Black Sword Hack Adventure - Kitchen Prep

I like to be prepared in pretty much any part of my life, so tend to take a lot of notes, and I am sharing some of them here. These are not my complete notes for my adventure, just the parts regarding tone. This is a useful step for my process, because I like to make sure I'm hitting the tone accurately. The original Appendix N references still remain my favorite stories. Black Sword Hack's Appendix IV focuses on Sword & Sorcery tales. While I have not read everything listed here, I have read many, which are listed below the break. From BSH p.96:

Appendix IV
Bibliography (in alphabetical order)

LITERATURE
The First Law and Shattered Sea trilogies by Joe Abercrombie • Three Hearts and Three Lions and The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson • The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington • Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon • Everything by Robert E. Howard. Yes, I mean everything • Elephants and Corpses by Kameron Hurley • The Gotrek & Felix series by William King • The Lankhmar series by Fritz Leiber • The Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum, and Erekosë series by Michael Moorcock • The Empire of the East series by Fred Saberhagen • Disfavored Hero by Jessica Amanda Salmonson • Nifft the Lean by Michael Shea • Raum by Carl Sherrel • We are All Legends by Darrel Schweitzer • The Dying Earth books by Jack Vance • The Kane series by Karl Edward Wagner • The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

I decided to flavor this adventure with a lot of references to The Dying Earth, The Lankhmar series, and particularly, Nifft the Lean, which I'll talk more on in the next post. These notes are in the first section labelled Tone. Some game design tips, and formatting observations are near the end. Some of my notes are simply entries copied from wiki pages that I have bookmarked in the past, and collated here for ease of reference.  

Love For Black Sword Hack

I've been playing and collecting TTRPGs for so long that sometimes I have to pause and really appreciate that fact. Over the years my tastes have changed, as you would expect, but I always get drawn back to my roots - today's topic gets right at the heart of it. I'll share more details about my history with all of that some other time, but I'll just move on to what this particular post is all about. 

Black Sword Hack - Ultimate Chaos Edition, by Alexandre "Koybayashi" Jeannette, Eric Nieudan, Olivier "Nobboc" Revenu, Goran Glivovic and published by The Merry Mushmen. 

If you are someone who has an interest in TTRPGs and just stumbled across my tiny blog and don't know about this game, just stop, bookmark this blog page, and go grab a copy right now. This page alone should tell you pretty much everything you need to know why you need it, and the vibes...they are strong.

https://www.themerrymushmen.com/product/black-sword-hack-ultimate-chaos-edition/

If you came here by some other means, chances are I don't need to tell you what you already know. The game is a masterpiece. Some of these features aren't unique to BSH (after all, BSH is based on The Black Hack), but here are a few things I like about it, and why. 

The design captures the genre fiction: Sword & Sorcery. The game has a classless character creation and progression system. It's not that I don't appreciate classes in other games, but this aspect speaks to the source material very well. 

Mechanically speaking, The Doom Die, a great Push Your Luck device. Similarly, the fiction is remarkably dangerous and brutal, and the combat and magic mechanics reflect this well, too. As well as player facing rolls. I'm not lazy by a stretch, but player facing rolls to two things I enjoy. It gives the player a greater sense of agency and investment. It makes me feel like a an arbiter vs an adversary - this is an important aspect to me.

Finally, as a GM/Referee and creative person, I am head over heels in love with the worldbuilding aspect of BSH. It gives me the tools that allow me to easily create a seemingly endless number of settings that can emulate a wide range of Sword & Sorcery tales - frankly, it's astounding. 

I could go on and on and on and on, but I think you get the idea - I love the book.

I'm currently writing a serious of adventures for Black Sword Hack. If you are already interested in BSH, come on back here to learn more about what I'm up to. If this is your first time here, or with BSH, I hope I sold you on it! 

 - DOKTOR WARLOK