There was a time when I doubted this day would come. After many years of silence, followed by further years of teasing, the revised edition of HackMaster is finally on Kickstarter. The game that started with its fourth edition and left behind the number with its fifth, now jumps immediately to XXV. This isn’t the edition’s number, though. The authors are celebrating the game’s 25th anniversary, which is the best possible time to dust it off and revamp it. They also went with pretentious Roman numerals, just so the industry knows they are smarter and cooler than everyone else. I mean, come on Wizards, calling your edition 5.25 or 5.5 is lame. What’s 5.5 supposed to be, a price tag? It’s still more than I’m willing to pay for anything released by you…

For those unfamiliar with the previous edition, go and read my review. It’s the best tabletop RPG written by man. It says so in the rulebook. The new edition will be based on the fifth, with some streamlining, clarifications, fine-tuning, reshuffling, and additional content. In fact, Kenzer & Co. is planning to cram so much new stuff into the core rulebooks that they had to increase their number from three to four. Yes, we are talking about four approximately 400-page-long, full-color, faux-leather-bound, hardcover tomes. Other publishers would call them deluxe editions and use it as an excuse to rip off devoted fans. Meanwhile, Kenzer & Co. is asking $290 for the entire set.

HackMaster is my all-time favorite tabletop RPG. I carefully avoided wasting money on Kickstarters all year long with the exception of Dragonbane: Trudvang, so I could invest in HackMaster XXV. In such a dull period for the hobby, it was the tiny morsels dropped by Dave, Jolly, and Eli on the Kenzer & Co. Discord that kept my passion alive, that made me have hope that there is more to the future of RPGs than shovelware and mediocrity. I have the utmost faith in the design team, because even if they had some awful delays in the past, in the end, they always delivered.

Are you ready to join the fray, or are you sitting this one out?