[Review] Black Sword Hack – Ultimate Chaos Edition

BLACK SWORD HACK – Ultimate Chaos Edition
An Old School Renaissance (OSR) Fantasy Game
Written by Alexandre ‘Kobayashi’ Jeannette, with art by Goran Gligovic
and released by The Merry Mushmen.

It isn’t often that I look to review books outside of the vast library of Stormbringer (and Elric!) RPG supplements that I’m yet to critique here, but given the recent positive murmurings I’ve heard about Black Sword Hack – and its eligibility replicate old school gaming of the Eternal Champion – I thought it was worth taking a look at.

Initial observations

I should start by saying that I purchased this book as a pdf via publisher’s website having missed the very successful Kickstarter in late 2022. As an aside, while this is my first interaction with the French based Merry Mushmen, they seem to be a publisher of the most wonderful boutique games and roleplaying supplements, however there was little on their website to tell me much about them beyond the generally gorgeous quality of the material they produce. I should also say, the fact they are a small publisher does unfortunately reflect on the price of the game itself – with the PDF alone being €16 Euro and the Print/PDF option €29 Euro before shipping. Just to put that in context for myself, based in New Zealand, the PDF works out to be $28 NZD, while the physical edition comes in at just over $70 NZD!

But while these costs might make me cringe, the art and design of BLACK SWORD HACK – Ultimate Chaos Edition pretty much makes up for it, being pack full of the lone artist’s (Goran Gligovic) beautiful work. Better still the pdfs come in many different versions, including one that provides a two-page spread view, allowing the reader to fully appreciate the art in the glorious format it was obviously created in. It is these sorts of design decisions that shows the flexibility and thinking available to smaller publishers like Merry Mushmen, ensuring they stand out from the crowd and deliver quality.

Onto the book itself, it is a 112-page PDF, that has a fairly short Table of Contents and surprisingly no index at all (although given the length of the actual rules and the nature of this style of game I wonder if an index is actually necessary). The text opens with a pleasant surprise; a foreword from Bill King, the well-respected fantasy author (and creator of the Gotrek & Felix characters for the Games Workshop Warhammer Fantasy setting). This brief introduction discusses Bill’s own relationship with roleplaying and his love of the previous edition of Black Sword Hack.

So what is Black Sword Hack and can you play Stormbringer with it?

To spare you the effort of reading the rest of this review… yes… yes you can…

…

Oh, you’re still here? Okay, ummmm…

Yes, you can very easily replicate Stormbringer using Black Sword Hack, but like many games that have recently declared their ability to fill this niche, it is really going to come down to the Game Master and the players to fill in the gaps where the rulebook falls short.

Now why do I say that? The short answer is that you only ever get the basics in every category that makes up the structure of a roleplaying of this type, and everything else is left for you to do. I should explain, in Black Sword Hack, the game’s claim to being a game focused on “dark fantasy roleplaying … inspired by (but not limited to) the works of R.E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane series, Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar and Jack Vance’s Dying Earth books” is based on the descriptive material appearing in the endless series of lists scattered throughout the book. From character backgrounds, through the rules to create your unique setting, and even the sample scenarios themselves everything is about providing options… but not too many, a dozen or so at most, just enough to ensure that you keep the scope of the game on the dark fantasy style. I’m going to be critical here and say that lists don’t make a game, and this is a trap that I think too many games like Black Sword Hack fall into. They note the tropes of a genre and the use these descriptions to focus, and some ways limit, the game play to that style.

Black Sword Hack can be pretty bad at these as beyond these and some specific example options – such as the Faerie Ties, Twisted Science and Runic Weapons – the rest of the game is pretty generic fantasy that – dare I say it – amounts to little more than competent.

Is it too horrible for me to say all that?

I suppose, after those comments, you are going to think I don’t like the game, but you’d be wrong. I very much appreciate it for what it is – a simple set of game mechanics (that attempt to replicate gaming style of the late 70s and early 80s) and plenty of suggestions and guides that identify what old school dark fantasy once was. However, beyond the atmospheric art and design, and various examples tapping straight into the text of the words of the fantasy authors themselves, there is nothing that compels me to believe that Black Sword Hack does anything other RPG couldn’t.

In summary

I like BLACK SWORD HACK – Ultimate Chaos Edition but in my (likely unwanted) opinion, it doesn’t go far enough to actually bring the conflicts of Elric, Corum or Hawkmoon to life…