Death Beneath a Frozen Earth

This page will serve as my design notes for an adventure im feverishly writing - currently called 'Death Beneath a Frozen Earth' .. expect updates, changes and shit that won't make sense. If you like The Black Hack and have any remote intention of playing anything I write .. stop reading. If you're here because you might run it, or you're looking for ideas to steal. Crack on.

The players will start the game with four 0 level funnel characters. Don't bother with stats, roll them as soon as that character needs to make a test. We want players up and running as fast as humanly possible. I already made some TBH funnel sheets when I ran a DDC back in the summer. i'll adapt those.

Game/Scenario Objective
The characters are part of a lost and presumed doomed expedition into the deep frozen earth. The fluff and mcguffins need working out, but the crux of it is they're trapped underground and have to search for a way out before their food runs out or the cold kills them. Also they've managed to unearth some horrid extra-planar-shapeshifter thats slowly eating them one by one. Even if they make it to the surface, if the Things do too - its game over. Players will control both the 'Humans' and the 'Things' - so they will have split priorities, some will want the Humans to win, others the Things.

Gameplay
The gameplay is split into two distinct phases, Day and Night.

Day is very much a traditional dungeon crawl in the old school tradition. Deadly, weird, probably not a huge amount of monsters - certainly no 'higher-races' or super intelligent beings. Maybe shambling frozen undead. I'll work on that.

Night is slightly different - normally you just assign watch and fast-forward the clock, not so in this adventure! Characters should quickly realise the cold will kill them, so they must build a fire for the night. Unfortunately there wont be enough spaces round the fire for all the characters, some will have to sleep huddled in the cold, the players first task during the night phase is deciding who.

- If 'A Thing' sleeps round a fire the gradual thawing will reveal its true nature, initiating a combat (assuming the other characters don't just lay down and allow themselves to be eaten)

- If a Human DOES NOT sleep round a fire they will gain a 'Numb Die' (this is a working title - I might change it to reflect a more madness inspired vibe)

Nightly Actions - In addition to to the campfire mechanics - players must decide what each of their characters are doing for the night. They should pass the GM secret notes for each of their characters declaring what they will be doing. There are 3 possible actions.

Humans can:
- Sleep. They will wake in the morning rested and can remove 1d4 Numb Die.
- Stay Awake. They will have DISADVANTAGE on all tests they make until they next Sleep. They can only Stay Awake for 3 consecutive nights. They will then be forced to Sleep.

Things must:
- Select one character to convert into another Thing. If they choose someone who is Staying Awake, they will be revealed. If they choose someone who is asleep .. that person is now A Thing.

Once all the actions are declared the Night phase will end and the GM will pass back notes to the players (for each of their characters) letting them know how the night went, there are a few options:

- You had a good nights sleep, remove 1d4 Numb Die.
- You're tired, but alive. You have DISADVANTAGE on all test until you next sleep.
- You are now A THING.

After all these cards are handed out the players roll their Numb Die - i'm still working out what this does, but its not good.

Also i've got something i'm working on called fears. Basically if characters have to do something they are afraid of they gain and have to roll their Numb Die.

...

More to come

- DB

The Black Houserules : Armor

One the greatest parts of being involved with the 'Hack movement is seeing what interesting things people can do with simple moving parts. Shout out to +Jeff Call for some inspiration on this.

Armor Hack
Im not  a huge fan of the Usage die being used for everything, but in additional things im already bringing in UD mechanics to Armor points and that solution isn't really doin git for me. So. Fuck it. Im thinking armor. There are two types of Armor. Light (d6) and Heavy (d8) When you take damage roll the Amor die, reduce the amount of damage taken by that amount. Additionally if you roll a natural 1-2 then the die downgrades in the normal Usage Die manner.Small shields +1 to the roll, and Large shields +2.

Note: You could do Light (d4) Medium (d6) Heavy (d8) - this fits with the 3 range band thing TBH has going on? Dunno, I like the simplicity of two options for amor, Heavy or Light. Binary sooths the soul.

The Black Hack : The Beserker Class

Here's an alternative to the current Warrior class (and Knight class from The Vertex of Hate). This is WIP and needs play-testing, and will likely make an appearance in an official capacity at some stage. Please lend me your collective brains and help me smooth off the rough edges.

Beserker
Starting HP : 4 + d10
HP Per Level/Resting : 1d10
Weapons & Armor : Anything that can be swung or thrown & All armor.
Attack Damage : *See special features

Special Features
For each level a character has, gain a damage dice (d8) kept in a dice pool, when you make your action to attack - assign your damage dice to all the creatures you want to damage. These can be Close, Nearby or Far-away. They do not have to be next to each other. Then for every target roll a corresponding Attribute test to confirm they take damage. The player must be able to, through narration and description, play out the attack. This pool resets at the start of the Berserker's turn.

A Beserker may go into a rage for the duration of a combat, giving them Advantage on all tests to deal damage, and Disadvantage on all tests to avoid damage. They may go Berserk once per day at level 1, twice per day and level 3, three times at level 6 and four times at level 9.

A Beserker gains an additional AP per level, on top of whatever armor they are wearing.

- DB

This is what TBH Mass Combat would look like

So Mass Combat, I've seen a few ways of doing it - some do away with the wargame, some embrace it whole. My version sits in the middle somewhere - still using the d&d trappings but adding weird story game style descriptive tags to units and adopting a GW inspired combat resolution. I dunno. Might change after a bit of testing, but this is fresh out the mind oven.

We take a monster and make them a unit. We don't need to know specific numbers, although to the nearest 10 or so is good. Goblins have 1HD. Lets say its a pack of goblins, that's? 20? So the unit of Goblins has 1 HD and we can make a few other bits of fiction or assumption. They have poor weapons, armor and training. Now lets take a squad of honor guards, there's 5 of them. Specific numbers still aint no problem though'. They have excellent weapons, Armor Training Morale etc. You get the idea. They also have 2HD.

So the two units face off, and roll a d6. They add their HD to the roll. You also get +1 for each of the following if they apply to your unit.

• 
  
• Larger Force than the foe.
• Be better equipped than the foe.
• Have more battle experience than the foe.
• Being led by/is a champion.
• Faster than the foe.
• Battlefield advantage. (such as a water elemental troop fighting in the sea)

Players compare scores and whoever wins deals that difference in damage. This damage is taken away from the HD. When HD = 0 the unit is Out of the Battle (1d4).

1. No survivors, all dead, including champion.
2. Champion Out of Action and unit destroyed.
3. Champion and handful of the unit remain fighting, rest dead.
4. Champion remains fighting, rest broken and fleeing.

Players should have all their units selected in an order on the table in front of them. Perhaps cards would be a good way to do this. The everyone takes turns to activate a unit. Move and attack or Double move move. Standard TBH. Close, Nearby, Far. Scale is just fractal. (Don't tell FATE). resolve spells normally? I dunno. A unit of wizards? Really? I like warhammer battle wizards so maybe i'll have work on some sort of magic system that uses existing spells. Another night perhaps

Spelling and grammar, i regret nothing.

DB

The boys first dungeon

Benefits of having offspring is you get to experience cool moments where they show an interest in your hobbies. My hobby is d&d. What follows is the boy's (age 6) first dungeon. I consider it to be equal parts weird, familiar and interesting. I think ill run some players through it. Maybe add some 'filler black rooms' - plus yeah yeah, I get blank rooms don't need to be filler (all killer amirite?)

Room Contents:

1. Goblin Shark (Head of shark, body of Goblin)

2. Psycho Cyclops.

3. Creepy lab, Skeleton, liquid with label 'Toxic', if drank gain a level.

4. Cyborg Skeleton - teleportation, mind control, lazor eyes.

5. Bunch of Bats - Machine converts toxic waste to healing potions.

6. Another lab - more skeletons, sword that traps souls.

7. 12 chests - 6 trapped: Laval pit, Arrows, Scared to Death, Killed by darkness, Anvil falls on you, Virus Kills you.

8. Yellow orb - reach in? flip a coin, Heads: Ghost Wolf appears. Tails: Nightmare spawns.

9. No door, just a purple portal. (wait that's it?? shouldn't there be more? No. Apparently not)

10. Ghosts with some abstract medieval contraption that's basically a hoover. There was a picture but just trust me. 

11. Robot room - bear with hat.

12. Misty Room with chest guarded by octopus.

The Black Hack : Guns & Ammo

Here are my thoughts on guns, these aren't 'official roolz' or anything - just my thoughts about how i'd like to do guns.

AMMO

All guns have ammo, represented by the usage die. Just as it was intended. You roll your ammo die at the end of a combat, and it works as per normal. I'd normally expect usage die's to be in the d8-d10 region.

SPRAY & SLAY

You can bypass the DEX test to hit, do automatic damage but you have to roll the Ammo's usage die immediately.

CRAZY AMMO

High power shells, LAZOR beams, angry bee's - all pack a serious punch. A gun with crazy ammo can roll with Advantage when dealing damage, but must also roll with Disadvantage when roll the Ammo's usage die at the end of the combat.

SNIPERS

Long barreled guns or weapons with computers and fancy shit can skip a turn, 'aiming' and automatically deal damage the next turn. Roll usage die at the end of the combat as per normal.

BOMBS

Area of effect weapons attack 1d4 targets in a Nearby area.

SWISS CHEESE

If you kill a creature with this gun, and have any 'damage left over' you have to give that damage to a Nearby creature. Oh there are only your friends around? Then you shouldn't be playing with guns indoors.

BLUNDERBOLLOCKS

If you have a gun that shoots shrapnel, pellets or other short range spreadables - should you miss, you deal your Level in damage to the target if they're Nearby.

STOPPING POWER

Replace class damage with a d12, the usage die for this gun is always a d6.

That seems like a nice set of rules to make Guns feel distinct, but not overwhelming. Also its unlikely that one single gun would have more than a couple of these little rule - tops. One each also helps distinguish the gun.

How to make a successful RPG (or lessons i've learned)

I've got a game out as you know, one or two people thought it was pretty fucking neat :

Not bad for a jumped up little set of house rules-turned small press title. So far I think we've sold 900+ 'real copies' (bundles ofc) and 450+ pdf's, a bunch of GM screens, Char sheets and the 1 page micro-setting 'The Queer and Deadly Town of Sorrowset'. All gravy then. So much so, that the resulting conversation about the game, its mechanics and its success have given me reason to get my think on.

Why has The Black Hack been as successful as it has, despite it being yet another d&d clone? It really isn't doing something all that special, same rules just spun a little differently. (Although I'd claim, anecdotally, that TBH is what D&D looked like before it was D&D - Arnesonian style) If I were to draw a parallel - or reveal something that has inspired TBH it would be LotFP. Now i'll say upfront im not a huge fan of the LotFP rules. They're just B/X with some neat tweaks, but that's not what I wanted to talk about. What I really like, and the reason I think James has had the success he has? It's attitude. Despite having 'vanilla' rules - and I mean that as no real insult - when you play a LotFP game you know what you're getting into. Real cray-cray shit. So thats what I tried to inject into TBH's soul - the same level of projected attitude. And one thing I've learned is it's that 'voice' that the game needs to stand out from all the hundreds of other generic fantasy roleplaying games that are out there. Production values are real important important too. Super important. We asked for extra money to print on nicer paper, and it worked, and shit the bed did it make a difference. Arts important. I couldn't put any in the book, space was tight in places, but I made sure to do something bold for the cover. Just wait till you see the T-Shirts.

What's next? Well if I were to look at the Raggi method of success, its support. TBH has already in the few short weeks it's been available, had a shit tonne of 3rd party support. Which is good, It's also sort of a shame, because a lot of those things - were things I had planned on doing. I'm still going to do them of course, in my own unique way. I asked the G+ hivemind what they would want to see next ..

So there we are - pretty much an even split. Vertex of Hate is going to be something of a similar size to the rulebook, but purely adventure, with some other small bits thrown in. It's not a guaranteed go'er yet but it looks like it might be a KS with Gold Piece. That way there's the opportunity to get badges, t shirts and other shit I posted about made. But beyond that? Stay tuned. TBH will return.