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Folcon

I've got to ask, does this sort of thing actually create interesting gameplay decisions?

Does gameplay actually end up feeling fun in practice?

Are the tables interesting themselves to lookup or is that just "the bad bit"?

Do you as a player, or anyone you've played with spend time scrutinising the tables for crafting better characters?

Are there interesting types of actions or manoeuvres that you can perform so you get more interesting strategic play?

Does combat feel like a duel for example?

I'm curious as I do sometimes sit down and write simulators for things like this and I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to source the books and see if this sort of complex branching decision-making actually provides some interesting gameplay =)...

EDIT: Any good crunchy book suggestions of stuff to look at which might be interesting to simulate?

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Hackmaster dialled this all up to 11 because it's essentially an extended joke in rulebook form. It was original referenced as the game played by the characters in a gaming cartoon strip, and only became an actual thing years later. A lot of the outcomes on the tables are there for laughs.

There are more serious games that had lots of tables, like Rolemaster, and basically the idea is for the game system to generate a wide variety problems and situations for the players to deal with, in combat but also in encounters and such. This takes some load off the GM by providing a lot of variety without preparation, but also because these outcomes are generated by the rules, the players can't claim the GM is picking on them by imposing nasty consequences arbitrarily. It's just one school of game design though.

Ok interesting =), so I guess what you're saying is Rolemaster does create some interesting gameplay decisions, but Hackmaster is unplayable?

Is that fair?

Not sure what your position is on the other questions, if you've played a lot of either I mean.

HM was absolutely playable (I only know the original 4th edition), but it was created by a company making RPG comics (specifically, it was the, until then, imaginary system the characters in Kights of the Dinner Table played), so it does not take itself super serious.

The super-detailed tables mostly don’t matter. It’s not as if you’d know the shorter ones by heart, so you either look them up anyway, or you (what we did) have a small program on the GMs laptop.

As with most roleplaying games, almost everything lives and dies with the skill of your GM to make it work and to a lesser part with the skill of your players (and by skill I mean ability to get into a flow with everyone else)

Our first session ended in (Chaotic Neutral with a bit of evil) me accidentally killing the party fighter and him re-rolling a Paladin that did not like me. And I got critically hit by his thrown pebble after clapping at a funeral.

Thanks for the clarification, 100% any roleplaying game is GM skill dependant.

It seems like the nice thing you get here is that some people went and came up with a whole bunch of stuff that could happen which could be good fodder for "fail forward"[0] style outcomes?

- [0]: https://mythcreants.com/blog/why-mouse-guard-handles-failure...

> 100%

There are games that democratize the power of the GM a bit. Very traditional RPGs are into putting pressure on the GM to be a one-man band for the players' entertainment, but the more "modern" ones share the authority, get the players involved in worldbuilding and/or expect the players to be proactive (rather than just respond to the GM)

My group is currently playing such a system, Irownsworn [0] (Free to play). It allows single player, gm-less and gm play. While we are playing with GM, you still have to make decisions about outcomes that are traditionally done by a GM. It works because a lot of details are abstracted away.

[0]: https://www.ironswornrpg.com/

> And I got critically hit by his thrown pebble after clapping at a funeral.

That sounds epic.

A very important detail about HackMaster 4e was that their license with WotC for the AD&D 1e things allowed them to publish a parody of AD&D 1e. They absolutely set out to create a fun and playable game (and IMO succeeded), but everything was contractually obligated to have an element of ridiculousness. On top of the generally lighthearted and joking prose, a big part of how they did this was to take the convoluted parts of 1e that later editions simplified away and instead make them over the top. 1e had lots and lots of overly specific lookup tables for things which later editions replaced with more general rules, so HM doubled down on that and made the tables even more gratuitously detailed.

If you set aside the humor aspect, HM is a game that plays very similarly to 1e, but more fleshed out and with a lot of assorted improvements.

>1e had lots and lots of overly specific lookup tables for things

For example the infamous Harlot table where you could roll for the precise form of loose woman you encounter. A different time, for sure.

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