a 2 JN US RESSCredits The Indie Hack First Digital Edition (August, 2016) © 2016 Slade Stolar, all rights reserved. Writing, Layout, and Publishing by Slade Stolar at scablandspress.com Artwork by herror /J. Carlos Andrés at heroru.com Direct and Indirect Help by Ron Edwards, Paul Czege, Robert Bohl, The Bakers (Meguey and D. Vincent), Chris McDowell, and (of course) David Black, David Schirduan and Ole Peder Gizever provided very useful feedback. Rules Playtesting by Thomas Novosel, Benjamin Kramer, Aaron Griffin, Dave Nearing, and Jake Sotodelvalle, Thomas, Benjamin, and Aaron played these rules with great care and a focus on making them functional and fun. Their playtest is reproduced with some modifications in the "Example Adventure" at the end. Additional Thanks This game wouldn't exist without The Threeforged RPG Design Challenge (Paul Czege), Forge Midwest (Willow Palecek, Tim Jensen, and Shari Corey), and On The Remembered Slopes (Dave Nearing). These communities pushed me to play and make new and better games, Additional thanks to all those who expressed interest in the game in its early stages: I probably wouldn't have finished it without being pulled forward by excited, curious, and encouraging GMs and players. Scorching Ron Edwards provided consulting on the main mechanic of an earlier game that got rolled into the rules of The Indie Hack. I consider this game to have been Scorced by the Gaze of Adept Press. ScoRCHED BY THE APEPT PRESS Inspirations This game would not exist without dozens of other games that I have played and shamelessly borrowed ideas from: Apocalypse World inspires the dice mechanics and the approach to light-weight, deadly, story-focussed gaming. The minimalist, hinted-at setting, game economy, and player-driven details should be familiar to players of Apocalypse World. If you want to say that this game is Powered by the Apocalypse, that's fine with me. Dungeon World inspires the relationship mechanics and the idea of cutting adventuring down to its core awesomeness. Info the Odd inspires the approach to monsters, magic items, and weirdness. ‘My Life with Master inspires the mechanics that replace alignment mechanics, namely, Masters. Swords Without Master inspires the tone mechanic in the Advanced Play section. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Second Edition, was my first edition of D&D. I've logged more hours with 3rd Edition (and 3.5), but AD&D2e was the beginning of an obsession, The Black Hack, of course, inspired nearly everything For further hacking... If you want to hack tis hack, please get into contact with me. Games and adventures that are based on (and require) The Indie Hack are fully encouraged However, as of writing, the images and text contained herein cannot be copied freely, Permission is granted to reproduce the page beginning "Character Sheet” (near the end of the book) for personal useThe Indie Hack What is This? The (TI) is fantasy roleplaying game that is played with pencils, paper, dice, and imagination. It takes OSR-style gaming and gives it an indie edge Indie Hack a minimalist There should be one G five players. me Master (GM) and two to Game terms are in bold upon first mention. Understanding the Mechanics Using The Indie Hack, you'll be telling stories with lots of interesting, strange, and/or frightening details. Details are properties or conditions (e.g,, the sword that you dig up in an ancient battlefield might have the details Rusty and Dull). Details are written down when they are added to a character, scene, enemy, or item. Details are crossed out when they no longer hold true (e.g., if you pay to have the old sword repaired, Rusty and Dull might be crossed out and possibly supplanted by Shiny and Sharp). Adding Details Hard details are added when rolling the dice and describe a fundamental change to some property of a person, place, or thing (eg, dealing damage, changing an object, annoying someone). In point form, note down all hard details added to a character, weapon, enemy, ete. (¢.g., when a player says "I slash it with my sword!", rolls and is over by 2, and therefore, has one hard detail to spend, add a detail like Deep incision to the monster. The player won the challenge by rolling and being over by 2; the effect of that victory is represented by a change to the monster in the form of a hard detail.) Soft details can be added more freely and make only temporary or superficial changes to the world (eg, moving around, calling out to an ally, asking a character a question). Soft details need not be written down. If granted a hard detail, you can chose to add a soft detail instead. A scene detail is a detail that changes the scenery or your tactics, ie,, things that are part of the scene, but not a property of a character or item. (e.g,, "My mace smashes the floor tile to pieces!" or "I slash at his left arm!" are scene details.) If granted a hard detail, you can chose to add a scene detail instead. For each scene, the GM will maintain a list of scene details. Details are typically negative or positive. Negative details are typically damage details, which indicate damage to a character or item. Positive details are beneficial properties (eg, Shiny and Sharp for a sword), Meeting Challenges ‘The actions of characters meeting, challenges that have risks and rewards are resolved by rolling two six-sided dice (246) with one Light Die and one Dark Die. The Light Die represents the difficulty of the challenge (and, if higher, GM detail), Tae Dark Die represents the characters heroism and prowess (and, if higher, player details) The player rolls 1 Light Die and 1 Dark Die and compares the results ‘The player always rolls both dice Use the chart below to interpret the result: ADraw Each side adds one hard detail. Over by 1. Winning side adds one hard detail but incurs one hard negative detail (e.g., counting against the capacity of their armour or weapon) added by an ally. Overby 2 Winning side adds one hard detail. Over by 3. Winning side adds one hard detail and done scene detail Overby 4 Winning side adds one hard detail and so does one ally, Over by 5+ Winning side adds two hard details.