Review: UVG - the Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City

With all the awesome things released this year it blows my mind that one I will use first is both free and, according to its author, incomplete.

Luka Rejec released an introductory version of the "Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City" last week. It's a 78 page point crawl with only one location fleshed out. According to Luka's Patreon, the complete version will be released in August of this year. While I'm looking forward to it, this teaser version has plenty to offer.

The cover by Luka Rejec

At long last, WONDER!

I downloaded UVG for the artwork. Luka's work has a way of expressing a great deal of detail and movement with a few simple lines. It reminds of the work of Jean Giraud, A.K.A. Moebius, while showing me something new and original. His work carries a sense of wonder and the fantastic while not settling in any particular genre. I am a fan.

"The Rusty Arc" by Luka Rejec

The Ultraviolet Grasslands leans into this same aesthetic. Luka is is upfront about the influence of the Dying Earth and psychedelic heavy metal on the setting/adventure. The sense of an ancient world, full of sorcery and super-science haunted by the, "long ago," is carried through the adventure's descriptions of the rotting technological remains, strange locations and local inhabitants. 

The new creatures and cultures introduced by the book add to the strangeness with a light touch. Each group, from humans to para-humans, has a brief description and then a table of rumours you can build your campaign's version of them from. Randomly generating the true and false features of these para-humans helps preserve that sense of uncertainty in the unknown and doubles down on the exploration theme of a fantasy RPG. It reminds me a bit of how Traveller's 76 Patrons was set up with a single premise or set of characters with multiple details on a table under each. It allows for the whole thing to be used more than once and be surprising for both the referee and the players.

UVG captures the wonder that the small press RPG community seems to be reaching for recently. It is exactly what I've been looking for. Judging by the sudden addition of Patreons since last week's release, I'm not alone.

"Tower and Hill" by Luka Rejec

Innovation!

It seems like almost every notable small press RPG release from the DIY D&D and OSR communities has some sort of game-changing innovation. UVG certainly delivers in this area. Luka created some new rules for travel which simplify encumbrance and travel while still making them work in a new way. His ambition was to convey both the vast size of the adventure area and the danger of travel through his weird savanna. I'll know for sure once I incorporate it into my regular game, but from reading it, I'd say he succeeds. Besides that success, he also creates a rules-light system for speculative trade that reminds me of Classic Traveller. The simplicity of Luka's system gives the players real choices about how much cargo to carry versus supplies, how large to make their caravan, and even what form of transport and retainers to use. All of these choices have an impact on the speed of travel, potential for encounters and even the likelihood of starving to death. Things like caravan speed and visibility also change the chances of starving and having an encounter.

Hacking up Treasure for UVG - Luka Rejec

I like the switch from days as a unit of time for travel to weeks. It helps to create the sense of isolation in the wilderness when there is only one encounter rolled per week. The party is on its own so they better have what they need. 

Because space and weight are issues that can kill a party, treasure can't always be hauled away with ease. Because of this feature, there are rules for hacking up the treasure for the best bits. This form of looting does terrible damage to these finds, turning the party into vandals, but it allows them to make choices about how they want to deal with large pieces of treasure.

While the UVG is a sandbox filled with all kinds of creatures and points of interest, the distance is the biggest enemy that needs to be faced. I enjoy this feeling of the vast openness as an opponent and can do a lot with it. It certainly marks this adventure as something special and reminds me a bit of how the darkness is handled in Veins of the Earth.

I like how once there is trouble, or something to explore, we return to shorter time units, from days for starvation, down to seconds for combat. It's a way of narrowing the focus and placing the players into the context of the current size of the environment they are interacting with. I'm looking forward to saying things like: "Four days into the second week you see movement on the horizon..."

Luka Rejec's Caravan Record Sheet for UVG makes tracking the new important bits easier!

How does it work?

Luka describes it as a rules-light, RPG point crawl and it is that, but it is clearly set up with some version of 5th edition D&D in mind. The saves reference the six classic statistics. Also the rolls for success use a roll high verses a ladder of target numbers. 

I tend to run a heavily modified hack of the Black Hack so the stat-based saves fit in fine, but the progressive target numbers are a bit harder to work with if you aren't using a skill system. The easiest thing seems to be dividing the stat by three and adding it to the d20 roll, but the most accurate might be to compare how much the check against a stat is made or missed by to the target number ladder. Someone using LotFP might want to multiply skill pips by two and add that amount to the d20 roll.

Despite the few 5e-isms built into the system most things are designed for cross compatibility. Encumbrance and movement rates are simplified when translated into a weekly turn system. All prices are in "cash" so it doesn't matter if you are using a gold piece, silver piece, or tic-tac as the main currency. All the creature and transport descriptions are expressed in terms of hit dice so they will work with any of the D&D editions or clones with minimal work. The weird weapons and items work with minimal conversion as well. 

Another Point of Interest in UVG - Luka Rejec

Basically the innovations are rules light and completely compatible with any system, while the details like weird weapons and armour are mostly expressed in terms of the 5e D&D rules with ascending AC for the armours and weapon terms such as, "finesse," and, "versatile." Any DM/referee using a stripped down "O5R" style rules will not need to convert anything. For the rest, it can be converted or ignored as usual.

The point crawl itself has a series of destinations arranged on the map with the different routes between them marked in how many weeks it usually takes to travel them. There are also spots for placing or generating, "points of interest," near the destinations or off the routes that the party might want to spend some time investigating. These points of interest are investigated in days instead of weeks. There is one sample, but no random generator for the points of interest. You'll need to create those on your own. I expect the full version will have more.

In this introductory version of the UVG, only the first destination, the Violet City is fleshed out. The rest are given a paragraph of description that is enough for anyone looking for inspiration, but leaves a lot of work for the referee to detail. The other locations are available to Luka's Patreon contributors up to #22, The Cage Run, but more are being added all the time. I like it as is. The paragraphs give me enough to work with that I can add details on the fly or make a few tables to generate some points of interest. I might even cannibalize LotFP's Carcosa for some points of interest and other terrors left over from the, "long ago." 

Point of interest from the "Long Ago" - Luka Rejec

UVG! What is it good for?

The sandbox can be used whole hog as described in the adventure and there are plenty of hooks to entice a wide variety of players to enter the Ultraviolet Grasslands. That's my plan.

The rules for hacking up parts of treasure for encumbrance reasons are going to be part of my campaign from the next session onward! 

UVG's rules for overland travel through what is essentially a desert are great! I'll be rolling those into my normal game for long distance travel. The simplicity and presentation of important choices to the players are the perfect tool for me. I may make some modifications for water-based travel so I can keep everything consistent. A new obstacles table is the first thing to create, but the UVG one is a great model!

The rules for trade and even market research could be used in a seafaring campaign or other trade-based adventure. If you spent a long time creating a vast world full of vibrant detail, or you spent a lot of money on supplements of the same, the trade and travel system might be a way to get the party moving around the map so you can use more of it. 

The Para-humans of the different factions in the UVG can easily be lifted and dropped into any fantasy world. There's no reason why the Cat Lords or Porcelain Princes can't be secretly be in charge of Vornhiem, Calimport, Lankhmar, or any home brewed city. 

The art is fantastic and could inspire a kick-ass campaign on its own! Knowing that the art would be awesome is a big part of why I took the time to check this intro UVG out! Without it, I might have waited for the finished product.

Final Thoughts

For a teaser product, the intro version of the Ultraviolet Grasslands is surprisingly complete and usable. The table of contents makes it easy to find specific information. The layout is clean. There are caravan tracking sheets that are well designed to be compatible with the system for the sandbox setting. The point crawl map is made to be printed, written on and used at the table. It is designed to be a tool and I can see it working well for me. The tables for obstacles and bad happenstances are nice details as well. The example of the Violet City is a fine template for fleshing out the other destinations. For a free product, I could not ask for more. It's more than a lot of referees will ever need to run a long campaign. 

It's barely referenced, but elves appear to be an affliction in Luka's campaign that infects the half-elves and turns them into tree-hugging monsters. I have my own horrific version of elves, but I'd love to know more about these ones!

I'd love a little more information about the purple mist. I may have missed it, but other than its change to the sunrise I'm not sure what it does. 

Did I mention the art? The art is great! I printed it out as an A5 booklet in black & white and it all looks great! The muted colours in the PDF set a wonderful tone and help create the feel of the sandbox setting for the adventure.

Even though I'll be incorporating the intro version of UVG into my campaign as a location as soon as I can, I'll definitely pick up the full version once it's available. Hopefully there will be a print version of some kind. Luka's ideas are different enough from mine to add a lot to my game, but still close enough I can use his work with almost no changes. I can just drop the Ultraviolet Grasslands onto the western edge of the map and start giving my players hints and hooks.

There are plenty of NPCs in UVG!

How to get UVG and more from Luka!

If I've peaked your curiousity, there are a few places to go for more: 

You can find the intro version for the PDF on Drive Thru RPG here. I printed it out as a half-letter sized booklet on a laser printer and it works great at that size. I'm torn on my expectations for the size of the final product. I am hoping the final product is A5 for the ease of use at the table, but I also want it to be A4 so the art is bigger!

There's more information on Luka Rejec's Patreon. You can get access to more detailed descriptions of the destinations by contributing as little as a dollar to the patreon. I expect I'll be sign up myself, now that the review is done.

If you are interested in seeing more of Luka's work, his website for his art and writing is here. He has a "rough portfolio" of art here. His art is also featured on his twitter here, and on his Instagram here.

Rules for Pets in the Black Hack

The longer I run David Black's stripped down old/new school D&Dish retro clone called The Black Hack, the more I find myself writing rules to suit the situations my players create and modify the game to our taste. The more I add and change the more I find myself with what looks like the beginnings of a great RPG that straddles the old school and new school well enough to function as a great little introductory fantasy RPG. That might fuel some posts for later, but for now here are the rules I created for running pets and animal companions in the Black Hack.

My players for my Keep on the Borderlands campaign went into the woods to see if they could find the dragon they heard about and only found the crazy hermit and his lion. They killed the hermit and then they tracked down the lion so they could use a Charm Monster potion on it. The warrior character treated it well and fed it more than the hermit did while they had it under control. I gave the player in control of the warrior a Charisma roll when the potion expired to befriend the lion. I figured with a 6 Charisma I was safe and the lion would just run away.

That's when they rolled a critical and the lion became their pet. Now I have rules for how pets work in the Black Hack. These are the expanded and polished version of what I sketched out during that session so they could use their lion right away. They've worked well so far. If your players force you to make up rules for pets you can use these ones!

There is a Moebius image for every blogpost!

Creature companions/pets have three attributes besides their regular DMG, HD and HP: Action, Sense and Loyalty. The ACT and SEN attributes are based on the creature’s HD. ACT is 10 + HD  to a maximum of 16 and SEN is 10 + HD + (roll 2d6 and choose the lowest one) to a maximum of 18. LOY is a usage die and depends on how well trained and well treated the pet is before bad things start happening. A faithful dog that has been with the character for a few years will have LOY of d8 or even d10. A pack animal that was recently purchased will have a LOY of d4.

ACT is used for physical tests like dodging falling rocks or combat. SEN is used to notice something, track or any test that depends on the animal’s senses. LOY is tested any time something bad happens, such as the beast is wounded, mistreated or neglected when hungry. If the LOY result is a 1 or 2 on a d4 the animal will attempt to run away.

Pets and creature companions can play different roles during combat. One option is to attack independently using their ACT attribute. If used this way they risk damage from opponents if ACT rolls are failed. Another option is for them to fight with the character that owns them and add a +1 to their effective HD for the purposes of fighting powerful or multiple opponents. Pets could also harass and distract a single opponent to create an opening and allow the character that owns the pet to get Advantage on an attack. It depends on circumstances, but creativity should be rewarded.

Pets get one action or attack, the same as the characters. Their damage based on HD already reflects the results of using all their natural weapons.

Here’s an example notation of a lion that was charmed using potions and then became a pet:

ACT 15 SEN 15 LOY d8

DMG 1d10 HD 4+1 HP 18

This way all the rolls stay player facing while they roll against the stats their pets have when they take some kind of action. The loyalty die allows whoever is running the game to keep things from getting too out of hand. If the pet is being overused they can call for more loyalty rolls.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Especially if your try them out too! 

#RPGaDAY 2017 - Day Four

Today's microblog topic, courtesy of #RPGaDAY2017, is the RPG I've played most since August 2016. I've easily played more 5e D&D than any other game in the past year.

I've played in a steady Sunday night game for a a couple of years or more. It's been pretty amazing. I managed to get my Warlock up to 16th level, the highest I've ever managed in 35 years of D&D. The system has adapted well to our dirty tricks under one of the best DMs I've played with. I've played a total of three characters in the campaign, but my Warlock is definitely my favourite. Had I know it would last so long, I might have chosen my class more carefully, but I have no regrets.

I ran 5e D&D campaigns for a couple of new groups of players. Both groups wanted me to specifically run "the new D&D" for them. Mostly because they had bought the books but didn't really understand how to use them. Partially because they wanted to play the new shiny D&D.

Philippe Caza

Outside of that, I've played all kinds of other games, from Marvel FASERIP to the Cypher System. Never as consistently or as long as D&D though.

The latest D&D is a pretty good game. I like the addition of backgrounds. The different types of each class that are chosen between 2nd and 3rd level remind me of the kits from 2nd edition. The feats are no longer overwhelming and merely add some colour to a character. There are enough player facing choices that t's easy for two characters of the same class to be completely different in play. All in all, it's pretty good.

I do find it fiddly at times. I don't like how much I need to consult the books during play, but it's not too bad. It's far more streamlined than the 3rd and 3.X editions. Left to my own devices I would play something more old school, but the best edition of D&D is the edition someone else is willing to run for you.

Moulding Young Minds and Other Madness

This post was supposed to be the third session report of my D&D campaign with my daughters but I'll be combining several weeks of play into this post to bring you all up to speed and talk about a few of the developments.

We're still using The Black Hack by David Black along with the legendary D&D Module, B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. I've made changes to both since we started but the biggest change is the expansion of the group.

I volunteered to watch my friend's son while she took her daughter to the clinic one evening and since it was D&D night, after supper I asked him if he wanted to play. Carter had never even heard of Dungeons and Dragons so I described it as "like a video game, but everything happens in your head." He thought that sounded cool so we rolled up a character. He decided on a Warrior named Dabber. When he rolled four for his Charisma he asked if his character could be missing an eye with a big scar and loose flap of skin. I was a little worried I'd need to draw that so I suggested a scar with a metal plate nailed into his skull to hide his empty socket. Carter thought that was a great idea and we were off!

The Black Hack Character Sheet for Dabber, the Warrior played by Carter, 9

Getting him to the rest of the party was easy enough, he simply followed the trail of corpses in the goblin cave to the supply room where the girl's characters were finishing up a short rest. Their rest had been interrupted early on by some hobgoblins coming through a secret door, but they were ready to go. They accepted their new party member since he was a bad-ass looking warrior and the Conjurer was tired of getting wailed on in combat.

It didn't take them long to find the seat of power for the goblin caves. I swapped out the original chieftain, honour guard and mates for a goblin queen and her retinue in her nest. I described it like something out of a HR Giger painting and they ate it up. The kids loved the large, bloated queen with her chain-mail stretched across her heavy body, swinging her great-axe at them while shouting in goblin. The large black eggs stuck to the walls and floor where goblins hatched as full-sized and functioning adults was alien and great scenery for them to work with as they moved around the room fighting the queen's honour guard.

They managed to kill the queen and ran through the last of the honour guard after she surrendered. Not much for mercy, these kids. My daughters also argued over who got to stab the goblins that fell to the Sleep spells because they both wanted to do it.

That was also the session where they started chanting, "One, one, one!" while rolling important hits in hopes of encouraging a crit.

With their huge treasure hall they were able to buy better armour and spend a month at the Keep trying to learn the Goblin and Giant languages from some people they found who were willing to teach them for a fee. They made their Intelligence tests at the end of the month and each added the language they had studied to their respective character sheets. Then they made another delve into the goblin caves only to find a giant spider had taken up residence in the common hall.

Apparently Carter talked about D&D and how much fun he had non-stop for a week. Since it worked out for everyone's schedule I offered to take him and his older sister on Wednesday so they all could play. Hailey was a little wary since Carter's excited descriptions made zero sense to her, but since my youngest, Pascale, was playing she said she'd try it out.

Hailey rolled up a character with both a high Strength and Dexterity. She decided to play a Thief like Pascale's character but wanted to use a giant, two-handed hammer. Since weapon damage is by class in The Black Hack and I had thrown out the weapon restrictions on day one anyway, I saw no reason to say no to her idea. Erie started tiptoeing around the caves with a giant hammer on her shoulder.

Erie, the maul-wielding Thief played by Hailey, 10

The group spent time bribing the ogre (now that they could talk to him) for safe passage and using their sneak attack on the hobgoblins that they found behind the secret door in the store room. My oldest, Chloe, thought it was hilarious that the hobgoblins had looted all the stuff from the goblins that the party wasn't able to carry in the previous session.

They tangled with the Hobgoblin Queen and ended up in a huge fight since coming in the back door allowed the bad guys to raise the alarm. The crazy fight stretched over several rooms and took the better part of the session. Two characters where knocked Out of Action, but the cleric's spells held out long enough to get them on their feet again and good rolls left them no worse for wear. Dabber ended up going toe-to-toe in an epic battle with the Hobgoblin Queen. She was immense and had as many hit points as the ogre from earlier that they were afraid to fight as a group. He held her off in her throne room until the rest of the party was able to mop up everyone else and pitch in.

Old Wojeb, the NPC Cleric they like having around even though his
abysmal strength and occasional cowardice make him kind of useless.

The kids poked around the room until they found all the treasure, but didn't even bother opening the doors to the rookery, or searching for the secret door into the complex. They were all satisfied with the crazy combat and wanted to get their characters back to the keep to sell their loot and heal up.

The next session they went back in through the goblin caves to get back into the hobgoblin lair to chase down the rumour about a captured merchant. They decided they weren't going to chance sneaking past the ogre's cave now that tow of them had chain-mail and they weren't paying the ogre any more money. Instead they drew him out into the open where they delayed him with a wand of web they had and filled him full of arrows before closing for melee. Some good rolling kept the party safe from thrown boulders and they took him down. They stripped of his outfit in the hopes of getting some gold for the bear pelts he was wearing.

This time they found the rookery. My 13-year-old felt pretty silly about not finding it or the secret door the first time. They destroyed the eggs and made their way into the armoury. They found out that telling the guards they had killed the queen was a bad idea but won that fight too.

Olys, the Conjurer played by Chloe, 13

They wanted to tap and scratch at every wall in the hopes of finding secret door but also wanted to be stealthy and sneak around. When I pointed out it was impossible to do both they decided on stealth.

The funniest part of the session is when my oldest decided to bluff the goblins preparing the hall for a feast into believing that they had paid the queen for the return of one of the prisoners and had gotten turned around in the caves. My youngest was trying to goad her sister into casting Sleep instead, "I don't think it's very heroic to lie to them."

Snekava, the Thief played by Pascale, 9

They pulled it off and got directions to the prisoners. A short battle and a running fight later and they were high-tailing it out of the ravine and heading for the Keep.

So far they've cleared out the goblins, the ogre and crippled the hobgoblins. It should be interesting to see where they go next. At this point they still trust the chaos priest spy at the Keep and have promised to come and get him to help them if they ever find any chaos altars, worshipers or relics.

As far as the rules go, I found the 4D6 HD for the Sleep spell was hugely overpowered when spell slots are only lost on a bad roll. I decided to use the LotFP version with only 2D8 HD affected by the Sleep. It's working out much better.

When we started I used the ablative armour with the recovery on short rests. I found it worked OK, but I slowly phased it out in favour of the damage reduction optional rule, starting with shields first and eventually moving to all the armour as damage reduction. The damage reduction solves the shield problem and speeds things up a bit. The monsters still get extra hit points from armour because hitting for zero damage is not fun!

The party is shaping up! They only have a handful of low-powered magic items, but they are well equipped now that two of them have plate mail and everyone else has exactly what they need. The Conjurer has added a spell to her spell book and the party has a townhouse rented inside the walls of the Keep for the next month. They are building relationships with the NPCs in the Keep and getting a feel for the Caves of Chaos. The characters are second and third level and they've all had a couple of stats increase while leveling.

All four are having the time of their lives and can't wait to play again!



#DandDwithKids

Their First Campaign

I've gamed with my daughters in the past. So far we've played a few one-shots to try out or playtest games aimed at kids.

I tried to get them into D&D with the Mentzer Red Box a few years ago. Both of them loved the images and the ideas in the book. The youngest didn't really have the attention span for it at the time and the game died out after the first session. D&D is not much of a solo game.

My oldest (12) has been pushing me to play again so I asked my youngest (9) this weekend how she felt about trying D&D again. She was super-excited to play!

We made their characters Sunday evening. The level of engagement this time was on a completely different level. When they were younger I was using the art to draw them in and help find out what they'd like to play. This time around we talked it out. Part of that came from their maturity level and part of it came from my decision to use The Black Hack as the rules for our campaign. It has no pictures and the rules are so simple all we needed to talk about was class-based concepts and what they wanted their characters to be able to do.

They responded well to starting with rolling the stats to find out about their characters and learn what they were good at. From there we looked at the four classes, what they could do and which ones would be complemented by the strengths and weaknesses of their characters. We also talked about what each class excelled at.

The short one liked the idea of a sneaky character who does things quietly and carefully, so she was keen to play a Thief despite her character's low Dexterity. Fortunately The Black Hack allows for two stats to be switched around during character generation and she didn't care if anyone liked her character, so she traded her DEX and CHA around to get herself a grumpy thief to play.

I barely started to ask the tall one what she wanted to play when she exploded: "Conjurer!"

This girl wants to play a wizard. I think it comes from reading her the Earthsea trilogy when she was little. She rolled a 17 Intelligence for her character so no stats were swapped.

Names came next and after some talk about naming fantasy characters we ended up with Snekava the Thief and Olys the Conjurer.

Snekava the Thief "...because she's so sneaky!"

While the girls shopped for their equipment I rolled up a henchman to help support their characters and avoid the TPKs that come with a party of two. Wojeb the Cleric (AKA Ol' Wojeb) came out of a low STR and CON but relatively high WIS. He can't carry much more than a torch and a shield but his hit points are high enough he should make an effective meatshield.

For the campaign I think I'll start with B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. It's a good spot for it and the Caves of Chaos allow for all kinds of different approaches to dealing with its monstrous inhabitants. Besides, it's an iconic adventure with sandbox elements that I ran recently in 5th edition so there's little for me to do in terms of prep.

The iconic Keep on the Borderlands

As for the larger world, I'm not sure what I'll do for that. I'm considering setting it in the old D&D Known World setting on Mystara. I've already done all the work of sprinkling my favourite OSR and classic D&D adventures throughout the setting. I've also subbed out chunks of the setting with cooler stuff from the Hydra Collective. For all that, the world has a history that makes suspension of disbelief easy to achieve. No matter what I do, it's all new to them, so exploring it will blow their little minds!

As far as system goes, I chose The Black Hack for a few reasons. I've already seen that it's simplicity makes it attractive as a way to bring beginners into D&D style gaming. I also like how it uses some of the modern gaming mechanics like usage dice and advantage/disadvantage. I want my girls to benefit from the old school, but I don't want them trapped there! I also like how damage by class makes weapon restrictions irrelevant so I could let them use whatever weapons they wanted without messing up the game balance. The biggest thing that made me want to use it for my daughters is the level advancement. Every level they'll roll for each statistic to see if it increases. This kind of obvious character improvement is going to make levelling that much more exciting and keep them engaged in the campaign. It also means low stats are not a big deal since they are more likely to increase than high ones.

We've decided on Wednesday evenings for our games since my wife is out that night and both of the girls are home. I'm looking forward to campaign play with the girls. I can't wait to see what they discover about their characters as they change and grow through play!

Black Hack Class Hack: Sorcery!

I reviewed The Black Hack in my last post. I mentioned that I felt like I had a few Hacks of my own to add to the growing number of genre specific clones of David Black's Modern OSR fantasy RPG.

I think an Early Modern Era, historical, weird-fantasy hack would be a lot of fun to play. For such a game I like my magic dangerous and unpredictable. It's something I've talked about before. Mike Evans came up with a good system to make sorcerers' casting flexible with an element of unpredictability with the usage die mechanic, but it lacks the danger I think is needed in RPG magic.

The usage die mechanic (from page 8 of the Black Hack) assigns a usage die to any resource ranging from 1d4 to 1d20 to roll when it is used. A roll of 1 or 2 brings the die to the next lowest value for subsequent rolls. Rolling 1 or 2 on the 1d4 means the resource (in this case magic) is exhausted until that resource can be replenished. The sorcerer can gain back one die for six hours of uninterrupted rest.

For my take on magic cast with the usage die I took a lot more inspiration from Barbarians of Lemuria, then mixed in a little Dungeon Crawl Classics and the spirit of weird fantasy.

Any time a sorcerer casts a spell the player rolls a number of usage dice matching the magic level of the spell. The spells are divided into three levels of sorcery: 1 - the Forbidden, 2 - the Infernal, and 3 - the Inscrutable (I'm still not entirely happy with the name of level 3).

The first level of sorcery consists of forbidden formulae and ancient rituals that allow the caster to bend reality enough to do anything a fully trained and equipped person could do, only with more ease. For example: a warrior with a sword can do 1d8 damage to a foe by attacking them. A sorcerer would utter a spell of forbidden magic and merely point at the foe to tear away their flesh for 1d6 + caster level in damage. A sorcerer can use this magic to create a light source, open a lock or climb a wall in a moment because a person could do so with a few minutes and the right equipment. It matches up in power roughly to the first and second levels of spells found in the Black Hack.

The second level of sorcery is more dangerous because it exposes the caster and everyone around them to infernal corruption. The player rolls two usage dice and takes the lower result because these spells are more taxing for the sorcerer to cast. The danger comes into play if the player rolls doubles on the usage dice. Doubles result in a casting mishap. Since it is more likely to roll doubles on D4s than D6s or D8s, it is more dangerous for low-level casters or exhausted high-level casters to use this level of magic.

Infernal magic calls upon the dread powers of chaos to reshape reality in larger ways for the caster's benefit. These spells allow the sorcerer to do things normally impossible for one person. A sorcerer can use this level of magic to fly, to transform something or knock a hole in a stone wall. Infernal magic could be used to create a poisonous fog that does 1d6 + caster level in damage to all nearby foes, or allow a sorcerer to vomit a swarm of demonic insects onto an opponent to eat their flesh for 1d6 damage per caster level. With so much possible in a moment with a whisper and a series of gestures this corrupt magic is tempting to use. It matches up in power level to many of the third, fourth and some fifth level spells in the Black Hack.

The Inscrutable level of magic comes from the recorded whispers of malignant intelligences in alien dimensions. Their motivations are as unknowable as their form.

This third level of magic is difficult, requiring special components such as time, place, specific alignment of astronomical bodies, assistants to help perform the ritual, and a specific tome or artifact. The more powerful the spell the more conditions the GM should apply to its casting.

These are spells of tremendous power that come at a terrible risk to the caster and their world. With this magic the sorcerer could create an earthquake that could level a city or create a magic plague that could bring an empire to its knees.

It can also be used to undo lower magical effects such as restoring a character turned to stone. It could be used to create a magical item. It could create a passage through chaos itself to allow a caster and their level in companions to travel anywhere in the world in an instant. It matches up in power to some of the higher level spells available in The Black Hack.

When a sorcerer casts an inscrutable spell they are flirting with disaster and draining their power. The player rolls three usage dice and reduces their magical power by one usage die for every 1 or 2 rolled. Doubles result in a casting mishap. Triples result in a casting catastrophe. There is no table for this result, match the effect to the scale of the spell, but tearing holes in time and space that allow extra-dimensional invaders to pour through is one way to go. Accidentally transporting the whole party to Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa is another.

One thing I like from both BoL and 5e D&D is the cantrip magic. Cantrips as minor feats of magic that can be cast with little danger of exhausting a sorcerer's magic sounds like a fun addition to the game. Little things like moving small objects, changing the apparent value of a coin for a few moments, creating a brief wind to blow a door shut, removing a stain, lighting a torch, creating small sounds as a distraction, detecting magic, etc. For these simple spells the sorcerer could test Int for success. A natural 20 would reduce their usage die for magic.

The usage die available to sorcerers would depend on their level:

• Level 1-2 would have a D4 usage die
• Level 3-4 would have a D6 usage die
• Level 5-7 would have a D8 usage die
• Level 8-11 would have a D10 usage die
• Level 12+ would have a D12 usage die

Image by Doug Kovacs for Dungeon Crawl Classics

I also roughed out a 3D6 table for casting mishaps:

3. 1d6 random people/creatures present become hybrids with another random creature

4. Earthquake for 1d6 moments

5. Random extra-dimensional invader/demon summoned (usage die in HD) and attacks caster

6. The minds of all nearby people randomly switch bodies

7. Random caster's relative teleported to close range with caster

8. All nearby gold turns to lead

9. Random caster's possession disappears

10. Roll on corruption table for sorcerer *

11. Roll on corruption table for sorcerer *

12. All nearby wood turns to glass

13. All nearby drawn weapons turn into something random (flowers, butterflies, etc)

14. All nearby metal super-heats for 1d6 moments (1 damage for small items, 1d6 + caster level for metal armour)

15. 3D6 HD of creatures put to sleep, centred on but not including caster

16. Random extra-dimensional invader/demon summoned (usage die in HD) - roll on reaction table from (page 8 of the Black Hack)

17. gravity reversed for 1d6 moments

18. Roll on corruption table for 1d6 of sorcerer's random allies

*There are plenty of these all over the blogosphere, I'll simply pick one while I playtest. This result is by far the most likely, so the greatest risk is always to the sorcerers themselves.

The Sorcerer as a character class is basically the same as the Conjurer outside of casting. I'll be trying this one out as soon as I get a group together to play The Black Hack. I think any player of a sorcerer that pushes their luck too far or over-reaches their level will likely end up in deep trouble.

Review: The Black Hack

To say that I'm late to the party with this review is a bit of an understatement. When The Black Hack Kickstarter funded back in February is was a mere blip on my social-media radar. I looked at it briefly, thought, "Ugh, a roll-under mechanic," and "Do I really need another retro clone?" then moved on. What I can say now with no reservation is it deserved a closer look.

As the year progressed multiple genre-Hacks using David Black's "The Black Hack" as a base cropped up. It wasn't until I saw what Mike Evans over at DIY RPG Productions was doing with his own sword, sorcery and super-science genre hack called Barbarians of the Ruined Earth that I decided I had to pay the Two US Dollars to get the PDF and find out what all the fuss was about.

I get it now! I understand not only why people love this version of tabletop fantasy role-playing, but also why it has spawned so many of its own hacks!

It is described as: "The most straightforward modern OSR compatible clone available."

It's a bold claim, but it has merit. The game fits comfortably into twenty A5 (half-letter-sized) pages, including the cover, acknowledgements page, Open Game Licence and character sheet. That means the game only uses sixteen pages to explain how to play.

With a core mechanic based on rolling under character statistics, the rules are clear and for the most part easy to understand. The writing is straightforward and economical. As a former journalist and a parent with little time to read rulebooks, I appreciate David Black's tight writing.

There is no art beyond the cover, but the layout and design is clean, with good use of white space and easy-to-use tables. It has two columns per page for most of the book. The typeface used for the body text is a standard serif font, offering no distractions or obstructions to reading. The headings and titles all use the distressed sans serif typeface you see on the cover. I like this particular choice as it embraces the "quick and dirty" nature of the rule system. The effective headings, bolded text and good use of white space makes it easy to reference the book for specific information despite the lack of page numbers.

The best use of white space is on the four pages of character class descriptions where each class gets its own page with a single column running down the middle of the page. This gives a special emphasis to these pages and leaves room to make notes around the text in the huge margins. It also allowed me to print out a few character sheets with the rules for each class on the back.

The rules themselves surprised me in their simplicity and flexibility. The core mechanic involves rolling under the relevant stat for any given action on a twenty-sided die (D20). Since stats are rolled on three, six-sided dice (3D6) player characters all start with a good level of competency. The balance of power from the difference between the levels of the player characters and the Hit Dice of their opponents (monsters) creates bonuses and penalties to combat rolls. The advantage/disadvantage mechanic that is a big part of the success of 5th edition D&D is also used to maintain the power balance and protect the specialisation of the different classes.

The rules are a solid blend of old school simplicity with modern improvements. The system simplifies resource tracking with the usage dice that also creates an unpredictable element to resource management. There is a six-item death-and-dismemberment style table for characters who are knocked "Out of Action." The sundered shield option to sacrifice a shield to escape damage is included as well. Encumbrance is streamlined with obvious penalties.

One interesting mechanic is how the players do almost all of the rolling, similar to Monte Cook's Cypher System. The player rolls under their relevant stat to attack and again to avoid attack. Because of this change, armour provides extra hit points instead of making it more difficult to be hit.

I didn't like it the first time I came across the idea of class-based weapon damage, but here it serves to eliminate the pages of weapon lists that you see in other clones while still having some variability in damage. I like how it assumes that fighters are more dangerous with weapons than other classes. It certainly makes sense when you look at fantasy fiction. Conan is just a deadly with whatever weapon he picks up and Fahfrd names all his swords "Greywand" because they do the same thing. The addition of the unarmed/improvised damage by class is smart. It means a balanced weapon of war like a spear or sword is going to be more effective than a chair leg or shield bash.

Spells are handled in a way I think will see more use of utility spells at lower levels. The player starts with the spell slots you see in most OSR clones, but the slot only expires during casting if the player fails an Intelligence roll. The total of spells memorised is restricted by level so players need to decide what they want to have prepared for fast casting and what they'll be pulling out their spellbooks for. It feels like the ritual casting option in 5e D&D without being so finicky. Also, this design choice creates uncertainty in the resource management of spells. If anything should be uncertain, it's magic!

The spell lists themselves are short, with single line descriptions filling one page each for divine and arcane spells. This is another good choice. Reading the spells I find the shorter descriptions far harder to misinterpret and stretch to irrelevant purposes than the longer ones of other clones and editions of D&D.

The monster entries are also almost always one-line per creature. Since they only roll damage, that, their hit dice and any special attack or defence is all you need. The list is two pages long and has creatures from one hit die up to twelve. With these examples, conversion of any other monsters should be no problem.

Player character progression by level is a nice innovation that works with the core mechanic. The player rolls a D20 for each stat and raises any stat they roll over by one. Each class has at least one stat which they roll twice for. Besides that each class also has a hit die that they roll for more hit points.

The game only has four classes including Warrior, Thief, Cleric and Conjurer. These four cover the basics and leave plenty of room for meaningful differences between party members. There are no rules for different fantasy races, but if you need them in your game it's not difficult to add them. With such a simple system, bolting on extras will be half of the fun!

That is why we see so many genre-based hacks of this system out there. The system is so straightforward and simple it would take some serious effort to break it. While reading the rules I came up with three genre hacks I'd like to do with it myself!

The example of play is one of the better ones I've seen. A player could read that one page and grasp almost the entire system.

I'm not surprised the game is picking up momentum. The Kickstarter had 604 backers. I don't know how many PDFs have sold since then, but The Black Hack community on Google Plus has 810 members as I write this review, implying it is only gathering more fans.

Still, the game is not quite perfect. I would change a few things that I don't like.

The cleric has a spellbook. This choice is not terrible mechanically, but for the sake of flavour I would call it a prayer book and refer to casting divine spells as performing miracles. It would create better separation between the cleric and conjurer.

The conjurer spells have "read languages/magic" as a third level spell. I'd put that back into the first level list and add "fly" to the third level list. Before I run this system I might come up with a streamlined version of the "summon" spell from Lamentations of the Flame Princess as well. If I can get it down to two A5 pages I think I'll slip it into my copy.

Armour points are used up during combat, but return after a short rest. Shields are included in this rule. I think shields should be persistent in their effect. I would give a character a bonus to their level for the purpose of defending against attacks from monsters of plus one for a small shield and plus two for a large shield. That way a first level character attacked by three hit dice monster could roll without any penalty to avoid getting hit instead of the plus two penalty for fighting a more powerful monster. The persistence would make shields particularly useful and would make the choice to "sunder a shield" to avoid damage a harder one to make.

Fighters get one attack per level every round. That is way too much rolling in combat for my taste. I like the speed provided by this system and after third level the fighter player would grind every round to a halt during his or her turn while rolling hits and damage. I'd replace this ability with the ability to use shields offensively against more powerful monsters so they get the bonus levels when attacking as well. I'd also allow fighters to roll to hit with two-handed weapons without the plus-two penalty. Those two changes should protect them as the most effective characters in any combat without putting the rest of the party to sleep every round.

Overall, these are small things and likely have as much to do with my gaming taste as anything else.

For two bucks this game is a steal! I printed my PDF out as a booklet on five sheets of paper. This thing will go into my bag for every face-to-face game I play. I'll probably put a small notebook in with it with some quick adventure generation tables and class-based equipment lists so I can use this game as a quick replacement if some players cancel at the last minute.

I think the best use of The Black Hack is probably introducing new people to fantasy RPGs. Its blend of old-school flavour with modern mechanics is a great doorway into the possibilities of tabletop role-playing. Its simplicity means no one is left behind and there's way less of the, "What am I rolling now?" and more, "I do X!"

Well done David Black!