We playtested the rules for the Black Company RPG. This is the first, partial release of rules v.1, from 2025-11-26. As requested in the rules, I'll add:
"THIS IS A PLAYTEST, NOT FINAL, IT MIGHT CHANGE!"
Let's see how it went.
SPOILERS FOR THE PLAYTEST ADVENTURE ABOUND! And for the first chapters of The Black Company.
Date: 1/25/2026
Characters:
Jumpy - NPC, controlled by all players
Pops (VL)
Big Dog (OL)
Princess (JM)
Lovebird (DC)
Redeye (ML)
We started when the Black Company was in the service of the Syndic of Beryl, on a hot summer day, not long after lightning had struck the Necropolitan Hill and possibly let loose . . . something. According to rumors (from Otto, who heard it from Tom-Tom), a demonic cat-woman-thing called a forvalaka was loose. Six of the company were hanging out with the remainder of their squad. Elmo, senior company sergeant, showed up and voluntold their corporal, Two-Hand, for a special mission. He voluntold the PCs they were in his group of men to for that mission.
They were led off to the Syndic's chambers, where a keen-eyed and sneaky member of the group (Princess or Redeye, I think) sidled up to a window and saw a quinquereme with a sail with a ruby-eyed skull on the sail.
They were assigned to escort Sabine, the spoiled teenaged daughter of the Syndic, 2.5 miles to her lessons at the Conservatory, where her tutor lives and works. They headed out with her carriage. The streets were tense, packed, and hot. Rumors of evil stalking the night, all too many signs of the Blues - rivals to the Syndic's Reds faction - were along the route. And the soldiers spotted coordinated looks between folks on the streets and in the upper floors. Meanwhile a bored Sabine tossed food to dogs following the carriage, in full site of angry, and hungry, impoverished folks. Good PR, Syndic's family.
(The PCs were marching in armor, in the heat - making it hot and miserable and impacting their rolls. BC RPG uses the Advantage/Disadvantage system. It also uses a group roll system where the lowest skill is rolled if numbers hurt - stealth, or forced marching for speed - and highest if numbers help - spotting things, for example. Sometimes it wasn't clear which case was intended. You can accumulate Stress, which slides you down towards loss of control, from some failures or from forcing a better roll.)
The PCs came across a barricade by the Urban Cohorts, who resent the Black Company, who in turn look at them with contempt. They wanted to know what was up with the carriage, and gave Two-Hand a hard time. Pops stepped in and intimidated the lot of them, warning them about the dangers of messing with them. The cohort decided to let them pass unmolested. (The PCs knew they wanted to get by without a fight, but it wasn't clear what mechanic to use. I offered up what the system allowed for in the adventure, and they picked that.)
Past their, they made it to the Convervatory but only through an angry mob of people who threw rocks, shit, and rotten food. Redeye was stunned, and the PCs kept their cool, and didn't kill any of the rioters. They made it in and set up patrols and bodyguards for the poorly fenced-in building. They knew they'd never get the carriage back out through the mob that was locked outside.
A few hours later, lessons were over - but in the meantime, a frightened scholar claimed to have seen something, and heard a woman's voice, and was unnerved. Forvalaka? Also, some Urban Cohort members came up and offered to the patrol group to escort them to safety. The Soldiers didn't buy it (no roll, it's stated to be patently false.) And the riotous mob had clearly turned into a full-fledged riot across the city.
Two-Hand consulted with the group and the scholars to find a way out. They wanted to get to the Bastion, rejecting getting to a nearby estate friendly to the reds. (They could have gone to the Rubbish Gate, but they didn't even consider it). Instead, they snuck out a back way, with Sabine and her servants, leaving the carriage behind.
The soldiers headed out into the streets. Along the way, they ran into a couple guys with a wagon full of corpses - blood drained and torn up, by a cat according to Redeye, the medic. No throats, little blood, no hearts or livers. Yikes. They made reasonable time - 6 hexes, 1800 yards, in two hours, dodging rioters as best they could. Next, another 1800 yards, and they found a group of Blues guarding a cat-headed statue. Lovebird tried to scare them off with tales of the corpses they'd seen, but the Blues attacked (Lovebird rolled about, oh, call it two or three successes and a Berylian assload of failures.) Their best trooper - Princess - risked Stress to seize the Initiative. They put down a large number of Blues in the first round, fended off a couple attacks from the remainder, and then put a few more down and the rest fled. Big Dog killed a few Blues still hanging around. (In retrospect, this was probably a chance to remove stress from him, but place it on others - see my notes.)
Things slowed down from there - as it got dark, they repeatedly rolled 1s to travel only 300 yards in two hours of furtive movement, avoiding crowds, and maneuvering past barricades. Things got ugly . . . and angry mob split them up (critically failed Soldiering roll to maintain order) and grabbed their VIP, Sabine. Two-Hand lost it and ordered them to kill everyone. They tried. They didn't succeed, but they killed a good number of rioters and rescued the girl. But Jumpy had gotten seperated and knifed badly (he went from fine to Wounded, two steps from dead.) They further ran into a vigilante squard trying to kill a merchant and his family (and killed a bunch of them to "solve" that problem, creating a lot of matryrs for the Blues and anger against the Company.) And they ran into the forvalaka. It pounced into a crowd, killed one rioter, and then tore open a screaming victim, drinking his or her blood and then eating the liver and heart to finish it off.) The PCs tried an orderly retreat and failed, turning into a bit of a confused escape that got them lost. They reformed, but almost all had picked up a lot of stress (see notes.)
In the end, they reached the Bastion, only to find a partial squad of fellow Soldiers stuck outside the stuck main gate, engaged with a bunch of Blues. The PCs blew an attempt to close with them by surprise but still got into a fight. A couple of fellow Soldiers went down and they killed a few Blues and scattered the rest.
From there, they set up a defensive line, got Sabine stashed in temporary safety, and turned to face a few hundred rioters in the waning hours of the night. The rioters came in waves. The soldiers gave up ground and lost a few NPC soldiers before breaking the first wave. The second and third broke as well, but they took a few more soldiers down.
In the end, the riots ended with a deluge of rain, cooling down the anger of the day and night. The PCs got chewed out by the Syndic, but not by Elmo, so who cares? They'd survived.
Notes:
- Some of the scenario was a bit hard to parse, like how the squad PCs are listed and 1st squad, 2nd platoon but the scenario calls them 1st of the 3rd. And it occasionally buries the lede - like telling you what someone's doing before you know what they look like. It made it tricky at times but I'm used to that. What was trickier was when it wasn't clear who was doing what - was the whole squad going? Just six guys? I split the difference by sending a larger group but the PCs did all of the actions.
It was also a railroad. So much so that there while you do have a variety of paths you can choose at one point, you end up needing to be at one specific place or adapting the adventure to another spot to make it work. In other words, it gives the illusion of choice - whereever you go, you get the same encounter at the end.
- The stress mechanic is excellent. It needs some getting used to, but it was interesting to see how much on edge everyone was, knowing that even though they could shrug off some combatants with ease they couldn't get out of everything without stress. Having to risk stress levels to get things done - or let a better person instead of the the worst person roll for some tasks - or as a result of failure meant that rolls felt important. It made even a successful fight with no injuries potentially a cost for having engaged in it.
I also love that almost all of the ways to remove stress are negative. You can complain to relieve stress, but you pass on it on to the one you complain to. You can brawl, or gamble, but they can result in injuries or money loss. You can attend a reading of the annals, but that's a monthly thing. You can't just take a short rest and recover fully. Add to the fact that you're always risking stress to get things done without potentially incurring injury or worse stress or bad outcomes, and it becomes central quickly. It's enjoyable even when it's not perfect.
- Combat is cheerfully quick and lethal. The PCs admittedly fought lesser foes most of the time, maybe all of the time. But they took it very seriously. Initiative and Morale are important, so the PCs risked Stress to gain Initiative, and cut down enemies as quickly as they could. Foes went down often appalingly quickly, but that suits Glen Cook's writing in general - fights are more often slaughters than battles. It was clear how quickly it could turn, though. Also, only the players roll - they roll offense when attacking, and defense when attacked. Makes you wonder how you'd resolve a fight between two PCs if one resulted, maybe as a result of some mind-bending effect (Spoilers: think Booboo's "Love Me" effect), or how major NPCs are handled. Still, it was fast. We had, uhm, four or five fights and then a mass combat, and played only 4 hours start to finish. GURPS with the options on it is not.
- Several times I just straight up listed some options to the players. Not great GMing, but it was clear people didn't know how to leverage their abilities to do things. It just wasn't clear what you'd use to do what, so no one knew what they were good at.
- Overall, the game is a lot of fun. I put in some concerns about issues that came up in play . . . but we liked it. I hope to see more, and I could see running a side game of Black Company if this remains the main core of the system.
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