KenzerCo Cyber Monday Sale

I just wanted to stop in and let everyone know about the Kenzer & Company Cyber Monday Sale. Until midnight tonight almost everything for sale on the KenzerCo website is going to be listed as half off. So if you've been looking at the gorgeous Hacklopedia of Beasts, currently rated as the third best RPG book of all time over at RPG Geek, until the end of the day you can pick it up for only $30. Interested in trying out Hackmaster Basic? Pick up the book for only $10. And if you've always wanted to try the best Western RPG ever made, you can get the Aces & Eights PDF for only $12.50.

Hacklopedia Flip-Through Video

While my review of KenzerCo's Hacklopedia of Beasts is still forthcoming (two different bouts of sickness and a hurricane have delayed it), I do have something new for those interested. Jolly filmed a flip-though video of the book so you can all get a peek inside!

A Couple of Hackmaster Notes

As the title says, there are a couple of quick, but very important, bits of Hackmaster news that have come out in the last few days. First, the Hacklopedia of Beasts has finally cleared customs and is currently at the KenzerCo offices being sorted and shipped! I'd guess that they're going to start showing up on people's doorstep sometime between Monday and Wednesday of next week, so look for my official review of the product a few days after that. I'm hoping to have the book in my hands and the review out by Friday, but that's mostly going to depend on when I get it.

The second piece of news is that the pre-order for the Player's Handbook is now up! They're doing it the same way they did the pre-order of the HOB, meaning that if you pay for the full price of the book now, you'll get the book when it comes out as well as a PDF copy today. It should be noted that the current PDF release is a very, very early Alpha version, and doesn't yet contain the complete rules. However, when you pre-order you get the right to download every version of the PDF, from the current Alpha version all the way to the RC (Release Copy) version. Also, if you're the type of person who likes to get involved, there's a thread on the KenzerCo forum where you can give suggestions about layout, rules clarifications, and the like. KenzerCo, as a company, is truly great about listening to it's fans and making changes when appropriate. Plus, if you've ever wanted to get your name on the inside cover of an RPG core book, this is your chance.

New Preview for KenzerCo's Hacklopedia of Beasts

If you're on the fence about picking up the newest offering from KenzerCo, check out this seven page preview of the Owlbeast that was recently posted on their website. I've already got my copy pre-ordered and will be posting an in-depth review of the book as soon as I get it in (or right after GenCon, depending on when it comes in).

Feel free to sound off in the comments section with your opinions of the preview!

Want to See What a Quality Product Looks Like?

Just in case you wanted to see what a quality print product looks like here are some pictures of the Advanced Hackmaster monster book, The Hacklopedia of Beasts.

Those who are familiar with the Aces & Eights core rulebook will be familiar with the type of quality pictured above, a level which I have never seen replicated in an RPG book.  

Well at least until now. 

Some are saying that this book outstrips even the Aces & Eights book for production value, but I'll need to have the book in my hands to attest to that.  Regardless, this shows that Kenzer & Co are committed to providing the gamer audience the very highest quality product.  Doing so has come with its share of adversity, from delays in publication to complaints about the high cost of the product, but in the end those who love RPGs, love Kenzerco's work, and are willing to pay a premium for a premium product are going to be more than satisfied. 

Hackmaster has come a long way from being a joke system in a comic strip, to a parody of D&D, to a system that stands on its own two feet and puts forth a host of innovations.  Despite the greatness of the new edition there are still those who think of Hackmaster as only a joke name and for that reason the good folks over at Kenzerco made this little poster...

The Hacklopedia is slated for release July 6th, carries a price tag of of $59.99 and can be ordered through Kenzerco's website. 

Reimagining the Goblin

Let's face it, other than the Kobold the Goblin is the low man on the totem pole.  You need a humanoid for your low level party to kick around?  Goblins fit your need perfectly.  They aren't all that dangerous, none of their abilities will frighten even a first level party.  So unless you've plan on throwing a small army of Goblins at the party, don't expect them to put up much of a fight. 

To my mind this is really kind of sad.  Goblins are a central monster in a lot of folklore, and though interpretations vary widely in those tales Goblins are usually portrayed as both scary and possessing supernatural powers.  The Goblin in D&D and other fantasy RPGs get's neither of those characteristics.  In fact they are more akin to cattle being brought to slaughter than their supernatural predecessors.  As I said, this is a damn shame.  I think it is time we got back to basics and made the Goblin a monster again and not some weakling to be kicked around with ease.

Scared?  I thought not.

Things didn't start off well for the Goblin.  In White Box D&D they warranted little more description than that they were little monsters.   Monsters evokes feelings of fear, but by describing them as little it takes away a portion of that fear and makes them seem less formidable (though obviously the fact that something is small doesn't mean it isn't dangerous).  

Later works including the Orcs of Thar and the AD&D Complete Book of Humanoids gave the option to have the Goblin as a playable race.  This kind of familiarity makes it even less likely that an adventuring party would view a small group of Goblins as a real threat, and increases the likelihood that Goblins would be looked at as just another race of people, much the way they are presented in World of Warcraft.   This isn't what we are trying to accomplish here.  In fact, it's quite the opposite.  We want to make the Goblins monstrous, to dehumanize them to a point where one wouldn't stop to chat with a Goblin, they would either run like hell or try to kill it before it killed them.

We get no help in our quest from second edition.  Hell they also present an option to play a Goblin as a PC in the Player's Option: Skills & Powers book.  Third edition humanizes Goblins even more and makes them an even less formidable threat to a party, and 4e goes even further.

So it seems we will get no help from D&D on this.  It looks like we are on our own.  In my mind that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I think monsters are one of the things that GMs are least likely to put some of themselves into.  They buy the Monster Manual and pick monster out of the book and plop them right into their games as is.  Despite coming up with their own campaign setting, their own adventures, and their own NPCs, GMs will just use generic monsters time after time.  I think this is a habit we as Gamemasters need to break.  We put too much of ourselves games to shortchange them by using the same old creatures time after time.

Silly tinkerer Goblins?  No thanks.

Just to give an example of the same old monsters getting stale let me tell you a story about my own gaming group.  For years and years we played only 3rd edition D&D, whoever ran the game used only monsters from the Monster Manual (Usually just the first one and not the four ridiculous ones that came after) and eventually everyone became very familiar with all of the "usual suspects" like Goblins.  One of our members, Bear, seemed to know the MM backward and forward and would point certainly facts about the monsters that would drive other members of the group (especially The Professor) out of their minds.  He wasn't doing it on purpose; for him it was just a reflex action.  He had been fighting the same monsters so long that he knew them inside out.

When we switched the new edition of Hackmaster it was like hitting the reset button.  Goblin stats were different and no one was all that familiar with them, but they still seemed to be Goblins in most of the same respects.  They were still the same cowardly miniature creatures that we had seen in D&D, though the insane damage dice in conjunction with the exploding dice (called penetration dice) that Hackmaster uses meant that they were far more dangerous.  That's half way there, but the Goblins still acted much as regular humans do, not in a kind of monstrous way divorced from human understanding.  So even Hackmaster isn't going to get us where we need to be, it's time to branch out on our own and create a whole new breed of Goblin.

The 1st Ed. Goblin

Let's recap our goals for this little project:

1. Unfamiliar - Familiarity doesn't only breed contempt, it breeds comfort and that leads to a lack of fear which is something we would like the party to feel.  Goblins are monsters and monsters should be scary.
2. Dehumanized - Goblins that act like humans basically are human and their differences are more or less cosmetic.  I have no interest in rehashing the moral dilemmas that come with basically seeking genocide against a race because their skin is different.  Those kinds of ideas have been done to death, see  Paladin and the Orc babies for details.  These Goblins should be treated as less than human because they are less than human, no moral dilemmas about it. 
3. Dangerous - I'm aiming to make a Goblin the equal of a Dragon, but I want them to pose a danger to the party.  As these Goblins are being made with Hackmaster in mind, this shouldn't be too difficult.  The penetration dice make you wince when you get hit with even the lowly dagger (2d4p damage).
4. Supernatural - These are monsters after all, so I want their origins to be supernatural.  Again, I'm looking for them to be outside of the natural world and apart from humanity.  
5. Powers - In Folklore Goblins have powers.  In D&D the Goblin's most effective power and running  away screaming (sometimes called the French power).  Ironically, even at this Goblins are hopeless as their short legs usually mean they get caught and butchered anyway.   So the aim here is to give them some powers beyond the mortal man that make them more dangerous, versatile, and unpredictable than the run of the mill RPG Goblin.  
6. Balanced -While balance isn't our primary objective (See Game Balance & the Conformist Utopia) it is something to be considered.  We want our party to be challenged by Goblins not wiped off the face of the earth.  They should be dangerous, but not too dangerous.

A little more mean looking, but still not quite it

With our objectives clear we are ready to proceed with our Re-imagining of the Goblin.  First we should considered the Goblins origins.  The major religion of the campaign I want to use this Goblin in his a strong religious element to it that is a fusion of several real world religions including Judeo-Christian elements such as demonology.  I think setting the Goblins roots somewhere in that Demonology could be the beginnings of a great Goblin.

How about this?  ...The very first Goblins were unbaptized children of early man who were led into temptation by Demons.  They were lured away from their families to caverns which led deep under the earth.  Once there the Demons tore out their unprotected souls and gave their bodies over to lesser demonic entities for possession.  The Goblins then were left on their own to multiply by abducting other children in the dead of night and carrying them off to lairs beneath the earth where they practice their dark ritual and create more of their kin. 

I like it.  It really fits the campaign setting, piggybacks off of real world folklore, and fulfills goal #2 to dehumanize the Goblins.  Now they aren't human or any other race of being they are the bodies of children that have been taken over by Demons.

Though their bodies were originally human they are now warped and deformed past recognition.  Their skin has become a sickly gray/green color, their eyes a solid dark gray near black.  They have razor shape teeth much like the way Demons are depicted in Renaissance art and they have elongated claw like hands with razor sharp talons on the end.  These natural weapons help to make the Goblins dangerous and thus fulfill #3.  The fact that they don't use forged weapons also helps with #2 as people would wonder where they got weapons if all Goblins were seen to carry them around.  Bite and Claw attacks will work well and I think damage somewhere between a dagger (2d4p) and a short sword (2d6p) will work perfectly.

We have already made the Goblins Supernatural (#4) by making their origins tied with Demons.  We can go further, and fulfill #5 (Powers) by giving the Goblins some supernatural abilities.  First to make them creepier I think I'll give them the ability to sound like the innocent children they were made from.  So an unsuspecting party might hear children crying or calling our for help only to find they they have been set up by Goblins.  Secondly, since I don't think that leaving dead Goblin bodies lying around is conducive to goal #1 (Unfamiliar) we will have their bodies melt into a viscus liquid after they die.  The liquid will seep back into the ground returning from whence the Goblin came.  Traces of the liquid might be left on the weapons used to slay the Goblins and I think the liquid should be slightly corrosive which could lead to weapon damage.  Goblin Ichor will be a potentially powerful component for spells and potions, making saving some before it seeps into the ground a valuable, if perhaps hazardous, venture. Finally, as these Goblins are creatures of darkness they would never willingly enter light of any kind.  A party holding a light source is sure to hold Goblins at bay (#6  - Balance) but Goblins have the ability to dampen and even completely suppress smaller lights.  For example, a party carrying a torch encounters three Goblins.  Kept at bay, the Goblins remain on the outer fringes of the torch light but slowly the torch light dims until it is the light of a candle.  After a few moments four more Goblins join the original three and the torch goes out completely.  Now the party is in trouble.  Alternately if a Mage is in the group and is using his magic to create light he may find the power of his spell fading as the group encounters Goblins.  The more join the fray the more difficult it is for him to keep his spell shedding light (In game terms he needs to keep pumping spell points into the light spell to keep it active).  Clerics might have to win constant turn checks to their any magical light they are producing shedding light.  The party might just find itself in a precarious position, fighting in the darkness against creatures born of darkness, all because of a simple supernatural ability. 

Scared now?  You better be!

Already we have worked on the six goals stated above and have a cool, unique Goblin who poses a significant threat to the party and who has a cool origin story steeped in campaign lore.  The Goblin is a classic and iconic creature, but it can be versatile as well.  There is nothing wrong with the standard Goblin if that is what you like and fits in your game, but if it doesn't it only takes a little work and consideration of the six above points for you to have a custom Goblin with an air of mystery and danger to challenge your players and shatter their expectations when they come across one.  

Advanced Hackmaster Player's Hanbook Video

Fans of Hackmaster have been (im)patiently awaiting the release of Kenzerco's Advanced Hackmaster.  Yes, we had Hackmaster Basic to wet our appetites, but I think we've long been ready for the main course!   The Hacklopedia of Beasts, the Hackmaster Bestiary, is already avilable in PDF with a print copy to follow in March, but how long will we have to wait for the all important Player's Handbook?  I don't know.  What I do know is that the book looks amazing, just like the Hacklopedia.  I know because Revil recently sent me a video that Jolly Blackburn posted of him working on the PHB.

Watch live video from KODT LIVE on Justin.tv

Gorgeous.   I don't know what else to say, I just love the look.  I'm very glad they are going with the same look as the Hacklopedia, both because it looks amazing and because I prefer a certain amount of continuity as far as look and layout go. 

Get the First Piece of Advanced Hackmaster Today

Kenzerco is now accepting Pre-Orders on the first part of AHM, the Hacklopedia of Beasts.  Though the physical book won't be out until sometime in the spring, anyone who pre-orders the book will immediately be able to download a PDF copy to hold them over.  Those who spring for the early version need not worry that their PDF will be anything less than a complete version of the book.  Any changes, additions, or alterations to PDF will be made available via subsequent download at no additional cost. 

This product is expensive, but the quality of the book really makes it worth it in my opinion.  Those who have the hardcover Aces & Eights have an idea of the kind of quality I'm talking about.  The print version of the book will be a full color, leather bound hardcover book 384 pages long.  I can't wait to get my hands on the real book, but until then I love being able to have a PDF copy to tide me over. 

Diary of a Gamer: Advancing Hackmaster

As I mentioned in my last Diary entry, my group has started participating in the Advanced Hackmaster playtest.  Obviously I can't discuss specific rules, but I can keep you up to speed on the general happenings in the campaign and my experience GMing it.

As usual I've been bad about keeping my Diary up to date.  At this point we have played four sessions and are deep into Frandor's Keep.  These entry won't be entirely spoiler free so readers beware.  For those of you who have already played Frandor's I'll make reference to the various adventure tittles to make it easier to follow our path.

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Week 1

The first week started with character creation.  In any incarnation of Hackmaster, even Hackmaster Basic, character creation is a serious investment.  Some people see this as a weakness, preferring character creation to be a quick and easy process that get's you right into playing, but I favor the dissenting viewpoint.  As I said I view Hackmaster character creation as an investment.  A player invests time and effort into creating his character, this leads to an immediate sense of worth.  The character has value to the player, a value he is keenly interesting in protecting.  Personally I don't want to run of play in a game where characters are discarded like used tissues only to pluck another from the box without another thought.  A player should feel the death of his character acutely, and strike to prevent his characters demise at all costs.

With that little rant over with let me get down to brass tax on how things went down.  There are five players in the group and things worked out like this

Donovan Krell - Human Fighter/Mage (Revil)
Leland Bronson - Human Ranger (Prof. Obsscure)
Hendrix Jinn - Human Cleric of Risk (Moox)
Steven Jenkins - Human Thief (FunTrip)
Ivar Greenstone - Human Mage (AngryBear)

Right away you may be blown away that they are all human, I kind of was.  One a single Elf or Dwarf among them.  However, since Jenkins ended up being racist this all worked out for the best.

I had the group start off a few days march from Frandor's Keep, deep in the wilderness of the Hinterlands.  The Hinterlands are a sort of colony of the Kingdom of Therin, but travel back and forth is almost impossible at this point and only small groups are able to make the perilous journey through the mountains.  The Hinterlands are kind of an untamed area on the edge of civilization making Frandor's Keep something of a Keep on the Borderlands (har har).  The game picked up with their making their last few days of travel to the keep.  On the way they were waylaid by a Kobold ambush, but dispatched the creatures with very little effort.  Before that happened though the Ranger took a critical hit from a Javelin that penetrated a few times and did some serious damage that would prove important later.

Camping the following night the group was set upon by a rabid boar that nearly whiped out the whole group.  The Ranger especially, who was carrying a big wound from the fight with the Kobolds was taken down to but one hit point in the wake of the battle.  Eager to rest the party left the boar carcass in their camp and just tried to sleep.  The carcass however drew the attention of a black bear...

Now a quick aside.  You may think that me introducing this black bear means that I had it in for the party, but that simply isn't so.  Rather I have a desire that each character get a chance to shine doing what they do best.  That is to say that I present the group with a situation that draws on the talents of one of the characters and allows them to save the party or advance the story in some big way.  In this situation it was me giving the Ranger a chance to do his "man of the woods" thing.  Let's see how that worked out...

...The bear tossed the boar carcass around sniffed at the party, rearing up on its hind legs to challenge the Ranger, who was closest, for the carcass.  The Ranger promptly tattooed the bear with one of his throwing axes.

I think you can guess how this one ended.  The rest of the group watched from high atop a tree while the Ranger's dead body was mauled for about 10 minutes before the bear drew the boar carcass away.  That's where we ended it.

Character Death Total: 1


GM Reactions 
I left this one feeling pretty low. I still am not sure what possessed the Professor to behave like a lunatic.  However, character creation went well and the other players were happy with thier characters.  The party seemed well balanced to me, covering all four basic areas combat, stealth, arcane, and divine.  But as you'll see a little less balance might have availed the group better, but more on that next time.  

Diary of a Gamer : The End of Pathfinder as we Know it

Last night my group's Pathfinder game came to an end.  The campaign started in October, was relauched in January and has run more or less steady since then.  Perhaps it was the relaunch effect, but it doesn't seem as though we've been playing Pathfinder for about seven months. 

The climactic conclusion of the campaign (or at least this part, there is still hope that we will return to it later) was the party storming the castle of an evil witch to rescue the King... Well, technically he's a general, but he is the game's King Arthur equivilent.  The game got off to a rough start with one of the players (Moox) not being able to make it, and got worse when another (Revil) had to leave.  This left just your faithful narrator and AngryBear to face off against the Big Bad, a CR 15 Green Hag Witch.  Fortunetly we had some NPC backup including a faery who was able to break the Hag's mental hold on the King.  He joined us in the fight and we put a wooping on the Witch, Evard's Black Tenticles be damned! 

I was glad to see the game (or at least this chapter) get a good end to it.  The game started off great and had a lot of really fun moments, but started to get bogged down after the Witch kidnapped the King.  We found outselves battles Derro left and right with no way of knowing we were going the wrong way.  What should have taken a few weeks instead took us months, and that sapped a lot of ethusiasm and energy from the game. 

So after months of playing Pathfinder what do I think of it?  Well first off I find it damn confusing! The rules are so close the 3.5 rules that I often find myself almost shocked when they made a rule change.  For example, they changed DR a bit, making it so that you consider your total weapon bonus in the case of a magic weapon when determining if it passes a certain DR type (this is a great change in my opinion).  For example, my weapon was a total of +4 so that passes the Cold Iron DR (which came up as we were fighting this strange Nyph creatures).  I didn't know that, nor did anyone else realize it until the fight was pretty much over.  These types of mistakes were common during the campaign, and I'm sure happen all the time to people who have a lot of experience playing 3rd edition. 

Overall the Pathfinder rules are good.  They fixed some really big problems that 3.5 had and added some more flavor to some of the classes, like the Sorcerer.  Upgrading the DR system and introducing CMB and CMD for Combat manuevers was also a welcome change.  That having been said not all the changes were for the better.  Pathfinder knocked the Ranger back down to suck-town, did nothing to address the fact that the Monk is a crap class, and left several broken spells in place.  So between 3.5 and Pathfinder you can find things that are better about each. 

But at least for now, Pathfinder is the past.  The future is Hackmaster, Advanced Hackmater (the playtest).  I'll be making what I hope to be a triumphant return to GMing... If not at least I'll have a screen to hide behind.  I'm really excited about this playtest, but nervous as well.  It's been a while since a I ran a game, and a while since I played HM so I'm concerned about getting the kinks out.  I'm plan on taking time this week to review the rules and brush up on the setting we'll be playing in, Frandor's Keep.  With a great setting and a great Rulesystem if this game fails no one will have to look far for who to blame. 

Because I wanted the players to have some time to consider their options I let them roll their stats ahead of time to mull over their options.  One player (ManOnFunTrip) is rejoining the game and wasn't there so he'll be doing all of his character creation next week.  Those who have already rolled had some mixed results.  Both Revil and the Professor did well, but AngryBear barely qualified as a PC. 

I promise to try to do better with this damn diary.  I may have epicly failed for Pathfinder, but its a new campaign and a fresh start.  Plus, ever GM wants an audience to complain to, right?   Obviously I'll be limited what I can discuss rules-wise, but the general narative will be fair game.

Return to Hackmaster

My group and I are now officially playtesting Advanced Hackmaster!  I'm not sure I can put into words how excited I am.  Obviously none of us can speak about the rules, but we can still give tales of the group's adventure, which I plan to do weekly. 

I'll be running the game, Revil and the Profressor will be players along with AngryBear and Moonxine.  We are starting out with Frandor's Keep, which only adds to the excitement. 

Unfortunately we won't be starting until May 11th (AngryBear has finals coming up), at which time we will commence a 2 game a week schedule.  Tuesday will be Hackmaster, and Pathfinder will continue on Thursdays. 

Overall this is an amazing opportunity and I can't wait to dive in.

GaryCon This Weekend

GaryCon 2010 will be taking place this weekend.  Every year I lament that I can't go to various convention and though I hope this is the year I finally break the GenCon barrier I know that GaryCon isn't going to happen for me. 

Though I'll be missing out others will be attending what is by all accounts one of the best weekends of gaming available.  Dave Kenzer has said that his team plans on running three to six Hackmaster Basic and Hackmaster Advanced games. 

Sigh...

Well maybe next year.  But those of you who are going this year I encourage you to pounce on a Golden Opportunity to play Hackmaster Advanced... and then tell me all about it!  Yes that's right, I am serious.  If you come back from GaryCon with a cool story and/or info on Hackmaster Advanced I invite you to email me and fill me in.  Maybe it will make me less disappointed at missing out. 

Safe trip to those heading out!