Hax

Hax is a 1999-2000 fantasy role-playing scenario for the popular Macintosh shareware engine Realmz, written by John Rawlins (boru@rainbowdragon.com). Adventurers travel to the Madwood in search of the elusive town of Hax, said to overflow with gem-bestowed powers; many a brave soul has sought to open a trade route there and found nothing but an unmarked grave.

Scenario Concept

The premise is a classic fortune-or-death adventure hook: players assemble a Realmz party and venture into Madwood territory in pursuit of a half-mythical settlement reputed to hold gems of tremendous power. Failed expeditions before yours have left the route littered with the dead, framing Hax as a high-risk, high-reward dungeon-crawl trek rather than a linear quest.

Engine Requirements

Hax 1.3 is built specifically against Realmz version 7.0.9 and may behave unpredictably on other engine versions. As a Realmz scenario it inherits the host's hardware floor: a 256-colour-capable Macintosh, at least 5 MB of free RAM, and a display of 640x480 or better. It will not run on the old Apple 12-inch monitors or other sub-VGA displays.

Disk Footprint

Realmz needs about 800 KB of free hard-disk space for temporary files during play, returned when you quit, plus roughly 300-800 KB per saved game depending on the scenario. If a new game fails to start, Rawlins's release notes specifically suggest checking that 800 KB of scratch space is available on the volume.

Distribution and Licence

Hax is distributed as a shareware add-on: about half of the scenario can be played for free, with a $10 registration fee unlocking the remainder. It will only run on a registered copy of Realmz, and the author explicitly authorised inclusion on the Info-Mac CD-ROM mirrors. Version 1.3 is described as fixing several monolithic bugs over earlier releases.