Haxen
A downloadable game
We call them Haxen, those who make incursions into the Requiem, the world of the past. A place and time murdered by the sorcerous rich, those capricious and omnipotent divines who were so desperate to live they killed everything around them. Haxen leave the safety of the communes to hunt the wastelands for salvage, and clues about what killed the world. Will you find answers? Will you defy your fate? Or will your corpse be another forgotten relic among the countless billions dead?
YOU ARE FATED
Haxen is an 8 page single-player tabletop RPG about exploring a shifting post-apocalyptic future with anachronistic characters. You use a series of runes and tables to navigate the world, create lore, and overcome obstacles. Tell the story of a ranger who explores skyscrapers looking for salvageable tech, a Paladin armed with an improvised axe hunting down near immortal oligarchs who survived the apocalypse, or a Cleric who can read the broken screens of the past, searching for names and answers.
NO DICE NO SHEETS
Haxen uses a resolution system of runes that describe potential outcomes from failure and calamity, conflict and mixed successes, to victory and opportunity. Based on the Blades in the Dark engine created by John Harper, this system creates risk and reward with every move in the Requiem, and gives you the basic building blocks to tell an exciting story in a strange post-apocalypse.
PRINT AS YOU LIKE
Haxen was made to be printed and played on the go, when and where you want. There are several printing version available to suit your needs best.
Credits
Written & Designed by Michael Elliott
Art by Maciej Zagorski of the Forge Studios
Scourge font by Tugcu Design
Based on Blades in the Dark, a product of One Seven Design, developed and authored by John Harper, and licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Haxen Zine
An 8 page 5.5 x 8.5 full colour saddle-stitched zine printed on high quality paper. Ships to anywhere in the world. Please include your shipping details. If you didn't provide any info or missed the prompt, please email your mailing address to michael(@)notwriting.net.
Community Copies
These are free copies of the game for folks who want to check it out, but cannot afford to do so. If money is tight but you're excited for the game, this is for you. Every purchase of HAXEN adds one more community copy to be claimed.
You can also get all my games by joining my Patreon for as little a $1 a month.
Development log
- Haxen Released!Feb 22, 2023
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I second the request for an actual play! Every time I pick it up (I am a KS supporter) I am surprised by how evocative it feels, and I would love for the game to be more widely known.
This also plays really well copy and pasting the character sheet and map onto excalidraw and writing/drawing on top of it (or any image editor would work).
I really love the mechanic where naming things solidifies them. I suppose you could even drop a second character into the same world if you wanted.
How do sorceries work? Are they only triggered by the two encounters that name them?
Yup! They can be quite disruptive so they're pretty rare.
Enjoyed my first playthrough (Kirgant lived to face the mourning flower and its undead minions, did not live through a requiem commune cursed by a witch and destroyed by orbital weaponry...)!
Clarification: I totally missed the point of haxes playing the first time, but am I right that they let you mark runes to resolve their associated action? I.e., when I have Rope & Bone, I can choose any rune to resolve an explore action?
It didn't click when I read it before, and I thought it was a chance to mark a rune from the matrix so you wouldn't have that outcome come up later (influencing the odds / fate indirectly). However, I didn't ever use them this way, because it feels bad to mark off runes without getting something in return 🙃
I think the haxes description and keywords are pretty clear and succinct, but an example turn description (even in prose) could help make the mechanic crystal clear.
Thanks for a fun playground!
Correct! It gives you some freedom to resolve those actions, rather than having to mark the next rune, as normal.
I didn't catch this either. Maybe there's a better way to word it?
Did an intro run as Prester Ki, rowing down the Kir River, attacked by an undead river dolphin that spewed acid from its blowhole. Scar from that. Fled to the Tael Mountains, where the space/time rips caused by the Time Scars gave me chronic nausea. Puked the whole way to the Kas Dead Forest, traded with some goblins for a bit of salvage, offended the lead goblin, got a scar where he bit me. Ran away again into some ruins, exited. The Time Scars swept in, and my left arm was ripped off and replaced with a clockwork prosthetic.
Have to retire Prester Ki because there's like three runes left in his matrix, even after exiting cleared some of them.
10/10 would breed chaos across the Requiem again.
Hell yeah! Thanks so much for sharing!
I am excited to try this. Some of the rules are a little fuzzy. It would be great is you could do a video walk-through .
Stay tuned! Planning on doing an actual-play in the future.
Awesome! Please let me know when you do!
Yes please. Just read through it and the instructions are really not clear. Could’ve spared a few pages to provide playthrough examples.
Any update on the actual-play?
Nothing at the moment. Haven't recorded one myself before so I need to learn how and then put this together. I'll definitely post an update when it's ready.
Any update?