Play Report: Mission Excalibur

Game: Mission Excalibur

Creator: Sean McAnally

Publisher: Nerd Glows On

System: The Black Hack

Number of Players: 3

Play time: Three sessions (~7hrs)

Game type: Virtual (Discord)

I have been itching to run this adventure since I listened Between Two Cairns's review a few months ago. It's a a cool premise - Germany won the war with dark magic, demons prowl the Earth and you play special operatives dropped into England to make sure Nazis can't harness the power of Excalibur. The fact that it was system agnostic (in its current version) and suitable for any old school fantasy game made it even more appealing.

Sometimes you just don't want to learn a new game for a single adventure, so it's nice to be able to dust off an old favorite. You know I had to do it to em with The Black Hack. We played this adventure across three sessions, one in July, one August and the final one in September. A lotta that is my fault, it is much harder to find the time to run games when you have a baby who refuses to sleep before 10pm. Seriously. I am blessed this kid sleeps through the night but until bed time? Awake and alert like a Swiss Guard.

I whipped up some quick character sheets to help my players catch the vibe and then we were off.

Play Summary:

The Black Hack 10th Anniversary Jam is WRAPPED!

And I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. 

80 users signed up. 20 submitted for a total of 21 submissions (I'm not counting my own contribution.)

We got a decent mix of adventures, dungeons, bestiaries, classes and new settings/hacks. Besides the stuff submitted in the last 48 hours I've looked at most of it and have been very impressed. Lotta cool stuff I would love to run at my table, and some elegant designs that just make me incredibly jealous.

I've got a few lingering thoughts about what I'd want to do differently if I ran another jam:

-Discord should be easier to use. I kept getting messages about the discord link to The Black Hack channel expiring and nobody seems to be able to make a static one. That feels like a silly problem in 2026.

That being said, I absolutely loved the conversations that took place in the #jam channel and loved seeing everyone bouncing ideas and giving feedback. It felt like exactly the kind of creative community I want to be surrounded by when doing a project like this.

-Did everyone take graphic design classes except me? Seriously it feels like I am the only person on earth who can't figure out how to put my writing into a pdf that doesn't look like a child's book report. That goes double for all your cute little itch project pages. 

-Itch needs slightly better moderation. I didn't know this until I ran a jam but there are bots/users that just spam any open jam with their unrelated nonsense. They're easy enough to remove but I probably shouldn't have to do it in the first place. The same message/project going up in a half dozen jams at the same time should ring al

-Maybe gamers have high expectations. I was beating myself up over a few things I didn't include in my submission - magic items and random encounter tables, mostly - because they are things I would expect to find in an adventure like I published. And it's kind of like...why? I have collected countless magic items and encounter tables over the years. If I got an adventure without them it would be easy to slot them in. Why stress a designer out with extra work.

Maybe all we need is some artwork and a good idea. Don't hassle someone for her another +1 doodad that does a thing.

-I don't really understand how information spreads in the hashtag OSR sphere. Couple of times I saw blog roundups and news lists about ttrpg stuff and The Black Hack jam largely went unmentioned. I know that everyone who participated did this for the love the game (literally) and that's why I put it together, but I want to make sure all that work gets seen! I want to breathe a little life into The Black Hack scene. Maybe that was a silly goal that needed way more direct attention that I could give it. Hopefully as time goes on people can find these jam submissions along with all the other material that exists for this system. 

-Writing and laying out ttrpg content solo is hard. Having a newborn makes it even harder. 🫩

I know it's been a few weeks since the last post. Been in a very transitional period - adapting to having the baby around, switching to a new job. It's been a lot. But things have been good. 

Hope all is well and you all had a great summer.

Midsummer Updates

Hello out there in dice world! Hope you all are managing to stay cool. 

Just wanted to chime in with a few updates (my brain is too pickled for a real post)

-The Black Hack 10th Anniversary jam begins in 26 days and has 45 registered participants! Wow! Legitimately very excited to see what people are gonna make. There's been some conversation in the TBH discord's #jam channel but I'm going to try and get some discussion started on itch as well. 

-Appendix N jam 2026 is in full swing. My give title is kind of a head scratcher so we'll see what I end up making ("The Rasped Prophecy")

-MemoryCore's backerkit campaign was a success! I mention this specifically because I backed this game (and I almost never back crowdfunding campaigns for games) and am really excited about it. Think it's gonna provide a lot of fun in 2027.

-I joined the rootring. This is a very cool project by elmcat to create a webring for ttrpg blogs. Just click the little buttons down at the bottom of any page on this blog (web version only - gotta ask about how to make it viewable on mobile) and you can hop to other blogs in the ring. Why doomscroll when you give yourself access to a nigh endless feed or tabletop game discourse and content? 

 -I am absolutely obsessed with Rules of Engagement's CAIN actual play, Division 12. I generally bounce right off APs but the voice acting and sound design on this one are *chefs kiss.* 

And that's all for today folks. My baby has been sleeping through the night for two weeks, I am filled with grilled meats and storms seem to have broken this hellish heat. Let me get back to bed before the boiling starts in the sky again. 

The Black Hack 10th Anniversary Game Jam

I'm hosting a game jam to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of The Black Hack.

I've mentioned it before on this blog but I adore The Black Hack. It is the retroclone that introduced me to retroclones and the wide world of the OSR. And it is the game that convinced me that maybe I could make some elf game stuff of my own. Despite all the games that have come sense I still find myself drawn back to it - and clearly all the folks over on discord agree that it's a game still worth talking about. 

The Jam isn't judged and there are no prizes. I just want to see people make some stuff for a system that I love. Also I have never done this before and have no idea what I'm doing. Maybe it goes poorly? Maybe no one submits anything? Still feels worth giving it a shot 

Form a team, make some funky art, rewrite the armor rules again. Throw something into the mix and let it join The Black Hack canon.

That's it. That's the pitch. Come make something with me in August.

I'll do a post-mortem post on this once it's all over but keep your eyes on the #jam channel in The Black Hack discord and the discussion page on itch for in-process updates. Oh and peep the #TBH10th hashtag on your favorite social media platforms.

Monsters from the Movies #1: Red Sonja (2025)

My wife: You'll watch any sword and sorcery movie, won't you?

Me: It is my curse.

Since the baby refused to sleep last night, I was burdened with the knowledge that the new Red Sonja movie is on Tubi. Folks, it's not great...but it's not completely awful either. Its biggest sin is that Matilda Lutz doesn't seem to have chemistry with anyone besides the horse playing Sonja's beloved horse. Luke Pasqualino and Robert Sheehan do most of the heavy lifting in this movie. Sheehan especially. He turns what could be a pretty one note villain into one that's pretty memorable.

Where this movie does kind of cook is the random background monsters. There are two characters who are Mandrill people and it goes completely unremarked upon. Where did they come from? Doesn't matter! We gonna get this practical makeup off.

There is also a Cyclops who shows up mid movie. It doesn't do anything memorable besides being one of the coolest fictional Cyclops I've ever seen. It's got the body of a Gorilla along the horns and legs of a goat. That sounds stupid but it absolutely fucking slaps.

I knew I had to stat up these monsters so here they are for your roleplaying pleasure. Torment your PCs! Have them make a new friend! You'll figure out what to do with these guys.

 

Randomness is a Conversation

I struggled deciding how to participate in this Blogwagon. I'm not particularly enamored with random tables - I'd rather roll on them before a session to pre-plan encounters than during. I absolutely hate the concept of the "gonzo" RPG, it just reminds me too much of teaching grade schoolers. And I will fudge a dice roll if it pushes the evening in a better direction. 

But as I was listening to a old episode of Between Two Cairns (the one where they review B10), Yochai dropped a gem which perfectly summed up my feelings on Randomness:

"I play roleplaying games to be surprised by my players." ~ Yochai Gal

I don't sit at the table to be entertained by tables or dice. I play roleplaying games with other humans - my friends - because I know they will do things that will surprise me and make me laugh. Or gross me out. Or completely flabbergast me.

For me, true randomness is the result of my conversations with my players and their interactions with each other in the world I've laid out. The dice and tables only matter as much as they help facilitate that conversation. 

Don't get it twisted. I'm not saying we should get rid of dice and tables. I personally need them to make sure I don't fall into tried and true patterns. I how my players will respond if a hatchet wielding Goblin leaps out of the bushes. I don't know what they'll do if they find that same Goblin crying at the roadside or arguing with his Bugbear boyfriend. 

And I have been told that Goblin CW romance drama is a trope I constantly fall back on. Sometimes we need random tables to save us from ourselves.

Sometimes couples fight and it's truly best to not get involved. No good group of D&D players will refuse to get involved.

But we need to strike that balance between letting our random encounter tables be prompts to inspire our players - and loaded guns aimed at them. Nobody puts a Dragon on one of those because they're just really hoping the party gets a friendly reaction roll. 

Okay, that's all I've got. Let me leave you with a table that will hopefully get the juice moving at your table.

d6 Random Enounters to surprise your players

1. Goblin & Bugbear having a lover's spat. 

2. d20 Fighting Men milling about the roadside. Half of their company is experiencing severe intestinal distress.

3. Cyclops attempts to collect a toll.

4. Roc feasting on an adventuring party.

5. The party crosses paths with a Necromancer and his undead thrall (d8 Zombies.) One of the zombies is a familiar NPC.

6. A bizarre, disc shaped object appears in the sky just ahead.

Stuff I've Written

Eagle-eyed readers might notice a new page on this blog: My Work. 

I have, at times, fancied myself a bit of a games designer and took a crack at putting out some stuff.