HackMaster

[Djohn]

I'm curious: have any of you ever played (or at least heard of) HackMaster?

For those of you who don't know what it is, it's basically a revamped version of the 1st edition AD&D rules with much more detail and a quirky sense of humor. I personally find it to be much more immersive and fun than 3E/4E. That said, it's probably the most detailed RPG system ever, and it's almost completely different from 3E/4E.

If you're interested in checking it out, here's a torrent with damn near every HackMaster resource ever: http://www.btmon.com/Games/Unsorted/...r.torrent.html

I would recommend just downloading the Player's Handbook if you want to check it out, and the Combatant's, Griftmaster's, Spellslinger's, and Zealot's Guides if you want to actually start making characters. Official character sheets can be found here.

I'm not really expecting you all to want to play it, but I'm rather curious what people think of it since it seems to not be very well known among newer/younger gamers. (Disclaimer: I'm actually not an oldschooler myself, but the game does seem to have retro appeal)

[BRP]

I don't know if it's fair to call Hackmaster the most detailed system... but it is pretty nice. Personally I don't really care for it over 3e or 4e, then again I think a lot of its appeal comes from people who enjoyed 1st edition.

[Kyreth]

Yep, HM player here. It definitely captures the flavor of 1st Edition D&D...it's like looking at an alternate universe where TSR didn't kill itself in suck and WoTC didn't then follow up by sucking the soul out of the game.

Any game where they give you an HP kicker to prevent low-level painful death gets a mark up in my book.

[Djohn]

Originally Posted by Kyreth

Any game where they give you an HP kicker to prevent low-level painful death gets a mark up in my book.

It seems like such a wonderful thing until you realize that every single monster with at least one HD has that too. It does make surviving the first few levels of squishy characters a bit easier though.

I was actually at a session yesterday and it was pretty classic. I had a Half-Elf Druid/MU (used to be /Fighter but that got level drained) and I decided to make things interesting by casting Magic Missile while wearing armor, which resulted in a spell mishap that rendered me Mute. Since my character was thus rendered 90% useless, I figured I might as well drink this potion we found, and then my character turned into a giant hedgehog that is now going to become the ranger's animal companion. I also got 1000 EPs towards my next character for Most Awesome Character "Death".

Speaking of which, I'm almost done making a Battle Mage with Spell Razor, Precise Targeting, Photographic Memory, High Spell-Jacker, Voiceless Casting, Still Casting, Opportunitist, and 19 INT (and a shitload of quirks). It should be interesting to play.