Operation Unfathomable is a super-fun, gonzo OSR underground wilderness crawl by Jason Sholtis. I've run it a few times using the Black Hack OSR rules set. The book comes with ten pregenerated characters for Swords & Wizardry and other old-school D&D-style RPG. To make it easier for myself, I took the characters and converted them … Continue reading Operation Unfathomable: Black Hack Pregens
I've made an ODT (Open Document Text file) template to create custom classes to match the style found in the Black Hack Second Edition book. I've designed it in LibreOffice. You can add your own text and images. You can print it directly or export it to a PDF. BH2E_Template (ODT) You'll need the following … Continue reading The Black Hack: Custom Template for Classes
I just got my copy of Barbarians of the Ruined Earth, a gonzo post-apocalyptic RPG using the Black Hack rules by Mike Evans. I got a chance to play this at the last Gen Con, and I'm happy to finally have the finished version. It's heavily inspired by the old Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon from … Continue reading Barbarians of the Ruined Earth: Revised character sheets
For my one-shot of the Noir Hack, I created a new house rule called the Straight Dope. It's based on the Flashlight/Smokes idea from the Cthulhu Hack. The idea is to model the social connections a character might have for particular institutions, that they could use to get information or make things happen. Each community … Continue reading Noir Hack: The Straight Dope – House Rule (with new character sheet)
I've just tried running a one-shot of Noir Hack, the film noir version of the OSR RPG Black Hack. To prepare for my game, I created a few new classes. Reporter Ink-Slingers, Gossip Columnists, Muckrakers Starting HP: d8+4 HP Per Level/Resting: 1d8 Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: Any Attack Damage: 1d6 Armed /1d4 Unarmed or Improvising … Continue reading Noir Hack – New Classes: Reporter, Citizen, & Swell
I've been throwing together new character sheets all weekend, and thought I'd add one more: The Noir Hack is Michael Brown's version of the Black Hack, designed to replicate old noir novels and movies. It's main innovation is the Darkness usage die, used to track the characters trauma and dark past. I've made a fillable … Continue reading Noir Hack – Character Sheets for a film noir version of the Black Hack
This is the basic adventure I ran for Bad Captain, a comic version of Star Trek written by Jeff Call using Black Hack rules. It's available for free here: Star Trek: Bad Captain. Overview The U.S.S. Calamity has been called to space station N23 in the Neutronia system on the borders of Federation space. Captain … Continue reading Star Trek: Bad Captain – The Negotiator
Clockwork Poet Warriors (Valor-Mechs) A class for The Black Hack - Second Edition An artifact of the ancient world, Valor-Mechs are hulking clockwork automatons in the shape of a man. No living wizard or artificer can build one, but ancient models are sometimes dug up in ruins and reactivated. They will have no memory of … Continue reading Clockwork Poet Warriors
I've recently run a session of Romance of the Perilous Land, a fantasy OSR game. It's basically a revised version David Black's the Black Hack. There are a few small mechanical differences, the main one being the game's magic users (called Cunning Folk) use spell points instead of the tradition method of memorizing spells. What … Continue reading Romance of the Perilous Land – The Old Man of the Woods (and Character Sheets)
