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!