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.

MARROW Magic II: Electric Boogaloo

 MARROW MAGIC

For a long time I’ve been struggling with how to handle magic in MARROW. I’ve never found or developed a system where I was satisfied with the depth, flexibility, and consistency of a spellcasting system and how it fit into the rest of MARROW. Here’s my first draft at something coherent and usable.

CASTING A SPELL

To cast a SPELL, roll...

INT: If you’re using an object, like a spellbook or wand, to cast

WIS: If you’re calling upon another entity to use your magic

CHA: If the magic was inside you all along…

If you CRIT, you cast the SPELL successfully without USE. If you succeed, you cast the SPELL, but USE it. If you fail, the SPELL fizzles, but you don’t USE it. If you FUMBLE, the SPELL flops, you USE it, and things usually go sideways.

PUSH

Once you’ve cast a SPELL, you can voluntarily take STRESS to PUSH it. There’s no limit to the STRESS you can take, but be careful- PUSH yourself too hard and things might get out of hand fast! There are three axes upon which you can PUSH yourself: Duration, Versatility, and Intensity.

	1 STRESS	2 STRESS	3 STRESS
DURATION	+d4 TURNS/ROUNDS	+d4 days	Eternal
VERSATILITY	Tiny bend in use	Reasonable enough use	Vaguely similar at best
INTENSITY	Perceptible boost	Significant boost	Mighty power!
(Extra damage)	+1	+2	+4
(Decreased casting time)	Halved	Quartered	Instantaneous

You can also PUSH yourself to the limit, casting epic magics that define eras. Nothing is outside of your grasp, from time reversal to deicide to mass resurrection. However, when you do so, you die with no hope of return, or suffer a worse fate. There is no escape from the scales of death.

USE

Depending on the form your SPELL takes, USE looks different. Here’s some examples:

STR: Wands, staves, orbs, rods, scrolls, spellbooks, and all sorts of eldritch bric-a-brac can contain SPELLS in STR slots. Most of the time, they have one SPELL apiece, with as many as 3 or 4 in a more powerful object, like an archmage’s book. They also contain a set pool of USE upon finding (d20, if you’re in a pinch). You can also use that USE as STRESS in the case of PUSHING SPELLS the object casts. These objects FUMBLE like anything else!

DEX: Magical tattoos, hereditary witchery, and parasites from other dimensions all might be sources of SPELLS that occupy DEX slots. Whenever you take USE from a SPELL cast in this way, take 1 FATIGUE instead. If you FUMBLE, instead take d6 FATIGUE, or induce an arcane catastrophe.

WIS: Most SPELLS as people know them, memorized bundles of arcane energy, are stored in WIS slots. If an ABILITY grants SPELLS, this is the form they take. When a SPELL takes USE, it instead is destroyed, no longer occupying a SLOT- you have forgotten the ancient rune-words you need for your invocation.

CHA: Most of the time, SPELLS themselves won’t occupy CHA slots, but instead, many ABILITIES grant SPELLS in various forms. However, a SPELL so mighty that attaches itself to the magician’s identity, something as world-shattering as Wish or Apocalypse...

TOKENS

Every SPELL on Aeros has an associated TOKEN. It might be a common item (a penny with two “heads” faces, a cat’s whiskers), or something unique and magical (a cockatrice egg, the Apocrypha Orb). If you have the appropriate TOKEN while you cast a SPELL, make your casting roll with ADVANTAGE.

D10 random TOKENS:

1 A spool of silver

2 A dream about the ocean in a bottle

3 A Nemidian rune-rock

4 A red mole’s molehill

5 The sword of Khar Vendis

6 A green glass eye

7 A staff carved from the world’s oldest tree

8 An angel’s toenail

9 A child’s favorite marble

10 A lightning bolt

PROCEDURE

• Roll to cast the SPELL

• If you have a TOKEN, roll with ADVANTAGE

• Allies can roll INT to assist, if they succeed, you roll with ADVANTAGE

• Expend USE as needed

• If you failed your roll, stop after this step!

• PUSH yourself, if you dare

• The effect takes hold

VULGAR ARCANA

This is the equivalent of your basic SPELL list. Roll a d4 (for one of the four types of rune magic) and a d8 to determine a random SPELL. SPELLS are described as follows:

Spell Name. Spell description, in terse terms. (TOKEN here)

1 RAVEN

1 Swarm. A scratching mass of claws and craws deals 2 WOUNDS and causes a lot of havoc before scattering to the wind once more. (Stillborn animal with a conjoined twin)

2 Feather Cloak. This cloak woven from the blackness between the stars clads you for a TURN; while wearing it, you’re only perceptible by magical entities. (Broken humerus)

3 Word of Murder. Call out in blasphemous tones and point at someone. A feather tattoo appears on their body. It will kill them in 13 days. (The skull of a Demon Lord)

4 Bird Soul. Animate an object with the spirit of a dead bird for a TURN. Good luck getting it to do anything useful. (A tea kettle filled with boiling blood)

5 Crowsflesh. You take a half-avian form for a TURN, your toes morphing into claws and your arms into atavistic wings of jet. (A statuette carved from a petrified tree)

6 Warp. The flesh of your target blooms and calcifies under your touch, inducing a random MUTATION. (A Moon Orchid)

7 Cry. Your mournful laments are understood by all who hear, so long as they are utterly pessimistic. Choose one living creature, you two can converse for a TURN. (Tears)

8 Psychopomp. Kill someone. You can pull the soul of a FRIEND dead for no more than a day into that body. That body can never heal through natural means. (A golden scythe)

OTHER POSSIBLE SPELLS: Wardenship of the Flock, Bird Familiar, Beast Command, Growth

2 MOON

1 Terraform. Everything FAR from you becomes a lunar biome: salt spires, crater-valley, fungal pit, sulphur sea, sugar-hive, the Moon Monarch’s Manor, or another. (Moon rock)

2 Crown of the Lunar Queen. A halo of glowing moon rock appears above a touched target’s head; they obey your commands for d4 ROUNDS. (Crown of a dead ruler)

3 Moon’s Nimbus. Moonlight shines around you for a TURN. It acts as natural sunlight, and no creature can enter the light without your permission. (Blue flame)

4 Regality of Moths. For a TURN, people assume you’re important, and you can levitate a handspan off the floor. (A living moth the size of your head)

5 Bind Moon-Beast. 50% this is some wildlife, like a Trilobite or a Stone Flower. 40% this is an intelligent member of the Moon Court, like the Bubble Wizards of t’Keem. 10% this is the Moon Monarch herself, who can grant wishes or bestow knighthoods. (Mithril bell)

6 Phase Change. The moon immediately changes to your choice of phase, or if it’s during the day, a solar eclipse occurs, lasting a TURN. Don’t overthink it. (A silver blade)

7 Melancholy Melody of the Moon Monarch. For a TURN, the minds of all who hear you sing are filled with thoughts of the worst outcomes of their actions. (Musical instrument)

8 Lunar Lock. Spend d4 ROUNDS carving zodiac symbols on a doorway or entrance to make it impassable for a TURN. (A key made for no door)

OTHER POSSIBLE SPELLS: Lycanthropy, Meteor, Zodiac Invocation, Solar Wrath, Read Stars

3 GLASS

1 Lacerating Carapace. You get +1 DEF for d4 ROUNDS as your skin sprouts broken flesh-shards. When something CLOSE hits you, it takes 1 WOUND. (Trilobite shell)

2 Prism. Create a monochromatic illusion your size or smaller for d4 ROUNDS. (Prism)

3 Sanguine Signatory. Take a WOUND to write a command in blood. As long as it’s wet (usually a TURN), all who read it must follow it. (A Devil’s quill pen)

4 Oubliette. Open a portal to a random place in the cosmos; a target you touch is banished therein for d4 ROUNDS or until a countercharm is performed. (Gold manacles)

5 Invulnerability. Touch an object to make it impervious to damage or FUMBLES for d4 ROUNDS. If you touch a creature, they are petrified for the duration. (Adamant dust)

6 Mirror Walk. Shatter the fabric of space-time to teleport FAR or open a portal to a random part of the cosmos that persists for d4 ROUNDS. (A mirror containing a soul)

7 Ocular Pearl. Summon a small ball of glass. You can see auras while holding it, and can see through it remotely if it’s in the same HEX as you. (Diamond monocle)

8 Open Door. Millenia ago, before the Cataclysm, the Doors were a network of inter-cosmic portals. They probably still work fine. (Keystone of a wizard’s front door)

OTHER POSSIBLE SPELLS: Resonance, Eldritch Lenses, Reverse Time, Shatter Reality

4 ASH

1 Emberwind. Anyone caught in this cone of whirling cinders takes 2 WOUNDS, and anything flammable ignites. (Weeds from under the First Tree)

2 Blitzschreiben. Carve a rune of lightning into something. The next thing to touch it takes 2 WOUNDS and is deafened by a peal of thunder. (Lightning in a bottle)

3 Fever Dream. Touch someone to cure them of all their Addiction to a drug, or all of their WOUNDS, STRESS, or FATIGUE. They fall into a coma for 24 hours. (‘Shrooms)

4 Memento Ignius. Touch a fresh corpse and ask it a question; it must answer as truthfully as it can, though bodies know less than minds. (A 6-fingered cat’s paw)

5 Maelstrom. Control the weather for a TURN; you can make it as extreme or strange as you please. (The claws of a Wind Dragon)

6 Erode. Touch something inanimate; it crumbles, rusts, or otherwise decays. (Bone axe)

7 Creation’s Song. Spend d4 ROUNDS singing sacred, cosmically resonant tones to manifest a simple object made of one material that takes up one slot. (432Hz tuning fork)

8 Conduit. Your flesh invokes a long-forgotten primordial form; you become an Angel of Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, or Air for a TURN, taking 1 FATIGUE after. (Burned effigy)

OTHER POSSIBLE SPELLS: Summon Mephit, Deaden the Ley, Call Colossus, Homunculus

CREATING AND RESEARCHING SPELLS: SPELLS can be researched with LONG EXPENSIVE PROGRESS. At the end of that time, roll INT. If you succeed, you have made the SPELL, and whenever you roll for a SPELL, you can choose that SPELL instead. If you fail, you know how to obtain the SPELL, but it won’t be easy. It may be contained in a wand sequestered in a distant crypt or locked in the failing mind of the Archdruid in the Maze, for example. You can research the location of a TOKEN for any given SPELL with SHORT PROGRESS, though if the TOKEN is a ubiquitous object, it won’t be very fruitful.

MAKING A SPELL

• There are no generic SPELLS. Every SPELL should have some unique dimension or bit of flavor beyond the lowest common denominator. For example, there’s no Magic Missile, but instead Screaming Skull, whose whispers of madness cause STRESS.

• 2 WOUNDS, d4 ROUNDS, and a TURN are good starting points. You want each SPELL to be capable of being PUSHED, so err on the side of weak.

• Chaos is your friend. SPELLS should shake things up when used, and be found randomly, with strange effects and narrow utility. What might the spell Hold Acorn do?

• Implications are your friend. A SPELL shouldn’t go for more than 2 or 3 lines. Assume that ambiguity can be cleared up by PUSHING the SPELL to get it to do what you want.

• As a rule, summoned creatures don’t have to like you by default. They behave as they normally would, which could create more problems than it solves.

BLACK MYTH for ICRPG

With help of Ezzerharden’s primer and a lot of delicious art from Black Myth: Wukong.

BIO FORM: Everyone is at least half Celestial. That means that they are more tangible and powerful than most creatures in the world, the spar of Heaven powering their souls.

• You start with 7 STAT points and 5 EFFORT points: you are a force to be reckoned with.

• You have an animal form of your choice you can occupy once a day.

• You operate on a different power scale: mortal creatures, like people and animals, never have HEARTS, only mystical entities can challenge your might in this way.

MARTIAL EFFORT: GUNS and KUNG FU both use a d8 EFFORT dice. However, in order to be “proficient” in these advanced weapons, you have to have at least 1 point in normal WEAPON EFFORT to represent your general training.

STARTING ARCHETYPE: Choose one of the options below, which gives you an extra piece of equipment and a starting ABILITY.

MONK You have honed your body with martial arts, meditation, and intense discipline. You get Focus Wraps (+2 MARTIAL EFFORT) and Mobile Mastery (You have ADVANTAGE on attacks when you move in the same ROUND).

ALCHEMIST Having mastered the traditional arts of healing, you’ve moved onto the greater pursuit- creating the False Gold of Immortality. You get an Herbal Kit (3 uses, heal ULTIMATE EFFORT) and the Midas Touch (once a day, touch something inanimate and turn it to gold).

NOBLE You are insanely rich and powerful, the scion of one of the Emperors of the Middle Kingdoms. You get a Badge of Imperial Authority (“I’m with the Emperor.”) and Commanding Word (Once a day, point to someone and command them, with a CHA roll if they’re inhuman, they must do what you ask).

GENERAL You have mastered the art of war, your skill in combat and leadership absolutely legendary. You get a Victor's Whetstone (Use this on a weapon to get ADVANTAGE on your next d4 attack rolls) and Command (On your turn, you can command an ally to attack for free).

MYSTIC You tap into the latent energies that suffuse the cosmos, known as Qi (“chee”). You get Prayer Beads (+2 MAGIC EFFORT) and Qi Manipulation (Take damage in order to automatically damage someone FAR from you for the same amount).

EIDOLON You are practically a specter, and shadows are like a cloak you wear on your shoulders. You get a Spider’s Mantle (As long as you are in darkness, you can climb on walls) and a Umbral Touch (Once a day, extinguish all light sources FAR from you and regain 1 HP per light extinguished).

INVOKER You summon idols and spirits from the strange realms beyond. You have a pet (1 HEART, +1 to all rolls and EFFORT) and a Spirit Step (Teleport anywhere you can see with a WIS roll, if you fail, you get shunted somewhere random in the cosmos).

STARTING LOOT: In addition to 4 pieces of ALFHEIM starting LOOT, start off with 2 Glyphs of any form. Each Glyph manifests itself differently depending on the form it takes. It can be used as a SPELL, a TATTOO, INSCRIBED on any item, or carved specifially into a WEAPON. (For example, Sun Wukong’s staff would be a quarterstaff with a STEEL INSCRIPTION and a WOOD WEAPON inscription, and that one item would be his magical starting LOOT.) Each one has a different effect:

	SPELL	TATTOO	INSCRIPTION	WEAPON
WATER	HEAL. Heal for MAGIC EFFORT.	FLOW. Your speed is doubled, and your body becomes amorphous, fitting through anywhere water can.	PLENTIFUL. The object goes above and beyond what it is supposed to do- a bag might have extradimensional volume, or produce 3 gold coins every time you open it...	EVER-FLOWING. If you get a 15+ on an attack roll, you can attack again.
STEEL	FABRICATE. Mold something metal into something else of equal volume for d4 ROUNDS.	IRON SKIN. +3 DEFENSE.	INVULNERABLE. This item cannot be destroyed or FUMBLED.	MAGIC-BUSTER. If you deal a HEART of EFFORT, you destroy enchantments on the target.
WOOD	OVERGROWTH. Touch a plant to have it explode in size instantly.	EVERGREEN. When you’re conscious, you regenerate 1 HP per ROUND so long as you haven’t taken fire or poison damage in the last ROUND.	SENTIENT. This weapon has a mind of its own, and communicates to you in some way.	RESIZING. The weapon can resize to any (reasonable) size.
FIRE	FLAME RAY. Create conflagration in a line FAR from you, it deals MAGIC EFFORT.	HOT SKIN. Deal BASIC EFFORT to anyone who hits you with a melee attack.	CONSUMABLE. When you destroy, consume, or break this item, something epic happens!	CONFLAGRATION. The weapon lights what it hits on fire, dealing BASIC EFFORT each ROUND until put out.
AIR	WEATHER CONTROL. Do a HEART of MAGIC EFFORT to control the weather for d4 ROUNDS.	WIND WALKER. You can fly half your speed.	POWERFUL. Like the gale and typhoon, the forces of nature give this item ULTIMATE EFFORT.	DANCING. Let go of your weapon and it will attack for you. It has a +0 to hit and uses your EFFORT bonus.

THE PREMISE: You all are graduates of the Still Pond Monastery, one of the Eight Pillars. Having graduated long ago, you all receive rather sheepish-sounding letters from the Oni in charge of the monastery, Master Fao. Despite appearing to be a hard, stone-faced demagogue during your time in his training, in your adulthood you realize that he was actually relatively ditzy and reckless, especially because of his penchant for “collecting” magic artifacts. He explains that the Monastery is in some trouble due to his recent escapades, and that he needs your help to set it right...

THE WORLD: The Middle Kingdoms, land of the mortal Emperors locked in eternal war for territory, lies in between the Eight Pillars, structures that bridge the mystical world with the corporeal. Beyond their perimeter, the magical realms of the Kunlun Mountains, Scarlet River, Flowing Sands, and Pure Lands are home to mighty Celestials and terrible beasts, like the Vermilion Phoenix and the Onyx Tortoise...

THE COSMOS: The Eight Pillars each also act as gateways to Heaven (Tian, home of the Jade Emperor and the Celestial Court) and Hell (Diyu, home of Lord Yama and his infernal servants). In addition, each planet is aligned with a specific element: Mercury (WATER), Venus (METAL), Mars (FIRE), Jupiter (WOOD), Saturn (AIR).