A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Blacksand

Blacksand by Graham Bottley is a role playing game supplement published by Arion Games for use with Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2nd Edition.

The supplement is available as PDF from DriveThruRPG for $11, as a softcover print on demand book for $25 or as both PDF and print on demand book for $25. It is also available in printed form from sites such as Amazon. The PDF is the version reviewed although it was purchased at a reduced price during a sale and has 100 pages, with two being the front and rear covers, five the front and back matter, one the Contents and four the Index.

The Introduction explains that Port Blacksand first appeared in the gamebook The City of Thieves.

Chapter 1 – New Rules explains that the chapter contains rules useful for pirate and naval campaigns, although their use isn’t limited to those. It starts off with Firepowder Weapons, with a new skill for using them, various different kinds of firepowder weapons and a 2d6 Oops Table for things going wrong when they are used. The weapons include thrown and hand weapons, cannon and a related substance, with their costs. Firepowder weapons are normally only available from specialised gunsmiths.

Naval Sorcery is described as being a highly specialised form of sorcery, and the practitioners of it are in huge demand in coastal settlements and ports. There is a new special skill for this type of sorcery and 16 new spells, as well as a 2d6 Oops Table.

Sailing and Seafaring starts with details on sea travel and the wind strength table from Heroes Companion is repeated for convenience. There are rules on calculating ship movement, including different kinds of modifier, and damage than can be suffered in strong winds if a rest is failed. Following this are details on the different characteristics that ships possess and the special skills of the crew that are used with these. Stats are given for several sample crews, and these are followed by a number of sample ships. There are nine ships detailed and these are mostly standard designs; the dwarven battleship being an exception.

Naval Combat has rules for ship vs ship and crew vs crew combat and dealing with the aftereffects of a battle. Referencing Heroes Companion, there are details on how Organisations apply to pirate fleets. Finally, there are some new naval magical items and a price chart for all the relevant items, from naval sorcery components to ships to weapons.

Chapter 2 – Settlement Generation has a means of randomly generating settlements. It involves dropping a number of d6s onto a sheet of paper, then noting the number down where they fell. In theory, this works from a hamlet to a large city. The dice are used to create the fundamentals of the settlement and then a series of tables are used to generate details of buildings, trades, inns and taverns, magical practitioners, temples, special buildings and businesses of different types, divided into poor, merchant and wealthy. The generator is probably better suited for towns and larger settlements rather than smaller ones.

Chapter 3 – Port Blacksand starts with a history of the city, starting back at its original founding, transformation into Carsepolis, destruction and resettlement. There is a two-page map of the city. Following this, it looks at daily life, the inhabitants, weather, travel within the port, food, drink and all kinds of entertainment, money and the often-erratic taxation, with new taxes coming and going regularly. Piracy is something the port is known for and there’s a list of crimes and their punishments, along with religion. Various important organisations are covered, with their grades and some notable NPCs.

The chapter then looks at the districts, with an overview explaining how they are laid out and what things mean. Seven districts are covered, each having a labelled map, a brief overview, descriptions of various different places of interest, including NPCs, and some adventure hooks. The palace has a map, but no locations are described, only some important NPCs. The Carsepolis Dungeons and the city’s sewers are just briefly described.

The Appendices have tables for firepowder weapons, oops tables for them and naval sorcery, seafaring tables, lists of buildings and streets in the city and their locations and random encounter tables.

Blacksand in Review

The PDF is bookmarked with the major and major subsections linked. The Contents is to a similar level of depth. The Index is more thorough. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of black and white illustrations, including maps. Presentation is okay.

This is a city book that describes a fair amount of a city, although many of the locations covered are inns and taverns. It’s also a city-state, which means it should be comparatively easy to drop into other settings. Using it with other systems is also possible, though a bit more work; there are some new rules and a few mentions of system-related things in the supplement, but converting it would not be impossible. The supplement is therefore more generically useful.

As well as the city, there are, as mentioned, some new rules, which are connected to seafaring and firepowder weapons. These don’t take up a huge amount of the supplement, meaning that they are both useful for AFF 2nd Edition and comparatively easy to ignore. The settlement generation system in Chapter 2 is pretty unrelated to the rest of the supplement; it’s useful, but it’s also unclear as to just why they are included in a book on a city-state. Blacksand is a decent city supplement and it can be found by clicking here.