Kenzer & Company have released a PDF preview of the new edition of HackMaster on their forums, downloadable here.Yeah, the PDF is essentially an advertisement, but you know what? This version of HackMaster sounds pretty cool to me.
I used to own most of the HackMaster rulebooks and almost really liked them. The players-versus-DM attitude kind of put me off, and the humor wasn't really my style, but I thought there were some cool ideas in it. Ultimately I thought it would probably work better as an AD&D supplement than as its own game, but I have no gameplay experience to back that snap judgment up.
Anyway, the new game certainly seems to be toning down the blatant (and formerly contractually required) goofiness while still retaining a sense of fun. I like that the mechanics are AD&D-inspired but still willing to go off in different directions - combat, especially, looks like it will be pretty interesting. I get a cool "let's take what AD&D did right, and go from there" vibe from this I haven't felt since I got into Palladium Fantasy when I was a teenager. That's exciting.
Between this and Aces & Eights, Kenzer is definitely starting to intrigue me.
(Yeah, I just preordered it.)
