Review 23: Slayers of the Blood God
Finally, back to some positive reviews! We move away from the over-written, crunchy systems for something sleek, elegant and evocative. Yes, I'm talking about Black Sword Hack, and specifically the starter adventure included in the core book, Slayers of the Blood God. I am assuming that this adventure was also written along with the game itself by Alexandre "Kobayashi" Jeannette, but it does not specify in the credits. It includes more fantastic art by Goran Gligovic.
Getting it to the Table
This one is definitely a shorter adventure, coming in at four pages total. The introduction states that it "can be played in two hours with reasonably proactive players." I found this to be pretty much on the nose each time I have run it (three times).
Being an introductory adventure, it is naturally laid out in a very efficient manner to save space in the core book, which in itself is only just over 100 pages long. It opens with a brief sketch of the background to the main antagonist in the adventure, the mercenary leader Rackhmoor Melioc, followed by a player introduction. Interestingly, it is intended to be played as a flashback, with the PCs already on their way to the village near Melioc's fort. I thought that this was a nice way to avoid a long, drawn-out dialogue scene, and it definitely helped keep things moving. The GM is encouraged to allow players one question each to have been asked during the flashback, or the GM can simply provide the players with the information that the quest giver has, in order to expedite things.
At its core, this is a site-based adventure that basically presents an interesting situation to the party and leaves things largely up to them in terms of progressing the story. The key areas (the village and the fort) are laid out with a combination of bullet points to convey information (mainly in the village) and area keys with some important bits of information bolded (mainly in the fort). It is a little inconsistent in this respect, but since it's such a short adventure it was not too difficult to use.
One interesting addition in one of the sidebars is the concept of the "stealth meter" to be used in an infiltration situation. Quite simply, it gives you a way to determine how long the party can avoid detection, based on the Dexterity attributes of the players, along with how it gets depleted depending on the party's actions. This is a neat little procedure that can easily be used in any situation you like-- during my three runs of this adventure, infiltration was used only once, with the other times relying on trickery or brute force.
NPC stat blocks are included in a sidebar as well, which is not my preferred place to have them, but again because it is such a short adventure, it is not a serious inconvenience. There is also relevant information about the Blood Warriors and Melioc in this sidebar that is pretty important for the running of the adventure, so it's definitely one that you'll want to read through a couple of times before you run it, so that you can absorb all of the information. Again, not a big ask since it is only four pages.
Finally, being a site-based adventure, its conclusion is left pretty open-ended. The party can return to the quest giver to get their reward, or seek more information about the events that have transpired, or even claim the fort as a new home base. There are definitely lots of ways to tie this into a longer campaign if you so desire.
What Worked?
- Concise layout, efficient presentation of information. Despite some inconsistencies of how information was conveyed, it never really tripped me up.
- Open-ended design, many paths forward. The party is given a simple task: get into the fortress, find the boss, get the thing he stole. There are multiple ways for them to find their way into the fortress-- secret passages from the town, tunnels from a mine, climbing over the walls under cover of night, bluffing their way in, or breaking down the doors are just some of the possibilities that came up when I was running it.
- Stealth Meter. Love to see things that can be borrowed for other adventures!
What Didn't Work?
- Some editing issues. Like many Merry Mushmen products, editing and proofreading is a weak point. Some of them are minor spelling inconsistencies ("Karst Brome society" versus the "Karst Brom society") which don't have any impact on the game, but some could easily cause confusion; in the area key for Rackhmoor's Bedroom, there is some repeated text that seems to ask the GM to roll for something that doesn't have a result-- possibly some text was accidentally copied from the following paragraph.
- Some ambiguity with the Blood Warriors stat block. There's a mention of their "one weak point" that is the only way to kill them, but then other ways of killing them are mentioned. This is just a nitpick on my part, and any capable GM can just make a decision about it.
Final Thoughts
This was a great mini adventure that is ideal for one-shots or convention settings, and an excellent introduction to Black Sword Hack's tone and sensibilities. It definitely captures that feeling of classic sword and sorcery stories by Moorcock or Howard, and each time I ran it, the players ended up taking a different path through the adventure.
Right now this adventure is only available as part of the Black Sword Hack core rules, which I linked above. Thanks for reading!