Set in the industrial city of Doskvol, Blades in the Dark starts the players as ground level criminals in a world where magic and technology rub shoulders in an uneasy fashion. Significant narrative work has gone into to bringing Doskvol, and its criminal gangs to life and the setting feels like a wild blend of Dishonoured, Peaky Blinders and Stalingrad.
Character creation is quick and easy. After picking your character archetype, it's just a matter of filling in the requisite playbook. All your skills and special abilities are laid out in front of you. Each character starts with a certain level of stress and trauma, representing their physical and mental breaking points. Your playbook also lists your vices, to be indulged at the end of the game to reduce your stress.
Once you have picked characters, it's time to pick your style of crew. Are you shadowy assassins or swaggering bravos? Advancing your crew is one of the primary motivations within the game. You plan scores so you can gain assets, assets let you upgrade your crew , upgrades let you pull off bigger scores, and eventually you go from having nothing but your lair, to controlling a swathe of the city.
Success or failure while out on the job is determined by rolling dice from an accrued dice pool. The GM decides if the actions you want to take are controlled, risky or desperate, which affects the potential consequences of the roll. You gather up a dice pool based on your traits and circumstances and roll, with only the highest dice counting. 1-3 things have gone badly, 4-5 you succeed with a consequence, and on a 6 you’ve managed whatever mischief you were making.
If the players want to accomplish anything large-scale, the GM creates a "Clock" containing up to 10 sections. With each successful roll, the players fill in a section, moving closer to completing their task. The problem is that many of the game's mechanics only activate if there is a clock running. This leads to the GM starting a clock for nearly every player action and keeping track of all those clocks is a logistical nightmare.
Should you be caught out in a situation your character was unprepared for, you can take a hit to your stress to perform an Ocean's Eleven-style flashback showing how you planned for this situation all along. The downside to this mechanic is that it can be surprisingly easy to be rolling 4/5 dice at most challenges. Succeeding at everything seems incredible to begin with, but it quickly loses its shine and begins to interfere with the "fiction first" style of gameplay.
Overall Blades in the Dark is a patchwork of fantastic ideas and overly forgiving mechanics. It starts you at the very bottom of a grim and gritty world and then makes it surprisingly easy to float to the top without ever taking a scratch.
contributed by John McCloy
Character creation is quick and easy. After picking your character archetype, it's just a matter of filling in the requisite playbook. All your skills and special abilities are laid out in front of you. Each character starts with a certain level of stress and trauma, representing their physical and mental breaking points. Your playbook also lists your vices, to be indulged at the end of the game to reduce your stress.
Once you have picked characters, it's time to pick your style of crew. Are you shadowy assassins or swaggering bravos? Advancing your crew is one of the primary motivations within the game. You plan scores so you can gain assets, assets let you upgrade your crew , upgrades let you pull off bigger scores, and eventually you go from having nothing but your lair, to controlling a swathe of the city.
Success or failure while out on the job is determined by rolling dice from an accrued dice pool. The GM decides if the actions you want to take are controlled, risky or desperate, which affects the potential consequences of the roll. You gather up a dice pool based on your traits and circumstances and roll, with only the highest dice counting. 1-3 things have gone badly, 4-5 you succeed with a consequence, and on a 6 you’ve managed whatever mischief you were making.
If the players want to accomplish anything large-scale, the GM creates a "Clock" containing up to 10 sections. With each successful roll, the players fill in a section, moving closer to completing their task. The problem is that many of the game's mechanics only activate if there is a clock running. This leads to the GM starting a clock for nearly every player action and keeping track of all those clocks is a logistical nightmare.
Should you be caught out in a situation your character was unprepared for, you can take a hit to your stress to perform an Ocean's Eleven-style flashback showing how you planned for this situation all along. The downside to this mechanic is that it can be surprisingly easy to be rolling 4/5 dice at most challenges. Succeeding at everything seems incredible to begin with, but it quickly loses its shine and begins to interfere with the "fiction first" style of gameplay.
Overall Blades in the Dark is a patchwork of fantastic ideas and overly forgiving mechanics. It starts you at the very bottom of a grim and gritty world and then makes it surprisingly easy to float to the top without ever taking a scratch.
contributed by John McCloy
