HoL [Paperback]

Christopher Elliott; Todd Shaughnessy; Daniel Thron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 11, 2002

The second edition of the fan favorite roleplaying game HoL, the previous edition is already a customer five star selection here on Amazon, this new edition is the same book, but at an affordable price!

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Cabil; Revised edition (August 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966476514
• ISBN-13: 978-0966476514
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,446,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My kids love it!, March 3, 2003

By 

Robert Lowry (Enumclaw, Wa United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: HoL (Paperback)

With all of the complex, rules heavy games on the market, it was a pure joy to be able to teach my two kids, ages 9 and 11, to play HoL! The rules are insanely simple, make for fast, exciting play, and allow you to totally immerse yourself in playing. I recommend this game for any parent wishing to teach their kids to roleplay, and as an educational tool as well! No better fun to be found anywhere! Both books are fantastic, with great writing.. you will be laughing for hours!
HoL, so good the entire family can play!

5.0 out of 5 stars perfectly insane!, October 14, 2010

By 

Chaos Turkey - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: HoL (Paperback)

this book is brilliance in its truest form. it is insanity distilled into game form and scribbled down on some paper, which was published and copied to form a book. suffice to say, i loved it! it is just the dose of silliness that we need in this day and age. buy! read! and enjoy!

7 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Human Occupied Landfill - the anti-RPG, May 24, 2006

By 

Aaron Zirkelbach - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: HoL (Paperback)

Let's review what most RPGs have that HoL doesn't bother with:

Typed word: HoL is entirely hand written. Badly. There are places where the writing smashes into a tiny scribble, and others where it's gigantic and takes up 1/8th the page. There are places where the author scribbles out his mistakes, and others where he actively makes fun of his spelling errors.

Writing style: HoL completely dismisses the more passive writing style most RPGs have, talking straight to the reader. Oh, and it uses profanity frequently. And by frequently, I mean every 3rd word or so.

Page Numbers: Seriously, I still have no idea how many pages HoL is. I never bothered to count.

Table of Contents/Index: Without page numbers, these two items are meaningless. I'm actually glad they didn't bother putting either in.

Art: the art is done by a talented artist, who is obviously pretending to be bad at art. That's right, the style of the good artist is "bad art".

Layout: Or should I say Layout? The book has no real layout, often writing over artwork, inverting, or simply going for a 90 degree turn at certain points for no particular reason.

"What is Roleplaying?" section: almost every game has one of these. HoL recommends going and playing one of those games first, which is a good idea, as much of it's humor/parody is inspired by other RPGs.

Character Generation: Yes, without a supplement, you can't generate a character in HoL. There are several templates (12ish), but no word on character generation. And the point totals don't add up, so character generation isn't obvious.

This all being said, it utilizes a few of the genre elements found typically in D&D and other "traditional" RPGs (here's the ones I remember):

No PC Sex: HoL has no women, so all sex undertook on the planet is of the male-homosexual variety. It is taken as a given that most roleplayers are male and heterosexual, so there will be little in the way of PC sex.

Homicidal Maniacs: Almost everything on the planet is insane and has the necessary arsenal available to level a small country. Therefore, the PCs are required to be homicidal maniacs as well just to survive.

But anyway, with this critique, I'm sure you're expecting me to dismiss HoL as a horrible, horrible game. Well, that's not what it's trying to be. Heck, reading the "introduction" you know that. It's a parody of roleplaying games, and a parody of the angst you see in many homebrew RPGs who want to "buck the system".

It strives to get a 1 star review by someone who roleplays and compares it to other roleplaying games. It does it's job admirably, so I'm happy to oblige.

And I couldn't recommend another game to buy in it's stead. It should be required reading for all roleplayers (well, all roleplayers age 13 and up, who've played their share of D&D and etc).