9 things I've learned from reading all these GLoGhacks

So, you have a GLoGhack. You’re pretty proud of it, and you’ve put it on the internet. But you want to level up. You’ve been seeing a bunch of other hacks, and they strike you as professional, clean, and honed. How did they get there, and how can you join their ranks?

Well let me tell you, after having read ~20 hacks for my GLoG review series and even more for the GLOGGIES, I've isolated 9 methods of GLoGhack gud. Disclaimer: I am by no means any sort of game design expert, and half of this stuff I haven’t yet done with MARROW (though you bet your boots I plan to), so take all this with a grain of salt.

1. PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST

I cannot stress enough that nothing will get your hack ready like sitting down with people and playing. No matter if your game is ballpoint pen on cocktail napkin or published physical artifact, players will make it come alive and show you where it could be improved better than any amount of theorycrafting. If you don’t have players in your area, find a group on Discord, even just to play a one-shot with! We only bite on days that end in Y. Also, playtest other people’s hacks, running and playing. Also also, play in your own hacks. Any perspective you can get from a table is invaluable, and better than any of the other drivel on this list.

2. FOCUS

This is perhaps the most important thing, hence first. What is your hack for? Is it centered around a cool mechanic? Is it built to exist in your homebrewed world? Does it emulate some genre? Get a lockdown on the aesthetics of your game, the narrower the better. A game about Dungeon Rats is great. A game about Dungeon Rat politics, with intrigue and backstabbing in the Knottail Court, is even better. Every dimension of your game should help feed into your mission as much as practically possible. Write yourself a manifesto.

3. MECHANICAL CONSOLIDATION

The second biggest problem I encounter, and one that plagues even me yet. Some hacks are no more than a curated collection of nifty mechanics and house rules bolted onto a d20 core. While that’s a great way to do things, especially for your first foray into hacking and game design, eventually you’ll want to trim the fat, step back, and look at each mechanic as it relates to the others. Is there redundancy? Inconsistency? Just too many subsystems for particular situations? Centralize as much as you can, it will help everyone.

4. FLOW

Perhaps the most nebulous, but arguably the most important. If you want anyone else to be able to run your hack well, you have to put a lot of thought into the order and manner in which you present information. Answer every question a reader has as quickly as you can muster. Present procedures in order of frequency of use, and present steps stepwise. Put similar concepts by each other. Lean on headings, page references, and repetition like a crutch.

5. VISUAL IDENTITY

Draw people in with flashy colors, fonts, and pictures. Add in a cover page. Throw in some cool headings and page borders. Establishing a strong and consistent visual identity is often the difference between a good but unremarkable GLoGhack and one that gets a lot of attention. Use this design to lean into the focus of your game. While you’re here, think about graphic design and page layout- are you using space as best you can?

6. PREFACE

At the beginning of your hack, tell us what it’s about, as well as what you’re proud of in it or what are the novel developments in the hack. After you read a bajillion, it gets harder to pick out the differences, so putting a “shopping list” up front will help it stick in people’s minds and keep the attention on your hack’s focus and unique strengths.

7. CONSISTENT DESIGN LANGUAGE

This one is really subtle, but once your brain locks into it, you can’t get out of the mindset. Keep your language consistent. Is it “making a roll”, “rolling a check”, or “testing”? Is it a “class level”, “Class level”, or “CLASS LEVEL”? Is it “Armor”, “Armor Class”, or “Defense”? It’s a subtle effect, but honing in on the language you use and creating repetitive and reliable structures not only makes your game look professional, but subliminally easier to make sense of.

8. INTERWEAVE CREATIVITY

Throw in sprinkles of humor, prose, art, or in-universe quotes. Don’t just hit us with a wall of rules that sound like they were written by a lawyer. Invite us into your world, show us what your game is supposed to be like by example. This is your chance to show off your purple prose or poetic prowess, or perhaps give those stick figures you doodled a forever home. Have fun with it.

9. STEAL LOVINGLY

If you see something you like, a graphic style, an authorial voice, a mechanic, a class, take (giving credit) first and ask questions later. We’re all in it together, and if we wanted our ideas to be stuck in our own skulls, we wouldn’t have blogs and Discords. And please feel free to reach out to your favorite creators, GLoG or otherwise. We’re all just a bunch of friendly, excited nerds who like to talk shop about our projects and help our fellow hobbyists out. If you’re polite, you can probably get into some game design deep dives with the writers you really admire with ease. Build community for yourself. Play in other’s games, and offer to run your own. Read other hacks and offer feedback and praise. Be a creative force, a building force, a guiding force, a beacon of knowledge and kindness.

I’ll stop before I get too preachy. Hope that helped. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.