The Black Hack

by Dave Black

The Black Hack is a super-streamlined roleplaying game that uses the Original 1970s Fantasy Roleplaying Game as a base, and could well be the most straightforward modern OSR compatible clone available. If speed of play and character creation, compatibility, and simple - yet elegant rules are what you yearn for. Look no further!

The Black Hack is a fast playing game and the rules can be picked up in minutes. The full rules fit in a single 20 page A5 book!

Here's a few quotes from the playtesting sessions of the game:

Mick Reddick - "Black Hack... Played this in beta and can honestly say this is as much fun as you can have with a retro clone! Simple, Streamlined and Superb."

Tony Tucker - "The Black Hack is so simple and flexible I can run it off the top of my head. Think up some weird monsters, give them some hit dice and go crazy!"

Daniel Sell, Undercroft ‘zine - "David black designs with spunk. Sharp and funny, full of the old spirit.”

Chris McDowall, Into the Odd - "Blackhack is three-chord D&D. It hand picks the best parts of the game's forty year history and distills it down to its firey, addictive spirit. Everything discarded is soon forgotten."

A printed edition of the rules will be available at the end of April (at the Squarehex website) once the Kickstarter copies have all been mailed.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Games, Fantasy

19 pages, ebook

Published March 23, 2016

Reviews

[Mar Beveridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing rpg manual. Very keen for my adventure in it!

[Joseph Riina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very light and simple, and I really like it with the exception of the whole Usage Dice/Armor Dice thing. Maybe I'm just not used to it, but it feels like in practice it would slow things down (and be tough to remember the intricacies of)

[James Bowman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A neat RPG that combines a streamlined version of the original D&D game with ideas from the 5th Edition rules (such as advantage/disadvantage and rests). Basically, the results of every action - your attacks, your defense, effectiveness of spells, etc. - are determined by a "test", where you try to roll under the relevant ability score on a d20. There are other interesting ideas in here as well, such as abstract distances and time measurements; simple initiative where success places you before the monster's turn, and failure after it; and a "usage die" to track uses of equipment. The booklet also provides simplified conversions of many iconic D&D spells and monsters for the Black Hack rules, to make it easy to get started, and a much-appreciated example of play at the end.

There are some tiny issues, however. The rules, while very readable, could stand to be a little better organized. And a few details among the sample spells and monsters aren't really explained, such as the 11 and 12 Hit Dice monsters in a game that's supposed to cap at 10 Hit Dice. (Also, the game clearly draws on the 3.5 and 5.1 System Reference Documents, but doesn't credit either in the Open Game License text at the end.) However, none of these hiccups take away the appeal of this ruleset. The Black Hack is for anyone who wants something that feels like classic D&D, but is much easier to run than any of the various editions. (A-)

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have the 2e - as a ruleset it's pretty neat and tidy. I really like the concept of the usage die. The real gold however is the pages and pages of tables that facilitate fantastic session building or solo play.

[Roque Romero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool streamlined system for fantasy ttrpg with some cool moving parts.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun very simple RPG. The core of the rules are about 30 pages with a bunch of fun tables taking up the bulk of the book such as random dungeons, NPCs and a bestiary of monster stats.

I used it with a group who has primarily only played D&D 5e. We were able to do character creation, rules explanations and start playing in about a half hour.

Since the rules are so so simple and sparse, it leaves a lot of on the fly decisions for the GM. My players complained about a lot of stuff before the game started but once they got into the game they had no problems with it. They were just used to playing 5e superheroes and not used to having a character with 2 hit points and (in their eyes) low attributes.

Another problem/feature (depending how you look at it) with the sparse rules is that there is a lot of stuff not included, but the author even says that this is meant to be "hacked" to add stuff in. For example, I wanted there to be a better ranged combatant so I created a ranger class that (I think) is balanced in about a half hour.

The layout of the book is great. A character can have everything including the rules for their abilities on the front and back of a sheet. All topics seem to be laid out so that you don't have to flip pages. For example, a topic may start on the left page but will wrap up on the bottom of the right page.

I love the art work and even if the game was atrocious I'd have given it a free star just for the logo.

I definitely recommend the game and hope to play it again. If you have friends you want to introduce to tabletop RPGs, but think they might be overwhelmed by D&D, give this a shot.

This review is for 2nd edition.

[Matt Bohnhoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun hack-and-slash rpg. Similar enough to D&D that it is fully recognizable and sleek enough in its design to make it feel like it’s not just D&D.

I read the second edition which is much longer with plenty of resources for generating location, NPCs, and enemies. Many of the tables make use of the physical page or encourage you to edit in your own entries. These are fascinating features that make a physical copy of the game desirable even though, rules-wise, the cheaper pdf would be more than sufficient.

[Malum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rules-wise, this is the bare minimum that you need to play an RPG. Sometimes that's not such a bad thing, though, and it certainly gets the job done.