Last weekend, I managed to get myself in the London Anime and Gaming Convention, and being a member of the team that organized the roleplaying games for the public, apart from my own FRONTIER, I came in touch with a few more lightweight and short games, one of which was The Black Hack.
For all of you who are unaware of The Black Hack, it is a "Hack" of the "Original" version of Dungeons & Dragons of 1974, fully compatible with most Old School Revival games that have recently made their appearance.
It has been designed by David Black, and you can find out more about him and his creations in his blog and his profile in Google+.
Without having a real experience with other similar games, I can't attest to this compatibility, but I have no reason to deny it.
As it was short and substantial, it was the best way to run Fantasy games that day without wasting time in Character Creation, so I started to browse through it quickly.
Physical form
Black hack is a small A5 booklet, with a black monochrome cover. Doesn't look very different from some theater reviews you might have got into your hands at some point, and is very close to the soul of the Old School Revival approach. It resembles the booklets that the 1st edition of Dungeons & Dragons was featured on, printed in copy shops and bound in Gygax's and Arneson's basement.
In the booklet there is no art other than one single sketch, that of the Characters' backpack in the Character Sheet (I'll come back to this later). This is not by itself a bad thing of course, as there is no space to be wasted in the booklet!
Setting
The game obviously doesn't feature a pre-made setting, as expected, but is based in the general and vague genre of Fantasy. There is a great interest in the fact that there are no options for different races, not even in the way that there were some in 1st edition Dungeons & Dragons. This means two things: Either the game an only support Human characters (and probably create a spark of interest in potential Game Masters, by imposing a boundary), or that any racial differences are purely cosmetic, and the game then can be easily adjusted to settings that feature Dwarves, Elves or Gnomes.
The available classes are four, the Warrior, the Cleric, the Conjurer and the Thief, and can cover a wide gamut of different choices that exist inside a Fantasy setting.
However, without it being immediately obvious, after a short study, and after trying to run the game for a group of players without prep, if you want to use the Black Hack "as is", without your own piece of hacking, you should know that the majority of the work that has been done is based more in Dungeon environments, and not in open adventuring spaces. This doesn't mean that you can't play something more "open", just that you will find many more pre-made tools to play in Dungeons and caves.
Most featured monsters are classic and expected in a Fantasy world, and are very easy to be cosmetically customized without much effort.
Character Creation
Character Creation in the Black hack is very easy and short, with a very approachable Character Sheet to fill in your Character. Statistic allocation is completely randomized and also very brutal, with the game trying to handicap the very good rolls.
After this is done, the Players choose their Class, roll their Hit Points, and read their different Class Features.
On top of this, there is a random Gold assignment, with which the Players buy their starting Equipment, along with a Weapon that is provided by their Class.
When all of these steps are over, the game is ready to begin.
Magic
Magic is, as expected from a Dungeons & Dragons clone, based in spells that a Character either reads out from a spellbook, or memorizes, and the book has a series of Spells of various Spell Levels, for each of the two spellcasting classes.
However, the game is equally brutal in the way that confines the number of spells that a Character can perform in a day, with the Cleric able to cast none and the Conjurer able to cast only one in the 1st Level. Old School stuff.
Combat
Combat follows a very simple "one move, one action" system, but is a large departure from the Old School approach, as instead of using a combat grid and miniatures, utilizes a loose descriptive approach for distances (Close, Nearby, Far-Away and Distant), making descriptions easier for the Game Masters, but much more blurry as well. It is very easy for all players to be "Close".
For a Player to Attack, he rolls his relevant Ability, and succeeds if he rolls under his Score in the 20-sided die. Similarly, Players Defendagainst monsters in the same way. This way, the monsters don't need attack or defend statistics, and only have a "Level" that determines their Hit Points and the amount of damage that they deal to the Player Characters.
When Player Characters reach 0 Hit Points, there is a chart that determines randomly what happens, from a simple fainting, to irreversible Character death. Brutal.
Other Systems
The game features a cool way of controlling when you run out of expendables (arrows, food and torches) that get resolved with the roll of a die. The items a Character can carry are equal to their Strength score, and there is a beautiful sketch of a backpack in the Character Sheet to track everything down.
Items
The game makes no distinction between different weapons, but the damage they deal depends on the Character's Class, and as a result there are no Weapon descriptions or charts, they are purely cosmetic choices of every Character. There are some lists with basic dungeoneering items and some armors.
Summary
The Black Hack is an interesting approach, specially for an amateur in the whole Old School Revival landscape, as I happen to be. In the Convention I was in, there was a much thicker offshoot of it, the Cthulhu Hack, and a quick search in the interwebs will reveal a few more dozens of supplements and offshoots.
It is definitely a very strong choice if one wants to play for an afternoon, however I am not sure that it will be similarly pleasant if one wants to play longer chronicles, as it seems that the thin choice margin won't help a newbie Game Master.
The more I see the ease with which I was Game Mastering on the fly by having a palette in my mind, formed by almost twenty years in RPGs, the more I can't imagine a beginner that gets hold of this game with their friends, be able to have a fun afternoon.
For sure, it led me to look deeper into some more Old School Revival games, it sure led me to see what else has David Black made.
I am waiting for your comments and suggestions!
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