3RD Party TBH

There's been a tonne of really creative and inventive uses of TBH as an 'engine' which i'm really digging and totally happy about. People have been kindly emailing me their drafts, and enquiring about what they want to do - but some haven't (which isn't an issue, mind you). But it prompts me to think now is a good time to publicly make everyone aware of how I want to approach 3rd party content that wants to reference TBH. The TBH rules are OGL, so you can totally use them for whatever purpose you want. The name 'The Black Hack' and the Hand logo aren't, however. But having said that, in the spirit of DIY gaming I want you to modify, create supplements and spawn spinoffs. Its what its all about. So if you want to create a supplement/module/hack, and if you want to use the name 'The Black Hack' - here's how you should go about it:

If it's a supplement (ie you need TBH to use it), somewhere on the cover you need the hand logo and the text 'For use with The Black Hack' If it's a standalone product (The opposite of above), somewhere on the cover you need the hand logo and the text 'Made using The Black Hack'

Any questions just get in touch!

#HappyHacking

Boxes, Maybe? Badges, Yes. Stickers. Yep.

So it occurred to me that I post alot over at G+ but have somewhat neglected the blog here. I don't feel bummed out on producing stuff, i'm in my most production period yet, dahling. I've got a bunch of old notebooks of ideas that, never went anywhere, I might go back through those and do some retrospective stuff? I dunno. But I've been working on The Black Hack stuff. Already written skeletons for the narrative and structure of The Vertex of Hate. Im not ready to talk about how it will get out there - but it's definitely gestating at a rapid pace. I also wanted to post a couple of photos - to show you some updates on other things that are going on, oh and the blog post title, those too, enjoy.

Thats a die drop to-hit table thing (the last one got ruined) 

Thats a tshirt.

Additional Things

Now the dust is settling, people all over the world are finally getting to tuck into their little black packages. Chortle. It's time to release 'Additional Things' - a document i've kept as I developed and whittled down The Black Hack to its 20 slim a5 pages.

Theres lots of variants, alternatives and optional rules in there. Theres some that expand on certain things or introduce whole new concepts such as Panic! and Failing Forward. Most were cut because of space, some because I wasn't sure they were right. But you get to decide now. Also there's a little bit of waffle from me on the rules, why I like them - a directors commentary if you will.

You can get it by clicking the image below, and in due time it will go on RPG.now (I know i should do launches on all paltforms at once, but friday night)

It also worth noting that it's a living document, so if you would like to see something included - get in touch. Oh and did I mention that the games on sale, including all the Kickstarter Exra's if you missed those too?. Yeah im sure I haven't mentioned that before.

Adios.

The Black Hack dead tree copies are on their way!

I've been busy at work creating, amending and general doing lots of stuff for my surprisingly successful OSR D&D clone 'The Black Hack'. So busy that i've rather ignored my blog - sorry about that faithful reader! But i'm mega excited to announce that you can officially purchase physical copies of the game, the GM screen and characters sheets! Peter is hard at work licking stamps and stuffing envelopes, so backers from the Kickstarter should start receiving their rewards over the next few weeks - but if you're not one of those wonderful, talented all round excellent people (and even if you are!) .. Here's some more cool things for TBH that you should totally be all over!

PDF's are available at RPG.now - you can get the Screen/Character Sheets and Rulebook all for the princely sum of $3.50

Physical copies can be nabbed from +Peter Regan's website Squarehex.com - they'll be available pretty darn soon.

TBH now has a G+ community - already with 200+ members, plenty of resources and the opportunity to hurl profanity at me - what more could you ask for?

The lovely +Bruno Bord has kindly developed a reference document for all your Black Hack 'hacking needs.

The free supplement 'Additional Things' is being proofed, and should be out and available in a day or two (in PDF format - there's no plans for a print run.. yet)

So what's next? I've got some ideas, me and Peter will be conspiring over the coming weeks as to what our next move will be - but i'd love to hear from yourselves about the things you'd like to see produced to support 'The Hack.

-DB

The 'Reactive BBEG'

Here's a method of procedurally 'activating' antagonists plans and actions, based on player rolls and relationships. I took inspiration from 13th Age and Dungeon World. I think it works best for GM who are slackers and make shit up as they go. Like me.

At the start of your campaign (no matter the length) choose a minimum of 3 Antagonists. These should be things that are capable of going the long haul - all the way to the end of the campaign if needed. But crucially they should represent something larger than the actual NPC you create. In my last campaign I had the Orc Lord, The Liche King and  The Great Druid. They each represented a 'prevailing attitude' in my game world, like the Orc was obviously war and chaos. Depending on the scale of the game its likely they'll have a shit-tonne of resources too.

Work those concepts up a bit - keeping them broad and undefined at this stage, but you need to assign each a goal or 'end state'. If their ultimate plan isn't stopped this happens, for good or for ill.  You should probably also come up with 3 loose 'milestones' - big things that need to happen in order for that final goal can be attained.

Have every character that is created choose 3 relationships with them - one positive, one undecided and the final negative. Have them spin a line or two of fluff around the relationship and they're good to go. At the end of every session have them roll d6 for each relationship - any 5's or 6's means that 'antagonist' will do something interesting to influence the story next session. Usually this will mean doing something toward achieving their ultimate goal, and hopefully someway that either reinforces or tests the relationship to the character that rolled a 5 or 6.

Now you've got an interesting sub-system with a bunch of antagonist that should react, act and generally have some backwards and forwards with the players. Also hopefully this takes some load off the GM between session, giving them a firm course to sail when creating stuff. - but also providing a lose structure so if it goes in an odd direction its not a problem. My games always go in odd directions.

x

The Queer & Deadly Town of Sorrowset

Here are two cheeky previews of the second stretch goal for The Black Hack Kickstarter i'm involved with. I ran a game live on Hangouts for a couple of reasons. One was to demo the setting to some people who'd backed the project and see if it was possible to prepare nothing - and rely entirely on the 4 pages of a5 to generate the game elements as we played. The proof is in the pudding, I suppose, really my players should be the ones to tell you if it was a success. But we laughed, we explored, met strange NPC's and fought Giant Moths. That sounds like success to me, and the best thing? All the ideas all the gameplay seeds were generated as the players explored. 

The Black Hack - Kickstarting Now

It suddenly occurred to me that I haven't posted to my blog since 'The Black Hack' kickstarter went live - and I know most people who read this will have seen me pimping the living shit out of TBH on G+, but you know, there might still be someone who hasn't seen it yet.

So.

The Black Hack is an 'OSR' retro-clone, based on OD&D. Oh great another retro clone I hear every groan in unison. Yeah, thats right - another one. But this one is a bit different, in fact its arguably the simples of all the clones. Here's some of the thing what it does, like.

• Characters take 5 minutes to roll. You'll be back in a pit trap in no time.
• The rules fit into a 22 page Digest sized booklet, table reading is important and the rules are straightforward and elegant.
• Players roll the dice, the GM will only ever roll some damage (if they want to, that is)
• 4 classes Warrior, Wizard, Thief, Cleric
• Races dont have rules, being an elf is cool enough! (but someones already homebrewed that)
• AC is damage reduction, a small amount of soak, assuming your character is well rested.
• There's 40 monsters in the book.
• The character sheet has a backpack to write all your loot on.
• We're already funded, and we've hit our first 2 stretch goals, the next ones not far off either.
• I made made it and therefore, by logical extension, it must be pretty good.

If you feel like throwing me a couple of quid (the same price as a starbucks you don't need) heres the KS link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/the-black-hack