KODT, HackMaster 4e and the TSR Ethos

 

If you haven't read Knights of the Dinner Table, or HackMaster 4e/1e (and to a lesser extent HackMaster 5e/2e), you likely aren't familiar with the over the top, tough as nails, unapologetic Gary-Speak that is at least a part of it's success. And if you weren't gaming during the AD&D first edition hey day of the 80's  era, you are less likely to realize how much KenzerCo got it right.

Back in 1996 when KODT first appeared in Dragon Magazine I was taking a break from gaming, had been for about two years. I never ran into the strip in the intervening years between then and 2004. It was about then that I got back into gaming and discovered first KODT and then HackMaster. At that time, I was deep in the throes of nostalgia for the lost age of TSR. I was aware of 3rd edition and even tried to play it for awhile, but everything seemed to have changed, and for the worse (at least in my opinion at the time). 

Dragon Mag 226, First KODT strip

Knights of the Dinner Table spoke directly to my soul. It's funny that this was the case, as I always took my gaming so seriously. What was in essence a cartoon (at least initially) had managed to speak directly to what I so longed for in my gaming. It as as if it spoke out of the past to my gaming heart. The adversarial approach between GMs and players, the hard nosed competition to outdo each other, out think each other. The high stakes, the danger, the strategic maneuvering in the game to get what you wanted. The death trap dungeons, let the dice fall where they may, and the sweet scent of player death on the air. I can't even really capture the essence of what it was, but Gary Speak had a lot to do with it.

This was what it felt like back in the day. All of these things--it was a very real ethos. Hard Eight and their cut throat tactics and from on high pronouncements. KODT captured it perfectly. I mean it was clear it was satire. The jokes were all the more funny because they were true! Yeah, they were occasionally amped up to eleven, as Spinal Tap would say, but they were soundly based in real gaming truth of the time. 

I was so excited to learn about HackMaster I nearly wet my gamer smock. It was an amazing effort to not only capture the game that the Knights played, but to also create a homage and natural successor to first edition, that should have, in truth been the 3rd edition we all wanted. Second edition AD&D had been so sanitized and made pretty for the BADD moms and Satanic Panic mongers that it had strayed from the original soul of the game. Though truthfully, that era of TSR as emperor of the gaming world persisted through at least the mid 90's. 

What we really needed was a return to the glory days of hardcore rules and hardcore play. We needed HackMaster to be the next iteration of the game. an innovative return to the glory of yesteryear. But the IP passed onto WoTC and other things were to be. In fact we owe a huge debt of gratitude to WoTC (preHasbro) to allowing KCo to produce the game in the first place. It could have never happened otherwise. 

But my point today is just this. If you really want to get a taste of what a certain phase of D&D, and gaming generally, was all about pick up an issue of Knights of the Dinner Table. Or give HackMaster a read. -- preferably the 4th edition as it is a real attempt to recapture what AD&D was. 5th edition still has lots of classic GarySpeak, but so innovative rules developments that it steps a bit further away from a strictly AD&D chassis.