HACK is a card game created by me and Katherine Thornhill. It's 2-4 players, and generally takes about 30 minutes to play. 

Vision

If you do something illegal for the greater good, does that make it bad? Ethical hacking can be an important topic for critical thinking in society. Many injustices have been brought to light because of people technically breaking the law and hacking to uncover the truth. For example, the Steubenville High School rape case or people hacking into large companies to expose stolen customer data. Some individuals will view this type of hacking as a justified action, social media tends to be more black-and-white about the ethics of hacking, and the judicial system can impose long jail times on hackers if they’re caught. Our vision is to pose the problem to the player that hackers have to go through when deciding whether they want to hack a certain “target” because it’s the right thing to do but risk getting caught by doing so. It’s a game based on strategy, inter-player cooperation, skill, and just a little bit of luck.

Story

The world you live in is being run by deceptive scum: huge companies that embezzle money, governments that steal citizen’s information, social media that hides the truth. You've decided it’s time to take justice into your own hands by hacking your way into mainframes, personal computers and servers to obtain the information you need to expose the dirtbags. Increase your hacking level so you can hit bigger jobs, but don’t get caught because the consequences will be severe.
Picture
Example Cards

Game Play/Instructions

Every player has a deck of resource and event cards (some are good, some are bad)
    • Each player deck consists of 35 cards
    • Each player draws 3 cards on their turn - these three cards will comprise the player’s hand for the turn and will determine their current hacking ability level
    • Adding together all of the bonuses given from the player’s hand (some will be negative) and their skill level gives the player’s current “attack strength” for that turn
    • At the end of the player’s turn, they will discard their current hand of 3 cards and draw a new hand.  When the deck has been exhausted, the discard pile is shuffled back into the deck.
Each player has their own personal hacking skill level - it will start at 0
    • This skill level will increase by 1 with each successful hack
    • This skill level will decrease by a random amount when the hacker has an unsuccessful hack (determined by a d4 dice roll)
There is a deck of unique hacking scenarios
    • 3 hacking scenarios will be laid out on the table for the hackers to choose from
    • Each scenario has a difficulty level that determines how likely it is that the hacker will succeed
    • When a hack is successfully completed, it leaves the table and a new scenario is put out
    • When a hack is failed, that hack becomes more difficult but more valuable (the company has been put on alert to hacking) -> its difficult level increases by 2, and it’s victory points increases by 1
    • Each scenario will be worth a certain amount of victory points based upon its difficulty level - when a scenario is successfully completed, the player will gain those victory points
    • How to determine if a player has succeeded or failed:
      1. Player bonuses from hand + Player skill level = Attack Strength
      2. Difficulty of Scenario - Attack Strength = Threshold of Failure
      3. Roll a d6, if Roll <= Threshold, player fails
      4. you win by having 20 victory points (VP), which you get by successfully hacking
Player Turn
    1. Draw 3
    2. Lay out all the cards drawn on that turn
    3. Play any Events
    4. Play any Special action cards in hand
    5. Compute Attack Strength
    6. Decide whether or not to attempt a hack
      • Attempting a hack is the only way to advance in the game and win
      • If you don’t attempt a hack, you immediately lose 1 skill level
    7. Discard hand