"the 'Black Hack for Everything' era is well passed now"

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Fenris-77 said:
I'm going to be honest here rather than kind. Your vitriol seems to outweigh your subject mater expertise. The fact that you don't know what The Black Hack is doesn't actually mean it's low rent or liminal, it just means you don't know the OSR that well. Additionally, no game has significant market share next to D&D, not in any meaningful way. However, and again, that doesn't mean those games aren't popular just that they don't weight as much as the gorilla in the room. So maybe you could talk about things in a way that makes sense in terms of actual market share and popularity and not just toss flaming bags of shit around because you don't' know any better? Just a thought.
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I don't mind honest. I'll be honest in return. What "vitriol?" Never read the game. Never played it. Never heard of it before yesterday. (Neither, you might have noticed, have other posters in this thread.) No dog in the fight, really.

But what I have seen many a time are fanboys on forums touting this game or that game as the Next! Great! Happening! Thing! Call it Feng Shui or Castle Falkenstein, Dogs In The Vineyard or Mouse Guard, Buffy or Burning Wheel, Nobilis or Tri-Stat, Wushu or Ars Magica, Hackmaster or 7th Sea ...shit, I could go a few dozen deep on them. Games that were the hotly touted, rabidly defended flavor of the month, and games that vanished from the zeitgeist in a year or three.

And sure, SOMEone's out there playing pretty much anything. Hell, there are to my certain knowledge still two GMs running my homebrew, which I cringe at recalling how ramshackle it was, and which I discarded in 1982 to do Fantasy Trip instead. (They were players of mine, they had copies, they had my blessing.) For what it is worth. Which is not bloody much. So there are other folks on this forum who use Black Hack? Terrific. I hope you're all having fun with it. Say, what OSR games were you having fun with five years ago? Which ones will you be playing five years from now? (Never mind that if you think about it, the "OSR era" has stretched quite literally the entire lifespan of the RPG hobby; there never has been a time when people weren't playing with old-fashioned rulesets.)

So I'm rather with CRK on this one in finding the notion of a "Black Hack For Everything Era" more than a little pretentious. Obviously that bugs the hell out of you. So stipulated; your privilege.
 
I don't think we're actually that far apart. The whole idea of black hack for everything is a construct anyway. Was it a very popular game to hack for a while? Yup. Were there some odd decisions made there? Oh yes. Are some gamers pretentious? Mmm, yes. That does not add up to a prententious movement however, nor does it make The Black Hack any less well designed.

I have no use for movements or fanboyism. I play what I like and dont need to covert folks. The only part of this that bugged me was your (somewhat pretentious) dismissal of a game you have neither played nor read. This isn't about a sacred cow, I also play BX, Trophy Gold and (shudder) 5E, plus some other OSR games ro scratch my fantasy itch. Its just about you having a gatekeeping moment and trying to badwrongfun people.

To answer your direct question I've been playing TBH since it came came out in 2016. Its also one of two systems that I use for most of my writing and design work.
 
The OP (reddit, not rumble) hasn't claimed that "Black Hack for everything" was a worldwide phenomenon. I think he/she was talking about some small part of OSR indie designers. There are thousands of indie designers out there, and some of them are hacking the Black Hack, that is the nature of our hobby. Are we really going to question whether that is a thing on this forum? We still have the Diary of a Black Sword Hack thread on a first page (and BSH is based on BH).
 
DeadBob said:
I know.

Making it worse, I like games of multiple sorts and even more freeform-y/FKish stuff too.

I had steak last night. I had leftover vegetarian this morning.
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I too am an abomination. I can enjoy old school D&D as well as games like DramaSystem. I guess I need to grow up and pick a side in the RPG Wars.
 
DeadBob said:
I know.

Making it worse, I like games of multiple sorts and even more freeform-y/FKish stuff too.

I had steak last night. I had leftover vegetarian this morning.
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Nah, that actually explains everything:shade:!
 
DeadBob said:
I guess I'd have to disappoint everyone, with liking both PbtA and BH variants.
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I'm not, in general, what you'd call a PbtA fan but I have a lot of respect for Root, Stonetop, and (although they're more PbtA adjacent) City of Mist and Metro: Otherverse. Vagabonds of Dyfed is also very cool and a perfect halfway point between PbtA and OSR.

I hate some of the attitudes that come with niche gaming scenes but I'm glad there's people out there hacking and experimenting with these systems and, more importantly, getting them out there in front of the people. The more variety the better I say!
 
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I never got "Black Hack" (or anything with "Hack" in its title).

Can someone provide a very brief description of what it does differently from other OSR games, e.g., S&W or OSE?

I'm just looking for a few sentences that notes what it does that makes it "special."

Extra positive vibes for anyone who can tell me why "Hack" is in the title.

Thanks in advance!
 
It was not the originator of usage dice but it really made them popular, it used advantages / disadvantage, and roll under attributes. It has a neat leveling up mechanic where you tell a story about your character as part of the process.
 
AsenRG said:
So, to tell you the truth, I rather prefer things the way things are now:thumbsup:!
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It's nice when most of the players of a game you like, are there because they have similar tastes, and the smarts/will to have found the game, and the will to be a fan of it.

As opposed to, because it's the main thing on the shelves, and in memes, etc. Then you get the other people . . . :shock:
 
I'm no Black Hack maven, but a couple of other things that seem to distinguish it from more 'straight' OSR games or retro-clones:
  • Enemies/n.p.c.s don't roll to hit p.c.s; instead the p.c. rolls to defend, based on his/her attributes.
  • No 'armor classes' or equivalent. Instead, you can choose to 'break' your armor and negate all damage from a hit. The more substantial an armor, the more times you can do so, but more protective armors are then harder to repair in the field (it's actually an elegant little system). Likewise no armor for monsters/n.p.c.s (with a few exceptions).
The game also has a strong 'pick up and play' vibe with lots of random tables to generate all kinds of setting or scenario elements, though of course you can find that in other games.

As far as the name goes, 'hack' seems to have become RPG jargon for 'a version or adaptation of a given ruleset or rule,' maybe derived from the recent extended meaning of the verb as 'clever tip or technique for doing or improving something' (as Merriam-Webster puts it). But maybe that's just stating the obvious.
 
AsenRG said:
...no, I just looked for a way to say "this", as in this post, but I kinda liked the picture, so ended up using this one:grin:!

Also, I agree that this use of "them" was a correct one, unlike many misuses I've seen lately:thumbsup:.
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As the emoji-master... do you use wow emoji when you don't understand what was just said? Because if so... Wow.
 
Ravenswing said:
So I'm rather with CRK on this one in finding the notion of a "Black Hack For Everything Era" more than a little pretentious. Obviously that bugs the hell out of you. So stipulated; your privilege.
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I didn't pick up on the fact that he cared about that particular race- just the fact that you're comparing the marketshare in a market where D&D is the outsized example as a reason that something is unknown. That's pretty disingenuous. And not having heard about the Black Hack at all? I don't think that's what CRK was saying- just that the Black Hack for Everything is a bit pretentious. It's well known, notwithstanding the fact that you haven't heard of it.
 
sharps54 said:
It was not the originator of usage dice but it really made them popular, it used advantages / disadvantage, and roll under attributes. It has a neat leveling up mechanic where you tell a story about your character as part of the process.
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I'm not familiar with the term "usage dice" (yes, I have been in this hobby for 40+ years...).

"Usage dice" = advantage/disadvantage dice?
 
Lofgeornost said:
As far as the name goes, 'hack' seems to have become RPG jargon for 'a version or adaptation of a given ruleset or rule,' maybe derived from the recent extended meaning of the verb as 'clever tip or technique for doing or improving something' (as Merriam-Webster puts it). But maybe that's just stating the obvious.
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Thanks! For some reason I thought it meant something more (RPG or fantasy) specific.

Anyone know why "Black" is in the title?
 
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