My review of this OSR 'samurai fantasy' game will be coming out sometime in the next 48 hours. So I thought first I'd start a thread on here. Has anyone played it?
Liked it? Disliked it?
Was Black Hack really the way to go here (or really, is it ever the way to go anywhere)?
Quote from: RPGPundit;969201Was Black Hack really the way to go here (or really, is it ever the way to go anywhere)?
Is that a spoiler for your final verdict?
I really like the positive, productive community that has sprung up around the
Black Hack hacks - something that Mehrstam's (IMHO, better)
Whitehack could have started years before were it not for the discouraging stance of its creator.
But I have to admit that I don't "get" Black Hack. The game revolves around two principles:
- Player-facing rolls - those I do get and can see the value and appeal even if I am personally not fond of them (as the GM I like to play as well, and using stats and rolling dice is part of that)
- Ressource management via saving throws - this is an overly fiddly mechanism for its own sake, it's the perfect example of what James Wallis once coined "stupid dice trick", especially in this incarnation with the "degrading" die steps.
It's so much faster and more intuitive to just cross off an arrow or an hour of a torch burning than to roll dice to see whether the ressource expires or just dwindles.
And note that I am not even tackling the argument of "realism" here. I can live with unrealistic abstractions if they result in faster play. But this is a rule concept that you have to explain and rationalize - as opposed to everyone already knowing that once you light a torch it burns for x time, or that when you shoot an arrow you have one less in the quiver.
(I do like expiry rolls for stuff that is unknown/highly variable, like spells or magical effects, or death saves once HP are depleted, or concentration rolls, or search time.)
Totally agree about the Whitehack. A really fine system. Perhaps Mehrstam's very fastidiousness is what led him to design not only an elegant system but control of the book to a damaging degree?
All you bastards always talking about the White Hack, you're gonna make me buy it, aren't you? I hate buying books from Lulu with no pdf option.
From the review, sounds like Kaigaku might be a keeper just for the setting.
Why is Aang from Last Airbender in a Japanese themed setting?
Quote from: hedgehobbit;969833Why is Aang from Last Airbender in a Japanese themed setting?
Same reason karate monks were in AD&D's faux-Europe.