The Black Hack 2E: OSR Ruleset Review

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[@QuestingBeast]

Tap into the OSR with the Questing Beast newsletter: bit.ly/Glatisant Join the Questing Knights on Patreon: bit.ly/QBPatreon Download my RPGs and adventures: bit.ly/ItchStore My favorite OSR books: bit.ly/TopOSRBooks

[@kobold7466]

Black hack sent by david black this is the hard back

[@CharlieQueenRPG]

The usage die works beautifully with torches, rations, and water in a dungeon in conjunction with the Black Hack encounter table. The Usage Die is not just about making item tracking easier, its about making it suspenseful in a dungeon. You think d12 arrows is going to last the whole delve until you have five unlucky rolls in a row and run out before you clear the first floor. Even worse when your torch usage die runs out and the entire party has to roll on the panic table.

[@FalkFlak]

Black Hack in a nutshell "hey rogue, did you take enough ammunition with you for the adventure?" "maybe"

[@SteveAkaDarktimes]

"But I do have my scabbard of endless daggers. want one?"

[@ishmiel21]

@@UCbo4nGZYFI5U3QFgL9CmDxQ you're right. Players are too stupid to figure out how that super simple mechanic works. We should keep babying them the way you have in mind. Unlimited ammo for everyone! Black Hack is by far the best OSR book to come out in a long time.

[@sean9223]

It is amusing to me that I've literally never seen or heard somebody ask about ammo during inventory management. I listen to a number of actual plays, and have gamed with a ton of different people, and it's been 100% my experience that when ammo is discretely tracked, it's ignored, or assumed to be infinite.

[@joshjames582]

@@sean9223 Assumptions like that are the rope with which gamers hang themselves.

[@Zenas521]

Unlimited daggers = endless gold, if you become an arms dealer.

[@hanelyp1]

Drive daggers into trees to mark your trail. Pitons when climbing.

[@SteveAkaDarktimes]

melt them down, corner iron production and become a monopoly. keep drawing daggers to form a giant pile. instant difficult terrain. throw daggers at everything. all the time. why bother with arrows? naked and imprisoned? vomit out a dagger and escape.

[@maximian707]

the rule actually implies that the character can make daggers out of anything they find. So you should allow players to do this only after long rests/ days.

[@FelipeBudinich]

I can produce infinite doodads with pencil and paper, would someone buy them tho? ;)

[@jaytomioka3137]

All those thieves All hawking daggers Never running out, the market is saturated … can’t give them away 😂

[@hahahalevy]

Regarding the usage die: When I ran Gardens of Ynn using Knave, some of the characters were equipped with firearms (of the 19th century variety). I just used the following rule: after each shot, roll D6 for rifles /D8 for pistols. A result of 1 means this was your last bullet. It happened only once during the six-session run, but on the last fight against the evil mirror-twin of a PC (secretly replaced during a previous altercation and marvelously played by him). It upped the tension quite significantly.

[@QuestingBeast]

Using a usage die without the dice chain sits much better with me.

[@jasonabdin7288]

This is the way my friend prefers doing it when we play Stars Without Number. I prefer instead that when the 1 is rolled, the player knows they now have a single shot remaining. You can play with the last shot cliche of "make it count."

[@vigil2249]

@@jasonabdin7288 That sounds less jarring and gives players better options; nice.

[@QuestingBeast]

@@jasonabdin7288 That's a good rule.

[@liondovegm]

@@QuestingBeast how I used it, was you only roll for ammunition at the end of a scene or at the start of a scene rather than every use. That way you only manage resources once per fight rather than every turn you loose a bolt. The big pro for me is _NO competent ammo user_ would mismanage their primary self defense tool, at the end of a fight they automatically scavenge ammo (unless they run away then they go down a die automatically). Another pro is fletching/gathering more ammo is an easy roll without much thought into how many ammo they get, eg, roll a five or higher and go up a die.

[@bjhale]

I like the idea of a usage die for something less quantifiable, like magic or even personal vigor. You could even tie each die step to a given spell level, with higher level magic corresponding to smaller dice, but which increase as the PC levels up. For example, at 1st level, a wizard/MU has a d4 usage die for 1st level spells per day. At 2nd level, they have a d6 for 1st level spells, and at 3rd level they have a d6 for 1st level spells and a d4 for 2nd level spells.

[@TheOtherWhiteNerd]

This such a good idea! I may have to futz with magic in exactly this way lol

[@bjhale]

@@TheOtherWhiteNerd Thanks! If you could, let me know how it goes.

[@dirkesterline2948]

That's a great idea!

[@Demonskunk]

The ammo die system saves time because you don't track each individual arrow. You don't need to Mark down each shot you fire, you just roll at the end of combat to see if you've lost stock. You don't roll after every shot so you're not keeping track of as much.

[@RabidHobbit]

@@99zxk I like this kind of mechanic, but for me it isn't about saving time. It's about players forgetting to do it, or just the annoyance of having to do it every round when melee users don't need to bother with this kind of thing. In my experience players ultimately just would rather not track ammo at all. Unlike gold, it isn't fun to "get more of it" it just sucks to run out, so there is no motivation for them to care about ammo bookkeeping. It also reduces the times a players needs to write and erase on the character sheet, although I know some people track ammo on something else like a notecard anyway. Rolling a die after an encounter to find out the status of ammo is just less friction than bookkeping in my experience. If someone really wanted to simplify tracking while still making supplies relevant, I guess you could have 1 die roll to check on the depletion of multiple resources: torches, fuel, ammo, water, etc. I think Ben doesn't care for these kinds of dice pool mechanics though, and that's fine. Everyone has different preferences.

[@rogerb181]

My players count ammo very carefully, but that mechanic might work well for supplies.

[@GCandC]

i just discovered your channel and i've got to admit, it's blossomed into one of my favorites. I picked up Mothership because of your review. Kudos - Dirk

[@QuestingBeast]

Thanks, Dirk! Mothership is really incredible.

[@ettoo]

Thanx for the review. You may have talked me out of the hard cover edition. With the pdf, you can print out the drop charts and the extra forms, like the hex maps.

[@sebbychou]

You don't write your die and everything, you keep dice pools aside like boardgame tokens. You only need to write it down at the end of a session to prepare for the next (or take a picture of your die pools). You're using a book-keeping-less as a book- keeping mechanism, that's why you're not seeing how it speeds up and adds a kinestetic element to armor, ammo, etc.

[@sethpeterson8261]

This is the first thing that seemed obvious to me when he said that

[@MrRourk]

Macchiato Monsters is a good combination of Black Hack and White Hack

[@morganjones4281]

Advantages of the Armor Pool system (or at least differences which make it unique and potentially preferred to the conventional damage reduction system in similar games): The Armor has a limit to its use in combat, and the player gets to strategically choose when and where they are willing to apply it. Flat armor reduction is boring and easy to forget. Also since it doesn't degrade in a flat damage reduction system, it creates an extra math step after every single attack. The Armor pool only being applied in some instances, having a cost, and a random factor makes it much spicier and it being used more sparingly causes it to potentially interfere less in play.

[@SkullDixon]

Some people like fiddly armor and as far as fiddly armor goes, it's pretty simply done.

[@jasonabdin7288]

I sorta like what they're doing with armor

[@sethpeterson8261]

@@jasonabdin7288 I really don't see how it could be called fiddly. From what he said you basically have armore "tokens". Subtract 1 token if you want to absorb a blow... No math. About as drop dead fast and simple as you can get really.

[@ishmiel21]

The usage die is far less cumbersome than counting every single arrow. Even your example shows that the usage die takes less time and effort than having to count each and every arrow.

[@QuestingBeast]

Just thought of an even better way. Don't track the arrows, track the number of fights. A quiver can hold enough arrows for (say) 6 encounters. At the end of each fight, put a dot next to your bow in your inventory. Simple, abstract, and much easier to plan around than usage dice.

[@ZoidZZX]

@@QuestingBeast Thing with usage die is that it adds some extra randomness and tension to the game.

[@TheNerdySimulation]

@@QuestingBeast Oh hey, that is literally the mechanic I designed for my own game! The only difference I have is that you degrade the ammunition a value equal to the weapon quality, which simulates the concept that you'd be able to carry a larger abundance of small ammo (versus a small amount of large ammo) due to size. :D

[@ishmiel21]

@@QuestingBeast That might be easier, though that is arguable, but it is certainly less interesting.

[@ishmiel21]

@@sadisrmaacy4341 I never said it was hard. I simply said the usage die is less cumbersome than counting every arrow. Reading is fun!

[@TheGamingKiwi]

I think the justification for the armour system is that it remains equally useful throughout all levels. If it was a simple damage reduction, the benefit would become more and more negligible the more damage enemies are putting out.

[@pedrobastos8132]

Yeah, but it doesn't make sense AT ALL. Armor doesn't work like that, it is not a single use thing, and one doesn't choose when it protects you. I mean yeah, the game is not trying to be realistic, I know, but this is a bit too far for me, kinda of a deal breaker, really. Deducting damage is the most logical solution, if you make the numbers don't go up too much throughout the game it the mitigation will be always effective. Anything else (yeah, even armor class s*cks) feels like reinventing the wheel.

[@TheGamingKiwi]

​@@pedrobastos8132 sure, less realistic than damage reduction, but I think it's more realistic than you give it credit for, it just requires a bit of abstraction. During play, I might imagine that my armour isn't truly one-use; rather it is constantly being useful and fending off attacks. Although, my armour doesn't protect fully me against the "damage" (under a fluid perception of hitpoints) of impact shock and fatigue (indeed, armour would exacerbate fatigue). When I actually "use" it, I can imagine that all the previous resistance has caught up to allow me to survive this one big hit, or alternatively that the previous damage taken wholly represents shock and fatigue, but this specific attack would have caused an actual wound, which the armour has here prevented. Indeed there's a little bit of mental gymnastics required, but you can make it work. In return, we get not only the scaling benefits as I have mentioned, but also a mechanic that is just more fun in my opinion. Instead of just a boring take-less-damage, TBH2 armour is a strategic resource, and one which is more satisfying cinematically and mechanically, as you get to utilise your armour in one heroic moment of grit against a devastating attack. As the cherry on top, its an elegant way of also representing armour wear, which is otherwise tricky to implement well.

[@pedrobastos8132]

@@TheGamingKiwi that's the problem, it requires too much mental gymnastics to make any sense, and as Ben said, it is just clunky as hell. It's one of those mechanics that will make the players ask: "why the hell am I doing this? This doesn't make any sense!". Believe me, when my players played Dungeon World after trying 5E, they *praised* the armor deducting damage: "now that makes sense, we were fed up with that Armor Class bullsh*t", it was like a godsend for them. TBH2's armor is just too artificial and gamey to be "relatable" or have any sort of verisimilitude, again, it doesn't make sense at all, armor is not like health points, or money, or torches, not everything has to be turned into a resource *just for the sake of it*, because that's exactly what it looks like. EDIT: Regarding armor wear, armor doesn't wear down as fast as this system is implying, I mean, how on Earth plate mail would be rendered useless after taking two or three hits?

[@malcolmsvensson6585]

I don't like the armour mechanics in original Black Hack or Black Hack 2E, but the good thing about both games is that they're incredibly easy to change to your liking. If you want armour to reduce incoming damage, it's as easy as saying so and coming up with some values for each armour type. I think the weird and sometimes bad design choices are actually a good thing for the game. A lot of the Black Hack's mechanics are almost slavishly focused on eliminating math from the game (not that I blame the author, mind), which, while not always working, means there are a ton of new ideas in the game. They don't all work and the ones that do don't work equally for every person's taste, but the books are full of new takes on old ideas.

[@pedrobastos8132]

@@malcolmsvensson6585 yeah, props for the author for trying. I'm just stating that the rule itself makes something that should be as straightforward as a simple subtraction much more complicated *and* much less relatable, because as stated above, it takes a lot of mental effort just to imagine how those mechanics work on the game's world. I understand that this is a very flexible and easy to modify system, but this in itself doesn't detract the fact that this ruling is kinda wonky, and shouldn't change the verdict, because if you take that into account then no conclusion can be taken, as each group is going to have its own house rulings and different experiences. What I am trying to say is that the content of the book should be analysed as is, not taking modifications into account. For example: modding the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. videogames can surely make them a much better experience, but that doesn't make the vanilla game itself any better. "It's bad but I can change it" does not make something good on release.

[@TheNiall666]

Another excellent review. I already own the 1st edition but you convinced me to buy this new hardcover. Another interesting OSR system is Dungeons and Delvers: Red Book, which I have just backed on Kickstarter, along with Golgotha by Fire Ruby Design (which will satisfy my love of sci-fi). It would be great to see you review these games if you get the chance.

[@jjbudinski8486]

Dude your review style is perfect, plus I like the fact they come from a game designer's perspective. Good stuff!

[@GoblinLord]

a good replacement for the Armor die might be that each type of armor has a different reduction based on a die size, smallest is 1 (clothed), biggest would be d8 (plate) and the rest fall into the center with some making your sneaking worse, and some not, just a thought

[@findmestudios]

I downloaded the PDF for the first edition and ran a one shot last week and fell in love. I adore how quick and rules-lite it is. Next week I'm running this for some friends who have never played DnD before. I might have to get the 2e PDF. I agree with you about the armor system in this, very wonky I don't see what's wrong with the armor system in the first one. I still prefer absorbing armor a la Dungeon World but a well.

[@markfaulkner8191]

Stuck at the bottom of a well? Start making a pile of infinite daggers to climb! Laying siege to the castle and can't get across the moat? Fill it with Infinite Daggers!

[@RedDiceDiaries]

Very interesting review, I've played a few games of BH2E and have very much enjoyed them, but I agree there are some odd choices in the mechanics.

[@CanadianSmitty]

Damage location... roll 1d4 + 1d12 and match up the roll with the location. Asign arm head leg body with 1,2,3,4 first.

[@madmarshman]

The die drop pages work for me ... I buy pdf's and have them printed and spiral bound, so they lay flat, not for die drop tables but them working is a side effect of spiral bound books laying flat.

[@daniellugo6461]

Hi! Loving all your reviews. I see some negativity in the comments. I think that if you review something without having played it, that is fine. When it comes to a game system (vs. a module) Maybe state at the front of the video that you are just giving your impressions of the material based on your overall RPG knowledge. Just a suggestion, I really do love your videos and look forward to each one.

[@colerape]

Love the review. Was hoping some of the wonkier sections of rules would have been changed. This review kept me from wasting money on something I don't want.

[@Zawfee]

What if for armor you roll your armor pool and total that and that's how much dmg it blocks? So let's say light armor is 2d6, medium is 4d6 and heavy is 6d6. The opponent rolls his weapons attack pool and then you roll your armor pool 1s represent degradation they still count for your total for that roll. So for example your opponent rolls 6d6 for an attack totaling 25dmg, you roll your heavy armor pool and roll 6,4,3,2,(2)1's totaling 17. You'd take 8dmg and lose two die. After you get your armor repaired then you get those die back. And this same idea could be used for weapons as well and different effects could be considered regarding quality of the weapon/armor etc. Just blurting what came to mind.

[@misomiso8228]

You could do a review of 'Winters Daughter' Everyone seems to say its quite good. Would be interesting to see.

[@paulll47]

What is the actual purpose of the damage location table? Is it only for flavour?

[@Matt20074]

It’s a good book, folks

[@DoctorTopper]

The way contests work... is it really that simple? Just roll under your stat. But then you have the same chance of of jumping over a small pit as jumping over a large pit?

[@fabiancamacho7061]

I kinda wished the monk class would be in the 2nd edition

[@TimeLapsePrints]

For me the usage die with ammo is more the abstraction than for time saving. I’ve watched so many archery videos that a system that randomizes the amount of ammo spent doing that 1d6 makes sense out of a system that didn’t before. But… I’m an odd duck.

[@quentinbergenholtz1420]

Writing inside a book is the deadliest of sins.

[@m_d1905]

Depends on the book. I made notes in textbooks all the time. Certain others, yeah I agree.

[@dixieflatline9772]

More bookmarks please

[@labshire]

Love the drop tables in the game but they definitely need to be photocopied out or you should get the fancy box set that has them on separate sheets outside the book. And I think I agree with you about all the usage dice. They're a fun idea but they're not actually easier to keep track of in practice. Especially if you are using actual dice like it suggests since you have to keep track of the physical die and also write it on your sheet so you can keep track between sessions. I've been using it to run Johnstone's Dungeon Full of Monsters and it's been a lot of fun but Idk if it's the right game for me for doing a dungeon crawl. That said, I think this is a perfect set of tools for generating an excellent hex crawl game even on the fly with a series of smaller dungeons and locations

[@jeffeppenbach]

I backed the KS at the PDF level, and that's my preferred method of use. I can print the parts I want, as many times as I need. I can scribble notes all over, and have no problems.I really think the book was made with the PDF in mind.

[@AdamNess-greylurk]

I think a lot of your problems with the drop tables and the "draw your own map" page stem from the fact that the author primarily distributes via PDF, with only a secondary interest in "dead tree" publishing.

[@sethpeterson8261]

This looks pretty great except: 1. That font... what in the the hell. Could they make it look less thematic or feel less evocative? 2. Is it lacking quality Dungeon rules like Old-school essentials has? Lots of tables, but does it drop the ball on guidlines?

[@mavorhoff]

There’s an embarrassing typo in your video title. I like your videos. Keep up the good work.

[@terratorment2940]

out of print 😭

[@1garryrippon]

OSR?

[@QuestingBeast]

Old School Renaissance. I have more info on it in the video description (and I've also done videos covering it).

[@AdorkableDaughterofNyx]

the only exploit i need to close with the thief's infinite daggers is selling them. i do this by ruling a thief's infinite daggers have zero resale value unless the thief wants to sacrifice a class feature on a loan tiill they repay double the value of the loan. meaning they lose access to the infinite daggers exploit until they pay off thew loan. which costs double the value they borrowed. otherwise, i don't care about infinite throwing knives. it isn't like they have enough range to keep up with a bow.

[@fufu1405]

Lol the armor system seems like it’s different just for the sake of being different. Sounds kinda gimmicky. Why the hell would my expensive plate armor be useless after it got hit?

[@lindy9196]

File this under "why the hell would anyone buy this?"

[@jomomma900]

I wish I knew what this was but he never really explained it so meh

[@QuestingBeast]

Lol

[@jomomma900]

@@QuestingBeast funny you'll respond but not clarify, great work dude lol

[@QuestingBeast]

@@jomomma900 No prob!

[@jomomma900]

@@QuestingBeast great content creator you are

[@tubebobwil]

Marcus Taylor what the heck are you talking about. The entire video is explaining what it it.

[@georgemouzakitis1876]

Another trashy system. The few good things that this system has like roll under, comes from AD&D and other systems also use it. I really can't see why the fuss about this game. Probably good marketing.