HackMaster 5th Edition Play: After Session 1 of 2

Back in The Day I was an early buyer of HackMaster 4th and was a low-counter member of the HackMaster Association as a registered GM. Tons of fun - I loved carrying my card around. I ran a HackMaster 4 campaign for a few years (heavily modified to get the satire out) and ported a version of the honor rules into my new AD&D 2e S&P campaign 8 years ago.

Naturally I was a pre-order guy for the HackMaster 5th Kacklopedia and PHB. I got Frandor's Keep the day I could. The Fun Lads Four and the wife all made characters and we started at Frandor's, running 5 sessions or so.

And we hated it. We all remembered the combat as wonky and confusing and the play as disjointed. 

I didn't pre-order the GMG and we put the books on the shelf in my storage room that it climate controlled. After 3 years sitting on the shelf I was moving books around and the PHB cover had simply fallen off. From sitting there.

I let Kenzerco know and they very promptly shipped me a free replacement (the batch my first one came from had a known issue). Excellent customer service!

About 10 days ago Sam persuaded me, Jack, and Nick to make 4th level characters, play two sessions, and see if it was still an issue.

This is what happened.

Inspired by Other Bloggers - Back in the Day and Now

  Last night I saw an interesting article in my Google+ feed - this fun bit. Inspired, I will do the same and related my experiences.

  I started D&D in '77 on March 15th. Yes, I remember the specific day because there was a Shakespeare play going on at the time. The guy running it was a college freshman at Ball State and was using the white box rules for a game with his girlfriend, some high school kids - and me. I am forever grateful to the two girls who insisted I be able allowed to play even though I was 9.
  I remember setting as fairly important; the DM used French to indicate when we were speaking to traders from other lands and his girlfriend used German to represent the barbarians from the North. I was soon with a group of middle schoolers with a high school age DM and he also had a fairly detailed setting with the politics between the elves and the dwarves really setting the tone.
  By the end of the year I had Traveller, the Holmes basic set, and Chivalry & Sorcery. C&S has a huge impact on me because it was very focused on setting and on background. And Traveller added skills! I loved the snap and crunch of Traveller with all the math, the ship design, etc. And I liked the complexity of C&S. But I played D&D the most, with a bullet.
  In '78 I started working on a setting for my own D&D campaign, a port city called Seaward. Originally it was a crude map of a small city, a nearby set of smugglers' caves, and where the wizard's tower was. My players seemed to love the background and settings. The style of play for us was similar to this;

-Make characters (3d6 in order, roll 3 sets and pick the one you like)
-Make the new character part of the setting with backstory
-Have fun.

  Character death was fairly common.

  Around 1980 I noticed that the modules I had gotten had really changed the map - figuring out where to put them, how they fit into the world, etc. really spread out the map and added a lot of depth. My house rules were both well begun and under constant revision. I was actively trying to figure out how to get Traveller-style rules in my D&D setting when three things happened in quick succession; I moved, I received the World of Greyhawk folio as a gift; and I received Rolemaster as a gift.
  The impact of Rolemaster on how I thought about gaming was huge, bigger than C&S had been. The Greyhawk folio made me look at the Seaward setting from a 'top down' perspective; my new set of players were very, very strong on the rules without being rules lawyers.
  Before you know it I was running two campaigns; one in Greyhawk where it was official modules and Seaward where it was original stuff. This was also the time of my first 'reboot' of Seaward - much like Crisis on Infinite Earths I fixed continuity errors and cleaned up the maps and storylines. Another interesting development was how the players wanted to move characters between the two campaigns. We also all used what we called 'strict time'; sometimes characters were unavailable so we began having henchmen go as adventurers when their boss was out - the beginnings of what I call jazz band adventuring although not nearly as sophisticated as it became later.
  During this time;
-setting was still very important as a tool for adding depth to the game
-a lot of my players had henchmen as quasi-substitute characters
-When character death was a little less common character 'so messed up he is out for months' was more common than ever

  After joining the army I was all over the map in more ways than one. My looooong training schools allowed me to participate in a very, very fun game of Champions and play in a campaign where the GM had only ever played Rolemaster, knew every rule inside and out, and was running in a homebrew setting. Those two GMs taught me a great deal about being prepared, session prep, plotline development, and collaborating with the players. I was also playing a fair amount of D&D including a number of very memorable 'one shots' with someone who went on to win several prestigious awards as a movie producer.
  Then I was lucky enough to join Lew Pulsipher's D&D group. As I have mentioned before, Lew had already solidified what I call 'jazz band adventuring' and his setting, Tonilda, was a revelation in its simplicity. Most importantly, he is a full-blown game theorist and we often had long discussion about theory and did a fair amount of experimentation.
  Of course, 2e cam out shortly thereafter and I did my second reboot of Tonilda to incorporate a lot of the things I had learned.
  During this time;
-setting settled in as what I still consider it to be to this day - a framework for plot development that allows various stories, characters, etc. to interact so that there is a feeling of verisimilitude to the game and more depth for all involved
-I realized that the balance between complexity and simplicity should vary and that the difference in 'feel' between systems is often about this balance

  I wanted to insert a little note, here, about my experiences as a gamer.
  I feel like I am a bit unusual as a gamer - I have been to two RPG conventions ever and while I enjoyed them well enough I doubt that I will ever be to many more. I have never, ever had any experience with being bullied, etc., about gaming. I had motorcycle racers and football players in my games from day one and a small majority of all of my players were special forces, airborne, or rangers. With a few exceptions I have always had girls or women in my gaming groups. I sometimes feel that this is anomalous since a fair number of my peers talk about their experience as very different than this.

  Storytelling/White Wolf/WoD came along just as I was transitioning from the army to civilian life. I have mentioned other places that I largely enjoyed WoD as a concept but I did not ever run it and was not a fan after playing it. Story and setting had been a part of my campaigns from the beginning but were always secondary to adventure and fun.

  I did run 3e for a number of years and used Seaward (not the main campaign area) for those games. While there are certainly great elements in 3e the complexity level was a bit too high for my players and I to enjoy it as much as earlier versions. We kept largely the same attitude; fun and adventure is first, story and setting add to fun and adventure, rules need to be balanced between simple and complex. My 3e campaign died a neglectful death since my players were always asking to play something else.

  I experimented pretty heavily in this time with Rolemaster, Fantasy Hero, new C&S, etc. but always kept coming back to 1e and 2e. I was an eager fan of HackMaster 4th and really enjoyed it. My wife is a huge fan of AD&D 2nd edition Skills and Powers so I eventually created a new campaign world, Blackstone, to run a dedicated 2e S&P campaign.

  Blackstone was the primary campaign for a few years while Seaward lurked about. Eventually my kids wanted to play more 1e and Seaward was back out in full. We still keep story and setting in support of adventuring and fun, as the kids age we use jazz band adventuring more and more, and we like the level of complexity between 1e and 2e S&P.

  4e went by pretty fast and it was some time sbefore I got the books - my sons play it as a tactical warfare simulator. I heard of and acquired OSRIC, S&W, etc. all pretty early and enjoy them a great deal.

  I currently run a 1e campaign (Seaward), a 2e S&P campaign (Blackstone), and a Champions campaign (Champions of Atlanta). I still wish I could figure out how to play Rolemaster more. I still wish I played as much as I GM.

  What are your histories like?

Play Report - Three First-Time Players

  As I mentioned earlier yesterday evening I hosted a family of friends. The dad, D., had played 1e in high school and college but had no group when he moved for his first job 20 years ago. He came over with thee of his kids: son M. (14), daughter T., 12, and daughter C., 9. My sons J., A., S., and N. all assisted in setup and character creations.
  We started by just talking about RPGs in general over snacks and lemonade. The kids were eager, having heard tales from the table from their father all week. M. is a Full Metal Alchemist fan and had some general ideas about character motivation; T. is an artist and had character concept sketches; C. was just ready to have fun.
  We moved on and J. rolled up a character as a demo; he rolled Str 17 Int 11 Wis 9 Dex 11 Con 14 Cha 9 - a classic 3d6 in order fighter. We took our time and explained hit points, armor class, weapon proficiencies, etc. as we went. Total time to roll up, equip, and discuss creation was about 25 minutes. Then J., A., S., and N. helped all four of the visitors make characters. We ended up with:
  C. - human magic-user with 1 h.p. and A.C. 10
  T. - elven fighter/magic-user with 5 h.p. and A.C. 10
  M. - human thief with h.p. 2 and A.C. 5/8
  D. - human illusionist with h.p. 4 and A.C. 8/10
         Yup, a 3d6 in order illusionist.
  and J. with his new fighter, u.p. 8, A.C. 5

  With the heavy skew towards casters I was really glad J. had done a straight fighter.
  I then took them aside in ones and twos and explained how some of them knew each other ["J., you and T. have the same swordmaster trainer; C., you and T. have the same wizard mentor; T., and C. you have met D. who is mentored by your mentor's husband; J., you and M. have done some 'little jobs' for the town guard captain every now and then", etc.]
  Once that little web of acquaintance was established the town guard captain dropped a story on J. about how a small village had a reward for people willing to figure out some missing people. In a few moments the web of acquaintances had resulted in a team on its way tot he village of Stowanger.

  Note: Normally I give each character a sheet of things they know, rumors they have heard, secrets they are keeping, and people they know at the end of character creation, but I also usually spend a fair amount of time with each person over each character. Since this was a 'training session' I abbreviated this a lot! Still, I made sure they didn't 'all just meet in an inn'. I also slipped the human magic-user a tube of salve from her grandmother.

  Note: My son, J., wrote a list of 'basic adventuring equipment for 10 g.p.' and 'basic riding horse package for 45 g.p.' and we printed this out - a great help for newbies!

  Off they went on the River Road, eventually stopping in the (soon to be) famous Sad Wolf Tavern in Ham-on-Wye. After spending the night they set out south to the sleepy village of Stowanger and its only public building, the Church of St. Aledhel of the Elves.  They asked good questions, spoke to the locals, and eventually figured out that the people going missing had all recently come into money. They asked if anyone had recently come into money and were soon camped in the Brownside family barn, watching their house.

  The next day it rained all day and night. At the end of first night watch the fighter/magic-user spotted movement in the rain-soaked night. Like many first-time players she almost didn't think to wake anyone else up before going out, alone, to investigate. She remembered, though, and the group soon identified the shapes as kobolds trying to pry open a shutter of the house. The party developed a fairly interesting plan of the magic-user casting Dancing Lights as a ghostly figure appearing amidst the main group of kobolds and then the party attempting to capture one of the isolated kobolds on lookout.

  The sudden appearance of the spell effect startled the kobolds enough that the main group fled (pretty badly failed morale check) and the party did try to capture a kobold, ending up with a dead one and one at -3 but stable.
  No cleric, so no way to get the wounded kobold to interrogation ready in decent time.
  The party then quizzed Farmer Brownside about where the kobolds might be; he eventually mentioned the 'haunted mill'. The party set off for this building after using the salve to heal a hit point or two and getting some sleep.

  Note: I was using Syrinscape with a bluetooth speaker set in the middle of the table- the players, new and experienced alike, loved the weather and battle noises; they said it added a lot and kept the in-game conditions in their mind.

  The old mill is a 30' deep, 40' wide 2 storey structure with no windows on the first floor (but a broken old door hangs from from the only entrance, on the ground floor. There are windows all around the second floor.
  The thief decided to climb up to a second floor window and scout - one failed climb walls check later and the entire party is creeping up to the front door and another use of the salve is gone.
  The ground floor of the mill has the broken machinery of the milling process and a number of areas for stacking grain sacks - 10' x 10' stalls with 2' high walls. The floor is covered in dried leaves, rotted old burlap bags (empty), and such debirs and their is a staircase to the second floor in the corner.
  The thief decides to scout ahead and promptly steps into a bear trap hidden under the debris. The noise prompts 6 kobolds to rise from hiding in the stalls and unleash a storm of javelins! My dice hate me and they all missed.

  Note: The three bear traps are in very specific places on the map - don't walk there, no trap. This is the 11th time I have run the old mill for new players. The thief was the first to go in every time; the thief failed to search for traps every time; the thief hit one of the three hidden bear traps every time.

  The prepared illusionist immediately cast Darkness, covering half the first floor and shielding the party from 1/2 the ambushers. J., and T. immediately close with the other kobolds. In the next three rounds of combat the party deals with 4 of the 6 kobolds they had seen and one kobold escaped up the stairs. They also (finally) got the thief free, but he was down to 0.5 hit points (yes, I keep track of 1/2 hit points) and unable to fight.

  Note: In the past I have typically explained 1e combat starting with rounds and then breaking that down into segments. This time, after thinking about HackMaster Advanced, I explained combat starting with segments and then moving on to rounds. One group isn't "data" but they seemed to grasp the basics of combat a lot faster this way.

  Then a secret door opened and a lot more kobolds started coming in. Then more started coming down the stairs. J., ordered everyone out while he held them off, but they insisted he go and actually held off the hordes long enough for him to get away with just a little javelin hit.

  Note: When running the old mill I prefer to have one of the experienced players do a 'heroic last stand' and die. Why? Well, to show that it is just a game and characters die. And to show that an awesome, courageous death in a game can be pretty cool. Also, I coach the player a little bit - when the death happens they talk a bit about how that was pretty cool, then pull out another character and let me know they are ready if I need to introduce  the new guy. This, again, stresses that this is a game, that characters die, etc. it also sets them up for jazz band adventuring where each player has a stable of characters that they mix and match.
  Since I often am teaching younger players (under 10 fairly often, like this time) this, in my own experience, gives them the emotional distance they need; people that age naturally and properly become emotionally attached to characters and don't like Bad Things to happen to their family and friends. The staged 'heroic death' helps teach them that, once more, it is just a game. If they seem really upset? The party retrieves the body, they visit the bishop and they all learn about Raise Dead, too!
  This time, though, the party's actions had set up a viable escape plan - J. didn't want to act totally irrational and I didn't want to 'punish' the party by just dumping new critters on them until their foresight and planning didn't matter so - he lived.

The party rushed back to the village and sent word to the local baron - before sunset troops arrived, the remaining kobolds were cleared out, and the party had its reward money.



  This was obviously a short, sweet adventure designed to quickly introduce new players to ideas ranging from searching for traps to cover to roleplaying asking locals questions. It went well, they all had fun, and they all want to play again.

  Mission accomplished!

New Spells - Ember's Firestrike

  I like Hackmaster 4th for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is it is really 1e with stuff [another reason is the amazing GM screen). But I and my kids love the spells, too. In my 2e campaign one of my sons plays a fire elementalist called Ember. He wanted to have the entire huge list of Fireball variants from Hack4 but some of them are a bit - over the top. He did his own versions of a few of them (with my help) and here is one of his favorites for outdoor adventuring.

Ember's Firestrike
Level: 3
Range: 5,500 yds.
Duration: Inst.
Area of Effect: 10' diameter sphere
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 5 seg
Save: 1/2

  When cast the spell hurls a tiny point of flame at great speed towards its target and, once it arrives, it detonates into a relative small but hot Fireball doing 1d4 points of damage per level of the caster; a successful save vs. spell reduces this damage by 1/2. At ranges of less than 100 yds this spell otherwise acts in all ways like a Fireball spell.
  It is, however, capable of striking foes much further away. With a line of sight and no obstacles Ember's Firestrike has the potential to cause damage up to 3 1/8th miles away.
  Note that at sea or on flat, level terrain the horizon appears to be about 3 1/8th miles away for a human male of average height.
  For any target area past 100 yards the caster must roll 'to hit' vs. A.C. 10 as if performing a melee attack as a fighter of the caster's level. There is no penalty to this roll within the first 500 yards but the roll is made at a -1 for each additional 500 yard to a maximum of -10 to hit for targets between 5,001 and 5,500 yards away. At 5,501 yards or more Ember's Firestrike dissipates.
  Example: Ember (11th level) and his henchman Firewing (7th level) are defending a mountain pass from an orcish army. The vanguard is 600 yards away and the leader is a mile (1,650 yards) away. Firewing targets the vanguard, Ember the leader.
  Firewing's target is more than 500 yards away but less that 1,000 so he rolls to hit vs. A.C. 10 with a -1; he rolls a 15 and strikes the area he aimed for doing 7d4 damage vs. all the orcs in a 10' radius.
  Ember's target is more than 1,500 yards away but less than 2,000 so his to hit roll is at -3. he rolls a 19 and strikes the leader and all other orcs within 10' for 11d4 damage.
  Misses are resolved as grenade-like missiles with distances of scatter in tens of feet.
  Example: Although the death of their warchief has shaken the orcs, they press on. Ember launches another Firestrike against a cluster of shamans directing troops from the rear - they are 2,100 yards away, giving Ember a -4 to hit. He rolls a 5, a miss. He rolls a d8 to determine scatter direction: 4, or towards Ember. He rolls a d6 to determine scatter distance; 3, or 30'. The Firestrike detonates at 2,090 yards directly between Ember and the shamans, doing 11d4 damage to a lone runner carrying orders to the front lines.
 
  Feel free to use the spell in your own games, please just keep Ember's name associated with it. It will be in my upcoming book Far Realms, as well.