First of all, let me give you the basics. The Black Hack is an OSR hack of "that Original 1970s Fantasy Roleplaying Game", written by David Black. It's pretty heavily rooted in the spirit of OD&D, but it brings some interesting ideas to the table that seem like attempts to modernize the game, or maybe make it more arcadey? I can't quite tell. Anyway, that's the gist of the game, so let's dive in and see what's cool and what maybe isn't.
The Black Hack does a lot of things I tend to hate outright in RPGs, because at my heart I'm a stickler for the classics. It has armor negate damage instead of raising (or lowering) armor class. It has players roll saves to dodge attacks, rather than having monsters roll attacks. It doesn't even have a sample dungeon in the rulebook (although it does have an example of play, so there's that). There's also only four classes, and doesn't include demi-humans. I'm pretty neutral in that regard, since it's really easy to add features to just about any game, and there's a lot of supplemental material for this ruleset that's at a very similar price point.
However, I was surprised in that I liked all of that, or at least how it's implemented in The Black Hack. I've had a lot of players in my games get attacked by monsters and say "Hey! Can't I roll to dodge?", and I've had to be the un-fun DM and say "Nope. Just sit there while I read this THAC chart I haven't memorized because I'm a schlub." Rolling a saving throw against an attacker (probably, I haven't playtested the game yet) does some interesting things for a player.
First of all, it directly engages them by making them take an active part. As a player, I find it easy to lose track of things when it's not my turn, and just take my punches when I get hit and deal with the aftermath. Then I roll my dice, see if anything happens, and go back to Instagram. Another part of the fun is that it also puts the onus on the player to succeed on their roll. Sure, it's still a random result, but it's so much more fun to succeed or fail by your own doing. It's easy to get wrecked by a non-player monster and feel like the game is rigged against you, especially if you're a new player who doesn't quite get all the rules yet.
The Black Hack also uses Usage Dice. I first encountered usage dice during a pulpy WWII game at a con, where it was used as a simple method of tracking ammunition. The basic idea is that any given expendable item has a usage die associated with it, which is rolled every time that item is used. When a 1 is rolled, the die is reduced to the next die down the dice chain, until you get to a d4, in which case a roll of a 1 or 2 expends your last reserves.
For example: Fafhrd fires an arrow at the Goblin across the room, and rolls a d10 for his supply of arrows. The roll comes up as a 1, so the next time he uses an arrow, he'll roll a d8.
Anyway, this is a pretty cool concept that I like a lot. I prefer keeping track of logistics with specific figures, myself, but unless you're a huge nerd like me, or if you're a new player who's just trying to figure out what the hell is going on, it's a way simpler system, but as a near-complete abstraction of real-life logistics, it can be weird to wrap your head around in some regards.
Experience in The Black Hack is handled in a way that reminds me of something between Dungeon Crawl Classics and Dungeon World. You level up whenever you survive a major event, fight, dungeon level, or session (that's almost an exact paraphrase of the book). When this happens, you get more hit points (yay!) and a chance for an increase to your class's prime attributes (double yay!). This is fine, I guess? Each class also gets added bonuses to their specific abilities. It works. It's not my favorite, but it's straightforward and keeping track of experience points is kind of a bother to some people.
As far as formatting goes, The Black Hack is iffy in a lot of regards. It crams a whole ruleset onto 20 nicely laid-out pages (including the Cover, a title page, and the OGL in the back), which is SWEET if you're into printing off hard copies of your RPG stuff, like I am, but the order information is presented to the reader just feels off to me. Each class has its own page, which is cool (although they don't really need it at all, given how simple the rules for class are) but they're relegated to page 8 of the PDF, when most information for character generation is on pages 3 and 4. Maybe I'm too much of a stickler, but in my opinion, D&D character generation is best laid out as stats, race/class, equipment, everything else. That said, the layout as-is makes sure you know all the mechanics before you get to the classes themselves. I dunno. It's weird.
After the classes, there's a nice lil section on magic for your and a bit of a barebones spell list, but you could easily port over any other Vancian spells you wanted. It works. Nothing really new here.
Then there's a two-page bestiary with monsters listed in order of hit dice (low to high), which is cool. Alphabetical is good for a devoted book, but power level works fine for a two-page list. It's basically just OD&D's greatest hits as far as monsters go, but all you really need is hit dice and the number of attacks/abilities to port over so you can stock your game with anything your heart desires if that's your thing.
And that's it! The Black Hack doesn't seem like it would be my favorite way to play OD&D, but I could see it being fun for a pickup or introductory game with a limited timeframe. It's got some cool ideas and I can definitely see why a lot of people swear by it. It's probably a good alternative to Swords and Wizardry, for people who care about the little differences.
At the end of the day, I don't know if it's for me. but maybe that's okay.
The Black Hack is $2.00 on Drive-Thru
BONUS FUN!!!!!
Here's my sample character I made, a Warrior named Theseus. Props for a game where a character can fit on an index card.
UPDATE 10/8/2018:
I've been using The Black Hack as my home system for about a little over a month, and wow. I've run into a handful of problems with the system- I've reverted to B/X style group initiative, and I had to homebrew a handful of quick fixes, but overall it's been great. The system is incredibly easy for my players to pick up, and no one has had any issues with the rules. I'd still rather be playing B/X, Dungeon Crawl Classics or any of my personal favorite systems, but for ease-of-use and friendliness for pretty much any skill level, The Black Hack can't be beat. Two thumbs up, for real.
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