Fair Warning
I now own three volumes of the HackMaster Hacklopedia of Beasts. The contents are based on 1^st and 2^nd Ed. and as such are far more adaptable to our 2^nd Ed. game than any of the d20 stuff I've got. This means that you can expect to see HoB monsters in the game, as well as HoB versions of some familiar monsters. Some of you may consider it significant that HoB dragons have 4-figure hit points.

There's a New Game In Town
I just picked up the new HackMaster Player's Handbook - it's awesome! If you read Knights of the Dinner Table, pretty much all that need be said is that it lives up to the comic. If you don't - you fool! - try thinking of it as what third edition AD&D is in the parallel universe where after Unearthed Arcana came out, all future design was controlled by a bunch of 13 year old boys who were given regular injections of testosterone and cocaine. Maybe some examples will help:

There's a fourth variety of Halfling: Thug There's at least one variation on Fireball for every spell level. Two new MU subclasses: Battle Mage and Blood Mage Mime is available as a language. There's a handy table to determine how much food you can make from your horse or your dog. Ever wonder how your party would make out in the Old West? Try the 9th level MU spell, Teleport Intergenre Two words: Grunge Elf Armor and shields have hit points.

Anyhow, the point is the game is a hoot and I'm dieing to play it. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a game at Worldcon, but don't be surprised if I come up with a one-shot HackMaster adventure for some afternoon when we're low on players for the normal run or something. The intro to the Players Handbook was available online, here. I strongly recommend reading it, it's very funny. Look for some example characters here when I get a chance to roll them up.

Future Gamers of America Update - Part II
Well, I'm a little late getting this announcement up here, but our daughter Eleah Lynn Flockhart (yes, Mommy meant for the initials to do that) was born on April 2nd 2001 at 10:24 (a palindrome). She is finally home, healthy and doing well. For more details, ask me for her website.

I apologise for the interuption in the game and lack of updates over the past month. Eleah's situation was of course totally unplanned for and sucked up all of my time even more than an infant normally does. I hope to start devoting the odd minute to the rest of my life, the game included, next week.

Future Gamers of America Update
From an announcement sent internally at Mike & Jay's office (8/2/00):

Fenlason Enterprises is pround to announce the release of their new wetware product, Hacker 3.1 (Formerly "Project Twinkle", aka Andre John Fenlason). We expect this new product to extend and compliment the popular Hacker product line, joining the well-established Hacker 1.0 (aka Bill) and 2.0 (aka Jay) products, and the new Hacker 3.0 (aka Alex). Karen is doing fine. Andre is doing fine too, but he's going through a bit of LCS in the NICU for observation. They should be home Sunday if everything goes well. Stats: 7lb, 12.4oz, reddish blond hair (too short to tell if it'll curl), blue eyes (when they're open...), and he doesn't look a thing like Alex! (Well, not much, anyway). Given that Alex looks just like me, it seems only fair that he'll look just like Karen. We'll see.

Congratulations Jay & Karen!

And Now For Something Completely Different...
My friend and coworker Matthew Booker has just become GM of his AD&D group. In the tradition of the group, he is creating his own campaign world. As part of this effort, he has created 51 unique dieties and is trying to create a specialty priest class for each of them. I told him I thought that this was overly ambitious and that it could probably be done quicker by writing a Python program to generate the classes (plus a seperate program to convert the output to HTML) and then backfit the dieties portfolios to the priests. Compare his efforts to mine and judge for yourself.

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