Customer Reviews

HoL

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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!

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!

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).

Iy's not a game. It's a (Foul mouthed) jab in th eye of role playing geeks.

It's aimed at I can't get laid D&D nerd, those depressing wanna be goth-vampire dorks, and every other RPG geek and their hobby.

I am amazed that some actually play it....