Ok, Mark, I'll bite; here's where we get to the down and dirty of just WTF is the "silliness" of Hackmaster:

1. Is it part of the Silliness that the GM cannot alter the rules? Is that part of what you will thus remove from the next edition?

2. Is it part of the silliness that the players cannot read the GMs-section of the rules? Will that be removed from the next edition?

Because you see the problem is that a lot of the people who try to claim that Hackmaster is actually a "serious" game want to pretend that those two things are not silly at all, and that therefore Hackmaster is some kind of a "gamist" forgey masterpiece because of it, when those things to me were obviously meant to be part of the joke on old AD&D ideas and stuff that NO GAMER IN HIS RIGHT MIND would ever have actually followed back in the day, and wouldn't really be done seriously today.

Also, if you take out all the silliness (which you say you want to do in the next edition), and you take out all the stuff that's the carbon-copy of AD&D 1e (which I imagine you'll be required to do in the next edition), what the fuck is actually left that then gets defined as "Hackmaster"? What the fuck is Hackmaster, exactly, if its neither "A way to play AD&D1e without having to get the old books again", nor "a way to play the goofy D&D-spoof they played in KoDT"? What else is fucking left to it that would make me give a shit?


RPGPundit

I don´t "get" Hackmaster till this very day. Too many contradictions, too many Monster books. It´s amazingly expensive! More expensive than getting myself all the 1e stuff.

Why?
What´s the point?

EDIT: I think the art is repulsive. But isn´t the art repulsive to underline the parodistic elements? Now you say it isn´t meant to be a parody? What kind of Artwork will Hackmaster 5fth Edition field?

You asked for it, Settembrini...

I once collected a bunch of important HM questions and answers pro and con in a file called The Hackmaster Enigma.

1. The Enigma

Phil Masters, humoristically challenged as always:

"I confess that I'm a bit puzzled as to what the whole point is of this product. If it had been intended as parody or slapstick humour, then fine - it'd take a brave and talented writer to get away with comedy at this phenomenal length, but if it worked for somebody, great. But it seems that it's intended to be (a) a working, playable game, and (b) a realisation of the game being played in Knights of the Dinner Table.

But hang on a minute - KotDT is broad comedy. A cartoon. The game being played there is blatantly horrible - the kind of chart-crazed morass that even munchkins avoid these days. It's the kind of game which a bunch of cartoon semi-sociopaths enjoy, with endless support for anal-retentive rules-lawyering. (Yeah, I know, some saner characters in the strip also seem to enjoy the game. To me, though, that just dilutes the joke; in any approximation to real life, Sarah would have walked from the group years ago, and found someone playing a better game with a better system. It wouldn't be difficult.) Implementing such a game in reality surely doesn't generate something anyone would consider playable - does it?"

Thanks, Phil (zzzzzz...)

2. One Solution

Chopper:

"I don't know much about Buzz (the reveiwer), but the problem here is that he expected a comedy where the serious Knights of the Dinner Table (KODT) fans expected Hackmaster.

The situation of the comics can be summed up as such. They are a comedy about people playing an RPG. The humor comes from the players and the extremes of the system they play. The comics have almost never portrayed Hackmaster as a humorous RPG. The flaws the players take aren't funny, but the ways they expect them to work are.

For example, in Cattlepunk Dave takes the Cross Eyed flaw to get enough points to buy Dead Eye for a +5 to hit. He finds out at the start of the game that Crosseyed gives you a -10 to hit. Funny (If you read it in the comic, not here) but the system wasn't funny.

If Hackmaster had been humorous, all the major fans would've been up in arms. We don't want a funny Hackmaster RPG, we want a Hackmaster RPG that'll have us fighting for our characters lives. A Hackmaster that gives us Assassins to be feared, not laughed at. When we recount the tales of our Half-Ogre Beserkers we want to be proud of it. The tales of battle and blood and that strange-ass living bush that popped out of nowhere and attacked us. That's a bit of what Hackmaster's about and I for one think that we (the Hackmaster fans) have gotten pretty much what we wanted."

Interesting...

3. Another Solution

M.J. Young:

"There is a theory bandied about that that is exactly what Hackmaster is. It's been called the first true post-modern game.

According to the theory, the Hackmaster rule books are not the rules of the game. Rather, the game of Hackmaster is a free-form game in which the players play characters who are playing characters in a role playing game. The rules accomplish this by being something more than a prop for play, encouraging the players to become those various characters, because they, the players, are focused past the characters they are actually playing and looking at the characters their characters are playing. That is, your character Craggin the Barbarian Fighter works better if you play the part of the rules lawyer, so your efforts to utilize the written game system to make Craggin a better barbarian induces you to play the rules lawyer part.

Thus although you think you're roleplaying the barbarian, you're really roleplaying the rules lawyer who is roleplaying the barbarian.

It is an amazing achievement. I don't know whether the authors were consciously attempting to do this, but as a game author I am quite aware that you can accomplish things with your game that were not your conscious objectives but really were what served your purposes in unexpected ways. This "game within a game" captures and parodies the OAD&D experience so brilliantly because it encourages players to play the parts of OAD&D player caricatures. The dungeon crawls are almost incidental; the real game is at the level between."

I don't know what to think of that. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I think it's just clever-clever as opposed to smart.

I do like how this approach avoids calling HM parody, the making fun of something from the outside by stating the seemingly obvious using inappropriate criteria. Instead, it becomes self-parody, a making fun from the inside for the duration of the game.

Then again, maybe it's enough to say that Hackmaster is pretty much like Rifts. Both funny and serious at the same time.

But Rifts has good artwork.

EDIT: The enigma is not the existance of HM, but rather the stupendously expensive and broad range of books!

Quote from: Pierce Inverarity3. Another Solution

M.J. Young:

"There is a theory bandied about that that is exactly what Hackmaster is. It's been called the first true post-modern game.

According to the theory, the Hackmaster rule books are not the rules of the game. Rather, the game of Hackmaster is a free-form game in which the players play characters who are playing characters in a role playing game. The rules accomplish this by being something more than a prop for play, encouraging the players to become those various characters, because they, the players, are focused past the characters they are actually playing and looking at the characters their characters are playing. That is, your character Craggin the Barbarian Fighter works better if you play the part of the rules lawyer, so your efforts to utilize the written game system to make Craggin a better barbarian induces you to play the rules lawyer part.

Thus although you think you're roleplaying the barbarian, you're really roleplaying the rules lawyer who is roleplaying the barbarian.

It is an amazing achievement. I don't know whether the authors were consciously attempting to do this, but as a game author I am quite aware that you can accomplish things with your game that were not your conscious objectives but really were what served your purposes in unexpected ways. This "game within a game" captures and parodies the OAD&D experience so brilliantly because it encourages players to play the parts of OAD&D player caricatures. The dungeon crawls are almost incidental; the real game is at the level between."

Huh?

Sorry, but the explanation reads like something that was thought about for far too long in a coffeeshop on a college campus.

Quote from: SettembriniI don´t "get" Hackmaster till this very day. Too many contradictions, too many Monster books. It´s amazingly expensive! More expensive than getting myself all the 1e stuff.

That put me off more than anything else. Why get a game that replicates what I can do with books I've already got or, if I didn't have them, could pick up on Ebay for a few quid. The division of monster books alphabetically was a complete turn off from buying any hackmaster products.

I picked up the two core books used and have enjoyed them immensely.  They are wrapped in the meta-concept of a fake game (with a fake intro and lots of opinions buried in the text) but it is a fully playable hack and slash game with very rich class and race options, an excellent honour system (that goes a long way towards addressing the issues with alignment in D&D).

It's overall attitude is hilarious and awesome.  It is very much the GM against the players, but the rules are designed to support that kind of play.  I think the underlying idea is that the GM is at a disadvantage because of the munchkin-potential of the players, so you have to have tons of mechanisms to keep them in line.  But everything is there in the book, so you avoid all the vagueness of rule zero.  I assume that people who play in a HM campaign know what they are getting into.  I'd love to try it, but it is probably just way too rules heavy for me these days.  I just don't have the cycles.

And the art is awesome.  I particularly like the Fraim brothers heavy lines.  There is a lot of amateurish art in there as well, for sure, but it's the content that makes it so good.  The first page of the GM's Guide is a guy getting impaled into a tree by a unicorn.  That about says it all.  The two page spread on the first page of the Races section in the PHB is a giant barroom brawl with all the races represented.  Very entertaining.

I really don't understand how it morphed from a game represented in the comic to such a complete and used system, but I suspect that those of you who have an itch for hardcore old school gaming would get it scratched by Hackmaster.

Mark- Why are nerds so crazed and uptight?

Quote from: RPGPunditOk, Mark, I'll bite; here's where we get to the down and dirty of just WTF is the "silliness" of Hackmaster:

Okay, just keep in mind that I can't really give out any advance information about HM5E yet.  It's still another couple years before HM5E, so a lot of what you're asking about hasn't been set in stone yet.  We do have threads on our web forums asking what people want/don't want to see in 5E, and we're listening to all feedback there (and elsewhere on the web, like here).

Quote from: RPGPundit1. Is it part of the Silliness that the GM cannot alter the rules?

Depends who you ask.  

If you read the introductions, you'll notice that a very unusual thing about the HM4E core books is that they are purportedly written by fictional game designers from the Knights of the Dinner Table "universe."  There are those players who take this writing style absolutely seriously, and will not alter the rules as written under any circumstances.  

In our "real world," if the GM wants to alter the rules of his game, and the players are okay with it, that's fine.  However, the rules as written must be enforced at sanctioned Hackmaster Association tournaments.

Quote from: RPGPundit2. Is it part of the silliness that the players cannot read the GMs-section of the rules?

Again, it depends who you ask.  This is another effect of the 'tongue in cheek' writing style that I mentioned above.  The same rules apply to the real world - if players want to read the GMG, fine.  But they better not be doing it at sanctioned HMA events or they might get a roll on the Smartass Smackdown Table.  

Quote from: RPGPunditBecause you see the problem is that a lot of the people who try to claim that Hackmaster is actually a "serious" game want to pretend that those two things are not silly at all, and that therefore Hackmaster is some kind of a "gamist" forgey masterpiece because of it, when those things to me were obviously meant to be part of the joke on old AD&D ideas and stuff that NO GAMER IN HIS RIGHT MIND would ever have actually followed back in the day, and wouldn't really be done seriously today.

All I can really say is to sum up what I said above - if someone enjoys playing like that, I say more power to them.  If you don't play like that, that's fine with me too.  Of course, I think everybody should accept everybody else's style of play and not argue about it.  Guess I'm just a dreamer...  

Quote from: RPGPunditAlso, if you take out all the silliness (which you say you want to do in the next edition), and you take out all the stuff that's the carbon-copy of AD&D 1e (which I imagine you'll be required to do in the next edition), what the fuck is actually left that then gets defined as "Hackmaster"? What the fuck is Hackmaster, exactly, if its neither "A way to play AD&D1e without having to get the old books again", nor "a way to play the goofy D&D-spoof they played in KoDT"? What else is fucking left to it that would make me give a shit?
RPGPundit

Sorry to keep beating a dead horse, but again, keep in mind that what parts of HM are "silliness" vary wildly depending on who you ask.  I can say that you won't see blatantly silly monsters like the Feces Flingin' Lemur or the Gummi Fiend, for example.  

Otherwise, I can't really say what's going into 5E.  We definitely want to keep that (forgive me for using this overused term) "old school feel", though.  You'll see a lot of our stuff from 4E that's streamlined and improved, and you'll see a lot of new stuff too.  And we want to make them quality products, much like the Aces & Eights RPG.

Hope that helps.  Feel free to shoot me any more questions.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityYou asked for it, Settembrini...

I once collected a bunch of important HM questions and answers pro and con in a file called The Hackmaster Enigma.

I think my favorite review is probably this one:

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12222.phtml

Quote from: walkerpI picked up the two core books used and have enjoyed them immensely.  They are wrapped in the meta-concept of a fake game (with a fake intro and lots of opinions buried in the text) but it is a fully playable hack and slash game with very rich class and race options, an excellent honour system (that goes a long way towards addressing the issues with alignment in D&D).

Quite true. I get to laugh while reading it and kick ass while playing it. That's why Hackmaster is near the top of my favorite games list.

If they take out the parody in 5e, they'll lose me as a customer. If they up the parody levels to where it's an unplayable game, they'll lose me as a customer.

Quote from: Mark PlemmonsI think my favorite review is probably this one:

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12222.phtml

Yes, I love that one, too!

You guys designed a weird game there... keep it weird!

Well, and don't publish a dozen monster manuals.

What is truly insane in the Hackmaster oeuvre is the GM's Screen. I checked that out at the same place I bought the two core books and it really blew my mind.  I mean that thing has so many fold out panels and flip through pages that it might as well be a separate rule book.  It's beautifully produced, tons of colours and good stock, but wow is it dense with charts and rules.  I felt a bit dizzy and out of breath looking at it.  Most impressive.

Quote from: Mark Plemmons¡
Sorry to keep beating a dead horse, but again, keep in mind that what parts of HM are "silliness" vary wildly depending on who you ask.

If that's true, then how the hell can you say you're going to remove the "silliness" from Hackmaster? I mean, if you can't even decide what was or was not a joke...?

QuoteOtherwise, I can't really say what's going into 5E.  We definitely want to keep that (forgive me for using this overused term) "old school feel", though.

And yet presumably, you're going to totally change the rules? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the rules engine will no longer be based on AD&D1e, right?

So what will we be left with? A game that will have the parody stuff taken out of it, the AD&D1e taken out of it; that you will try to keep the "old school feel" for nonetheless, and which may or may not decide that stuff like the "Official sanctioned Hackmaster" rules about having to obey the rules to the letter was either a joke all along or is the central feature of the game...

That means that what you'll be left with is either yet another "generic old-school fantasy game" in a market already very full of "generic old school fantasy games" (I should know, I wrote one!), or you will have a narrow-casted dead-serious "gamist" game that might appeal to the two Forgies who actually want to play such a monstrosity rather than just try to force D&D to follow this vastly unpopular concept that no self-respecting D&D player would ever actually want to play.

So I guess the next question is: Are you really sure this is a good idea?

I mean shit, I really hope you can explain it better to me; I really want to believe that you guys aren't just out of your minds, or that you haven't bought the hype that a couple of fanatical Forgites have flung your way and made you believe that HM is somehow all about "strict gamism" or something; but right now what you're saying sounds a little bit like if Chaosium were to suddenly declare that the next edition of Call of Cthulhu will "get rid of the Cthulhu mythos" and "get rid of the BRP rules" but will still somehow be Call of Cthulhu... I mean, really, what the fuck is left?!

RPGPundit

If you would drop all the utterly irrelevant "forgie" references, you might actually have a valid question there, Pundit.  Might help to present it in a positive, less attacking way.  What may sound to you like intellectual rigour just comes off as unnecessarily aggressive.