My current gaming obsession appears to be The Black Hack (TBH). Over the past few weeks I have got enthused about using this small engine to drive a number of games, including a short campaign set in the realms of Midnight. In fairly short order TBH has spawned a whole host of hacks, embellishments, and whole new genre settings from grimy Victorian London to the glittering towers of corporate Cyberpunk. Amongst this eruption of creativity I have gathered a range of neat ideas to blend back in to TBH to make the game that I want around the table – The Gray Hack.
The ideas are, largely, not my own, but the blend and presentation will be. I will include my own take on fantasy races and a few minor tweaks to the classes and include some of my own. Armour will see some modifications along the lines of David Black’s ‘Additional Things’, though I’m still vacillating on which method to use. A simple skill system has been included along with some other clarifications and 13th Age loveliness.
At present this is just coalescing on a Google Doc, but in fairly short order the blend will be done and I can put it into some sort of layout, which will be a challenge. I’d like to try Scribus for this short and simple project, to get my hand in, but may just keep this to a PDF export from Docs as it is all very simple.
What will I do with The Gray Hack? In the end I’m not really sure how useful a careful blend of some of the neat ideas around TBH all placed into one little rulebook will be to anyone else but me. I’ll judge it when it is done. If nothing else it will be a fantastic and complete little book for me and my friends, which is probably good enough for me.
I’m of to UK Games Expo later this morning for a few days of gaming, shopping and schmoozing. Fantastic way to end my week off.