"You are doomed. The only question is how much you get done before Doom catches up."
Black Sword Hack is a dark sword-and-sorcery OSR game on The Black Hack engine, drawing on Moorcock's Eternal Champion and doomed antiheroes like Elric. Classless heroes, defined by Origin and Background, stake their fate on a Doom Die that erodes as they lean on luck. A multiverse locked in the eternal struggle of Chaos and Law, with world-building tools baked into the rules.
A grim multiverse on the brink of catastrophe, where Chaos and Law tear reality apart. Cursed swords, alien gods, dying empires, and heroes marked by doom. The tone is tragic pulp in the Elric vein: power always has a price, victory always a bitter edge. Generator tables in the rules assemble your dying world on the fly.
Roll-under d20
The Black Hack core: a test is d20 roll-under your attribute, and players make all the rolls. A light, fast, lethal system familiar to the whole family of Hacks.
The Doom Die
A special resource: invoke the Doom Die (a d6) to boost an action. But on a 1–2 it shrinks. When it's spent, Doom befalls the hero. A mechanical metaphor for the antihero's doom.
Classless: Origin & Background
No classes. A character is defined by Origin (human, half-breed, spawn of Chaos…) and Background. Flexible and grim — as befits the world of the Eternal Champion.
Chaos vs Law + generators
The setting's eternal war of Chaos and Law is built into the mechanics, and generator tables (factions, alien gods, ruins) assemble the dying multiverse right at the table.
Open in Session Zero to let every player vote and see the results.