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.
