huh, that's pretty much how Sword Bearer did damage.
It's taken from Aces & Eights. Which is a great method for natural healing in a gritty/"realistic" Wild West campaign with no supernatural in it. It's a really shitty healing system to have in a game meant to emulate D&D.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1037850It's taken from Aces & Eights. Which is a great method for natural healing in a gritty/"realistic" Wild West campaign with no supernatural in it. It's a really shitty healing system to have in a game meant to emulate D&D.
While in some literal sense, you are correct about it's origins, Aces and Eights was the trial run for the house system they always intended to use for Hackmaster once the AD&D licence was lost.
Having said that, it is pretty pointless once you get past very low levels, as magical healing is readily available and quickly supersedes the complex, slow natural healing system.
Talking about Kenzerco and Hackmaster generally, the horrible way the GMG and HoB II pre-orders were (and, in the latter case, still is being) handled have completely soured me on the company.
I still love Aces & Eights.