To the Well
Hackmaster is a game that was OSR before OSR was what all the kids were talking about. I first played it in the early 00s with my old friend and longtime DM, who went all in on HM. During my long absence from the table, the guys played a lot of it while I did whatever the hell I was doing while not enjoying my life playing RPGs.
Fast forward through a billion stories and a lot of future blog posts and here we are in 2026. I bellied back up to the table in April of 2025, in time to roll through the tail end (or at least long pausing) of an AD&D 2e campaign. The decision was made to pause and start something new. Being that it’s 2026 and we have multiple guys in the group who are always buying up new games, the time came to make the decision on one of life's most important questions: “What do we play next?”.
The list was endless. DCC, Shadowdark, Mork Borg, Mothership, Dolmenwood, OSE, Land of Eem, and so many relatively recent games sat on the shelves, staring at us. And, right beside them were games of old for which it takes very little convincing for all of us to say “Sure, sounds good.” Dungeons and Dragons (of course), World of Darkness, West End Games’ Star Wars…even Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun were right there, waiting for us.
But, we landed on Hackmaster, a game with which they are all intimately familiar and one that I can maybe pass as half-knowledgeable of. The history and explanation of the game would require a multi-part docustyle blog series (which would be fun, but that’s probably beyond my scope), but suffice it to say that it’s a really fun, crunchy, heavy version of AD&D 2nd Edition. It’s got tables galore, wacky additional rules, and the most in-depth, fun character creation mechanics I’ve ever seen.
So, we set off on what would become multiple session zeroes. We fought through cancellations, distracting gum-flapping (my bad, guys), and cold ass weather to eventually have 4 characters and a GM ready to play.
I think what makes our group feel special is the venerable nature of it. Not the characters, the guys at the table. We’ve all been in this hobby for decades. The years have flown by far too quickly and the gray hairs have popped up seemingly overnight. The book collection has grown, new games with spines itching to be cracked and new or revamped mechanics waiting to be argued over. Some of the concepts of these games are under genre umbrellas that hit us right in the nerdy cockles. Ideas explode out like an ever-expanding universe of possibilities every time we talk about playing a new game. Even from a creative perspective, imagining possibly GMing one of them, I start concocting hooks and NPCs and overarching campaign stories. You know, just in case.
And even through all of these positives, we go back to the dusty shelves on the wall that hold the games most dear to us. Because it’s where we started, grew up, and learned gaming. These games are where the hobby’s claws dug in and inspired us, where wonderment was actually a thing. Yes, newer stuff causes the stars in our eyes to shine, but the older games are the cosmic stuff by which those stars were formed.
So, in a hobby where we keep up regularly and always buy new stuff, the worn books with fraying edges, still our best friends through many an era, make their way back to the table. So, we’ll play Hackmaster. And, goddammit, we’ll have the time of our lives. And, in those too-often moments of conversational distraction that get the game off course, we’ll talk about how we should try to play one of the news games we probably shouldn’t have spent so much money on…and then we’ll go back to making sure our honor isn’t going to get us in trouble.
Let’s hack.
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