Hackjammer - Initial Thoughts and Overview!

I picked up Hackjammer today.  I've looked Hackjammer over a bit tonight,
and here's some various initial thoughts (in no particular order).

Cover Art - Overall, pretty good. It's got a good SJ feel, and it almost
looks like the one ship is hitting the Hackmaster logo. lol Upon closer
inspection, it looks like another ship fired upon it. The fighter guy on
the front seems a little plain, but the gith and the pixie make up for it.
Pixie seems like a natural addition to the SJ universe.

Interior Art - I have mixed emotions on this. Some art is great, some a
bit silly (hey, it's Hackmaster), and some is so-so. Seems to be some good
space scenes in here. I wish the ships were in color, but that's okay.

Authors/Adaptation - Adam Miller (aka Night Druid), Paul Westermeyer, and
Rian McMurtry (aka Whalejudge). These guys are on the SJ Council, and
there is nobody out there better qualified to bring Spelljammer to life as
a Hackmaster product.

Length: 128 pages. Jam packed with materials for that short of a book,
though.

Intro - This gives the basics of Hackjamming and HackSpace.

Chapter 1 - Player Characters in Hackspace

Races - Looks like the Gromman (and Hadozee?) are replaced with the Apes
of Gronnanar. There's four subraces to these, so that's good.

The dracon, giff, and lizard men are all here. Looks like the scro are now
orcs (orcs spelled backwards is scro!), and the xixchil are in the monster
section.

New Skills - Standard SJ style skills here, taken from prior products.
What I like here is that they can be adapted to any edition of D&D easily.

Quirks - These are great flavor pieces! Phobias are all neat. Love the
Smell of Smoke in the Morning just says Giff all over it (read the
description!). My absolute favorite, though, is Red Shirt. Think the
original Star Trek series on that one!

Traits - Bonuses to combat.


Chapter 2 - Ships of Hackspace

This is the chapter everyone is going to want to see. Looks like some
mainstays in there. Dwarven Citadel is now the Dwarven Bastion. The Elven
Motharaa Monarchship...am I reading this right? Mothra? lol

Oh, you have to read the Gnomish Rodentship (Rodenster). It's a hamster
cage in space, complete with spinning wheels. lol

Great Jammer appears to be the Spelljammer itself. Spudnik I? lol Gotta
love it.

All the rules here appear to be very similar to the 2e SJ ship rules.
What's nice is that many, if not all, of these ships have notes on other
configurations.

The bad part is that there isn't art for each ship.

Chapter 3 - The Dry Dock

Equipment, crews, ship modifications, etc. A good section on ship perks
and quirks.

Chapter 4 - Combat in HacksSpace

Navigation, taking off and landing, combat, repair, and spells in space.

Chapter 5 - The Rock of Brawl

Gotta love the name! All too short of a chapter, though for the size of
the product, I can see why.

Chapter 6 - The Worlds of HackSpace

Shouldn't that be "wurlds"?

Nice chapter on the sample sphere of HackSpace. Very abbreviated, as was
the prior chapter. HackSpace, aka the Caz-Adar System, has an inner and an
outer system, which is a cool idea for Spelljammer.

Chapter 7 - Politics of HackSpace

These are the Powers that Be in Hackspace.

A funny one is the Joint Chiefdoms of the Giff General Staff (chiefs of
staff - lol).

There's a nice section on the guilds and churches of HackSpace. I like
this section because it includes some of the major religions of SJ,
providing a bit of a religious structure for the SJ universe. Celestian is
here, so I'm happy.

Chapter 8 - Adventures in HackSpace

There's a couple of scenarios in here, plus notes on converting existing
Hackmaster mods to HackSpace, future modules, and general notes on
converting adventures. Kudos on this section.

Appendix A - New Monsters

What I like is the stat blocks all have an "aka" in them, giving alternate
names. These are hilarious. Sunrise dragon, aka sunset dragon (for
example). Elmarin are also known as St. Elmo's fire. lol

Speaking of dragons, the radiant dragon is in here, along with the comet
and sunrise dragons (the latter two being creations of Night Druid). I
still remember talking to him about them initially.

Giant space hamsters are here, and we have an added bonus with giant space
hamster humanoids. The Lakshu are here (nice pic!). Mechanical gnomes take
the idea of autognomes (one of the types) and expands on it. I like that
the bit about babies is in there too. Neogi are here.

Space whales are hilarious. Kindori are here, but now we have the Moby
Dori, Kindorca, and Delphinid.

Finally, the Xixchil. This chapter ends with flora and fauna of HackSpace.

Appendix B - New Spells and Magic Items

Helms are here, as are an alternate means of travel - the Splendid Sails
of Hackjammin'. New spells. Lots of good stuff.

I would have rather had the section on altered spells by the new spells,
but no biggie.

Appendix C - Beyond Hackspace

Phlogiston is here. There's a discussion on universe building, a map of
the Known Spheres, and lots of tools here.


Overall, I think Hackjammer is great, and Spelljammer fans are going to
love it. The feel isn't exactly the same, but a lot of that is art and
layout. There are pages at the end of chapters with a lot of blank white
space. Art could have been used there. Seems like there's a lot of good SJ
ideas in there, more faithful to SJ than any other 3rd party product out
there.

This book is a MUST for any serious SJ fan. Kudos to Adam, Paul, and Rian
on a fun book and a job well done.

Trampas
Wanderer of Celestian