#RPGaDay: Day 15

15. Which RPG do you enjoy adapting the most?

Answer: Since my recent return to the hobby, I've started exploring some of the new games that have come out in my absence, most of these small, print-on-demand OSR games. In a lot of these cases, these have been strict retro-clones or approximations of some version of D&D with the house rules the creators used to play in their own games back in the day. In a few rare cases, these OSR creators have created something truly new using the spirit of those old games. My pick for day # 15 is Whitehack, a game which I've bought but have yet to play.

Whitehack was built for adaption. It's less a rule set than it is a framework on which to build a fantasy setting of your own design. It's a guidebook on how to build a game of your own. It provides a perfect opportunity to eschew some of the more common tropes and cliches of fantasy role-playing. I could easily imagine myself creating a humans-only Conan/Hyperborea kind of world or something stranger and weirder, maybe some courtly hellscape.

The character creation process involves a custom, GM-designed intersection of class and groups, where the former are vague categorizes (Deft, Strong, and Wise), and the latter are ability-score influencing characteristics (think race, background profession, and affiliations). This allows for multi-dimensional characters that don't fit into the neat boxes of other games. It makes each character very unique and one-of-a-kind. The mechanics themselves are different and it's taking me a while to understand just how things. work.

As I mentioned, I have yet to play this game, but I'm excited to try it out and truly make it into my own. It's the RPG that I hope to enjoy adapting the most. In the end we'll have to wait and see. Have any of you played this?