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Black Sword Hack Ultimate Chaos Edition
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.
Black Sword Hack UCE is a rules-lite tabletop roleplaying game for two to six players and one gamesmaster. It evolves from the old-school renaissance play style (sometimes known as adventure gaming), using straightfoward 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.
The game eschews traditional classes in favour of backgrounds depending on the characters’ chosen origin: barbarian, civilised, or decadent. It is a quick and efficient way to build unique characters who will adventure in a world of your own design. Black Sword Hack also uses a Doom die mechanic to help push the envelope of traditional OSR lethality – at the risk of going too far and becoming doomed.
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.
Black Sword Hack UCE is a rules-lite tabletop roleplaying game for two to six players and one gamesmaster. It evolves from the old-school renaissance play style (sometimes known as adventure gaming), using straightfoward 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.
The game eschews traditional classes in favour of backgrounds depending on the characters’ chosen origin: barbarian, civilised, or decadent. It is a quick and efficient way to build unique characters who will adventure in a world of your own design. Black Sword Hack also uses a Doom die mechanic to help push the envelope of traditional OSR lethality – at the risk of going too far and becoming doomed.
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.
112 pages, ebook
Published March 1, 2023
2 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 30, 2023
By far my favorite roll under system to date. This game is designed with campaign play in mind. Light guidlines on how to build the world from the group up with your players (or alone) is provided, though it's not Black Sword Hack's strong point. The game includes rules for fairly limited yet somehow diverse play styles by including rules for twisted science, sorcery, demon pacts, spirit alliances, fairly ties and runic weapos. This might sound pretty gonzo, but the author warns against using all the listed elements at once and recommendeds choosing a few to use in your game.
The character creation is simple yet provides enough meat to give you a good feel of the character without overdoing the details. This is important if you intend to run a sandbox as is recommended - quick character generation is a must and I believe this system has a good balance of quick and detailed. Character creation also has a great variation on rolling attributes so that character attributes have a range between 8 and 13. You end up with more balanced characters and keep the fun of rolling dice. You start with one of 3 origins: barbarian, civilized, or decadent. This dictates the backgrounds you can take. Backgrounds give basical attribute bumps like +1 str or allow you to take dark pacts or other special skills. The process is fun and intuitive.
I have yet to play this one, so a game might bump this to a 5 star rating.
4.5 stars because the character creation is awesome but the world building tips are not quite there for me.
The character creation is simple yet provides enough meat to give you a good feel of the character without overdoing the details. This is important if you intend to run a sandbox as is recommended - quick character generation is a must and I believe this system has a good balance of quick and detailed. Character creation also has a great variation on rolling attributes so that character attributes have a range between 8 and 13. You end up with more balanced characters and keep the fun of rolling dice. You start with one of 3 origins: barbarian, civilized, or decadent. This dictates the backgrounds you can take. Backgrounds give basical attribute bumps like +1 str or allow you to take dark pacts or other special skills. The process is fun and intuitive.
I have yet to play this one, so a game might bump this to a 5 star rating.
4.5 stars because the character creation is awesome but the world building tips are not quite there for me.
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June 10, 2023Wonderful little RPG that takes the old-school bones and ramps up the doom-laden prog-rock Moorcockian flavour--I am very into this sort of thing, so this was maybe always going to be a slam dunk for me. I hadn't gotten around to reading The Black Hack yet, so I was also impressed with the solid simple mechanics here, and the extremely vivid and genre-appropriate modifications this version has made.
And then the rest of the book is rounded out with two (2!) sample adventures, a city, some lovely random tables, an example world, and much more. A lot of great stuff crammed into a little book, very much looking forward to getting it to the table.
And then the rest of the book is rounded out with two (2!) sample adventures, a city, some lovely random tables, an example world, and much more. A lot of great stuff crammed into a little book, very much looking forward to getting it to the table.
November 4, 2023
Black Sword Hack is the kind of indie, OSR inspired RPG that I like to support. Like many other OSRs, this one takes inspiration from the pulp fiction writers of the early-to-mid 20th Century, with a dash of the modern day revivalists. As a spark plug for the imagination and generator of bizarre and interesting gaming ideas, it is pretty fantastic. As a rule system, eh, I’m not as enthused. The rules almost feel like an afterthought here. Still, given the modularity of most RPG systems, this book is quite adaptably plug-and-play: pillage what you’d most enjoy using and move on.
June 4, 2025
I like the game.
I love the concept.
But the book itself is sloppy. There's an example of the rules early on that's got a typo that made me question the ruleset and go back and forth between two different pages, reading them several times to figure out if it was *my* mistake.
There's also several less severe stuff, but it feels very amateurish.
I also find the game a little too light on explanations at times.
I love the concept.
But the book itself is sloppy. There's an example of the rules early on that's got a typo that made me question the ruleset and go back and forth between two different pages, reading them several times to figure out if it was *my* mistake.
There's also several less severe stuff, but it feels very amateurish.
I also find the game a little too light on explanations at times.
May 28, 2023
A cool distillation of Sword and Sorcery and Dark Fantasy settings for playing condemned pawns of Law and Chaos in a dying world, inspired by the works of Moorcock, Howard, Leiber, Anderson and friends.
Streamlined rules, built over the Black Hack system, and evocative random tables for character and world creation and adventure seeds.
Streamlined rules, built over the Black Hack system, and evocative random tables for character and world creation and adventure seeds.
April 20, 2023
On a first read, incredibly flavorful. Seems like an ideal book to run a Conan adventure like the stories : no heroes, mysterious, surprising and fast moving
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews