Hello There Folks.
A few years ago now, I introduced my group to Old School Hack, and I have to say that all of our lives were changed.
Old School Hack is a 'hack' of a 'hack' of the old Gygax Red Box DnD by Kirin Robinson. Now, OSH is a simple game that you can run with right out of the proverbial box. It's rather rules-light and lets you invoke the wonders of old school fantasy adventures, or in our case pure insanity.
The game itself consists of seven character classes (Fighter, Magic User, Cleric, Their, Elf, Dwarf, and Goblin) and a simple 2d6 dice mechanic with one of the two dice acting as a bonus damage die. Pretty early on I started playing around with making additional classes basses on various DnD classes that have existed through the lines 30 sum odd year (at the time) run. One such class that was created was the Grippli, these awesome little Tree-Frog Men. I got the idea from the illustrious game designer and podcaster Ross Payton and his addition of the Grippli to the player races of DnD 4th Ed.
One of the abilities that I gave to the Grippli class was called "Psycho Sweat." The thought behind this was to mimic some tree frogs natural defense mechanism of secreting a poisonous or bitter coating to themselves.I decided to make it hallucinatory instead of poisonous. It was meant to be something of a utility by working like any other offensive liquid in a fantasy game, s it could be used to coat weapons, armor, etc..
With that info dump out of the way, on to the actual anecdote.
The adventuring party in this instance consisted of a female Fighter, a heavy metal Cleric, a bright eyed Grippli named Skippy, and the worst Mage ever (he modeled his character after Superfluous from Journey Quest).
I set up each adventure using a floating island here heroes and adventurers gathered and used as a hub for compiling parties. If a party took on an adventure, then each member would sign an adventure log. At the time of signing for this adventure the Mage, having been drug along, signed as "FuckingSaveME," instead of his actual name. From that point onward, that's the only way the Cleric would refer to him.
Fast forward to about mid dungeon. The party had just completed an encounter with monsters that escape my memory, The Mage, as per his players portrayal, continuously defamed himself and acted in a cowardly way, even though he killed the last monster with a jet of pressurized milk . I approved, because I knew what he was going for and everyone else was enjoying the interaction. In an effort to cultivate confidence in his comrade the Grippli offer his hand to the Mage for a high-five (in person and in game). As soon as their hands smacked, I heard in a quick yell for the Grippli's player: "PSYCHO SWEAT!"
In that moment we all just stopped. All the side chatter died because everyone was starring at the Grippli with agape mouths, the Mage started to giggle.
From there I let the Mage describe his hallucination. Instead of a terrifying psychedelic trip that we were all expecting, he chose to have the best damn trip ever. The world was no longer big and frightening, the world was now his bitch. At this point he charged ahead of the party taking random doors and shrugging off any ill effects he was encountering.
Then he found the Purple Monkey Knight. That's right, a big purple monkey with a visored knight's helmet and swinging a big damn sword. The Mage and the Monkey Knight traded blows for a good two or three rounds with neither hitting or doing much damage, then the Mage critted.....on everything. He maxed out both die and proceeded to beat the Monkey Knight to death with his staff.
After the combat, his high wore off and he collapsed under his cowardice again.
The entire scene was amazing, there was so much laughing, and I was struggling to actually GM instead of crying due to laughter.
To this day, I'll forever love Old School Hack. I'm a big fan of the absurd and ridiculous a good chunk of the time, as that's part of my fun. When I run OSH for my Krewe, I make it deliver.
Hopefully all you good folks reading this enjoyed that as much as I still do. I'll try and drudge up some more stories from my gaming past to share in the future.
In the mean time, Stay Frosty, Folks.
Old School Hack is a free PDF game by Kirin Robinson that you can download HERE, if your interested. Have fun!
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