Character Creation Challenge 2026 Day 27: The Black Sword Hack

The Black Sword Hack is a sword & sorcery RPG that specifically seeks to emulate Moorcock's Elric books and Karl Edward Wagner's Kane stories.  It is an interesting game with its roots in the 2nd edition of The Black Hack.  Unlike many hacks of the Hack, it makes somewhat more substantial changes to the game than, for example, The Pulp Hack.  The major change that The Pulp Hack made was with classes.  The author modified the classes to fit the genre.  And some of those paralleled the original The Black Hack classes.  And that was essentially it.

 

The Black Sword Hack went a different route.  One of the major changes it made was doing away with classes.  You roll your Attributes on a table down the line.  The results range from 8 to 13.  You choose a Background:  Barbarian, Civilized or Decadent.  You then choose three Backgrounds, two from your chosen Background and one from any Background.  Backgrounds can modify your Attributes and give you advantages.  You then roll two weapons from Background based tables.  And get money based on your background to buy gear.  Then...let the slaughter begin!

 

It makes some other changes and additions, too, but I won't go into them.  I have the 1st edition of the game so that is what I used to create this character.