KoDT 7 + HackMaster (March 2016)

In September 2024 we presented two offers from Kenzer and Company. We resurrected (for a second time!) our March 2016 HackMaster Bundle featuring HackMaster, the parody-turned-real FRPG. And the revival’s all-new companion, KoDT Trouble 7, was our seventh offer of Jolly Blackburn‘s long-running Knights of the Dinner Table, the comic that launched HackMaster.

HACKMASTER [from March 2016]

Revived for a second time, this March 2016 HackMaster Bundle once again had everything you need for your own HM campaign, including all the core rulebooks.

HackMaster has one of the most unusual origins in the hobby. It first emerged in the late ’90s as a pure fiction, the system of choice for B.A. Felton and his enthusiastic players in the back pages of gaming magazine Shadis. In 2001, armed with an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons license from Wizards of the Coast, Kenzer released HackMaster “4th Edition” – a not-quite-parody of the AD&D 1E/2E rules that captured the spirit of the game seen in the comics. (There were no prior editions; “4th” was part of the spoof). HackMaster won that year’s Origins Award for Game of the Year.

HackMaster evolved into a full-fledged, full-featured RPG, spawning more than 40 add-ons, supplements, and game aids. In 2011, as the original license was expiring, Kenzer started a long transition to a new version of HM. This “fifth edition” (unrelated to D&D Fifth Edition, which was still three years in the future) removes most of the parody aspects. The new game mechanics, written from scratch, incorporate the Honor, Skills, and Count-up systems from Kenzer’s 2007 Old West RPG Aces & Eights. And HackMaster got a new setting: the Kingdom of Kalamar, made popular in a long line of Kenzer supplements released in the D20 boom.

This revived March 2016 HackMaster Bundle presented all three massive HackMaster Fifth Edition corebooks, the Frandor’s Keep setting. and several adventures and supplements. There were five titles in this revived offer’s Player Collection (retail value $57):

• HackMaster 5E Player’s Handbook: The complete, current 400-page rulebook (again, no relation to D&D 5E). Includes the free HackMaster Basic introductory rulebook.
• Two short supplements, Zealot’s Guide: Book 1 and Book 2, with new clerical orders and dozens of spells.
• In the Realm of the Elm King and Legacy of the Elm King: One of the best introductory HM adventures – a search for missing children outside a small village near Frandor’s Keep – along with its free-standing follow-up, a traditional crawl through kobold-infested caverns in the half-wild lands around the village.

Those who paid more than this revival’s threshold (average) price also got this revived offer’s entire Gamemaster Collection with three more titles worth an additional $95, including the 370-page HackMaster GameMaster’s Guide, the 387-page Hacklopedia of Beasts monster manual, and the campaign setting Frandor’s Keep.

KoDT TROUBLE 7 [all-new]

Hoody-hoo! This all-new KoDT Trouble 7 Bundle gathered KoDT Bundle of Trouble volumes #61-70, collecting KoDT issues #219-258 (2015-2018), plus the Midnight Special. Even if you’re new to the Knights’ dinner table, these Trouble-some collections make it easy to pull up a chair and enjoy the longest-running and most successful comic strip in RPG history.

For many years Kenzer has reprinted back issues of KoDT, two to four issues at a time, in its Bundle of Trouble compilations. Up to now we’d already presented 60 volumes across six offers, averaging two offers a year. With this bargain-priced “bundle of Bundles” we finally caught up! (Kenzer’s latest Bundle of Trouble as of the time of this offer was #78 and collected KoDT issues #287-290.) From here on, if Kenzer permits, we hope to present a new KoDT Trouble offer every year or so.

There were eleven titles in this KoDT Trouble 7 offer’s Troublesome Collection (retail value $151), including Knights of the Dinner Table Bundle of Trouble Vol. 61, V62, V63, V64, V65, V66, V67, V68, V69, and V70, along with a collection of lost issues, the KoDT Midnight Special.