The only smoke here is coming from your crack pipe.

Quote from: SettembriniThis whole thread is one giant smoke grenade.

What do you mean?  I think Mark's answered everything he can...

And you just fired another one.

Actually, I think this secretiveness is really, really lame & daft.

It´s not like anything would change if he spilled the beans now.

I´m done with this company.
If they refuse to answer simple questions about their games, I´m not interested.

EDIT: Why the stupendeously expensive and cumbersome Hacklopedia? Why alphabetically? How to set up a campaign when you just have "Oozes to Schmoozes" and "Tittilator to Uulgurasta"?

Have a nice life in "secretland".
:rolleyes:

Keeping a soon-to-be-OOP edition secret is beyond me.

Yes, please go away and don't come back.  That would probably be healthy for this thread.

Quote from: SettembriniAnd you just fired another one.

Actually, I think this secretiveness is really, really lame & daft.

It´s not like anything would change if he spilled the beans now.

I´m done with this company.
If they refuse to answer simple questions about their games, I´m not interested.

Have a nice life in "secretland".
:rolleyes:

What are exactly these simple questions? Pundit and so on, asking open ended questions open to interpretation. Different people will give you different answers. Your just not getting the one you want to hear.
I really dont understand all the people dogpiling on HM here. Because half the people who are claim to be all about the olds school. One even designing a game to capture that old school feel. HM doesnt have to try to capture that old school feel. It fucking is. For christ sakes its AD&D slightly updated. So you dont like the silliness inherent in some on the writing. Then ignore it. Or play something else. The fact that the majority of people bashing it are the ones who by their actions should be praising it as a bastion of old school. Is quite baffling to me.

I suspect that a lot of those people have never actually read the rules, let alone played the game.  But you make a good point, these are the self-styled old school, trad-style gamers who are so negative towards the game that has been carrying that torch longer and harder than anyone.  It is bizarre.

Quote from: SettembriniAnd you just fired another one.

Actually, I think this secretiveness is really, really lame & daft.

It´s not like anything would change if he spilled the beans now.

They're years away from publishing a new edition of the game. That ain't secrecy, he's just got nothing to tell you about the new edition because he doesn't know for sure what'll be in it yet.

QuoteEDIT: Why the stupendeously expensive and cumbersome Hacklopedia? Why alphabetically? How to set up a campaign when you just have "Oozes to Schmoozes" and "Tittilator to Uulgurasta"?

I do agree, the monster books were the bit that put me off Hackmaster. Too many, too expensive.

Quote from: RoninFor christ sakes its AD&D slightly updated.

No, it really isn't. Its based on AD&D and it builds from there, but it isn't an 'update' of that game.

Quote from: walkerpThey won't acknowledge it because they probably can't figure out what the fuck you're talking about.  You really sound like an insane person.  You and Sett are doing far more to perpetuate the GNS meme here than anyone else.

What part of this is difficult to figure out, Nimrod:

Was the idea that the Gamemaster MUST slavishly follow all the rules exactly as written and the players cannot read the GM's book part of the joke all along, a tribute to some silly notions no one ever really took seriously in AD&D1E; or is it a crucial dead-serious defining aspect of the game?!

How hard is that to figure out and answer? Apparently, for Mark Plemmons, pretty tough.  :rolleyes:

RPGPundit

Quote from: CabI don't quite get where you're coming from. Say, if someone was to keep the parody/GM vs Player aspects of HM and use, say, a slimmed down d20 mechanic like we've seen in C&C, then build back up from there, why would that not work more or less just the same as HM?

No, it wouldn't. It would, however, be half of the story at least. What you'd then have is a humourous paranoia-in-a-dungeon type of game.
What it'd be missing would be the tribute to AD&D1e; so it would no longer be a humourous parody of D&D; nor would it be a ready-made clone of AD&D with some cool house rules, usable without any humour at all if you removed all the Joke parts of it (including the JOKE about it being gm vs. player).

But that's not what it sounds like Mr. Plemmons is suggesting. It sounds like he's suggesting that they're going to get rid of:

1. The AD&D1e clone feature.
2. The humour.

So what we'll be left with is an actually serious GM-vs-player fantasy game that will appeal to a tiny portion of the original fandom of Hackmaster, a game that would seem tailor made to satisfy the Forgies and the Swine, who would be the only people stupid or fucked up enough to think that the Gm-Vs-player stuff ISN'T a JOKE, because their Dear Leader has actually told them that this is how all fantasy adventure games (including D&D) ought to really be made.

RPGPundit

Quote from: SettembriniThis whole thread is one giant smoke grenade.

Holy fuck, isn't it though? These guys could give TonyLB some lessons on how not to actually answer the question, and he's already a Grandmaster at that...


RPGPundit

Quote from: theemrysThere was a quote on the Kenzer boards by David Kenzer saying that the "attitude" of Hackmaster will remain... which for many people is the core.  Sure, some of the mechanics will change somewhat, especially since they have to move a bit away from AD&D, however my bets are that the "feel" of the game will be similar and overall will be a big step forward.  In my opinion they've already improved on the "older system" and this next step will do so even more.  Given the great job they did with Aces & Eights, and their plan to put as much love/attention into their Hackmaster update, I'm not worried in the least.  Will it be everyone's cup of tea... no... but I bet it will be damn good.

Ok... and just what the FUCK do you mean by "the "attitude" of Hackmaster"?!

What is the "attitude" of Hackmaster? Because to me, the "attitude" is humour, parody, and D&D goofyness.  

But I get the feeling that to a tiny subset of the fandom, the "attitude" is taking HM deadly seriously, and seeing it as full blown rules-set that MUST be played exactly as written.

In other words, they missed the original joke.

The question is, whether Kenzer has forgotten the original joke?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RoninWhat are exactly these simple questions? Pundit and so on, asking open ended questions open to interpretation. Different people will give you different answers. Your just not getting the one you want to hear.
I really dont understand all the people dogpiling on HM here. Because half the people who are claim to be all about the olds school. One even designing a game to capture that old school feel. HM doesnt have to try to capture that old school feel. It fucking is. For christ sakes its AD&D slightly updated.

Yes, that's what I love about HM.  And apparently, that's one of the things they're throwing away in the new edition.

QuoteSo you dont like the silliness inherent in some on the writing. Then ignore it.

You need to increase your reading comprehension.  Sett and I are the ones DEFENDING the silliness. Its the other side that are claiming that HM should never have been silly at all, and that in fact some of the jokes in it should be taken seriously.

QuoteOr play something else. The fact that the majority of people bashing it are the ones who by their actions should be praising it as a bastion of old school. Is quite baffling to me.

Again, reading comprehension.  We're praising the current edition, and expressing extreme concerns about a future edition where the authors have claimed they're going to get rid of: 1. the AD&D and 2. The humour, but where they refuse to answer on whether they're going to get rid of that part of the original humour which was the idea of having to obey every single rule as written.

Because if that rule isn't done as part of the parody, if it isn't funny, then the game isn't old-school at all. Its a twisted warped perception based on what someone hostile to Regular Roleplaying imagines old-school D&D must have been like or ought to be like.

RPGPundit

Mark, let me add that I do appreciate your willingness to answer questions here, and agree that its way more than what we would be getting from WoTC, who instead came onto places like this and lied to our faces.

However, I do wish you could clear up that one little issue you keep skirting around.
Let's try it really simply, one last time:

Is the next edition of Hackmaster going to keep the idea that every rule must be officially followed exactly as written, and not going to treat that as a joke?

That's all I'm asking, and you still haven't answered.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit2. 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.

Actually, back in the day we did have a rule that the players could not read the DMG. It was a pretty easy rule to enforce, because most of our players didn't even open the PHB except to look up spells.

I've never played it, but a buddy of mine was flipping through some Hackmaster books few weeks ago and told me he was thinking of buying them out of nostalgia and appreciation for the hack 'n slash sensibility. And he has never heard of the Knights of the Dinner Table.