Old School Hack

I am currently on the verge of obsession with Old School Hack.  Created by a friend of mine, it seems to hit a very nice sweet spot between old school sensibility, story game philosophy, and contemporary game design theory.  I say "seems" because, admittedly, I haven't played it yet.  I've seen it played on several occasions; if it weren't for the damn traffic on I-85 I would have played in a pre-release playtest.  Curse you, outlet mall!

I am scheduled to run a session of this game next week for some folks here and am really looking forward to it.  I am also already thinking about how to hack Old School Hack for the WWII pulp game I hope to run someday.

Comments

  1. It does look cool. It seems a little "gamey" to my tastes, but maybe that's more the particular sort of modern presentation than actually content, I don't know.

    Oh, and I gather from Risus Monkey that you are in Rcok Hill? You're just down the road then.

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  2. @Trey -- Curious as to what you mean by "gamey". And, yeah, I am in Rock Hill. Are you in SC?

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  3. I kind of see the "gamey" thing, but it doesn't get in the way of story (unless like a certain fourth edition of a popular RPG). The gamey part relates entirely to combat but it adds a very interest layer *and* it helps make combat fast and furious. Outside of combat, the "gamey" bits fade into the background and it truly resembles an old school game.

    Anyway, I had a blast the one time I ran it.

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  4. Yeah, I'm in Columbia. By gamey, I mean "gamist" in the old Forge GNS theory sense. It's encounter set-up (arenas, I think?) and some of its character abilities exist for game reasons.

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  5. Re: Gamey -- I get it now. I haven't run it yet, so I am just speaking from reading it and seeing it played. I think the arenas are a cool way to handle a lot of game elements (range, reach, etc) in a fast, semi-abstract way that would be very flexible. It's not ideal for dungeon-crawling, though.

    @Trey -- Awesome! We should try to get together sometime. I am running Old School Hack on Friday if you want to head up. It's only an hour!

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  6. That would be cool! Unfortunately, I'm going out of town this weekend, but maybe some later date?

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