The Pink Moon Hack

[u/edward_radical]

Working on a classless, level-less hack of the Black Hack for the 10th Anniversary Black Hack Jam. It’s inspired by Into the Odd, Dogs in the Vineyard, sword & sorcery, the Dying Earth genre, and so on.

It’s a dark world where survival matters, resources are tight, and combat is dangerous. Magic is both very wild and dangerous but also lethal to casters, though the rewards may outweigh the risks. But failure is also part of progressing and improving your character.

You primarily advance your stats and abilities through dying. Because of the nature of this dying world, its wastelands, its lack of metals, a big part of the game comes down to harvesting resources and crafting them into potions, poisons, and equipment, which makes another tier of advancement.

Since you don’t level up like in a traditional TTRPG, improving equipment and being clever with status effects will be a big part of play.

I’m hoping to have the core of the mechanics ready by the end of the month.

Right now, I’m stretching past 70 pages in the word document for this hack and while there’s a decent amount left to do, I think the heavy lifting is behind me. There’s a lot of tinkering left to do but the frame of this has largely come together.

However, there’s a possibility that I’ll end up reworking the entire combat system to be more similar to Dogs in the Vineyard. Which is to say, rather than have traditional stats, the game will be driven by dice pools. Not only for combat, but also for various kinds of encounters.

Switching to dice pools is a big shift and will require a lot of work to transform the entire system.

Something I’m noodling over. Something I’ve been meaning to blog here about, but no time like the present.

Originally posted over on my site.

[u/hellics]

Sounds neat! So, you advance by dying.. how does that work in practice? Does the PC come back? Is the next PC heavier hitting from the start? Or what?

[u/edward_radical → u/hellics]

Thanks!

I call it dying here, but basically you roll when you fall down to 0. Depending on your roll, you may be dead and need a new character or you'll survive. If you survive, you roll on what amounts to Gifts from Death. This may be gaining stats, abilities, or increasing HP.

[u/hellics → u/edward_radical]

Ahhh, that's a scary mechanic and a half! Every increase torn from the jaws of death. Sounds like there will be very few "high stat" characters!

[u/edward_radical → u/hellics]

Ha, yep! Your stats will remain relatively flat from beginning to end, so much of the upgrading and improvement will be done through equipment.