Category: Design

My one nagging doubt about Hack100’s rules, which refuses to go away, is the “highest roll wins” tie-breaker for Opposed Tasks.

Opposed Tasks arise when a character pits one of their Abilities against a counter Ability of another. For example, Stealth vs Perception. Or melee combat.

At the highest level, the outcome of an Opposed Task is determined by the overall “quality” of the two opposing rolls. A Critical beats an ordinary success, which beats an ordinary failure, which beats a Fumble. However, two opponents will often achieve the same overall result. For example, both might achieve an ordinary success, or both might Fumble. In such instances, a secondary means of determining the outcome is needed.

Here’s an early work-in-progress release of Catching Rats & Robbing Graves (CRARG), a supplement for Hack100 that provides guidelines for running Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP)-style games. Release 0.01 of CRARG includes the Introduction and the early sections of Character Creation.

To accompany the release, here are some supplementary design notes.

Before diving into a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay-inspired conversion of Hack100, I thought I’d take a look at similar paths travelled by others. There are three existing RPGs that I’m aware of that pass the “Does it have ‘Rat Catcher’ and ‘Grave Robber’ characters?” test.

Whilst I love the setting and tone of the 4th Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, I’m less convinced by its mechanics, particularly in combat. Fundamentally, it’s a straightforward d100 system. However, it is burdened by a plethora of modifiers to each attack roll – advantage, target size, range, conditions, ailments, psychological effects, etc. And that’s before you factor in additional influences such as weapon qualities/flaws and creature traits. The organisation of the rulebook doesn’t help, with oft-needed information scattered throughout its 300+ pages.

With the release of the Hack100 core rules, it’s time to consider what to do next. I’m keen to build upon the momentum generated by the launch that saw around 500 downloads in the first three weeks.

There are three areas in which I see scope for additional content.

I came into this project with a reasonably clear idea of what I wanted to achieve. Frustrated by the complexity of the most recent versions of my favourite d100 systems (most notably Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and RuneQuest), my objective was to compile a stripped-down d100 system that would allow me to adventure in those worlds with a minimum of in-game rules referencing.

With that overarching aim in mind, I set myself ten design goals for Hack100 back in a blog of March 2020. Here I’ll review the final product against those original ambitions.

Before we get into the specifics of Hack100’s mechanics, I thought it would be helpful to outline some of the high-level objectives of the project. Therefore, here are my design aims, in approximate order of importance.

I’ve always liked percentile-based (d100) systems for role-playing games. The early editions of RuneQuest, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Call of Cthulhu were the staples of my formative adventuring back in the 1980s. In terms of game mechanics, d100 systems provide an unmatched clarity over the likelihood of an action’s success or failure.  They also tend to be more flexible, avoiding rigid character classes and levels.