Hacking Games

Yesterday's discussion of "hacking games" put the thought in my mind. Simple games? They invite hacking and experimentation. Back in the day, we had the basic Car Wars for the longest time, and sheet after sheet of typed additions to the game that we invented. Star Frontiers, Top Secret, and many other classic games were so simple we built entire expansions for them using our homebrewed content - and it was fun. The games were almost designed for expansion and experimentation, and while you could play them as they were - coming up with all sorts of new things yourself was a part of the hobby.

Now by hacking, I am thinking of larger changes and systems - more that just a new monster or magic item. You can do small changes in most any game, and one of the fun parts about D&D 4 was its generic monster creation system that let you come up with anything, mutant mushrooms, flying monkeys, robots, or any other creature imaginable and put it in the game. Our base three book experience with D&D 4 was an incredible run, and the more we bought for that game the worse it got because our imaginations were slowly crowded out.

Complete Games

With newer games, especially ones we invested heavily into (Pathfinder and D&D 3 and 4, FFG Star Wars), we never really hacked those games. We had some non-publisher material for some of them, but we never really took those games and made them our own like we did the older games. Perhaps we had that consumerist expectation where we expected everything was going to be done for us, and that the publishers would keep their new books balanced and equal options to everything which came before.

I feel there is a point where a game gets so big and complex you give up hacking it. Any hacks you make end up breaking the game, ruining some class balance somewhere, or affecting a part of the rule you either don't know about yet or never use that will come up later when you play with others. This is also true of games where the dicing system feels "tight" - if you touch too much, add modifiers, or come up with combat options or maneuvers outside of the game the system will start breaking.

Basic Fantasy hits a sweet spot for me because the base game's options are so limited hacking is almost required to customize the game to your liking. I can drop in crit charts, skill systems, hit locations, new magic or power systems, modern weapons, sci-fi elements, ability scores, class tweaks, and just about anything into this game and modify it to my liking quickly.

For the most part, all of B/X is like this, and the basic framework of the rules is very hackable and extendable. Certain B/X games come "pre-hacked" to capture a certain flavor, such as Labyrinth Lord's hack of the AD&D material into the system and Dungeon Crawl Classic's retro-gonzo emulation. All of them are cool, and demonstrate how well B/X works as a base for any game you can imagine - from fantasy to sci-fi it just works with a couple tweaks here and there to capture falvor, genre, and the danger level desired.

Old School Essentials is modular and designed to be very hackable, so it deserves special mention here too. You can just buy the Core Rules booklet and get none of the others - no spells, no classes, no genre rules, no treasures, and just the core rules module and hack an entire system off of that core. If you want to put in the work, this is your ultimate hacking option. An SRD is out for this too, along with many other B/X games, so you can hack for free.

Basic Fantasy focuses on fantasy basics and gets the "system plus standard parts" down to the metal, which is where I like to start. The game has the standard four-plus-four race-class combos (Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Human) and (Fighter, Mage, Thief, Cleric) so there is a lot of room for my own interpretations of variant classes and new races. There are also no race-as-class options - just the basic formula which is easy to build upon. It is not as modular as OSE, but the resources and format of this game work for me well when I am experimenting.

And this is B/X porting is super simple, so where you choose to start is honestly preference.

Room to Breathe

I feel a game needs to leave parts for you to play with. I feel some designers get this very completist feeling, so the rules just keep going on and on covering every possibility. The game feels complete. I put it down. I rarely return to it. There isn't a part inviting me to tinker or experiment. There is no room for my creativity. All of the page has been colored by crayons. There is no room left for me.

I have done that with games, and I don't know if it is just me, a bad habit, or if anyone else feels this way. Games that are complete are less interesting than games that invite me to take part in their design. I guess I love the modding community of games like Skyrim, and love to see what players come up with - and even myself. The game has lots of open places. The rules are up to interpretation. There is plenty of room conceptually to add new systems and new ideas.

Same thing with pen-and-paper games these days. I am moving away from the "complete experiences" and gravitating towards the simple games I grew up with, and finding myself spending more time with the ones I can modify and experiment in with new rules and subsystems.