REDHACK - a character driven roleplaying game

The world around us has fallen. Ancient ruins, reminders of a past that no-one remembers, dot the fractured landscape. Civilization clings to survival with shaking claws, as the chaotic wild encroaches upon it. Civilization creates a foothold, a light in the darkness. But every time the light is snuffed out and darkness crawls forth again from the depths, and pushes back civilization. So it has been for as long as anyone can remember. 

What is RedHack?

This game is a nod to games that came before it; the classics, the fantasy heartbreakers, the retro-clones, the indie revolution. This is all of that. RedHack is a game that requires at least 3 players to play. It’s best with 5, maybe 6. 

Most of the players in this game take on the roles of characters who venture out on dangerous quests seeking gold and glory. It's about fighting monsters and getting loot. It's about trying to make it out alive. One of the players takes on the role of the Game Master (GM) who adjudicates the rules and is in charge of the overall pacing.

RedHack is a roleplaying game. A game that will require imagination and thought. It requires that players invest in learning the rules, and interact with creative input.  It’s a hard game where the rules are meant to be used and taken advantage of. Darkness creeps up and with every invocation tries to snuff out the light that surrounds your characters. You’ll need to take your time and learn to master the system to fight back against that darkness.  

RedHack is a game about exploration and strategy. It is a game of social graces, and violent deadly combat. Gather your friends and light your torches.

Welcome to the Blog

My intention with this blog is to share and discuss my work on designing RedHack, whatever it ends up becoming. I sincerely hope you join me on this journey. Today I would like to speak about inspiration, design goals, and some of my general thoughts on the project.

ZineQuest: 1?

In 2019 BWHQ ran a kickstarter during ZineQuest for Miseries & Misfortunes, a hack of 1981 Basic Dungeons & Dragons edited by Tom Moldvay. The game innovated on several aspects of Basic D&D adding new classes, a new skill system, fire-arms combat and a new system for experience points -just to name a few things. It took rules designed for dungeon crawls and high fantasy, and transported it to the dirty streets of 1648 Paris. The system was intriguing and challenging.

So an idea occurred to me. What if I then -in turn, took the system provided in Miseries & Misfortunes, innovated upon it -adding my own spin, and brought it back to the fold of delving into dangerous dungeons. And there is where I began with RedHack.

Goals

I love dungeon delving games, and I particularly like team focused games where all the players are in the action - often over their heads, and they have to use teamwork and strategy to overcome adversity. I like games that reward player skill -play the game more, and get better at it and use that to your advantage. This sort of game play can be found in my previous game, the Deep Dark. But I wanted to expand on it and make it dramatic, frightening, and stressful.

I want the game to feel OSR, but to be something else. I want weird and frightful magic. I want quick and deadly combat. I want baked in implied setting without a map ever being drawn. I want a game with a focus on exploration and strategy that encourages player skill. I want players to be able to leverage their ability and imagination and meld that into both the narrative and the mechanical aspects of gameplay. And I think I'm quite close to much of that.

What is your game about?

RedHack is a character driven role playing game about overcoming perilous dangers while exploring a crumbling world. Hopefully making some coin in the process and being able to live and tell the tale once your crawl back into town.

How is your game about this?

RedHack provides classes for players to choose that specifically address their role in overcoming danger. Each character has a set if skills which allow them to interact with the fiction to overcome said dangers. Each class has a checklist of experience conditions, that characters must gun towards in order to advance. And each character has one to three drives, that tell the players at the table why the character is pushing towards and/or fighting for the goals they are gunning toward.

How does your game reward players for interacting with the mechanisms?

RedHack rewards come in two forms: Experience Points & Treasure. Experience Points are earned when players have their characters perform certain experience conditions in the fiction. These conditions require players to use their character's skills, traits, drives, etc. to accomplish the pre-determined conditions. If players work towards one of their character's drives -which are player written, they also earn experience points. This XP is then accumulated until thresholds are met which then allow characters to advance in order to become stronger, more resilient and better prepared to face new challenges. The circle then begins anew.

Treasure is a fictional reward that helps characters be better equipped and more powerful in the fiction for new challenges they face ahead.

Seems like there is much more to go into - I hope I got all of that right :)

Well we'll have to say all that more for future updates. I hope this has you thirsty for more info - I plan with future posts to dive into the minutia of characters, skills, all three magic systems, saving throws, etc. There plenty to come. I'd love to share it all with you. Please subscribe so you're able to read about it first. 

-Stephen