Some+Thoughts

I'd like to share the following thoughts that I happened across at the K&C boards today, talking about 3/4th ed and the direction the game has gone, away from its name and towards something new/different. It's something to chew on, as we can all see that 4th moves the game further along the writer's suggested axis.

"I think it's a lousy system for Dungeons & Dragons, at least as I know and love it - but a great system for "movie serial/heroic action" games (and 4E looks to be even moreso). The early 3e products had sketchy enough stats you could pretty much use them in any game system - the more recent DELVE format ones... well, you only need the core books for spell descriptions and if you've got a group that isn't anal about things I suspect you could run d20 from just the modules...

Something about these rough words hit me that we really aren't playing D&D as we first learned it any longer. I found myself nostalgically poring over the K&C website wondering where my favorite company had gone (their vitality after relocating to new offices had been so diminished, I'd given up on them back in '05 or so.)

And I found that Aces and Eights had released to widespread acclaim, that it was quite literally the only new game at Origins and Gen last year, and that it had exhausted its print run. Hackmaster was in development for '5'th edition, pressing on despite the end of the license.

And most of all I found a community of people that had concluded that HM had tied up the strands of Ad&D into a more cinched hole, exhalting it in baroque glory. A community of people that echoed Ed Greenwood's words on the game:

"hackmaster takes...nay, HURLS, you back to the days when games were FUN! SCHLING!!" --Ed Greenwood

Reading something like this, and knowing a bit about the character of Ed, I could only speculate that the man that we all know to be running 2nd ed at his home games is perhaps, in fact, playing hackmaster.

With evidence and opinions like this before us, it seems that we too are challenged to decide if we want to play 'movie serial/heroic action" games, or if we want to play that unique flavor of game, Dungeons and Dragons.

I for one have a preordered copy of 4th, but...I also have a place in my heart where I know that HM5, reportedly a tightening of the 'serious,' while dropping most of the 'parody' elements, a cinching of the mechanics introduced in A&8, and a game put out with creative integrity rather than 'market pulse' at its heart, and I think it's the game I'll long to play. I'm of course waxing poetic, as neither game is more than a mote in god's eye to us, as we haven't seen either.