There and Hack Again RPG Review (LakeSide Games)

There and Hack Again is the second of two reviews for RPGs from LakeSide games. My hope is to put a really awesome RPG that you may not know about on your radar.

There and Hack Again is one of what are generally referred to as Old School Rules or OSR style games. It's based on another OSR work called "The Black Hack," which is what the "Hack" in the title refers to. OSR games are based on early versions of D&D. This game is no exception, but it makes substantial changes to the game. This is where the term "Hack" comes in. The rules have been "hacked." They've been changed, but the idea is to not increase the game's complexity or to make it unrecognizable for people who are comfortable with the old school D&D rules.

There and Hack Again, as the name implies is an RPG based on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien's the Hobbit (and other related works.) What concerns me about this choice of title is that players that are interested in a role-playing game based on the Lord of the Rings will likely ignore it and choose the officially licensed The One Ring RPG by Free League. While others who see the title will, because they don't want to play a game based in Tolkien's Middle Earth, also give There and Hack Again a miss.

I hope the title doesn't keep the fantasy RPG fandom at large away from this game, because it is awesome. There and Hack Again is inspired by Tolkien (among others) to tell heroic stories of high fantasy. There and Hack Again takes inspiration from The Lord of the Rings in the same way that Dungeons and Dragons does. It focuses more on the way these stories are told than D&D ever did, and that's a good thing. There and Hack Again is built to tell a hero's story in a high fantasy world, and while inspired by Tokien, this world is not Middle Earth. The world is yours to create.

T&HA uses the core six ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, but it doesn't use ability score modifiers. Instead the ability score itself becomes your basis for success. This means that every point of an ability score matters. However, this isn't a roll under system (as is used in the Black Hack and in Dragonbane.) It's a roll high system, which is what D&D players are more accustomed to. That's a smart move. This is accomplished by taking a higher number and subtracting your ability score from it to reach a target number. That "higher number" decreases as you level up making your target number smaller. So, the system has a sort of built in Proficiency Bonus … clever.

T&HA has race and class separation and includes the races of Men, Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings. While classes are divided by Archetype. There are three archetypes: The Brave, The Cunning, and The Wise. Each Archetype provides the core rules for the character, Hit Points, Weapons and Armor Allowances and some key abilities common for all members of that Archetype. Class then usually adds just one or two advantages and some flavor.

Under each Archetype are three character Classes.

Classes under the Brave Archetype are: Champion (an armored knight), Ranger (a warden of the wilds), and Warrior (a general man-at-arms.)

Classes under the Cunning Archetype are: Hunter (an archer of the woods), Rogue (a sneaky hero), and Swordmaster (a fencing swashbuckler.) 

Classes under the Wise are: Bard (Charisma based magicians of story and song), Druid (Wisdom based magicians of nature and healing), and Wizard (Intelligence based magicians of elements and illusions.)

The Wise are spellcasters and can cast each spell that they know up to three times a day. That's it. No complex charts or tables to reference. Casting spells requires a check, which determines the spell's overall effect. A failed check doesn't mean that a caster was not successful in casting their spell, it just means that the ultimate effect was not the one desired.

Spellcasting rolls and all other rolls are player facing, but enemies of levels higher than your own will make your chance of success more difficult. Conversely, weaker enemies will make your chance of success more likely. The same is true in combat (or for any opposed roll against a non-player element). Enemies don't roll to attack, the player rolls to defend.

Characters also have "Boons" These are special powers, abilities, feats or talents that players can use to fine tune their characters. Some Boons are tied to a character's class or race, but most are available to everyone. The race of man allows a player to start with three boons while the other races provide two. Players will gain additional boons as they level up their characters.

There are no experience points in the game. Players level up following milestones and a period of downtime. This downtime element is really interesting to me. It requires that characters take extended breaks between periods of adventure. The characters are people that live within the world. They have homes and families and places to be. This requirement grounds the characters in the world, and I love this.

Intertwined within the game's mechanics are: Faith and Despair. Faith is the good stuff that gives players hope and makes them heroes. Despair is the bad stuff that hurts players and gives the game a feeling of grandiose scope and its sense of good and evil without resorting to something as clumsy as an alignment system. Faith and Despair really mean something in the game. Faith can be used to mitigate bad die rolls, or cast an exhausted spell, or use an exhausted special ability. Despair can overwhelm a character giving them a penalty to all dice rolls until they are able to overcome it.

Faith and Despair are designed to focus game play on the heroic. There is also the fact that money in the game is abstracted. Players have no motivation to become murder hobos or to hoard gold (and in fact, doing so would increase their despair.) Finally, there is the Adversary. This is the "big bad" of your story or campaign. T&HA is meant to tell big stories of normal folk becoming heroes and taking on seemingly insurmountable odds. This is the good stuff folks.

There and Hack Again is my favorite OSR style game. It's awesome, and I think every gaming group should give it a try. It's a tragedy that Hasbro's D&D is played by millions while a game like this languishes largely unplayed or talked about. There and Hack Again is a masterpiece, and it's the high fantasy RPG that you should be playing.

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Black Star RPG Review (LakeSide Games)

Black Star is the first of two reviews for RPGs from LakeSide games. My goal is to put a really awesome RPG that you may not know about on your radar.

Black Star is a rules-lite sci-fi RPG. There's definitely a bit of a Star Wars vibe to this one, but any cinematic style space opera adventure game would be well served by these rules. The game uses 2d6 for tests. A 9+ is needed for success. You add an ability score to your role. Abilities range from 0-5, but new characters can't have a score greater than 3.

There are 10 abilities that cover pretty much all the standard sci-fi adventure RPG tropes: Blasting, Brawling, Diplomacy, Discipline, Instinct, Intellect, Speed, Strength, Tools, and Transports. This "10 Abilities to rule them all … " approach reminds me of Mike Pondsmith's Dreampark RPG, which is one of my favorite RPGs of all time. It looks great here!

To augment their abilities players have Archetypes which represent job experience from their past to help to focus what the character can do. There are 10 of these as well and players get to choose two of them. The Archetypes are: Diplomat, Expert, Fighter, Heavy, Mystic, Outlaw, Pilot, Scout, Soldier, and Tech. Each Archetype grants players access to a pool of Talents. Talents provide special benefits when taking certain actions.

In addition to Talents based on a character's Archetype, there are Innate Talents that a player can choose. Some of these are quite exotic ("Wings" for example) and would allow players and the GM to create custom alien races.

Resolve is the drive that keeps characters going. It's part hit-points and part hero-points. When a player fails an ability test they can spend a point of Resolve to roll again, or to automatically succeed but with some kind of negative consequence tied to the result. This presents some interesting opportunities for negotiation role-play that really appeals to me.

The rules have examples of futuristic equipment, spaceships, psionic powers, and several adventure ideas. All in all, Black Space is an awesome Sci-Fi RPG for players looking for something that would be easy to get to the table. It's just the kind of concise yet rich RPG system that I'm always on the lookout for.

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Harmonies Board Game Review

Almost missed my post today. Julie and I have been playing a new board game (It just hit stores on Friday.) all day today. The game is called: Harmonies. If we had played Harmonies when I ranked my Top 100, it would have landed somewhere in the top 20, maybe the top 10. It's that good!

In Harmonies players draft chonky wooden disks to create a habitat for animals to live. (It's a bit like Cascadia, but the drafting reminds me of Azul.) You score points for creating habitats appropriate to specific animals, and just for grouping your land features in certain ways. 

On your turn, you select a group of 3 disks/tiles (like in Azul, except you always keep all three) and then you must place them. This can be tricky, because you might get a tile that won't be placed for you in an optimal way, but you still have to find somewhere to put it.

You may also choose an animal card, if you don't have four already. Be careful though, these cards stay with you until you complete them. The animal cards have spaces to store a few cubes. You can remove a cube from the card and place it into the habitats that you are creating if they meet that animal's requirements. Once all cubes are placed, the card is complete and it frees up space for a new card. 

This puzzle of building the terrains and then creating the habitats for the animals is really breezy and fun. You're just creating patterns with the disks and putting cubes on them. But, because of the application of the theme to both the disks and the animal cards everything is intuitive. Julie and I were up and playing in minutes. The game is quick to learn, quick to set up, and quick to play. But, then oh so thinky! It's awesome!!

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part Four (93-91)

Julie is right, Red7 should be higher in my Top 100, probably much higher, so should Sentient, and Jekyll Vs. Hyde. Initially, I just ran our collection through the ranking engine and then I started these blog posts. Upon review, some things just seemed out of place. I think that I made some decisions based more on how much I wanted to get a game back to the table, than on how much I liked the game. Julie pointed out in several instances, "But, we've only played that game once." It's true, we have a lot of games that we have only played once. Most of these I am excited to play again. But I probably shouldn't translate that excitement into how much I like the game. I decided to do some manual adjustments to correct some of the aberrations that I found, but the ones that I have already blogged about are locked in, at least until I try this list again in another 3 or 4 years.

#93 Scooby Doo! The Board Game

This is a game that Julie and I will agree to disagree on. She likes it, but she doesn't love it. I love it. Horrified didn't make it into my Top 100. Horrified is a great game, but for me, Scooby-Doo! completely replaces it. They are both "scary-season" appropriate cooperative games, and they occupy the same basic space in game complexity (if you play Scooby-Doo! on its hardest level.) But, Scooby-Doo! is Scooby-Doo! (I think that I just won my argument there.)

In Scooby-Doo! players take the roles of the iconic characters from the classic cartoon series. You can play Scooby, Shaggy, Daphne, Velma, or Fred. The characters each have a special power that they can use once during the game by eating their scooby-snack. (Horrified doesn't have scooby-snacks. Scooby-Doo! wins.) Players move around the board collecting items to build traps to capture the big bad.

Movement is done through card play for both the players and the villain. The design here is such that moving from player actions to the villain actions is very intuitive and you'll never forget to take the villain turn (which has happened to me in some other cooperative games.) Movement cards also have an initiative value on them and this can be really important because you need to balance when you want to go compared to the other players and the villain. Timing means a lot in the game.

If characters take "damage" action cards are discarded. Running out of cards means running out of time and this is one way to lose the game. As the villain moves around the board they haunt the different locations. Having too many haunted locations will also lose you the game. For locations you have all the classics like the malt shop and the amusement park.

The board and components are beautiful. You even have the Mystery Machine that you can drive in (if you have gas!) I love Scooby-Doo! so much! It's so thematic and so much fun that it's my 93rd favorite game of all time! (Side note: there are a few Scooby-Doo games out there. If you decide to try this one, be sure to get: Scooby-Doo! The Board Game that is published by CMON. The logo is in the lower left corner of the box.)

#92 Copenhagen: Roll & Write

Copenhagen: Roll & Write is basically Tetris the board game. One player rolls a set of five dice with colors on them. The more colors that you can match, the larger Tetris sized pieces you can draw on your paper. The other player gets to choose among any unused dice to mark a different area on their sheet to gain special powers.

Tetris pieces that you draw have to start at the bottom of your grid area and go up. You can only place a piece if it can sit on top of another. It's very Tetris. You get bonus points for completing rows and columns. The game ends when someone hits a certain threshold of points and the person with the most points wins.

Copenhagen: Roll & Write scores high on the quick and easy scale. It's landing high on this list because Julie and I have played it quite a bit recently, and it's just so easy to get to the table. And yeah, the Tetris puzzle is really fun! That makes Copenhagen: Roll & Write my 92nd favorite game of all time!

#91 Lost Ruins of Arnak

Lost Ruins is one of those games that I adjusted and pushed lower down my list to give other games a chance. I remember really liking my play of this, but we have only played Lost Ruins of Arnak once and it's been awhile. So, yes! I really want to get this back to the table. But, I can't remember enough about it to do it justice here. 

I remember that it's a worker placement game and that you use workers to explore ruins to gain resources to buy cards to gain powers to perform more and better actions to explore more ruins to get more resources. Doing all these things gets you points. The actions are tied to a cool "Indiana Jones" type theme and I remember really liking it. 

I have got to get this game back to the table! Who knows with a few more plays Lost Ruins of Arnak might become even better than my 91st favorite game of all time!

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part Three (95-94)

#95 World's Fair 1893

World's Fair 1893 is a great little area control and set collection game with a rondel (a round action selection track) shaped like a Ferris Wheel! 

Players place workers at locations that are based on various themed categories around the wheel to claim different events to sell tickets to their attractions in order to gain points to win the game. 

You score for having a majority in a given category and for having sets of different kinds of events as well. It's a bit of a push and pull that keeps the game play interesting and challenging and this is all enhanced by the game's theme. 

The cards all have art and flavor text that is based on real attractions that were present at the World's Fair in 1893. This is so awesome and is yet another reason the World's Fair 1893 is my 95th favorite game of all time.

#94 Red7

Red7 is a simple card game. Cards come in 7 suits numbered 1-7. The core rule of Red7 is that you must have the high card to be winning and you must be winning at the end of your turn or you will be eliminated. I normally don't like player elimination in games, I think Red7 might be the only one that I own. But, Red7 plays really well at 2 players (where player elimination doesn't matter) and it plays really fast (so no one is eliminated for long.)

Suits have a hierarchy and this is used to break ties. So a 4 always beats a 3 regardless of its suit, but a red 3 is better than a green 3. The suits are the 7 colors of the rainbow and if you are familiar with the anagram Roy G. Biv, then you already have the hierarchy memorized. That is the colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Red is the strongest color in the suit hierarchy and violet is the weakest. So the highest valued card in the deck is the Red7 and the lowest valued card is the Violet1.

But Red7 isn't just a game of "high card wins." Each suit also has a power that changes the rules of the game. One suit changes the rule to "most cards of one color wins." Another suit changes the rule to "most cards below four wins." And the Red suit changes the rule back to "high card wins." In the case of a tie, the highest numbered card in a set will decide the winner. When this is a tie, the tied high card of the highest suit in the color hierarchy wins.

On your turn you must change the conditions of the game so that you are winning. If the current rule is "high card wins" and your opponent is winning with a blue 7 in front of them, (The only card in front of you is an orange 3.) you might play the yellow 7 from your hand down in front of you so that you are winning. Now it's your opponent's turn.

Your opponent can't beat a yellow 7. They have a red 6 in their hand, and red is stronger than yellow, but you always rank the cards by number first and then by suit. Your 7 is higher than their 6, and your yellow 7 is higher than the blue 7 that they have on the table. They can't win following the rule "high card wins." However, your opponent does have an Indigo 4 in their hand. Remember that I said that the card suits carry a special ability to change the rules. They do, but not if they are played in front of you. They must be played to the discard pile to change the rules. The top card of the discard pile dictates the current rule for winning.

On a player's turn they may play a card in front of themselves to satisfy a win condition, or play a card to the discard pile to change the win conditions, or both. Your opponent plays the Indigo 4 to the discard pile changing the win condition to "most cards in a row." Then they play the red 6 down in front of themselves to satisfy the new win condition. They now have a blue 7 and a red 6 down in front of them. They have 2 cards in a row. This is more than you have. You have an orange 3 and a yellow 7 in front of you. That's only 1 card in a row. Your opponent is now winning. 

One final thing. Because the card your opponent played has a number value greater than the total number of cards in front of them (they played a 4 and only have 2 cards in front of them) they get to draw a card. This is the only way that you can draw a new card into your hand. Your opponent draws a new card adding it to their hand. It's now your turn.

I have spent way too much time on this one game, but Red7's game play is so smooth and so clever that I just felt the need to go over it in detail. This is a great game for anyone who enjoys card games. For a long time Red7 held a spot in my top 10 games of all time. It has fallen quite a bit only because Julie and I have played it sooooo much. Still, I am happy to report that Red7 is my 94th favorite game of all time!

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