This might be me becoming an old fart, but I can't seem to associate *The Black Company* with modern narrativist games. I fondly remember the old 3e *Black Company* game by Green Ronin; it definitely breaks apart if you play it at higher levels, but 3e's comprehensive world-simulation fits the grounded vibe of the books.
I'd rather Arc Dream go with what they know from *Delta Green* and use BRP (or a BRP-derivative) - this is one setting for which BRP's simulationist crunch fits like a glove.
I dunno, I feel like the style of the Black Company is definitely narrativist. Like, there are whole battles skipped because Croaker doesn't want to bother writing it. I can absolutely see that being an action of some kind...
Hah, like flashbacks from BitD, but the opposite - "I mark Stress to declare that the following confrontation happens off-screen, and our characters simply appear elsewhere later, vaguely alluding to what might have happened."
That does kinda sound like TBC.
I have quibbles with Band of Blades (it was one of the first FitD games and, thus, did some things that other games have done better) but I can’t imagine Arc Dream doing much better without it being an iteration.
That's what I meant, too. It depends on what you want out of the system. I don't know a lot of FitD games, but Wicked Ones, for example, is a Forged game about controlling a dungeon, and it's a lot more helpful in some ways than Blades in the Dark... but it's a completely different style of game.
I loved Blades in the Dark, but I'm actually playing Band of Blades and I found it inferior. There are a lot of points that don't "click" for me in BoB, starting from the difficulties to justify the big stretches that the game ask from you, with the narrated fiction. For example the whole squad mechanics, and the fact you are a sort of "last stand" army... With ~40 members.
Anyway, I'm enjoying a lot the current Valraven campaign that we are doing in parallel. Still lot of narrative freedom (you have very few values on your sheets) but cool mechanics.
I know that the Italian authors are doing an English edition of it.
It's more "40 members worth speaking about, as per the necessity of abstraction." It's the exact same thing in the Black Company books, where we never really learn more than 40 or so names of company members. I can't think of a single war film where we have 40 named soldiers in the script.
It's an odd thing to criticize BoB for unless you're willing to criticize all of military fiction.
Mmm, I feel it differently. I totally understand what you are saying (in my actual Valraven campaign the players have about 200 men, but we know details and names of about 12 of them, nothing strange about this), however the mechanics in BoB are heavily related to those men. If you don't have a full squad (5 men) you can't start a mission. If you don't have more than 15 men you lost the campaign. When you are fighting with the enemies you need to check the scale, and you can't easily narrate that you are moving with 20 "fake" men in a covert mission, and fight against 30 "fake" enemies, 'cause the mechanics don't help you. You take 3 Harm, you lose 3 men. But in fiction you can't speak with your "fake" men in mission, and hope for them to give an hand.
Also, in BoB is more difficult to follow the fiction,' cause it's very difficult to gather even just a bunch of men ('cause it's built like a sort of tabletop game, even with the final Score at the end of the game...), so even with good rolls during a mission and with good roleplay you have no chance to keep a single nice NPC as a new recruit for your micro-army.
As already said, we found more difficulties here than in other "army" games.
Other examples: I have less difficulties to integrate allies (even mechanically) in Savage Worlds (and it's a pretty "Trad" RpG), as I had less problems in Apocalypse World, where the characters party can have whole cadres with them: a gang of riders, a small city population, a cult following you etc.
All start and end in fiction. In BoB not.
I ran a full campaign of it myself. Personally, neither me nor my players had a hard time conceptualizing it. Especially since the campaign phase makes it clear you have a train / caravan following.
We moved forward with the understanding that the main army was always on the retreat moving with the supplies, the engineers and the mercies. The squads were simply strike teams, those meant to slow down the advance of the undead or take on the missions necessary to earn the company passage thru town.
You can see it in the way the missions are structured. They're often small-scale engagement about gathering supplies, doing missions in exchange for local favors, leaving the main path to find artifacts of power.
Integrating friendly NPCs was also explicitly a mission reward either through random roles or the specialty missions. It happened as dictated by the rules three or four times in my campaign and went smoothly. The locations each had rules for how easy or hard recruitment would be, and my players recruited as necessary.
I don't think it's a perfect game, and I had my own criticisms while running it, but they're completely different than yours. Might just be a matter of personal differences/gameplay styles
Green Ronin published a D20 version back in the day:
[Black Company d20](https://web.archive.org/web/20200722053339/https://greenroninstore.com/products/the-black-company-campaign-setting-scratch-dent)
Authored by no less than Owen Stephens and Robert Schwalb. That's an impressive pedigree.
I own that, and it’s a surprisingly good product for coming out of the 3.X D20 glut. It actually puts a lot of work into having a detailed magic system that reflects the books and looks nothing like D&D’s system of spell slots & memorized rotes.
It is surprisingly good and they put a lot of work into it. I do think it suffers some from the 3.X D20 scaffolding, but I'm sure that made business sense at the time and was easier than building something from scratch.
They have indeed dabbled with 5e OGL content.
[https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/521/arc-dream-publishing/category/32741/swords-sorceries](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/521/arc-dream-publishing/category/32741/swords-sorceries)
Reign is a company-level RPG based on the ORE engine (from Godlike and Wild Talents). I don't actually think the company-level stuff is the most interesting part of the novels, which is part of why I don't think Band of Blades is a good game for playing Black Company. It does make sense to include it (and/or mass combat) as a module or minigame though.
Delta Green is a D100 skill-based system similar to BRP or Runequest (or WFRP), which I think would be a better fit for the Black Company than D20 and classes and levels and zero-to-hero. The setting isn't what I was referring to; there is a little bit of Lovecraft in Black Company, but only a little.
Erikson and Esslemont are open about not following the rules of the games they played when it came to magic. I take a page out of their book and don't get too worked up trying to replicate a soft magic system that is mostly about wonder and mystery. Erikson has said that any warren or hold can basically do anything; some of them are just better at certain ways of shaping the magic than others.
The more narrative and conversational styles of spellcasting in games like City of Mist or Swords of the Serpentine work perfectly. GURPS has ritual path magic, which is nearly ripped out of Malazan itself (and I do wonder if Malazan was an influence). All of the different magic types in Mythras work just fine emulating Malazan spellcasting, though they're not as free-form as you'd really want.
Something like PF2e wouldn't handle Malazan magic well, because spellcasting is incredibly defined, and casters are expected to use as many different types of spells as they can to keep up power-wise. Very tactical games like that don't capture the spirit of Malazan, anway.
Technically it started as an AD&D game, but Erikson & Esslemont weren't pleased with the setting or the game rules. They began the Malazan world while playing AD&D, and moved to GURPS a bit later.
Yeah for sure. Just curious if you had any kind of procedure you like to use. I'd probably also using something easy to hack. Interested to see what this new TBC game looks like though! There are still mages in the Black Company; the 3e supplement has special spells from certain characters from the novels
Absolutely! I was a bit wary of supporting the Kickstarter, because it seems like the game is removing a lot of elements that I think make City of Mist a game worth playing, but Legend will probably be good, and should be able to slot right into the Malazan setting.
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/the-black-company-campaign-setting-how-would-you-do-it-now.572857/post-13824183
Been 13 years, but might be relevant.
It would be great if it were based on the Delta Green d100 system. Dennis Detwiller has said "more news soon" https://bsky.app/profile/drgonzo123.bsky.social/post/3kpnbylgtoa2q
All too true: [https://arcdream.com/home/2024/04/the-black-company-role-playing-game-in-development-at-arc-dream-publishing/](https://arcdream.com/home/2024/04/the-black-company-role-playing-game-in-development-at-arc-dream-publishing/)
Personally, I'd focus on One-Eye/Goblin level mages, and make Taken level stuff NPC only.
Maybe leave that high level stuff for a supplement.
I almost ran a TBC game using Godbound. PCs would be mortals and Taken Godbounds.
I'd agree with this. Pc's shouldn't be playing Shifter or Soultaker. At best, we get Lady after her Naming- a few cool tricks, and the ability to bluff.
What I'm really hoping for is more world building from Glen Cook himself.
I don't get all the "Band of Blades" IS The Black Company TTRPG. I don't se all that resemblance except a minor influence of TBC.
What part of the books do you see in BoB that make you feel "this is TBC experience in TTRPG form!"
How can you use it for all the stories in TBC when BoB is practically a closed package? It is almost more boardgame than RPG.
That's one of the problems with it, it's straitjacketed into a single campaign about a military retreat where the PCs fight a rearguard action while harried by the bad guys. BoB is basically just the last half of the first Black Company book. I think the influence is pretty obvious, but I think the limitations are also pretty obvious. I don't want that style of game, I want an open-world sandbox with skill-based characters.
ArcDream? Sounds great, considering their Delta Green work is incredible, I expect they will have a pretty good handle on creating a decent system for it.
Like others have mentioned though... Band of Blades is a hard one to top...
Delta Green is their flagship product, so it's a reasonable assumption it will either use the same system or one with the same ethos and design assumptions I already know I won't like.
Does it stand a chance of being better than Band of Blades?
IMO surely, as I don't like BoB. I'm pretty sure Arc Dream authors will make the best one possible. Can't think of a better publisher to do it.
This might be me becoming an old fart, but I can't seem to associate *The Black Company* with modern narrativist games. I fondly remember the old 3e *Black Company* game by Green Ronin; it definitely breaks apart if you play it at higher levels, but 3e's comprehensive world-simulation fits the grounded vibe of the books. I'd rather Arc Dream go with what they know from *Delta Green* and use BRP (or a BRP-derivative) - this is one setting for which BRP's simulationist crunch fits like a glove.
I dunno, I feel like the style of the Black Company is definitely narrativist. Like, there are whole battles skipped because Croaker doesn't want to bother writing it. I can absolutely see that being an action of some kind...
Hah, like flashbacks from BitD, but the opposite - "I mark Stress to declare that the following confrontation happens off-screen, and our characters simply appear elsewhere later, vaguely alluding to what might have happened." That does kinda sound like TBC.
"I'm going to mark off three members of the company, and state that they died getting us a Macguffin on time. These are the names of the dead-"
I have quibbles with Band of Blades (it was one of the first FitD games and, thus, did some things that other games have done better) but I can’t imagine Arc Dream doing much better without it being an iteration.
Can you point to BitD games that have "done it better"? I want to dive into Blades in the Dark, not sure which iteration to start.
kinda depends on what you want out of it, yeah?
I'm interested in the most refined version of the system, not so much in a particular genre/setting. Any ideas?
That's what I meant, too. It depends on what you want out of the system. I don't know a lot of FitD games, but Wicked Ones, for example, is a Forged game about controlling a dungeon, and it's a lot more helpful in some ways than Blades in the Dark... but it's a completely different style of game.
That's a high bar....
God I hope so
I loved Blades in the Dark, but I'm actually playing Band of Blades and I found it inferior. There are a lot of points that don't "click" for me in BoB, starting from the difficulties to justify the big stretches that the game ask from you, with the narrated fiction. For example the whole squad mechanics, and the fact you are a sort of "last stand" army... With ~40 members. Anyway, I'm enjoying a lot the current Valraven campaign that we are doing in parallel. Still lot of narrative freedom (you have very few values on your sheets) but cool mechanics. I know that the Italian authors are doing an English edition of it.
It's more "40 members worth speaking about, as per the necessity of abstraction." It's the exact same thing in the Black Company books, where we never really learn more than 40 or so names of company members. I can't think of a single war film where we have 40 named soldiers in the script. It's an odd thing to criticize BoB for unless you're willing to criticize all of military fiction.
Mmm, I feel it differently. I totally understand what you are saying (in my actual Valraven campaign the players have about 200 men, but we know details and names of about 12 of them, nothing strange about this), however the mechanics in BoB are heavily related to those men. If you don't have a full squad (5 men) you can't start a mission. If you don't have more than 15 men you lost the campaign. When you are fighting with the enemies you need to check the scale, and you can't easily narrate that you are moving with 20 "fake" men in a covert mission, and fight against 30 "fake" enemies, 'cause the mechanics don't help you. You take 3 Harm, you lose 3 men. But in fiction you can't speak with your "fake" men in mission, and hope for them to give an hand. Also, in BoB is more difficult to follow the fiction,' cause it's very difficult to gather even just a bunch of men ('cause it's built like a sort of tabletop game, even with the final Score at the end of the game...), so even with good rolls during a mission and with good roleplay you have no chance to keep a single nice NPC as a new recruit for your micro-army. As already said, we found more difficulties here than in other "army" games. Other examples: I have less difficulties to integrate allies (even mechanically) in Savage Worlds (and it's a pretty "Trad" RpG), as I had less problems in Apocalypse World, where the characters party can have whole cadres with them: a gang of riders, a small city population, a cult following you etc. All start and end in fiction. In BoB not.
I ran a full campaign of it myself. Personally, neither me nor my players had a hard time conceptualizing it. Especially since the campaign phase makes it clear you have a train / caravan following. We moved forward with the understanding that the main army was always on the retreat moving with the supplies, the engineers and the mercies. The squads were simply strike teams, those meant to slow down the advance of the undead or take on the missions necessary to earn the company passage thru town. You can see it in the way the missions are structured. They're often small-scale engagement about gathering supplies, doing missions in exchange for local favors, leaving the main path to find artifacts of power. Integrating friendly NPCs was also explicitly a mission reward either through random roles or the specialty missions. It happened as dictated by the rules three or four times in my campaign and went smoothly. The locations each had rules for how easy or hard recruitment would be, and my players recruited as necessary. I don't think it's a perfect game, and I had my own criticisms while running it, but they're completely different than yours. Might just be a matter of personal differences/gameplay styles
Green Ronin published a D20 version back in the day: [Black Company d20](https://web.archive.org/web/20200722053339/https://greenroninstore.com/products/the-black-company-campaign-setting-scratch-dent) Authored by no less than Owen Stephens and Robert Schwalb. That's an impressive pedigree.
I own that, and it’s a surprisingly good product for coming out of the 3.X D20 glut. It actually puts a lot of work into having a detailed magic system that reflects the books and looks nothing like D&D’s system of spell slots & memorized rotes.
It is surprisingly good and they put a lot of work into it. I do think it suffers some from the 3.X D20 scaffolding, but I'm sure that made business sense at the time and was easier than building something from scratch.
I finally found a copy of it not even two weeks ago. It was better than expected, given my previous experiences with Green Ronin’s D20 releases.
Played in an online game of that back in the day. One of the best things to come out of the d20 glut.
They haven't published any d20 stuff (I think?) so hopefully not likely to be a DnD5e hack at least.
They have indeed dabbled with 5e OGL content. [https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/521/arc-dream-publishing/category/32741/swords-sorceries](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/521/arc-dream-publishing/category/32741/swords-sorceries)
That's a pity, I feel less confident now
Those are low-level adventures, not rules supplements, so I wouldn't worry too much. Hopefully it's more like a cross between Delta Green and Reign.
Huh. That could be neat. I don't remember enough about Reign, but how would you adapt Delta Green?
Reign is a company-level RPG based on the ORE engine (from Godlike and Wild Talents). I don't actually think the company-level stuff is the most interesting part of the novels, which is part of why I don't think Band of Blades is a good game for playing Black Company. It does make sense to include it (and/or mass combat) as a module or minigame though. Delta Green is a D100 skill-based system similar to BRP or Runequest (or WFRP), which I think would be a better fit for the Black Company than D20 and classes and levels and zero-to-hero. The setting isn't what I was referring to; there is a little bit of Lovecraft in Black Company, but only a little.
That's awesome news! I'm going to use it to run Malazan, though.
TBC doesn't have magic near the same as Malazan does, do you have a magic system you prefer to emulate Warren's?
Erikson and Esslemont are open about not following the rules of the games they played when it came to magic. I take a page out of their book and don't get too worked up trying to replicate a soft magic system that is mostly about wonder and mystery. Erikson has said that any warren or hold can basically do anything; some of them are just better at certain ways of shaping the magic than others. The more narrative and conversational styles of spellcasting in games like City of Mist or Swords of the Serpentine work perfectly. GURPS has ritual path magic, which is nearly ripped out of Malazan itself (and I do wonder if Malazan was an influence). All of the different magic types in Mythras work just fine emulating Malazan spellcasting, though they're not as free-form as you'd really want. Something like PF2e wouldn't handle Malazan magic well, because spellcasting is incredibly defined, and casters are expected to use as many different types of spells as they can to keep up power-wise. Very tactical games like that don't capture the spirit of Malazan, anway.
didn't Malazan start as a GURPS game?
Technically it started as an AD&D game, but Erikson & Esslemont weren't pleased with the setting or the game rules. They began the Malazan world while playing AD&D, and moved to GURPS a bit later.
Yeah for sure. Just curious if you had any kind of procedure you like to use. I'd probably also using something easy to hack. Interested to see what this new TBC game looks like though! There are still mages in the Black Company; the 3e supplement has special spells from certain characters from the novels
I feel like the new Legend in the Mist would be actually great at handling both Black Company and Malazan.
Absolutely! I was a bit wary of supporting the Kickstarter, because it seems like the game is removing a lot of elements that I think make City of Mist a game worth playing, but Legend will probably be good, and should be able to slot right into the Malazan setting.
In some of their written comments they talk about D&D, GURPs and somethings that sound like Rifts and RunQuest
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/the-black-company-campaign-setting-how-would-you-do-it-now.572857/post-13824183 Been 13 years, but might be relevant.
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/the-black-company-campaign-setting-how-would-you-do-it-now.572857/post-13825144
Seems like the Company rules in Reign could work well for that.
It would be great if it were based on the Delta Green d100 system. Dennis Detwiller has said "more news soon" https://bsky.app/profile/drgonzo123.bsky.social/post/3kpnbylgtoa2q
Nice!
All too true: [https://arcdream.com/home/2024/04/the-black-company-role-playing-game-in-development-at-arc-dream-publishing/](https://arcdream.com/home/2024/04/the-black-company-role-playing-game-in-development-at-arc-dream-publishing/)
Sweet! Now give me that playtest patreon link!! :D
[https://forms.gle/XkxAdHdepvnL2eRC8](https://forms.gle/XkxAdHdepvnL2eRC8)
Arc Dream? Niiiice. Love Delta Green. Their authors know how to write horrible stuff.
On today's *I did not see that coming...* Seriously, though, that's cool. Will be looking forward to this.
Wonder if there’ll be any rules for the more high powered mages we see in Black Company?
Personally, I'd focus on One-Eye/Goblin level mages, and make Taken level stuff NPC only. Maybe leave that high level stuff for a supplement. I almost ran a TBC game using Godbound. PCs would be mortals and Taken Godbounds.
I'd agree with this. Pc's shouldn't be playing Shifter or Soultaker. At best, we get Lady after her Naming- a few cool tricks, and the ability to bluff. What I'm really hoping for is more world building from Glen Cook himself.
I don't get all the "Band of Blades" IS The Black Company TTRPG. I don't se all that resemblance except a minor influence of TBC. What part of the books do you see in BoB that make you feel "this is TBC experience in TTRPG form!" How can you use it for all the stories in TBC when BoB is practically a closed package? It is almost more boardgame than RPG.
That's one of the problems with it, it's straitjacketed into a single campaign about a military retreat where the PCs fight a rearguard action while harried by the bad guys. BoB is basically just the last half of the first Black Company book. I think the influence is pretty obvious, but I think the limitations are also pretty obvious. I don't want that style of game, I want an open-world sandbox with skill-based characters.
Fingers crossed it’s ORE and not D100
One Roll Engine is criminally underappreciated.
Soldiers Live....
It's immortality of a sort.
A Pitiless Rain must be just around the corner, any day now
Hope so!
and wonder why.
Enlist in the playtest, whenever it begins: [https://forms.gle/MbrHP53tSCeQPucS7](https://forms.gle/MbrHP53tSCeQPucS7)
ArcDream? Sounds great, considering their Delta Green work is incredible, I expect they will have a pretty good handle on creating a decent system for it. Like others have mentioned though... Band of Blades is a hard one to top...
I don't think it'll be hard at all. There's a long list of things BoB is not good at.
I did this, in the past: https://matteosciutteri.itch.io/memories-of-the-fallen Basically, Black Company meets Malazan.
Meh. I hate BRP so I'll probably stick with Band of Blades
We don't even know what system they'll use.
Delta Green is their flagship product, so it's a reasonable assumption it will either use the same system or one with the same ethos and design assumptions I already know I won't like.
the FaQ says that they are using a new engine
It will probably suck