Freehack Version 2.0

I've released a new version of Freehack: version 2.0!

This version refines the core mechanics (outside of the basic roll mechanic, which is unchanged) to address some issues I've uncovered across dozens of sessions of playtesting and bring the game more in line with how I actually run it in practice.

The first thing I decided to change was the instruction that game masters should always make players aware of the probabilities of their actions prior to rolling. This idea made conceptual game design sense. One of the core purposes of a rule system is to give the players some idea what their characters are capable of. This is knowledge the characters themselves would automatically have but which we have to use rules to replicate in a game of make-believe. Freehack already weakens the players' grip on this knowledge by replacing quite formal combat rules (for example) with a much vaguer system so I felt it was important to present the raw probabilities to compensate. The problem with this idea is slows games down a lot so in practice I didn't end up following this rule. Every action a player wants to take now effectively has to be "confirmed" twice, once to request the probability and once to confirm the probability is acceptable. I've changed this to be an option the players should be made aware of so they can request the probability for rolls as desired, hopefully limiting it to only a handful of vital rolls.

Another problem was the lack of clarity around when exactly the game master should roll. Freehack 1.0 defined some times when the game master definitely should roll (e.g. a player character fences with an opponent) and times when they definitely shouldn't roll (e.g. when choosing what the villain decides to do next) but there was always a large gray area in between. Does socialization rely on the words the players have their characters say, a roll, or both? If a player attempts to pick a lock, fails, and then immediately tries to attempt it again what should the game master do? I've rewritten the rolling rules to try lay out a taxonomy of types of roll and when to use them.

The last issue I wanted to address was around quantities. There were times in my game where a character would get badly injured and I would roll repeatedly to see if their condition worsened and it always felt a bad kind of arbitrary. I had no idea how many rolls I should make before declaring the character dead and so tended to err on the side of caution in case I was unintentionally unfair to the players. I tried to add the "ongoing rolls" mechanic to rectify this but looking back I don't think it ever made much sense or really addressed the issue. I've added new "track" rules in this version to try and address this.

I've also removed the "procedures" mechanic because I felt like it was leaning too much into making Freehack a framework for other games, rather than a ready-to-play game in its own right. I never really used the procedures mechanic as it was and I've come to feel that if your rolls are consistent enough to be usefully described by procedures you're probably not playing to Freehack's strengths (e.g. using lots of situational modifiers to reward deep player engagement with the scenario).

Enjoy!