Where It All Began

The Dark Origins of Black Powder

Hi there, in this blog I’m going to go over the creative process of making my weird little RPG Black Powder. 

A bit about me, I’m Ben and I have worked as an illustrator, animator, production artist and director. I've worked on video games like Age of Empires V and The Quarry. 

I also worked on loads of comic books.

The Game

So the inclination to make Black Powder came from watching

Dave Thaumavore

s YouTube channel and his review of Mörk-Borg. I have no idea how I stumbled there, it was just a gift from the great and terrible youtube algorithm. 

Now I have played a fair few TTRPG’s but I often found the rule books to be very intimidating to read, with their huge a4 pages. (Especially if they're glue-bound! ffs.)

Yeah they had some nice full page illustrations, but usually you just have walls and walls of text. Then I saw Mörk-Borg and my mind was fucking blown. It was punk, it was adventurous, it had a bloody attitude. 

The writing was short and punchy and the rules were simple and brutal. This started me off on a binge of other books by Free League, including Cy-Borg and Death in Space. Then I found

Ben Milton

’s YouTube channel and I knew the OSR (Old School Renaissance/ Resurgence) was for me. The rules are simple and brutal, your imagination and craftiness is what counts not the endless stats on your character sheet. 

The Setting

The decision to set the game in a fantasy version of the 30 years war came as a chocolate in the peanut butter situation as I was also listening to “Hell on Earth”, the podcast mini series by the lads at Chappo Trap House.

I always loved the late renaissance period where you still had dudes in armor, but also hand held guns and the liberal use of gunpowder as a weapon. It’s like a time period that feels like it's being invaded by the future, like something out of the culture novels.  

Further research revealed all sorts of horrifying details about the war that were just begging to be included into an almost apocalyptic historic setting. 

Religious persecution, mass hangings, plague, fire, swarms of pigs and rats devouring all in their path! It’s no wonder the people of what is now Germany thought this was the end of days. 

And all of this as the backdrop of a war between the Holy Roman Empire and the Puritanical Protestants who were sick of the corruption and contradictions of the Roman Catholic Church. Throw some demons, zombies and aliens in there and I’m hoping you are as excited and horrified as I am. 

Now there are more influences obviously and I’m going to go over each one in its own post so they get their own space. I’m pretty open with what influences me, and to be honest if you know you can see them in my work a mile off hah. 

The world in Black Powder is a terrifying one, but one I hope you are excited to explore.

This Blog will always be free. But if you want to subscribe at the paid level at $8 a month that would be greatly apreciated. I even plan for some goodies to go out to subscribers later this year.