What do you think?
Rate this book
HackMaster 4th Edition
HackMaster Player's Handbook
Congratulations! In a world where there is no shortage of mediocre games, you've managed to find one of the true gems. Furthermore, if you've ever played a fantasy role-playing game before based on a d20 combat roll and armor class, you already know how to play this game! And while this is the 4th edition of the HackMaster game, in another time, another edition or an alternate universe, this could easily have been called "3e." It's the 1st/2nd edition with new crunchy-bits and a whole lot of fresh attitude. Playing this game will make you feel like you did when you first started role-playing. Excited. Filled with wonder. And just a bit nervous.
Here's just a sample of what you're gonna find in this tome:
* Over 750 Spells (97 new MU spells alone, including Sidewinders, Skipping Betties and 17 other Fireball spells!)
* 17 character classes (including a revamped non-wuss Bard, Monk, Berserker, BattleMage, Dark Knight, Assassin and Knight Errant)
* Building Point rules with more than 250 Skills, Talents and Proficiencies (including Mapless Travel, Armor Maintenance, Attitude Adjustment, Wuss Slap, Mocking Jig, Advanced Looting, Underground Survival and Major Taunting)
* 13 revised races (including Grunge Elves/Grel, Drow, Pixie Fairies, Gnome Titans and Gnomelings)
* 132 Official map symbols
* Exclusive, highly detailed Honor system
* Countless tips on improving your play to a more respectable level
* Insight into the dice-rolling techniques of the creator Himself
* All-new quirks and flaws (including trick knee, HackFrenzy, multiple personality disorder, and more)
* Improved combat system with Penetration Damage, Hit Points for armor and shields and revamped Turning rules
* Mulligans, Bad Karm, Dibs Protocol
* Advice on sympathy monsters, grudge monsters, character baiting and other classic GM tricks for the unwary
* Over 150 different charts and tables (Including Birth Legitimacy, Quality of Upbringing, Livestock, and Saving Throws
* In excess of 350,000 words of wisdom
Here's just a sample of what you're gonna find in this tome:
* Over 750 Spells (97 new MU spells alone, including Sidewinders, Skipping Betties and 17 other Fireball spells!)
* 17 character classes (including a revamped non-wuss Bard, Monk, Berserker, BattleMage, Dark Knight, Assassin and Knight Errant)
* Building Point rules with more than 250 Skills, Talents and Proficiencies (including Mapless Travel, Armor Maintenance, Attitude Adjustment, Wuss Slap, Mocking Jig, Advanced Looting, Underground Survival and Major Taunting)
* 13 revised races (including Grunge Elves/Grel, Drow, Pixie Fairies, Gnome Titans and Gnomelings)
* 132 Official map symbols
* Exclusive, highly detailed Honor system
* Countless tips on improving your play to a more respectable level
* Insight into the dice-rolling techniques of the creator Himself
* All-new quirks and flaws (including trick knee, HackFrenzy, multiple personality disorder, and more)
* Improved combat system with Penetration Damage, Hit Points for armor and shields and revamped Turning rules
* Mulligans, Bad Karm, Dibs Protocol
* Advice on sympathy monsters, grudge monsters, character baiting and other classic GM tricks for the unwary
* Over 150 different charts and tables (Including Birth Legitimacy, Quality of Upbringing, Livestock, and Saving Throws
* In excess of 350,000 words of wisdom
400 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2001
4 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 1, 2023
Spawned out of the classic gaming comic Knights of the Dinner Table (which I haven't read, though I probably should) and eventually, largely on account of fan pestering, ripping itself out of its forebear to be its own thing, Hackmaster is conceived as something of a parody of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: it takes all the crazy and overcomplicated things of the system, lays them down on the table, and smashes your face in it. It chips away the nostalgia and forces one to bear witness to the ugly truth. How could anyone have figured this stuff out back in the day? And nowadays, with so many better-designed games - a bunch of retroclones among them - why would anyone want to?
Or that's what it seeks to do, anyway. I don't think it quite pulled it off.
It doesn't go far enough with the concept... and when it does go the distance, it goes a bit the wrong way. It mostly just adds a bunch of new subsystems and tables and fireball variants and Honor, while leaving what's already there more or less intact - just with an immensely more mean-spirited writer, one that insists at every opportunity that you must use everything as it is, no houseruling allowed, or you're a wimp and a loser and not playing the game as it's meant to play. It's really unsubtle about it, and not very funny. I'd have liked it to - expected it to - shake things up a little more, actually rip apart the rules themselves, exaggerate them, make them weird... but instead, all too often, the punchline is just "Look! It's AD&D! Isn't that weird?"
I think its mistake is that even while it's doing its parody schtick, it tries to present a functioning system that could actually be played in real life, not just in a weird fantasy comic where things (presumably) get really crazy from time to time. This hurts the parody and shackles it from going all the way with the jokes and the fun and the nostalgia-breaking. Yet also, all of the added rules and complications really do not make it seem like anything I'd like to play, either: around an actual table, all the parody stuff would just frustrate us. So it's torn apart between these two approaches and falls into a middleground that can't pull off either.
Still, it did open my eyes to some extent: of course I always knew just what a weird mash-up of a system AD&D was, but this book could clarify them better and put them into words in a way I couldn't, as well as point out some details I'd never really thought of at all. I was halfway on my way away from the system and towards Basic and its derivatives already, and this planted a pretty big stepping-stone on that road, right under my feet. And wedged between all those tables and abuse and mockery, there were a couple decent laughs. And the art was always nice.
We'll make it two and a half stars. I liked parts of it, even though on the whole it left me lukewarm.
Or that's what it seeks to do, anyway. I don't think it quite pulled it off.
It doesn't go far enough with the concept... and when it does go the distance, it goes a bit the wrong way. It mostly just adds a bunch of new subsystems and tables and fireball variants and Honor, while leaving what's already there more or less intact - just with an immensely more mean-spirited writer, one that insists at every opportunity that you must use everything as it is, no houseruling allowed, or you're a wimp and a loser and not playing the game as it's meant to play. It's really unsubtle about it, and not very funny. I'd have liked it to - expected it to - shake things up a little more, actually rip apart the rules themselves, exaggerate them, make them weird... but instead, all too often, the punchline is just "Look! It's AD&D! Isn't that weird?"
I think its mistake is that even while it's doing its parody schtick, it tries to present a functioning system that could actually be played in real life, not just in a weird fantasy comic where things (presumably) get really crazy from time to time. This hurts the parody and shackles it from going all the way with the jokes and the fun and the nostalgia-breaking. Yet also, all of the added rules and complications really do not make it seem like anything I'd like to play, either: around an actual table, all the parody stuff would just frustrate us. So it's torn apart between these two approaches and falls into a middleground that can't pull off either.
Still, it did open my eyes to some extent: of course I always knew just what a weird mash-up of a system AD&D was, but this book could clarify them better and put them into words in a way I couldn't, as well as point out some details I'd never really thought of at all. I was halfway on my way away from the system and towards Basic and its derivatives already, and this planted a pretty big stepping-stone on that road, right under my feet. And wedged between all those tables and abuse and mockery, there were a couple decent laughs. And the art was always nice.
We'll make it two and a half stars. I liked parts of it, even though on the whole it left me lukewarm.
March 9, 2010
Ever read Knights of the Dinner Table? It's a comic strip that appeared (and may still appear, I haven't kept up) in Dragon magazine. The characters in the strip play a game loosely based on all the "weaker and humorous" parts of the Dungeons and Dragons game. It is called Hackmaster. Someone (of course) made the game. it is largely a spoof of D&D but with playable rules. There are ways to become unbelievably strong or intelligent, you strive to obtain weapons like the +12 Hackmaster sword... it's played for laughs. It's not bad.
April 9, 2012
good reading primer for hackmaster rpg!
August 17, 2024
Good evening and welcome fellow Children of Chaos.
So there is a moment in this book that sums up every problem I have with it. This up their own ass, condescending, grogish mindset of the worst part of the OSR. There are 4 paragraphs of them defending the use of measuring XP by how much money the characters earned at the end of the dungeon. And while not the choice I'd make I don't think it's a bad one.
However the book goes on a rant about "pear shaped" game critics "tipping over their Duritos" to race to their keyboard to complain instead of writing a game.
YOU DIDN'T WRITE A GAME EITHER, YOU JUST TOOK AD&D AND ADDED HOTNESS AS A STAT!
The common thing you see in these OSR games about "When games were fun". Look man these games were not fun, it was sitting in your friends basement, eating pizza, and laughing when the ogre crushed your brother's skull. It wasn't the game, it was the time, and you'll never get that back my just being mad and gatekeeping RPGs. I think the term is Toxic Nostalgia.
But hey, this game adds Comeliness as a stat, and I can give credit that most game that add hotness as a stat do this one didn't. 90% of them give women a bonus to Comeliness because "women are hot". This one does not. Generally men and women have the same Comeliness (though it does differentiate other stats based on gender, wanna be a woman fighter? Too bad, you'll never be as good as a man). Still making your hotness a quantifiable stat is gross. Like I can say MArk Henry is objectively stronger than me. But appearance is strongly subjective.
The spell list is bigger than AD&D as well. Did you need 40 versions of fireball? No? Well too bad.
I can say there is something good in the Honour stat, that starts really awful because it is totally just based on your stat rolls, (3D6 down the line of course, the thing Gygax himself said you shouldn't do). But you gain honour based on RPing your alignment, but if it gets too high you start taking penalties, but you can lower it by burning it to give yourself boosts. And I kinda like the idea of pushing your players to use their FATE points, or drama dice whatever you want to call it.
Also at the end of the book there is a section based on dice ettique, on how to choose dice, on how to "purge" bad luck and it's kinda funny
So yeah, a few minor praises but this game does not make up for the fact this is just an Angry version AD&D. I'll just play AD&D and not read constant angry rants about modern gaming and just openly mean to players.
It wasn't 3D6 down the line that made those days fun my friends, it was the time and place. LEt's not just scream about modern gaming and keep others from having those fun times. Gatekeeping will kill out hobby
So there is a moment in this book that sums up every problem I have with it. This up their own ass, condescending, grogish mindset of the worst part of the OSR. There are 4 paragraphs of them defending the use of measuring XP by how much money the characters earned at the end of the dungeon. And while not the choice I'd make I don't think it's a bad one.
However the book goes on a rant about "pear shaped" game critics "tipping over their Duritos" to race to their keyboard to complain instead of writing a game.
YOU DIDN'T WRITE A GAME EITHER, YOU JUST TOOK AD&D AND ADDED HOTNESS AS A STAT!
The common thing you see in these OSR games about "When games were fun". Look man these games were not fun, it was sitting in your friends basement, eating pizza, and laughing when the ogre crushed your brother's skull. It wasn't the game, it was the time, and you'll never get that back my just being mad and gatekeeping RPGs. I think the term is Toxic Nostalgia.
But hey, this game adds Comeliness as a stat, and I can give credit that most game that add hotness as a stat do this one didn't. 90% of them give women a bonus to Comeliness because "women are hot". This one does not. Generally men and women have the same Comeliness (though it does differentiate other stats based on gender, wanna be a woman fighter? Too bad, you'll never be as good as a man). Still making your hotness a quantifiable stat is gross. Like I can say MArk Henry is objectively stronger than me. But appearance is strongly subjective.
The spell list is bigger than AD&D as well. Did you need 40 versions of fireball? No? Well too bad.
I can say there is something good in the Honour stat, that starts really awful because it is totally just based on your stat rolls, (3D6 down the line of course, the thing Gygax himself said you shouldn't do). But you gain honour based on RPing your alignment, but if it gets too high you start taking penalties, but you can lower it by burning it to give yourself boosts. And I kinda like the idea of pushing your players to use their FATE points, or drama dice whatever you want to call it.
Also at the end of the book there is a section based on dice ettique, on how to choose dice, on how to "purge" bad luck and it's kinda funny
So yeah, a few minor praises but this game does not make up for the fact this is just an Angry version AD&D. I'll just play AD&D and not read constant angry rants about modern gaming and just openly mean to players.
It wasn't 3D6 down the line that made those days fun my friends, it was the time and place. LEt's not just scream about modern gaming and keep others from having those fun times. Gatekeeping will kill out hobby
July 8, 2008
I got these books months ago, and just got around to reading them cover to cover recently. The humor is a bit too hammy in places (screw you wotc lawyers), but this game is awesome. 1e/2e adnd mashed up with great addons. Hackmaster is now officially my favorite non BRP game.
July 1, 2013
I really missed playing simple 1st edition AD&D when D&D went off to 3rd edition. Hackmaster was the solution for me. I still look at these today and wish I could get a classical group together.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews