Arc Dream Announces Black Company RPG

Glen Cook's Black Company dark fantasy novel series last had a tabletop roleplaying game in 2004, from Green Ronin Publishing. The series features a mercenary group, with a mix of gritty military fiction and epic fantasy.

Arc Dream Publishing has just announced that it is currently developing a new game, written by Delta Green's Shane Ivery and Dennis Detwiller. It will use a new game engine built around "suspense, terror, and savage heroics", starting with a core rulebook and then supported by adventures and sourcebooks. There is no release date yet.

VICTORIA, BC — The Black Company Role-Playing Game is in development by Shane Ivey and Dennis Detwiller, co-authors and publishers of the award-winning Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game.

The Lady? Where had I encountered that word used that way, emphasized as though it was the title of a goddess? A dark legend out of olden times.… —The Black Company

In The Black Company and its sequels, novelist Glen Cook redefined epic fantasy by writing with ordinary soldiers in mind. He opened the way for generations of authors of dark fantasy.

Arc Dream Publishing proudly announces plans for a new tabletop role-playing game based on the Black Company series. Licensed by Glen Cook, The Black Company Role-Playing Game will put players at the heart of the adventures, dangers, and treacheries that surround the storied Black Company.

In The Black Company, we follow an elite mercenary company through a continent-spanning war and desperate raids. A war between good and evil, the enemy might say, rebelling against the dark empress who employs the Company. A war between evil and far worse, if you ask those who know what drives the leaders of the rebellion. Don’t ask the soldiers of the Black Company. They only want to do their job, look out for each other, and live another day.

I faced him. And the memory came. A devil’s hammer drove spikes of ice into the belly of my soul. I knew why One-Eye did not want to cross the sea. The ancient evil of the north.… “I thought you people died three hundred years ago.” —The Black Company

Glen Cook wrote The Black Company as a veteran who wanted to see the soldier’s experience in the wars and adventures of heroic fantasy. Arc Dream Publishing has spent decades capturing the experience of soldiers and government agents for RPG players. Arc Dream has received universal acclaim for its horror game Delta Green and its World War II game of desperate superheroics, Godlike. Detwiller and Ivey are writing The Black Company Role-Playing Game to evoke the soldier’s experience in a world of brutal bloodshed, shocking sorceries, and seemingly impossible odds.

“I’ve been enthralled by The Black Company since the first books came out,” Ivey said. “This is the thrill of a career. We’re writing the fantasy game that we’ve always wanted to play.”

Detwiller added, “Shane and I have long considered creating a dark fantasy game, and Delta Green always wanted a twisted, crazed little brother. The Black Company is a perfect fit.”

In the night, when the wind dies and silence rules the place of glittering stone, I remember. And they all live again. —Soldiers Live

Being a soldier of the Black Company makes you part of something greater than yourself. Yours is the tale of brothers and sisters who came before and those to follow. Your name and deeds will be recorded in the annals. When you fall, this bloody-handed family will fight and die to save or avenge you. And thanks to you, the Company will go on.

 

[Von Ether]

I actually think Star Wars is "just tell me which forest the elves live in" from a gaming perspective. I don't care about the lore at all. I like that it is a giant mess of shallow worldbuilding with room for anything.

I can't argue with that, though there are a lot of unspoken expectations with Star Wars (I know a GM who was so confused why his group wanted to play Imperials and not rebels.) And while some don't care about the lore, others do and that's a whole other kettle of womp rats when a session zero doesn't clarify if this a STAR WARS game vs a space opera wearing star wars clothes.

Sadly, SW as a standard space opera is not as divorced from the IP as standard fantasy is from Tolkien or D&D.

But then again, maybe it isn't as I am now a Dragonbane fan and everyday at the unofficial DB discord we have a poster who wants to add their favorite D&D-ism because DB feels "weird" without it.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I keep bouncing off it.

I finished the whole series and enjoyed it quite a bit. But I don't know that I'll ever re-read the entire thing again. It's a huge investment of time and there 1 - are plenty of books I haven't read and 2 - plenty of shorter books and series that I would prefer to re-read over it.

As much as people rave about TBC I'm shocked there's no movie yet. Someone should kickstart it.

Eliza Dushku is producing a TV series and starring as The Lady in it. But there hasn't been any news on that in years, so it appears to be stuck in development hell.

 

[tmanbeaubien]

How did Glen Cook get persuaded to license TBC for another go around? Maybe Shane Ivey and Dennis Detwiller let him read the intro flavor text for Delta Green - the "What is Delta Green" page on their website. (Delta Green » What Is Delta Green?) which has a very dark Black Company kinda vibe.

 

[ART!]

Very interested!

I fell in love with the first book, and then made the mistake of reading the relatively recent 1.5 book (Port of Shadows, set between the 1st and 2nd books). I'm hoping time will scrub some of the content of that book away so I can go back and enjoy the 2nd book.

 

[ruemere]

Oh dear. It's going to be an extremely tough challenge to do better than previous game.

As a fan of the series, I was extremely appreciative of Robert Schwalb's and Owen J. Stephens' (yes, that Robert Schwalb and that Owen J. Stephens) effort at previous game (The Black Company (role-playing game) - Wikipedia ).

The game was slightly let down by unbalanced classes (the classic Buffy and her friends issue) and unwieldy True20 magic system (let's go over the design process of the spell you want to cast once again, Joe), but as long as you kept the characters on the same build platform, avoid spellcasting (or use premade spells) you were fine.

Still, I don't mind them having another go as long as they use a better system.

 

[Theory of Games]

So would this new TBC RPG be using the same d100 system as DG? If so is that system deadly enough for TBC?

 

[jdrakeh]

So would this new TBC RPG be using the same d100 system as DG? If so is that system deadly enough for TBC?

If it does use the system underlying Delta Green, it can be easily tweaked by the designers to be very deadly.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

But I'm kind of amazed that people still know what the Black Company is, ya know?

Granted that the last BC book was decades ago and Cook hasn't written anything new in ten years for any series (although he's apparently still got stuff in the works - the guy's about 80 at this point). But a big chunk of his output has been published in omnibus editions that have been kept in print, or at least in the warehouses. For a genre author whose career really started in the 80s he's actually got pretty good visibility to this day, arguably even better than his peer David Drake and certainly better than many more contemporary writers with their often-tiny print runs. That's got to count for something even today where bookstores are increasingly irrelevant.

You aren't alone. It's a massive, sprawling, series and not everyone likes it enough to plow through the mass of pages and changes of PoV. The Bridgeburners, an army group in the novels for anyone unfamiliar, is IMO heavily inspired by the Black Company in a lot of ways, and the general tone of the books supports this.

I feel like the Malazan books suffer from the decision not to divide some (maybe all) of the books into duologies or even trilogies, as well as the usual dearth of editors who can/will push for more brevity from their writers. Black Company gets to some very long individual books and convoluted plots later on, but it benefits a lot from the opening three volumes being very self-contained and short enough not to be intimidating. It hooks you early on when you most need to hook the new readers, then gets more complex and wordy. I can't imagine BC would have anywhere near as many fans if the first three-four books had been printed in one united volume.

 

[Superchunk77]

Very much looking forward to this.

 

[Reynard]

.I feel like the Malazan books suffer from the decision not to divide some (maybe all) of the books into duologies or even trilogies, as well as the usual dearth of editors who can/will push for more brevity from their writers. Black Company gets to some very long individual books and convoluted plots later on, but it benefits a lot from the opening three volumes being very self-contained and short enough not to be intimidating. It hooks you early on when you most need to hook the new readers, then gets more complex and wordy. I can't imagine BC would have anywhere near as many fans if the first three-four books had been printed in one united volume.

My big problem with Malazan is a format one. Because I drive a lot, I do most of my "reading" via audiobook. It does not work well in that format for me.