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The explosive popularity of this system should tell you a great deal about how good it is. Not only a distillation of, and improvement on, well-worn mechanics, the game takes pains to emphasize utility. Its system WORKS and that’s more than many more involved games can say.
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The description aren't detailed at all, but for me that's more of an advantage than a disadvantage.
Very easy to use. Great product.
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Fine, a bit too generic, and doesn't have the xd6 skills as noted previously
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Yawn, ok, so it offers the needed masters to print out hex gridded maping forms in a few patterns.
It's free, so stop expecting the moon :)
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Hey, it was free, so it's hard to complain eh :)
But I will offer simpple kudos. It will deliver on the intent.
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This product certainly hasn't reinvented the wheel in any fashion. But, it does a good enough effort. It earned my puny dollar :)
I'll likely print it out and get use out of the effort.
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Backed on KS for a PDF copy, THEN bought the dead tree version: this is how much I love this game. I like to think of it as “my” Fifth Edition, because it keeps everything I liked about BECMI (my first iteration of D&D) and imports just enough of the streamlined mechanics cool kids love so much these days.
Seriously, Advantage/Disadvantage is convenient, the Encumbrance rules are simplified but still matter, and yet you also have those beautiful random generators for dungeons, wilderness, encounters that I had in my old booklets.
I think some people who criticize TBH2e here slightly mischaracterize it: it is not a retroclone of anything, and it is debatable if it is even strictly speaking OSR. Yes, it is more survivable. Yes, it has playbooks for chargen like a PbtA game. But still gives you the old D&D gonzo, random, resource scarcity experience. Bravo.
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I bought The Black Hack 2e out of masochistic curiosity because it was advertised with many reviews as a popular “rules lite” "keep-it-simple-stupid" streamlined yet comprehensive & eccentric Old School Renaissance DnD retro-alternative. I wanted to find out why it was popular and how it was organized. I am not disappointed for those purposes. However, I’m still wrapping my head around what’s in it worth integrating in my DnD homebrew from blackhack 2e. Some of the tables are ridiculous. Fore example In the “MONSTERS & OPPONENTS A GUIDE TO CREATURE ENCOUNTERS” there are 2 1d6 tables for “THEY ARE” & “WITH” for every monster. Some of that is kitsch, tacky, raunchy and as lame as the blotchy grotesque artwork. For example the entry for Humans if you roll 2,2 THEY ARE “Making rubbings of things” WITH “a Pig in a Dress” Every bizarre random table with limited possibilities is just begging the DM to go WTF? and write their own result tables with way more results. Its a book that appeals to the RPG person who is either content with the kitsch or thrives on being agitated by that kitsch satire to write and make his own. I can’t honestly say I would ever want to participate in this game by the book.
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This is a MUST have for any GM of The Black Hack 2e. Even more valuable than the (highly useful) bestiary, is the reference sheet. At the end of the document, there is a 2 page quick reference sheet that is a perfect GM Screen. It is up to date with the 2nd Edition's rules (including the Armor rules). It is the best quick reference sheet you will find anywhere for the system.
And again, the bestiary itself is very handy to have. Especially if you're running an old school adventure module and want to quickly grab a monster stat block to drop in.
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Picked it up a couple weeks ago and am now running a game on a Monday over the internet. It is exactly what the doctor ordered - straightfoward rules, capturing the feel of old school B/X D&D but with enough modern elements to make it distinct. Also undead spacemen.
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A neat RPG that combines a streamlined version of the original D&D game with ideas from the 5th Edition rules (such advantage/disadvantage and rests). Basically, the results of every action - your attacks, your defense, effectiveness of spells, etc. - are determined by a "test", where you try to roll under the relevant ability score on a d20. There are other interesting ideas in here as well, such as abstract distances and time measurements; simple initiative where success places you before the monster's turn, and failure after it; and a "usage die" to track uses of equipment. The booklet also provides simplified conversions of many iconic D&D spells and monsters for the Black Hack rules, to make it easy to get started, and a much-appreciated example of play at the end.
There are some tiny issues, however. The rules, while very readable, could stand to be a little better organized. And a few details among the sample spells and monsters aren't really explained, such as the 11 and 12 Hit Dice monsters in a game that's supposed to cap at 10 Hit Dice. (Also, the game clearly draws on the 3.5 and 5.1 System Reference Documents, but doesn't credit either in the Open Game License text at the end.) However, none of these hiccups take away the appeal of this ruleset. The Black Hack is for anyone who wants something that feels like classic D&D, but is much easier to run than any of the various editions. (Originally posted on Goodreads)
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Fantastic, streamlined, simple and hackable. The artwork, the design, everything encourages you to pick up RPG and just play. I love this one to bits.
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This is a nice collection of random tables. Some are a bit silly (What's on the end of the stick?), some are useful in a pinch (quick NPCs and hirelings), some are useful and I hadn't thought of before (The skeletons are commanded to...), and some are mehhh (coins on a corpse). There are some clever ideas that I plan on using in my sessions. I'm quite satisfied with my purchase, as it gave me some ideas that I had never thought of before.
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An irritating book to use.
First off, the lovely art is gone, as are the quirky spins on monsters, so if you're expecting a product as high quality as TBH2e you might be dissapointed. There's no flavour, simply pre-adapted stats for common foes, which admittedly are useful for running old modules if you don't have the time or inclination. It's not, however, a flawless book for that purpose either.
The monsters sometimes have confusing abilities such as the Blink Dog requiring you to reroll initiative partway through a round without explaining what happens to creatures (even the ones on its side) that haven't gone yet. To my knowledge blink dogs either use their teleportstion to attack from unexpected angles or otherwise to retreat after attacking, based on the edition they appear in, so I have no idea where this confusing initiative rerolling ability comes from.
Perhaps most infuriating for me is the fact the double whammy of enemies not obeying TBH's damage rules, and only having average damage listed. Firstly, TBH allows GMs to know a monster's damage by it's hit dice, HD1 monsters roll a d4, HD4 monsters roll a d10 etc. Average damage has always been given after this in parentheses, however the author of this book assumes that all GMs will default instead to average damage and doesn't list the die used, but worst of all the damage often doesn't line up to the HD rule.
The aforementioned blink dogs are HD4 creatures and yet do 4 (average) damage, when a HD4 monster should roll a d10 and deal average 5 (given TBH's rounding down fractions). In another example a HD7 black dragon deals 10 (avg) damage, when it should be rolling 2d8 and averaging 8. For the GM who likes to roll damage it is so infuriating to not know which dice to roll since these monsters don't work the same way from one to the next.
The real icing on the cake is that at the back of the book there's a section on adapting your own monsters which includes the HD-to-damage table from TBH and tells you to use it to determine how much damage a given monster makes.
For a book that promises to take the effort out of converting classic monsters for use in The Black Hack, it manages to do 75% of the work leaving you to figure out how much damage a monster should really be doing, or else use average damage on each and every attack. The fact that some abilites are downright confusing and others are instead just dull, lacking TBH's flair and charm means this is a book I'd recommend if you're a)really lazy and b) are fine with running monsters verbatim without anything to spark your imagination.
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Creator Reply: |
Thank you for the review. Just to clarify your points about damage. The damage values for monsters are presented in exactly the same way as they are in the monsters included in the TBH2e main rules. The conversion rules do include the Damage by HD table as you say, along with a note to say that attack damage can be increased or decreased depending on the type of attack. It seemed reasonable to reduce the blink dog damage and increase the black dragon damage given the nature of their respective attacks. |
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My go-to OSR game out there, it has just the right feel for me, and works just as well with more serious or sillier tones. I defeinitely got more than I bargained for, but in a good way.
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