Blades in the Dark

by John Harper

Blades in the Dark is a tabletop role-playing game about a crew of daring scoundrels seeking their fortunes on the haunted streets of an industrial-fantasy city. There are heists, chases, occult mysteries, dangerous bargains, bloody skirmishes, and, above all, riches to be had — if you’re bold enough to seize them.

You and your fledgling crew must thrive amidst the threats of rival gangs, powerful noble families, vengeful ghosts, the Bluecoats of the city watch, and the siren song of your scoundrel’s own vices. Will you rise to power in the criminal underworld? What are you willing to do to get to the top?

In this stand-alone game, you’ll find:

* Rules to create your scoundrel using the following character archetypes: the Cutter, the Hound, the Leech, the Lurk, the Slide, the Spider, or the Whisper.
* Rules to create your crew, built from types like Assassins, Bravos, a Cult, Hawkers, Shadows, or Smugglers.
* A robust core mechanic which puts the fiction first—the strength of a character’s position (desperate, risky, or controlled) matters just as much as the character’s ability scores.
* A lightning-fast mechanic for planning criminal operations to cut through the usual slog of planning at the game table.
Rules for alchemical experiments, gadget tinkering, and weird occult powers—including rules for playing Ghosts and other strange beings.
* A setting guide to the haunted city of Doskvol, with all the maps, factions, NPCs, schemes, and opportunities you need to run an exciting sandbox game.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Gaming, Games, Horror, Reference, Crime

328 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.

Reviews

[Krell75 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qualità manuale:⭐⭐⭐
Ambientazione:⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sistema regole:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rinchiusi in una città senza sole, tra vicoli bui in cui si cela il pericolo di essere derubati della vita, i cittadini sopravvivono nella paura. Paura di voi.

Fate parte di una banda di malviventi e dovete farvi un nome tra la mala che domina i quartieri di Duskwall.

Il sistema di regole che viene presentato in Blades in the dark andrebbe studiato da ogni Master di giochi di ruolo. L' impostazione giocatori-master per la risoluzione e la creazione della narrazione è da incorniciare e prendere a modello. Applausi.

----------------------
Manual quality:⭐⭐⭐
Setting:⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rules system:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Locked up in a sunless city, among dark alleys where the danger of being robbed of life lurks, citizens survive in fear. Scared of you.

You are part of a gang of criminals and you have to make a name for yourself among the underworld that dominates the neighborhoods of Duskwall.

The rules system presented in Blades in the dark should be studied by every role-playing game master. The player-master setting for the resolution and creation of the narrative is to be framed and taken as a model. Applause.

[Beyonder · Rating 5 out of 5]

After running 3-4 sessions already, Blades is easily the best new RPG I've played in the past few years. It has a fresh blend gameplay that employs strict rules side by side with improvisational fiction in a way that just pops unbelievably well. The system is mature without being too advanced. It recognizes and calls out many of the stumbling blocks and pitfalls of traditional table-top RPG systems just enough to illustrate how its mechanics remove many of those obstacles.

If you have players who
- Spend more time planning than acting, only to have their plan quickly go sideways.
- Let character development go by the wayside.
- Get too stuck on rolling their best numbers rather than telling a great story
- Don't engage with your long elaborate plots
- Complain of a lack of control
- Mentally Check-out while waiting for their turn.

This game will change your life and possibly theirs. This game is efficient and you can get a whole adventure done reliably in one evening of play. Even better:

YOU CAN ALWAYS RUN YOUR SESSION WITH HOWEVER MANY PEOPLE SHOW UP

Adult life is hard and sometimes You don't know whether you're hosting 6 players or 2 until the last minute. Blades lets you adapt play on the fly to tell a story with the characters you have right now.

If you're a GM who's been around the block a bit, pick up a copy for sure. You will not be disappointed

[Shadowdenizen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

Interesting twist on the RPG genre: I may spring this on my current group for a 1-shot.

[Nacho Ocejo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blades in the Dark presenta una nueva modificación del sistema Powered by the Apocalypse, con suficientes modificaciones para que el autor lo haya bautizado como Forged in the Dark.

Sí hace unos años Apocalypse World fue toda una revolución en el mundo del rol (con decenas de juegos publicados o creados por seguidores del sistema), este Blades in the Dark da un paso más, y sin duda alguna se convertirá en un clásico de los juegos de rol, especialmente en los que se enfocan en una experiencia muy concreta. Y es que este BitD centra todo el sistema alrededor de los personajes, criminales que intentan hacer prosperar su banda en una ciudad victoriana fantástica, pero sobre todo en la banda. La banda es la auténtica protagonista del juego.

El juego incluso anima a los jugadores a no encariñarse con los personajes y centrarse más en que su banda deje huella en la sombría ciudad de Duskwall.

100 % recomendable, tanto por la lectura, que presenta una ambientación realmente interesante, de fantasía urbana, con multitud de detalles (hay hasta un capítulo dedicado a la gastronomía en un mundo sin sol), como por el sistema que, aunque presenta multitud de reglas, una vez le pillas el truco puede dar grandes alegrías a tu mesa de juegos.

[Malum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw a review that called this game a "watershed moment in rpgs", and I might have to agree. A freeform, sandbox rpg where your failures are just another way to make more interesting things happen in the world (otherwise known as "failing forward"). Added to this are progress clocks that determine when things in the world happen, the player being able to choose what attributable roll for a task (as long as it makes sense inn the narrative), and a really detailed and interesting world to play around in (and lots of other games are coming out based on this system in case you're not into grimdark). After reading this book, I don't think I will look at rpg design the same way again.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend let me borrow this book in the explicit hope that I'd like it enough to want to run a game of it. Mission accomplished.

Setting
A thousand years ago, the world was a typical fantasy world of magic and mystery until something went wrong. The Cataclysm blotted out the sun, turned the oceans into a night-black watery void with stars faintly glimmering in its depths, and sundered the Gates of Death, unleashing hordes of mad, angry ghosts on the world. Through desperate sorcerous measures, humanity barely survived, clustering in cities and abandoning the deathlands to the dead. In the millennium since then, as ancient sorcery failed, humanity turned to technological innovation, using blood from the Void Sea's leviathans and electroplasm distilled from ghosts to create an industrial revolution. Lightning towers form a city wall to keep out the dead. Ever-burning lights keep the city lit even in the face of the black clouds that are all that remains of the sky.

It's metal, is what I'm saying. 🤘🏻

The main setting is the city of Duskwall, a port town in the Empire. The PCs are explicitly a crew of "scoundrels," down-and-outs on the wrong side of the law who want to make it big in the world, generally by getting rich but with other possible motivations as appropriate. On the way they have to deal with the Imperial authorities, the "Bluecoat" city watch, other rival gangs, the enraged spirits of the vengeful dead, and weirder things within the city. And if they're lucky, survive another day and eventually make it to retirement.

All this background is pretty familiar if you've read any of the source material listed in the front of Blades in the Dark--Dishonored, the Thief series of games, The Lies of Locke Lamora, the Vlad Taltos books--but when I showed it to another friend, he immediately thought of Unhallowed Metropolis, which makes a lot of sense too. The action is confined to Duskwall explicitly because that prevents the crew of thieves from just leaving the city and going fishing somewhere until the heat dies down after they commit a crime. The city is full of immigrants from other nations, merchant houses, ghosts, cults, weird secret societies, and other groups because that provides a mixture of possible allies and enemies for the PCs to rob from, butter up, flatter, backstab, and otherwise interact with. And the ever-present darkness provides a great cover for thieves to do their dirty work.

I actually really like the world and there's a lot of other games I'd want to run in this setting, even beyond a crew of scoundrels.

System
The system of Blades in the Dark is extremely focused and seems a good fit, but it falls down for me in a couple areas.

After picking an archetype like Cutter (toughs and bully-boys), Leech (alchemists and tinkerers), Slide (spies and manipulators), or Whisper (occultists and sorcerers), players put points into a variety of skills like Attune (supernatural manipulation), Finesse (doing things with skill and aplomb), or Survey (noticing details and seeing what's around). These skills, rated 1 through 4, are rolled as a dice pool and the single highest result determines the effect: 1-3 is failure, 4-5 is success with a complication, and 6 is unqualified success. That means that most rolls will be 4-5, so the PCs are generally competent but get into increasingly more dangerous situations as their plans unfold. There are a variety of ways to get extra dice, from taking Stress to teamwork to accepting a Devil's Bargain, but not enough to change the math. The game also explicitly allows for flashbacks and various other means of affecting the present situation. If the guards burst in, an inventive player can describe how her character actually contacted them with a bribe the previous day, leading to an easy explanation as the PCs talk their way out of trouble. Or perhaps the guards don't burst in because the PC got the shifts changed, or had a workman change the locks, or some other method of turning the situation to their favor.

All this leads to one of the problems I have with the game, which is that the GM rarely rolls. The actions of NPCs are generally determined relative to the player, using a set of mechanics called Position, Potency, Quality, and Scale. Position comes in Controlled, Risky, and Desperate, and the latter three all describe the relative strength and competence of the NPCs in play. A pair of urchins would be pretty low on all three of those, a patrol of Bluecoats would be lower Potency but of moderate Quality and Scale, and a powerful Whisper might be low Scale but extreme Potency and Quality. The GM takes all that into account along with the dice rolls to determine the final effect of the PCs actions, but generally NPCs don't act. There's no "PC attacks, then NPCs attack" dynamic. Instead, the GM asks "What do you do," and if the PC lunges at their enemy (using Wreck, perhaps) and fails, then the GM describes how they took a savage wound, or the enemy disarmed them, or otherwise left them in a compromised and dangerous position. But it's always relative to the PC.

There's nothing innately wrong with this, but rolling dice is fun, even if you're the GM.

The other major mechanic is Clocks. Any time there's something that can't be resolved in a single roll, it gets turned into a Clock where segments are ticked off as progress toward a goal. This doesn't have to be an explicit project with an end point, though it can be--there's also examples of clocks ticking toward a gang leader losing patience, or the guards getting suspicious, or other more abstract goals. Most of game comes in under either a Clock or a simple roll.

There's additional mechanics to track the crew of scoundrels and their relations with other groups in the city, their attention from the law, and so on. It's all designed to increase the tension on the player characters and encourage them to take risks, go for bigger scores, and try to get as much money as they can before they burn out.

I'm a little dubious of how much of the game comes down to the 1-3, 4-5, 6 roll or ticking off notches on a clock--I tend to like it when mechanics for different activities feel different--but I should say I haven't actually played it and it's possible that I wouldn't mind at the table.

It's impossible for me not to compare Blades in the Dark to Shadowrun, in that they're both about groups of criminals committing crimes in the hopes of getting rich/famous/powerful/etc. Shadowrun is a more planning-focused RPG, where a big portion of the game loop is the players coming up with a plan, buying equipment, and trying to cover all the eventualities so that when the plan goes wrong, the PCs have enough gear and skill to get out of whatever bind they've placed themselves in. Blades in the Dark's flashback mechanic means it's explicitly not about that sort of planning--it's assumed that the PCs have done their homework and planning, but the flashback mechanic means the players don't need to plan ahead of time, they can instead show how their characters anticipated whatever problem the GM comes up with and prepared for it in the moment. Some people like solving the puzzle, and some people think that a whole session given over to planning, legwork, and shopping is a tedious nightmare. It's all about preference.

The setting is the real draw for Blades in the Dark for me, and I'm already thinking of ways to adapt it to other possible scenarios, maybe drawing from Unhallowed Metropolis for inspiration. Scavengers exploring the deathlands. Political intrigue among the nobility. The former could even use the same rules, because someone made a traditional fantasy hack of the game called Blades Against Darkness. But maybe it's fortunate that I read The Lies of Locke Lamora a couple months before Blades in the Dark, because the plot of that book sounds like an excellent game of Blades in the Dark. Street urchins rise to prominence, encounter an enemy beyond their imagining who lays them low, and have to claw and scrape their way back to the top? It even has flashbacks that happen in the course of the narrative. If Blades in the Dark can replicate that progression--and from my read-through, I think that it can--it'd be a joy to run.

[Rocío Vega · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesante pero bastantes reglas y conceptos están explicados de forma farragosa

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfection is worth waiting for. John Harper used the delay to do more playtesting, polishing his RPG system to a fine sheen. What remains is sleek and stylish game of fantasy scoundrels, searching for the next score in a dark gothic ghost-haunted world. This is a tightly focused masterpiece of game design, that demands that you play by its rules.

The system is elegant. State your intent and roll d6s equal to your action rating. Beg for help from your friends, push yourself, or take a devil’s bargain for more dice. Only the highest result counts. 1-3 is a failure. 4-5 is success with consequences. 6 is success, and multiple 6s are a critical success. Where the game excels is in driving fiction first play. The core gameplay loop involves the player setting their goal and choosing an action. The GM sets the position (controlled, risky, desperate) and the effect (great, standard, limited), the player finds extra dice, you roll, and tick off clocks.

The system has enough bits to communicate difficulty, but is fast and light and gets out of your way, because what this game is really about is making the city of Duskoval and the dangerous lives of scoundrels come alive. Play is divided into three phases. In free play, players wander the city talking to contacts, getting into and out of trouble in a traditional linear RPG style. When they’ve gathered enough information to identify a likely target, the play switches to the Score. Pick one of six plans, fill in a detail, roll Engagement, and hit the ground running in media res to demonstrate that these are professional scoundrels. Rather than tediously planning a heist, players spend Stress to create flashbacks (“of course these are the guards I bribed”, “I memorized the canal schedule and a barge is passing underneath right now”, etc). Finally, in the third section, downtime, players indulge their Vice to recover Stress, work on long-term plans, upgrade their crew and territory, and watch the gangs around them respond. This pacing mechanism, with brief bursts of action interspersed with longer periods of slower work, is an RPG design innovation, and I’m interested to see how the moving parts, between Coin and Reputation and Heat and Stress, all work together.

The setting of Duskovol is mashed together from a bunch of sources, the Dishonored and Thief video games, the Vlad Taltos series, The Lies of Locke Lamora. The result is evocative without being specific. This is a city ruled by cruel and decadent aristocrats, inhabited by downtrodden workers, and infested with criminals and cultists, where the dead linger and forgotten gods lurk around every bend. There’s a district by district break down, but the setting mostly comes through in one sentence descriptions of NPCs and organizations. Lists and tables in fine Gygaxian style provide enough material for a GM to skeleton an adventure, but this is a game that demands that everybody improvise in visualizing and inhabiting the city, rather than specifying everything in advance.

This is a tightly focused game. Reading it, I’m confident that within its wheelhouse it’ll be perfect. The active Google+ community has tons of hacks (and I hacked a much earlier edition for Stross’s The Laundry series). That said, this may not be a game for the faint of heart, and with its mechanics so tied up in pacing and danger, it may not be as flexible as it appears. One-shots are doable, but a lot of the cooler features about crews and downtime won’t come into play.
Compared to earlier editions, the rules for teamwork and leadership are much reduced, probably for the better. On a minus point, there’s a lot of mechanical similarity. A desperate back alley skirmish, binding a hostile ghost, and making contact with a noble at a swanky party are all the same type of action: working down a clock. My personal point of confusion is the Coin stashed away for retirement-the goal of the game-when every bit of narrative around thieves says that your career ends in One Last Job that is too rich to resist, and too dangerous to survive. Still, these are minor gripes for a damn good looking game. Put BitD on the top of your list.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very interesting game, inspired by the Apocalypse World engine, where the players are members of a criminal enterprise in a dark fantasy world. The focus is on building up that enterprise.

The core mechanics are relatively simple, replacing the 2d6 system of the AW engine with a d6 dice pool mechanic. The results still normally break down into a full success, partial success, or failure result, the exact details of which are determined by the circumstances. There's a bit more to it than that, but it will be familiar to those who have played AW games before.

I had the opportunity to playtest an earlier iteration, and have already managed to run a one-shot of the final result, and I really like it despite some reservations.

Those reservations are twofold, one with the system and the other with the setting.

The system one is one of preference. The d6 pool system feels more swingy to me than does a 2d6 plus modifiers system. I may very well change my mind on this as I play it more. I know that getting a 10+ on 2d6 and a 6 on 1d6 has the same odds, but am unsure how the rest of the math breaks down.

I initially found the setting way too dark, both literally and figuratively (there is no sun in the setting). It's growing on me, but I think I'd prefer running or playing in a more traditional setting. Fortunately there are a lot of settings being worked on, including one set in the Draegaran setting of Vlad Taltos.

Still, if I wasn't already running another game, I'd probably go ahead and run this in the default setting despite my reservations. It's that good.

Edit: I've had a chance to play this several times now, and like it less each time. Part is the swinginess of the system, but I think more importantly it's the way that Resistance works. It feels like resource management where you have no idea how much of said resource you are going to have to spend ahead of your choice of whether or not to spend it. The book tells me to spend my Stress, but this randomness when it comes to Resistance makes me want to hoard it. I hate it.

I've pretty much soured on the whole "Forged In The Dark" branch of the PbtA ecosystem at this point, so I'm adjusting my rating downward to reflect that.

[Leonardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The pandemic (and a Shut Up & Sit Down video) openend up the world of solo RPGs for me and the reactivation of social life (and another Shut Up & Sit Down video) has opened the world of modern RPGs. I have already gone through a first set of rulebooks (including Tales from the Loop and Mausritter), but Blades in the Dark has certainly been a world/game-changing experience and something I hope to share soon with my group of fledgling players (well, not all of them are novice to the world of RPGs, but none of us has played TTRPGs in a while, so were are starting up the engines with more classical systems). Heist movies meets steampunkish occultism and a world constantly on the brink of impending doom make up for a mesmerizing and deadly cocktail in which a group of daring scoundrels who must face other gangs, corrupt law officers, and dark occult forces. The game system (in the vein of other Powered by the Apocalypse games) is very streamlined and action-focused and even the flashback and the clock tools helps to enhance the TV series dynamics. Given the deadly nature of the adventures involved, the games puts as much emphasis on the creation and development of individual characters as well as the gang they belong to (which might and hopefully will outlive them). And this brings me to one of the most interesting aspects of this kind of RPGs (and one in which Blades in the Dark excels): world creation is not the sole creation of the rulebook or the GM. Certainly, the book includes a lot of information about the city of Duskwall and the rest of the world, but there is still much lore that is left to the imagination of the GM and the players (and of the myriad of hacks and mods creators that have been inspired by the core rulebook). In that sense, a warning for novice RPG players is perhaps warranted: this might not be the friendlist or easiest entry into the genre. Although the players certainly portray scoundrels, their role goes beyond the "murdering hobos" meme and their are expected to do something more than to react to the "you are offered a mission in a tavern" traditional hook. And GM certainly will need to step down from their pedestal of sole authority in the game. They are still responsible for key aspects of world creation and for many background decisions that will affect players in the long-run, but they are closer to keepers or caretakers than to all powerful gods that decide beforehand every single plot element. Other reviewers have already pointed out some shortcomings in the game system and it certainly requires a learning curve (for everyone coming from D&D and other traditional RPG systems), but Blades in the Dark is certainly an inspiring and exciting system and setting that is well-worth trying. And last, but not least, they physical copy of the game is a joy to hold and read and, despite being all black and white, it's decidedly resistant to fingerprints.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting RPG. It's very focused on a very singular type of play: heists and similar thieverly activity. I haven't played it yet, but it looks like it's pretty good at it.

The system looks like it'll require some good GMing skills, but it's pretty nicely setup to ensure that things can be run off the cuff, the acommodate the immediate desires of the players and GM alike.

The other thing to really appreciate is the background, which is evocative, spooky, and fun.

[Володимир Кузнєцов · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Ножі у пітьмі" - це нестольна рольова гра, розроблена на базі ігроладу славнозвісного "Apocalypse world" - інді-системи, яка вийшла у 2010-му і спричинала справжній вибух в рольовому середовищі, наслідки якого відчуваються і досі. Якщо дуже коротко, вона значною мірою змінила сам базовий підхід до ведення настольної рольової гри, значною мірою залучивши до не елементи саме класичних настолок - структуру хода (не ільки для бойових та інших тактичних ситуацій, але для гри загалом), чіткий набір елементів кожного ходу, зміну фокусу залежно від певних етапів, і таке інше. Ідея виявилася настільки вдалою та життєздатною, що вже незабаром з'явився фентезійний спін-офф цієї системи Dungeon World, а за ним - ціла низка ігор, що використовували цей ігролад, які нині загально визначаються як Powered by the Apocalypse.

Blades in the Dark - граДжона Гарпера, талановитого майстра та ігророба, яка пропонує вам пограти в якості банди покидьків (scondrels) - злочинців, які починають своє сходження драбиною злочинного світу у похмурому місті Дасквол - північному порті, звідки броньовані кораблі вирушають полуювати на морських левіафанів, чия кров є сировиною для препотужного джерела енергії - електроплазми.

Так, джерела тут досить прозорі. Автор не приховує навіть, що надихався знаменитою серією Dishonored, так само як і Thief та ще кількома відомими серіалами та книжками на схожу тематику. Втім, хай це вас не відлякує. В цьому синтезі ідей пану Гарперу вдалося створити свій, дійсно цікавий та захоплюючий світ, який до того ж, вималюван досить широкими мазками, щоб лишити вам достатньо місця для створення власних елементів сюжету та сетінгу. Тут є і катаклізм, через який сонце вибухнуло (не питайте, як це б'ється з законами астрофізики), і тепер світ занурений у вічні сутінки. Окультні експерименти розбили Брам�� Смерті - і тепер духи померлих бродять серед людей, завжді голодні до життєдайної енергії. Їх ловлять і спалюють в електроплазмових печах, інших - заганяють в складні іскро-машини, анімованих мехів, якими померлі можуть користуатися, як новим тілом. А інші всіляються в тіла живих, поглинаючи душу жертви, і заволодівш її тілом, стають вампірами.

Збудована на ігроладі AW, гра, менше з тим, зазнала значних змін, і має чудову, дуже просту та зрозумілу, втім гнучку та гречну механіку, яка дозволяє ефективно керувати персонажами та створювати живий, вируючий світ. Вона збудована за месіонним принципом, коли покидьки раз у раз вирушають на "діло" (будь то грабунок, викрадення, вбивство, війна банд, провокація вуличних бунтів, контрабанда та таке інше), а між "ділами" відпочиває, розширює свій вплив, мутить зав'язки на нові справи, ховається від закону та зализує рани. Кожна дія має наслідки і система це чудово відображає. Ба більше, навіть без участі персонажів місто виру та змінюється невпинно. майже 50 фракцій (банди, державні інститут, містичні кола, профсоюзи, ецетра) знаходяться у постійній взаємодії, здіймаючись і падаючи, розпочинають війни та утворюють союзи - і все це створює безперервний броунівський рух, який доволі легко відтворити мастеру і який створює неймовірну атмосферу живого міста.

"Ножі в пітьмі" - одна з найкращих рольових систем останніх років, і те, що вона вже спричинила рух своїх систем-послідовників - багато про що каже. Її легко засвоїти та опанувати, важко вичерпати навіть протягом тривлої кампанії - і до неї цікаво повертатися. Обов'язковий требаграть для кожного поважного рольовика.

[Kevin Leung · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a player, I didn’t need to read the book cover to cover the first time. In fact, I would probably recommend against it. Take the quickstart version of the rules and get into a game to get the feel and flow figured out.

Then you can come back and read the book to get into the details once the general concept is in place.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant game that adroitly addresses some of the major issues with traditional role playing games. The world building is second to none and the book goes into great detail to explain the lore and politics of current day Duskvol, providing GMs with more than enough material to construct a campaign around. Loved it. Makes me wish I had friends so I could play with them.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Harper delivers yet another magnificent game with deceptively simple mechanics that hide a world of nuance. The read-through is only a formality; the real treasure lies in finding all the brilliant gems scattered surreptitiously throughout the text which can only be claimed with repeated readings and gameplay.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't normally read a game rule book from cover-to-cover. This one is an exception, and that is because it is exceptional.

I will add a fuller review at a later point when I can get my ideas fully down.

[Caleb M. Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and clever game.

[Thom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This kickstarter role playing game has two aspects - setting and rules. Both are interesting, and both a major change from something like D&D.

I really like both the simplicity and flexibility of the rules, and they are clearly explained in this book. The narrative concept of diving into the action will make for a faster game. Using flashbacks instead of extensive planning will make for really interesting heists - a genre I love to read and watch. I won't go into full game details in a book review, but this uses six sided dice, the rulebook and some printed materials, and 3x5 cards for the various notes and clocks.

The setting is the other half of the story, and the author has created a really interesting framework for all the various factions and heists. I can truly see why various home games will differ pretty wildly from each other, which is not a bad thing. What is a bit tough for me is just how disconnected this is from other settings. There is magic, electricity, ghosts and ultra powerful other beings. The main setting is isolated from the external world by a lightning wall - but there's a rail which leaves this and travels to other locations. I know players who will want to know more, and characters who (having lived here) will need to know more. This is a lot of lifting into a new setting.

What would have helped me is fiction. Stories written in this world that would give a hint to what goes on, without locking everything down. A few have been published by Andrew Shields. There is also a pretty good list of influences, and I suppose a game could be adapted to match one of those directly. Related settings have been published under the imprint "Forged in the Dark".

It's a lot to take in, but I am looking forward to running a game with the right group.

[Zedsdead · Rating 4 out of 5]

PCs do rather less navigating a pre-fab story and far more co-authoring it. Mechanics like action selection, flashbacks, and devil's bargains encourage a constant stream of creative characterization and plot point generation. It's extremely collaborative.

And it's designed to almost jump right in. You only select how much you can carry in advance. What you're carrying is decided as you go. And BOOM, you're already hanging on the side of the building detailing how you're going to get in through the window.

This is a very free-wheeling, conversational approach to RPGing. The possibilities are intriguing but it's also pretty intimidating.


Note: Interesting that the rules allow for your character eventually becoming a ghost, a vampire, or a spirit-possessed steampunk automaton. There are fully fleshed out PC rules for all of these.

[Saur · Rating 5 out of 5]

So my dnd group picked 'criminal organization' as their patron for the upcoming campaign. I was already aware of blades in the dark from Oxventure's campaign and I thought the mechanics seemed cool and that I'd steal flashbacks at the minimum. I kept my eyes open and happened to come across the book in a gamestore and bought it "for research purposes." I highly enjoyed reading the sourcebook, the game in itself seems intriguing and I'll possibly run some one day. For now I'm stealing shit for my Eberron crime campaign.


The last third, the worldbuilding bit was also really fascinating. The criminal noir mixed with the idea of dead people not passing on and becoming ghosts that can cause all sorts of problems is cool and worth exploring more.

[Jeremy Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prior to reading this book, I already had the opinion that Blades in the Dark is the best RPG system that I've ever played. This book still managed to surpass all of my expectations.

This single $30 (very cheap, for an RPG book) volume contains all of the game's mechanics, including detailed explanations and examples of play; a focused yet comprehensive game master's guide; a full sourcebook of the game's setting, each line stuffed with juicy tidbits and plot hooks for the GM to insert into their game; lists and charts for generating almost anything the GM could need; a chapter of advice for players; and interspersed throughout, a great deal on the philosophy of the game, critical for setting the group on the right track towards fun. I read the book from cover to cover (also unusual for an RPG book), and not only was it entirely worthwhile, it was an easy and engaging read.

Go buy this book, and play some Blades in the Dark.

[Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real nice mechanic you got there. Sure would a shame if someone... put a clock on it!!!

For real though, this is a ttrpg system to emulate the underdog up and coming criminal group in a rough and tumble city. People will get hurt, buildings will blow up, and your favorite NPC goon named No-Leg Schlomby will be kidnapped for ransom twice a session.

My one worry is that basically every mechanic is built around "clocks". (Just a concrete amount of time/mistakes before something happens/finishes/goes wrong/etc.) And while I love the idea so much, it feels a little weird that EVERYTHING is a clock more or less. I think this will become a non issue during play though.

[Arthur Tassinari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eu provavelmente nunca vou conseguir reunir um grupo pra jogar isso aí. Mas eu vou roubar metade das regras e do cenário pra outros jogos e não contar pra ninguém.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I technically read this bc my dnd group is adding it to our ttrpg rotation

Really great manual, easy gameplay, super fun!!!

5 d6 dice out of 5 🎲

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this setting so much! I can't wait to play some games in it.

[Joey · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite RPGs I’ve ever read. An absolutely wonderful system that has spun off dozens and dozens of other games for a reason.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent layouts, very clear rules and examples of play.

[Giordano Cecchini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uno dei GDR più innovativi e spacca cervello che io abbia mai letto, e oggettivamente uno dei manuali più completi, oltre al sistema di gioco (intrigante e articolato, forse troppo,) che è il perfetto punto di congiunzione tra gioco di ruolo e gioco da tavolo, all'interno il manuale contiene anche una ambientazione steampunk, dark e low-fantasy approfondita ma con grigi da poter delirare personalmente partita per partita e soprattutto, qualcosa che serviva da tempo, oltre alla definizione del ruolo per il GM anche la definizione degli OBBLIGHI dei player, insomma una rivoluzione sotto tanti punti di vista con uno sforzo preparativo per il master minimo (grazie anche alle numerose tabelle e spunti forniti) compresso in un formato piccolo e, c'è da dirlo, esteticamente molto accattivante, un must have per tutti gli appassionati del GDR

[Christopher Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been dabbling with tabletop RPGs for a few decades now (mostly solo - don't ask), but this, as many have already said, is rather groundbreaking and fresh, at least it feels such, which is just as good in this business. I'd give it five stars except for the saltiness (you should know that about me by now) and the lack of examples. I know that sounds unfair, especially since it does have a good amount of examples and samples and such, but most of them are either in the middle of a situation or based on fairly experienced DMs and/or players, and while they give you the sensation at the time of reading them they are helpful, when you get in the middle of a score you wish you had more direct samples to help you through - at least, I felt those sensations when attempting my first couple of sessions as a DM. I will admit immediately at this juncture they were my first sessions ever as a DM (not counting one fun but sloppy First Quest session many years ago with my family, which went slightly worse than Tom Servo's session with Crow and Mike). Thus, these irritations may solely be my own property and not yours, which is swell if true.

I did not desire to dwell so long on the "flaws" of this work by the fascinatingly clever John Harper. This work is magnificent. It creates in a short time a vast world of possibilities, adventures, escapades, and more. I am not nearly clever enough to create as many layers as Mr. Harper has. The most obvious example is the spirit world layer on top of everything. Sure, a (I truly despise the appellation) "steam punk"/Victorian/Ocean's 11 open world for bourgeoning gangs in a land of constant darkness would be engaging enough, but to add the spirit realm atop it, sheer brilliance. All of this in a fully realized world with different cultures, a familiar-but-fresh backstory, and likewise familiar-but-fresh archetypes that combine in what feels like a new package ... and this is what real creativity has to be today.

Even beyond all this cleverness, Blades in the Dark is a fun game to boot. I've only played it as a GM (and that poorly, I admit again), but the game's focus on creating a story first and "following rules" second (or maybe third) makes for a fast, adaptive system good for inexperienced players and GMs alike (I forfend to say "intuitive" at is juncture, at least until I am a trifle more experienced). The double XP options of individual players and crew advancements is another added layer of fun. It's taking me some getting used to, but the game system is clearly well-honed and sharp, even in its freedoms and opennesses.

This is a great vehicle for fun, comraderie, creativity, and cooperative storytelling. And you can even play moral heroes who pray to God in their downtime. What more can you want from an RPG? Get it and play it today.

[Benjamin]

The last book (phew) in the Bundle of Holding Indie Cornucopia #7.

And probably my favorite of the bunch: you are scoundrels in a Victorian-era industrial city in a world scarred by a cataclysm that obscured the sun and released demons and ghosts. But rather than, say, an epic quest to seal the gates or fix the world, you are trying to work your way up in a corrupt and dangerous city underworld.

My eyes sort of glaze over when it comes to reading rules these days. (When people talk about their stamina in the halcyon days of their youth, I say, "Oh man, when I was young, I could pick up a new attribute/skill system like that" and then try to snap my fingers.) But the book gives a lot of examples and even my skimming of the rules shows a lot of thought not just into how to adjudicate a heist, but also how to keep the action moving: you don't plan in this game so much as introduce flashbacks that show why the terrible thing that just happened in the game was part of the plan all along.

I'm also a sucker for any game that has character creation and also group creation rules. Give me those sweet stats for lairs.

There is also, I want to point out, some really good world-rules-theme design here around having the city as your only refuge, so if you piss off the cops or some other criminals, you can't get out of town and start over in LA (as you traditionally did in the US) -- you have to face the consequences.

But then also the world-building provides a lot of other hooks that, frankly, make me wonder if there are other stories that you would want to tell in this world. Like, instead of whale hunting for oil, in this world there's leviathan hunting for their demonic blood that powers the city's protection. That's almost too interesting to ignore, and yet there's no filling in of what that life is like, only how that affects the city and your miserable little lives there.

Also: I wouldn't have minded more art or more specific art. There's a lot of silhouettes of daring rogues being daring, but, say, what does a spirit-animated Hull look like or a spirit mask?

Still, here's the question that matters: Would I play? Absolutely, super interested, and a few of the alternate corebooks look good too (there's one that seems like Xenophon's Anabasis, where your crew is the army retreating through demon-infested lands, and what's not to love about that?).