An unknown gem in my opinion. I've been looking for a quick bare-bones game that embodies the basics and the terminology of D&D, to run with students. There's a lot of good, modern, rules-lite games I've considered for my students (such as Tinyd6 and EZD6), and The Black Hack of course is good - but The Basic Hack exactly fulfils what I'm looking for, as an introduction to d20 gaming.

All rolls are against the six attributes, there is no skill list, but the four classes each have an advantage in a specific ability - fighter in attacks, thief in sneaking/ disarming traps, etc. Rolls are player-facing, another time-saver. Creatures have a Challenge Rating (ie HD), hit points, sometimes special abilities, thats it. Their Challenge Rating is a modifier to PC's defence rolls. All very clean and simple.

I may change the die mechanic to roll high, rather than roll under, simply to stay consistent with D&D should the players want to progress to 5e or other d20 games. But thats easy, and I could see myself running The Basic Hack as is for home pick-up games. As the previous reviewer said, its very easy to modify and customize.

This game is great, I love its simplicity. I think many rules light games rely a bit on the GM having some experience and this is no different.

Its got enough about it to just sit down and get going very quickly. Its a good base to add to, you can easily make new classes, spells and little feats for the players.

Great work

For me, this hits the mark. The Black Hack scores points for cleverness but this game scores for playability. The lack of the usage die and the character advancement rules are prefect.

The only omission is a section just for the new GM. For one-on-one play it's straightforward but if you're refereeing for 5 players what do you do when someone decides that they want to search for a secret door and the rest of the party say "yes, I'll do that too!" Does one person conduct the search while the other four heroes stand around whistling or does everyone throw a die? If the latter option is chosen, secret doors need not exist since they'll almost always be found. I know what I'd do but there's no advice to help the first-time GM and as this is a beginners' game, that's quite a gap.