HackMaster GameMaster's Guide Hardcover – April 27, 2015

Cover/Outside: Worst quality than the hacklopedia of beasts or the players handbook but still usable, I found the lack of some simple "Gamemaster's Guide" or some such on the front cover (instead of just the spine) somewhat jarring, but I guess it saves on printer costs and its not a huge deal so I won't complain too much there. The chapters are color coded along the sides of the pages which makes it easy to navigate if you know the book somewhat well.Chapter 1: General GM advice. A lot of it represents old school modes of thinking and ignores blatant advancements in the tabletop RPG field. Most glaringly is the "Look it up" as the number 1 rule. Don't get me wrong, I am the sort of person who loves crunch in my games because I enjoy meaty mechanics, but DM fiat is vastly preferable to slowing the game down to a crawl ESPECIALLY during combat because there is some rules ambiguity. If its your first time playing and you are just sort of doing a "tutorial" run sure but during any sort of reasonably paced game slogging through rules should be the last option you consider. The railroad mechanics are weak (If you haven't read the essay on "Quantum Ogres" just go read that) as well the advice is literally copy pasted in two places in the book (Page 9 and 188). Better advice would be that if you are pressed for time instead of creating one giant dungeon and forcing your players to go there because nothing else exists create a bunch of smaller "side quest" type adventures the players can interact with. That way there is still choice and likely the side quests will be vastly more interesting on a whole because 1. The players had a choice in interacting with it instead of being forced into it and 2. Its easier to make a small contained scene interesting than a bunch of connected scenes interesting. At the end of the day, if your players have to end up at the dungeon just skip the part where you pretend they have a choice and go straight to the dungeon to avoid a whole lot of frustration. Now to the games credit it does say at the end of the piece to actually have real choices, but it feels like the "Worst case scenario" bit could have been reworked. The rest of the section is fairly unremarkable talking about how to deal with problem players, bring people in from other games, table culture and game themes, etc.Chapter 2 Combat: Lots of crunch, I liked some of the terrain rules (given of course you have all your terrain modifiers jotted down somewhere and your group is experienced enough that some additional math doesn't slow you down too much). There was some errata to prevent disengaging/reengaging in order to gain free attacks, some overly complex pursuit rules, and new "near perfect attacks". Also some info on air to ground combat and poisons. I thought it was ridiculous that an assassin using poison suffers an honor penalty - the persons freaking job is to kill people not kill people in a specific way, and thats just the assassin. Personally, it seems like the only people who should take honor hits are good characters followed by lawful characters.Then we get to the meat of chapter 2 - The fumble/Critical rules. These rules are in my honest opinion extremely poorly written and overly complex. Im 50/50 on whether the rules are a joke I am not getting or the author is really committed to these asinine rules. Not only that, but the author has the gall to blame his readers for the slow combat system he created telling readers its THEIR fault that combat is slow after creating these ridiculous rules.Fumble: On a fumble (ie a nat 1 in which the modified attack is lower than the defense) you fumble, roll a d1000 to see what happens, and if the result is odd the attacker gets a counter attack. Some of the results include things like "Hinder a random ally within 5' + weapon reach; they suffer +d6 seconds penalty to when they can attack next and a -(d4 + 1) to hit penalty on next attack or 25% chance of hitting you instead; If ally is arcane spellcaster in midst of casting a spell this counts as "Caster struck by blow absorbed by body armor for purpose of spell mishaps" As you can see results like this add an insane amount of bookkeeping, require looking up random rules (what the heck is "Caster struck by blow absorbed by body armor") and are just completely unclear (is it a 25% to attack the fumbler or the attack penalty? Do I get to choose or do I roll to see if I attack the fumbler and only if I don't do I get the penalty?). MANY of the results also result in permanent stat damage via muscle strain which seems super lame to me.Critical: These rules are somehow even more egregious than the fumble because they take something as exciting as a critical hit and manage to make it incredibly painful. The game has you rolling on MASSIVE (d10,000!) tables many of the results are either super unfun (Oooo I hit the dragon on top of his foot!) or else dramatically broken (Crit kills instantly no matter what). The tables would maybe be forgivable if it didn't slow the game down so dramatically. Now to be fair both these and the fumble rules are specifically marked as optional rules, but you would need to have a VERY unique group in order to make the time investment worth it with these crit tables.Chapter 3 Adventure: Some NPC reaction tables, clunky and with too many random modifiers IMO but still serviceable at least compared to the crit rules. Some feats of strength guidelines, torture rules (I don't know about you but im not too interested in playing games where torture is going to be a part of the game). This chapter focuses mostly on some miscellaneous things that could possibly come up in your game, and if you don't want to use DM fiat to solve it you have some fairly detailed rules to do it for you. Overall, I don't personally mind the detailed rules on events that will not come up very often (such as dehydration or starvation) because they are nice if implemented and if not its no big deal, unlike core mechanics (such as critical hits) rules for miscellaneous rare events can only add to your games.Chapter 4 Spellcasting: Spell mishap rules/spellcasting in armor rules. With enough homework this section could improve your game/spellcasting, but your players need to really be on top of it/have the various tiers of spell failure printed out.Chapter 5 The Journey: Basically same feeling as chapter 3, a bunch of rules on overland travel, but these rules have even less utility unless you really care about how much weight EXACTLY your Ox can pull. Or how road quality affects travel times.Chapter 6 Between Adventures: Tries to spruce up leveling up, I kinda like these rules because the level up event tables look like they could be fun. Perhaps most importantly the training mechanics encourage players to develop ties with NPCs that can later be used (Grand master needs you to do X to continue training, etc). There is also some rules on item quality/maintenance which seems over the top, and some rules for selling gear. Finally the rules for alcohol and stimulants are actually pretty good, especially the various rare types of alcohols with cool effects that heal you or grant strength etc.Chapter 7 Character Vitals: Some rules on social status/fame/honor which I was pretty meh on (a fair amount of it was just regurgitated info from the players handbook). There are also some new proficiencies/skills/talents which was pretty cool.Chapter 8: Zero level characters: The book has rules for creating 0 level characters and crawling your way up to first level, I thought it was a cool concept but the book specifically says even the 0 level characters have completed like 90% of their training (Which I understand, you can't go from being a peasant to being a mage by killing a few kobolds), still I wish the flavor was more along the lines of Dungeon Crawl Classics in which you start out as truly bottom of the barrel and work your way up. I thought the execution was middling to moderately successful.Chapter 9 NPCs: Moderately useful tools for creating NPCs, more importantly there are rules for how to have henchmen/sidekicks/hirelings and the like.Chapter 10: Same as chapter 1 basically. Some stuff on encounter design/traps which was moderately useful.Chapter 11: Loooooots of treasure tables, really where the book shines right here is the wealth of items and treasure tables.Anyway the rest of the book is basically treasure stuff + info on the setting + a short section on diseases. The treasure info is likely to be the most useful to any GM, and the treasures are often wonderfully detailed and have rich backstories even when the items themselves may be somewhat lackluster.TL;DR: Most of the rules will only add to your game if A. The GM finds that extreme realism is a must. B. You like stopping combat for 3 years whenever criticals or fumbles happen. C. You do a lot of homework and make sure you know all the rules in advance because they aren't very BSable.

I've been playing Hackmaster since the original 4th Edition days. Back then, Hackmaster was required to be more of a parody game, but it was still the most fun RPG experience I've ever had. With this new edition, Kenzer & Co. has really upped the bar.To begin, the book's quality seems a bit lower than the other two core books (the Player's Handbook and the Hacklopedia of Beasts). Let me be clear, those books set a tremendously high bar! I've shown non-gamers those books and received awed exclamations. They are beautifully bound and printed books. The covers set a tone. They are just truly beautiful things. The GMG is all black. I felt like I was receiving an advance copy when I got it. It's not poorly bound or printed. It just doesn't have the oomph I was hoping for. One could say it's black as the heart of the GM, and one would be right. But it was less than I was expecting with this book. The binding seems the same high quality as the others, and the printing is well-done, hence the 5-star review.The game system is what I have come to expect from the detail-oriented Kenzer & Company. Hackmaster 5e is truly a wonder to play. The base system is quick, easy to GM, and very cinematic with concepts such as follow-through damage and knock backs. The dice-penetration mechanic is truly a lot of fun, creating those once-in-a-lifetime lucky shots that we read about in our favorite fantasy novels, where the little Halfling deals the death blow to the dark lord of evilness. Truly, Hackmaster is a game for the creation of epic legends!The book is organized well, with a table of contents that is easy to get the hang of, with colored indexes on the pages so you can flip through them and quickly find the section you're looking for. Every attention to detail was paid to this book!It was a long time coming for long-time fans of Hackmaster, but the wait was definitely worth it. It's a pricey book, but you'll understand why when you hold it in your hand. I, for one, was tired of books falling apart from use, and this book isn't going to do that. It'll stand the test of time. Well done, Kenzer & Co., well done, indeed!