Black Sword Hack - Ultimate Chaos Edition
Black Sword Hack is a rules-lite tabletop roleplaying game for two to six players and one gamemaster. It evolves from the old-school renaissance play style (sometimes known as adventure gaming), using straightforward rules that are easy to modify, expand on, or ignore. It will let you run dark fantasy epics inspired by the works of old masters of the fantasy and science-fiction genre, including Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, Karl Edward Wagner, Jack Vance, Robert E Howard, and many more.Grab your sword and shield of bronze, don your demonic breastplate, and recall the spells you stole from Elfheim. You must get ready for battle, for the enemy is threatening everything and everyone you've ever known. The struggle between Law and Chaos is coming to an end, and reality itself is in danger. You may have to sell your soul, and perhaps even lose your life – but if the world is to disappear tomorrow, you and your companions will go to your doom knowing you fought til the bitter end.
Give birth to a world, and watch it burn
As a gamemaster, you are in charge of guiding your unlikely band of heroes in a world of war and decadence. What world? The one you design using the procedures detailed in Black Sword Hack! These easy-to-follow guidelines and inspiring random tables will spark an original setting in no time.
Your players will create a party of antiheroes who live by their swords, wits, and demonic pacts, and you'll decide how the setting responds: which nations fight an endless war using dark sorcery, spirit alliances, or weird science (the game offers six forms of 'magic', including runic weapons of course). You'll create a main antagonist and their plans to rule the world – or destroy it, or rebuild it in their own image – and challenge your players to do something about it.
RPG hacking, a brief history
Black Sword Hack is an evolution (a 'hack' as we call adaptations of a game in our circles) of David Black's The Black Hack. If you haven't spent much time in the dank dungeons of adventure/OSR gaming, you may not know The Black Hack. Appearing roughly at the same time as the just as seminal Into the Odd (during the 3rd wave of the OSR, also known as Ye Gilded Days of Olde Google Plus), TBH prompted a slew of hacks of every kind, some of them still going strong like The Cthulhu Hack. If you've ever wanted to explore dungeons like our ancestors used to, we cannot recommend The Black Hack enough.
This book is bundled with the first issue of the Chaos Crier - a periodical zine for Black Sword Hack and other sword & sorcery adventure games!
Author: Alexandre ‘Kobayashi’ Jeannette
Art: Goran Gligović
Editor: Éric Nieudan
Layout: Olivier Revenu
Special Guests: Evlyn Moreau, Rob Matthews
The book - A5 (5.9’ x 8.25’, slightly bigger than digest size), 112 pages, hardcover, sewn binding. Printed in full color on 125gr. coated paper.
The zine - saddle-stitched A5 zine, 26 B&W pages.
*PDFs will be emailed once the physical item ships.
