A big spring rules update in the lead-up to a new season of Planet Karus gaming.

Rules for retirement and alternate range modifiers have been discontinued and archived.

A new version of Hackbut is available. Version 1.11 brings several changes that hit the Planet Karus campaign directly:

• Players can maintain a roster of characters and bring more than one PC per player on an expedition.
• There are finally rules covering play past level six.
• Treasure (and the XP that flows from it) is now split into fixed shares: two for each primary, one for each companion.
• Level six characters’ shares evaporate, which creates real pressure to retire them, unless they’re banking XP toward a new class via multi-classing.
• HD re-rolls at the start of an expedition always take the new result, and upkeep (under- or overpaying) ties into that re-roll.
• Carousing has been reworked and renamed squandering.

Many of these changes may take some getting used to or may even be considered controversial. The design intent is to keep the level six cap while still letting the campaign generate fresh advancement indefinitely. Fixed shares and evaporating level six shares push the focus from individual characters to the roster: capped characters retire or multi-class, new characters come up to replace them, and the engine keeps running.

Two other changes that are good to be aware of: heavy armor now costs 8 slots (to be more in alignment with the classic rulesets), and fumbles now only trigger on the first attack of a sequence, with a random roll determining the effect.

On a final note, we’ve added a second black powder weapon, a wheel lock pistol, and an accompanying retainer type, the pistoleer. These don’t touch Planet Karus, but they further bolster the “landsknecht gothic” implied setting Hackbut was built around. We might run a mini-campaign down the line that puts these rules on the table.