The Most Straightforward Modern OSR Game Available?

OSR fans might find The Black Hack from David Black interesting. Based on the original edition of D&D in the 1970s, it claims to be "the most straightforward modern OSR compatible clone available". It's short - 20 half-sized pages - and is on Kickstarter right now, already funded. David has kindly sent me along an exclusive preview of the game!

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You can find the Kickstarter here. If fast and streamlined is your thing, this is certainly an option. The rewards seem very generous - £1 for the PDF, or £5 for the print version - and bonus stretch goals like printed character sheets, a micro-setting, and a GMs screen have already been unlocked. Given the low buy-in, it seems like a no-brainer for fans of this style of game.

 

[Baumi]

Thank you! 8D

By the way, which classes will be included and can you give us a small preview about weapons?

 

[DavidBlack]

Thank you! 8D

By the way, which classes will be included and can you give us a small preview about weapons?

So far its the big 4, Warrior, Thief, Cleric and Conjurer.

Weapon damage is handle by class - a warrior deals 1d8 damage with weapons or 1d6 using improvised weapons. A Conjurer deals d4 damage with weapons or 1 point if improvising

The rational is that every sharp bladed instrument is capable of poking you full of holes, causing you to leak to death - But the effectiveness of doing so is determined by your training.

 

[Baumi]

Awesome, I love class based damage (lets you choose weapons that you find cool)! 8D

 

[dave2008]

I do have one concern; the rule of characters rolling to avoid an attack is straight out of the Cypher System rules by Monte Cook, and not part of the OGL. Maybe that mechanic is part of another OGL system, but I'm not aware of one.

Not sure if it is part of the SRD, but 5e has a variant rule to have the characters roll to avoid attack, actually that may have been an UA article not that I think about it. Regardless the concept has been around for ages. I used the concept in about 1990 when my group of PCs grew from 5 to 7 and I had a hard time keeping everyone engage. I'm sure I wasn't the first.

 

[dave2008]

I m not much of an OSR Guy, but this one looks great and I instantly baked after this preview! 8D

Awesome! What do you bake, and will you be sharing?

 

[Baumi]

Awesome! What do you bake, and will you be sharing?

Never! Nom Nom Nom....

 

[EdL]

Not sure if it is part of the SRD, but 5e has a variant rule to have the characters roll to avoid attack, actually that may have been an UA article not that I think about it. Regardless the concept has been around for ages. I used the concept in about 1990 when my group of PCs grew from 5 to 7 and I had a hard time keeping everyone engage. I'm sure I wasn't the first.

Yep, the roll under stat (for various things) has been around since at least the early eighties... and probably since the seventies.

 

[DavidBlack]

I took direct inspiration from a thread where a player of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign was answering questions about how Dave ran the game and that came up. Seem to me like thats what the game could have been like in its earliest simplest form - STR, DEX, CON etc - just rolling below on 3d6.

 

[jerzyab]

I've made some calculations concerning Usage dice. Given the mechanics (if roll = 1 or 2, decrease die size), I wanted to know how many rolls each die size would last.

Here are my results (average over 10k trials):

Die size	Rolls before 0
d4	2
d6	5
d8	9
d10	14
d12	20
d20	30

 

[Morrus]

I had somethings very similar to usage dice in my earlier drafts of WOIN. It proved pretty unpopular in play though. Flukes or bad luck meant you could stock up on arrows and yet still run out 3 shots later. It didn't sit well with players and it got removed in playtests.

This version looks to have a but more buffering inbuilt, so might avoid that issue.