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, but given the recent positive murmurings about Black Sword Hack – and its potential to replicate the old-school gaming style of Eternal Champion roleplaying – I thought why not take some time out of my busy schedule and take a look at it.
Initial observations
I should start by saying that I purchased this book as a PDF via the 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, although there was little on their website to tell me much about them, beyond the generally gorgeous quality of the material they produce, of course.
I should also mention, that as they are a small publisher this does unfortunately reflect on the price of their products – with the BLACK SWORD HACK – Ultimate Chaos Edition PDF being €16 Euro and the Print/PDF option €29 Euro before any shipping is added. Just to put that in context for someone like myself, based here in New Zealand, the PDF works out to be $28 NZD, while the physical edition comes in at just over $70 NZD! Ouch!