Black Company Campaign Setting
The Black Company Campaign Setting is sourcebook providing gamers with everything they need to run a d20 system fantasy campaign in the world of Glen Cook’s
Black Company novels. The book is written Robert J. Schwalb (one of the strongest figures in d20 game design today) and Owen K.C. Stephens (author of many gaming works that I admire.) The book is published by Green Ronin Publishing as part of their
Mythic Vistas line.
A First Look
The Black Company Campaign Setting is a 320 page hardcover sourcebook available for $44.95 US.
The cover is illustrated by well-known
Dungeons & Dragons artist Wayne Reynolds, a crisp piece of art depicting some darkly clad mounted warriors and a mounted woman (
The Lady) is a scarlet gown before a towering fortress. This particular piece is an exact recreation of a passage from the novel
The Black Company.
The interior is black-and-white, illustrated by Ilya Astrakhan, Toren “Macbin” Atkinson, Drew Baker, Kent Burles, Jonathan Kirtz, Pat Loboyko, Ben Risbeck, Mike Vilardi, and Lisa Wood. Some of these names are regulars in the Green Ronin artist stable, so you might have a bit of an idea what to expect. The art in the book is not limited to line art; much of the art is thoroughly shaded and detailed, evoking the gritty feel of Cook’s world.
A Deeper Look
According to Chris Pramas, Green Ronin only received permission to publish a single title in their
Black Company license. This one book had to be fairly comprehensive if it was going to have a fair chance of satisfying the appetites of would be
Black Company players. All told the book has fourteen chapters plus appendices sorted into five major sections: introduction, character creation, game rules, campaign material, and appendices.
The first section spans two chapters, it’s not quite the norm for an “introduction” section. These two chapters have a run down of the
Black Company novels, major differences between the
Black Company setting and the D&D norm (in terms of both setting elements and style), and a bit of a gazetteer of the world of the Black Company.
The second section pertains to character creation. As many d20 resources do that do not feature non-human player races, the selection of race is replaced with a similar mechanic, in this case called
backgrounds.
The Black Company’s take on backgrounds provides you with 4 bonus skill points plus 1 per level, a short list of bonus class skills, a bonus feat, a “background trait” listing other mechanical effects, a favored class, and a citation of which iconic characters from the books hail from the background. The skill and feat arrangement makes the benefits of the background neatly fit the bonuses of a human, making it easy to incorporate the book’s material with core material (or vice-versa).
The Black Company does not use any of the existing d20 fantasy classes as is, though some of the new classes featured here are core classes with only minor tweaks. Many, however, are all-new classes. The new classes are:
- Academician - A non-roguelike skill-based class. Like a rogue, the academician receives 8 skill points per level, though with a more scholarly skill selection, and class abilities that enhance those skills.
- Berserker - Essentially a core barbarian.
- Fighter - Similar to the classic D&D fighter, the black company fighter is has some of its abilities (skills and bonus feats) turned towards the role of leadership in combat.
- Jack of All Trades - Another skill based class, this one less scholarly and heavy on the bonus feats. This class would be a nice “bridge” class in many d20 fantasy games to realize a lot of character concepts.
- Noble - Similar to the fighter, the noble in has leadership abilities, as well as class abilities representing the resources and contacts that a noble would have.
- Ranger - For those who wished for a non-spellcasting ranger, this is it. Similar to FFG’s Wildscape, the options for combat styles have been extended. In addition, the ranger gets a sneak attack-like “ambush” class ability and can choose a terrain for a “terrain mastery” class ability.
- Scout - Somewhat similar to the ranger or rogue, the scout receives a stealth, ambush, observation, abilities, and a slow progression sneak-attack like ability that can be used with missile attacks at any distance.
- Thief - Essentially a core rogue, with a bit more of a focus on skills that an actual criminal would use.
- Weapon Master - The monk is, in the eyes of many D&D fans, an odd bird in the game. But is there not room for a class that is all about martial discipline, but focuses on more traditionally western weaponed martial arts styles rather than the classically eastern unarmed style? There is, and this class is it, essentially a core monk retooled to use weapons.
- Wizard - As magic is fundamentally different from standard d20 fantasy, so to is the wizard a fundamentally different class. See the discussion of magic (below).
- Zealot - This is essentially a religious warrior. Again, the class wields no magic. It’s a bit of a one note, with bonus toughness feats, a rage-like “righteous wrath”, and a “smite the infidel” damage bonus.
As with many campaign style sourcebooks, these core classes are supported by a variety of prestige classes to model particular concepts later in the book.
Many new skills and feats (and new uses) pertain to new subsystems and extensions in the book like the combat system. However, the most noteworthy addition is the skill based magic system.
Though there is a dabbler feat that allows non-wizard characters to take ranks in magical skills, magic skills are principally the province of the Black Company wizard class. The magic skills are
detect magic, ghost sound, magic, prestidigitation, and
resistance. When it comes to casting of spells, the
magic skill is the most immediately useful.
In addition to magic skill, a character’s
magnitude is immediately important. Only the lowest magnitude is available to non-wizard characters. Higher magnitudes only come with levels in the Wizard class.
A variety of spell effects are available to a spellcaster; a variety of possible effects are listed in the magic system section. Augmentations to the spell can heighten the DC of the effect. Time to cast a spell is determined by the difference between the character’s casting skill total and the casting DC. Characters with higher magnitudes can expend more energy, giving them a bonus to their magic use check (and attendant bonus to chance of success and/or effectiveness of the spell), but at the cost of additional drain (nonlethal damage that is suffered as the result of casting a spell.)
The combat section of the book brings you combat on 3 different scales: personal, company, and army. Personal scale combat is merely an extension of the standard d20 combat rules, with a few tweaks to give it some of the “grit” that the book has. This includes a massive damage threshold (albeit one more generous that d20 Modern) and a grievous injury table that can result in longstanding impairments. That said, a d20 modern style action point rule is used alongside these gritty rules, making this combat variant less nasty than some “gritty” variants.
A bit like Malhavoc’s
Cry Havoc, Mass combat comes in two varieties, ( in this case being company and army level.) Like many d20 mass combat system variants, these are extensions of the existing d20 combat system, modeling units of soldiers as single combatants.
The company level rules don’t go as painstakingly into modeling units based on individual d20 combatant statistics as some d20 mass combat variants do, in part due to the fact that armies in Black Company are a bit more like historical armies than fantastic ones. Company rules divide units by their size, type (archery, infantry, etc.), and experience (green, elite, etc.). Army level rules are more abstract, modeling some troop types as mere modifiers. This makes it less detailed but perhaps more manageable than its contemporaries.
One of the more eye-popping features of the books is the characters chapters. Almost any licensed product brings fan favorite characters to you in game statistics form, and this is no exception. In addition to carefully considered game statistics, each character has a sizeable section of background material.
The thing that is surprising to me is the sheer level of some of the NPCs such as the Lady (weighing in at 57 character levels) and the Dominator, with 75 levels.
Yeah, ouch.
Now this is probably what would be considered par for the course for beings who are basically deities; official d20 products routinely give deities 60 levels. And yet, the Black Company is a campaign setting in which deities can be actively challenged, something which appears to not be the case for deities on the scale of books put out by the Deities & Demigods book. Though levels of powerful characters seem to be a common point of contention in game products, I can’t help but feel as if for the backdrop the Black Company presents, the levels are a bit high.
In addition to the material discussed above, the book contains rules sections on allegiances, equipment, gamemastering and campaign advice, a bestiary section, and appendices providing a an indexed roster of the Black Company, spellcasting reference tables, rules for the Tonk card game, a character sheet, and an index.
Conclusions
A frequent expectation and complaint of players coming to gaming from the halls of fantasy literature fandom is that RPGs should do a good/better job of emulating the books that they so love. Some RPGs are written with this very sensitivity in mind.
As far as emulations go, I must award the Black Company an “A” for emulation. The artwork was carefully selected, and the rules and characters carefully crafted to help realize the feel of the books.
Black Company grapples with one of the central problems of adapting literature to games: sometimes emulation comes at the price of playability. The case in point here is the spellcasting system. I have seen
Elements of Magic: Revised in play, and can tell you that it takes a certain sort of tinkering player to deal with the complexities of such a system. And I would estimate, looking at the Black Company magic system, that is would be even more daunting to use in play.
However, let it not be said that the Black Company book does not bring literary inspired gaming material to the table that GMs seeking a more literary feel to their games can take advantage of. Further, unlike some more extreme d20 variants, much of the material seems highly portable and has a lot to offer a traditional d20 fantasy campaign. I daresay that I am sorely tempted to import some of this material into my non-Black Company game, in particular the Jack-of-All-Trades class and the backgrounds.
Overall Grade: B+
-Alan D. Kohler
