Thoughts

on Forging
in the Dark

By Small Cool Games

version 1.3 • September 2022
 Contents
Intro....................................................1
Why Forged in the Dark?.........................1
How to Use This Thing.............................1
How Deep Does Your Hack Go?................1
If It Doesn't Belong, Take It Out...............2
Setting................................................2
Characters and Crew....................3
Zero to Hero...........................................3
Playbooks..............................................3
Contacts................................................3
Character Details...................................4
Actions and Attributes............................4
Special Abilities......................................6
Advanced Abilities..................................9
Equipment and Load............................. 10
Other Playbook Things.......................... 11
The Crew.............................................. 11
Cycle of Play................................... 13
Game Phases........................................ 13
Free Play.............................................. 13
The Score............................................. 13
Engagement Roll.................................. 14
Flashbacks........................................... 14
Stress.................................................. 15
Trauma................................................ 15
Downtime............................................ 16
Vice..................................................... 16
First version © 2021 by Small Cool Games.
Version 1.3 © 2022 by Small Cool Games.
The Faction Game................................. 17
Advancement....................................... 18
Coin and Stash..................................... 19
Payoff.................................................. 19
Retirement.......................................... 19
Heat and Entanglements....................... 20
Turf and Claims.................................... 21
Rep and Tier......................................... 21
Crafting and Acquiring Assets............... 21
Rituals................................................. 22
Non-Player Characters.......................... 23
Resolution Systems...................... 24
Rolling the Dice.................................... 24
Action Roll........................................... 25
Position and Effect............................... 27
Consequences...................................... 28
Resistance............................................ 30
Armor................................................. 31
Fortune Roll......................................... 32
Progress Clocks.................................... 32
Gathering Information......................... 32
Teamwork ........................................... 33
It’s Your Game................................. 34
Credits.............................................. 35
Resources......................................... 35
Games and Supplements....................... 35
Other Resources................................... 35
You may print a paper copy of this digital document
for personal use. That means you have express
permission to make a copy on your printer or have
the clerk at a copy shop print one for you.
 Intro
Forged in the Dark (FitD) is a rules engine for making
tabletop roleplaying games. It was introduced in
Blades in the Dark by John Harper in 2017 and has
since been used as the basis for many other games.
If you are not already familiar with
Blades in the Dark or other FitD systems, this
guide will not make much sense to you. You
can find the system reference document (SRD)
for FitD (as well as a discussion forum and
other resources) at bladesinthedark.com. There
are links to other FitD games (some free) on
page 35.
In this guide, I’ll discuss various options for mod-
ifying the FitD engine to fit different settings, play
styles, and preferences. I can’t and won’t attempt to
cover every possible way to hack FitD, but I will try
to take you through all the pieces the system, talk
about what they are for, give some examples of pos-
sible hacks, and give some guidance on when and
how you might change each of them to suit your
own purposes.
Why Forged in
the Dark?
FitD supports a fiction first, narrative-driven play
style with strong player agency. With deep and
elegant mechanics, the system drives a continuous
interactive conversation among all the players. The
multiple levels of success and consequential failure
built into the dice mechanics create dramatic situa-
tions almost automatically, allowing low-prep play.
Be Aware
There are lots of RPG game engines that are
designed to be generic and easily adapted to many
different kinds of settings and styles of play: Fate,
GURPS, Savage Worlds, Cypher System, Genesys,
and others.
1
Forged in the Dark is not one of those.
The FitD System Reference Document ruleset is
optimized for the specific setting and style of play
of the original Blades in the Dark game. Which is
to say:
1. A gang of scoundrels who have banded together
to commit crimes;
2. In a corrupt, ghost-ridden, early industrial city.
If you’re going to hack FitD, you’ll find that the
more your game deviates from the assumptions
the system makes, the more you’ll need to change
things. So be realistic about the scope of whatever
project you have in mind. If your game is radically
different from the original setting, you'll be doing
some significant system hacking.
How to Use This Thing
This is a fairly long and comprehensive document
(longer than I realized it would be when I started).
If you are all in on designing FitD games, then go
ahead and read the whole thing.
But you can also use it as a reference. If there is a
part of the FitD system you are thinking about or
unsatisfied with, find that section and see if it’s
helpful to you. Each piece of this guide is written to
be mostly independent of the rest, so you can just
check out the bits you’re interested in.
How Deep Does
Your Hack Go?
You can approach a hack of FitD at various levels,
from changing a playbook to designing a new game
that is only distantly related to the base system. I'll
organize hacking FitD (somewhat arbitrarily) into
several layers.
 Layers of Forged in the Dark Hacking
Doskvol, ghost field, history, NPCs,
Setting
factions, maps, lore
Actions and attributes, playbooks,
Characters
special abilities, contacts, crew
and crew
sheets
Claims, cohorts, coin, crafting,
Cycle of downtime, entanglements, faction
play game, free play, heat, retirement,
rituals, score, stash, trauma, vice
Dice system, stress, resistance,
clocks, position & effect,
Resolution consequences, harm, fortune
mechanics rolls, progress clocks, gathering
information, armor, stress,
resistance
You might find that someone has already done
something similar that you can borrow (with
attribution please). But if not, I'll try to give you
some guidance on various levels of hacking, from
minor adjustments to rethinking the core systems
of the game.
If It Doesn't Belong,
Take It Out
A common mistake for someone first messing with
FitD (including me) is thinking that all the pieces of
the game need to be shoehorned into yours. They
really don’t.
If there are subsystems that do not reflect what
your game is about, don't spend any energy trying
to re-skin them into something that sort of fits.
Just remove all the bits that do not belong. Your
game will be better without leftover, ill-fitting com-
plexity. Then create any new systems you need for
your game.
As I go through the different parts of FitD, I'll com-
ment on which are likely to belong in most games,
which are most readily removed, and what kinds
of interdependencies you might need to take into
account as you make changes.

Setting
Here are some things you might do with setting. ⚫ Adapt a FitD game to a different setting. Maybe
⚫ Play a published FitD game, but with some you want to play Blades in the Dark, but using a
house-rule adjustments to fit your preferences. city in a different world with different kinds of
magic (or without any kind of magic). This will
⚫ Expand on the setting of a FitD game. You
require relatively few changes (such as changing
might make a new playbook, crew sheet, or
references to ghosts, the ghost field, etc.). You
move the action to a different place or time in
might re-skin some default playbooks to better
the setting. There already plenty of resources
reflect the new setting or change the names of
available at bladesinthedark.com to let you do
some parts of the game (renamed actions, etc.)
things in other parts of the Blades in the Dark
and add some new things.
setting: you can play Bluecoats, leviathan hunt-
ers, heroes conspiring against the Immortal ⚫ Make a totally new FitD game. This will require
Emperor, and other options. I will not address significant work if it’s very different from a
those in detail here, but if that kind of hack is current game, especially if you also have ideas
what you’re working on, some of the discussion about changing the core system. Go for it.
in this guide will still be of use. (Note that the
setting of Blades in the Dark is proprietary and
not part of the free-for-use SRD. You may not
use it commercially without permission.)

2
 Characters and Crew
Zero to Hero
In standard FitD, characters by default start with
limited capabilities, with seven dots distributed
among twelve actions, a max of two dots in any
action, and one special ability. During the first few
sessions, any character who takes harm is signifi-
cantly impaired, and without extra coin they may
have to live with that harm through multiple scores
because healing can be quite slow. (Some groups
might choose to ignore, fudge, or hand-wave some
of the harsher aspects of the game for newer PCs,
but that’s not what the rules call for.)
The characters become progressively stronger and
more resilient as they (and the crew as a whole) gain
advancement, until by the end of a long campaign
they are very capable, with various special abilities,
up to four dots in their best action (able to roll six
or more dice when they need to), the coin to take as
many extra downtime actions for healing as needed,
higher tier equipment providing potency in many
situations, resources to manage entanglements,
plenty of crew bonuses, etc.
In thinking about your game, one of the first things
to consider is whether the FitD model (weak and
vulnerable starting characters, steady progression)
fits your game. Maybe you want more capable
starting characters. Do you expect each player to
have multiple characters? How many sessions of
play do you expect a typical game to run? How do
characters begin and progress over that span? How
hard should it be to challenge veteran PCs?
Playbooks
An obvious place to start when hacking FitD is to
create new playbooks. You can download the stan-
dard Blades in the Dark playbooks from bladesin-
thedark.com to use as an example of what FitD
playbooks contain and how they can be organized.
3
Are Playbooks Required?
Nope. You could design a game in which characters
are differentiated from each other in other ways
than playbooks or “character classes.” There would,
in effect, be only one playbook. This could work if
you want your game to have characters with similar
backgrounds and starting roles, for example, or
contrariwise if you want to provide so many cus-
tomization options that playbooks are too limiting.
Contacts
The contact list on a playbook provides both the
player and the GM with hooks to NPCs that are
specific to that sheet. Standard FitD gives five
contacts to each playbook, with a name and brief
description. That adapts well to many kinds of
settings where the PCs are likely to have access to
people they already know. If appropriate, you could
divide those into categories (such as family and
non-family or professional and personal) or let the
player define one or more contacts.
The assumption here is that these contacts will be
available to come frequently into play. That fits the
standard FitD setting, in which the PCs are likely
to engage with the underworld and other social
strata of a single city over the course of a short or
long campaign. If you expect the PCs to travel far
and wide, contacts can be left behind and become
irrelevant. Consider whether the format of contacts
fits your game, or if you want to integrate the PCs
with specific NPCs in some other way. For example,
PCs could have relationships with specific factions
rather than with individual persons, or they could
have other kinds of game world connections.
If two players want to use the same playbook, they
will get the same contacts. That might work fine in
a game where the PCs run in the same social circles.
You could also provide alternate contacts for each
playbook, just in case.
⚫ In designing Vergence, family and faction con-
nections are crucial to the setting. I wanted to
provide players with more engagement and
control than just providing standard contacts
with each playbook. Instead, players pick NPC
contacts from several lists that depend on the
character’s family background.
Character Details
Standard FitD uses Heritage and Background as
quick ways to establish the character’s origin and
culture. You can modify or rename these (or the
items within each category) to fit your setting. They
act as an xp trigger, so players are motivated to
incorporate them in large or small ways.
If you wish, you can provide other mechanisms
for the player to flesh out the character. Be aware
that too much extra stuff can feel like a burden for
players who don’t have a clear sense of character at
creation or just want to play without having to do
homework. But here are some options:
⚫ Replace (or add to) heritage and background.
Use other structured character details, such as
drive, beliefs, occupation (either what the char-
acter does for a living now or did for a living
before being thrust into the plot of the game),
family connections, etc.
⚫ Each PC could start the game with one trauma
condition already marked. This would create
some level of pathos at game start. If so, you
might set retirement at 5 trauma instead of 4.
See the discussion of trauma on page 15.
⚫ Create a system for bonds with other PCs. These
can be used as xp triggers or given additional
mechanical weight. For example, maybe you can
only assist a PC you share a bond with (or get
free assists if you do share a bond). PCs might
have a specific number of bonds or do some
action to establish or maintain them. Instead
of restoring stress by indulging vice as in the
standard game, you could create a mechanism
4
whereby PCs recover stress by roleplaying a
scene with another PC with whom they share
a bond.
⚫ Add a structured system for generating charac-
ter history or life path. You could ask the player
to come up with two or three significant events
from the character’s life, or roll for them on a
random table. For example, you could generate
one critical event from the character’s child-
hood or adolescence and one more recent event
that drove the PC to join the crew. Each event
could potentially involve one or more other PCs
if you want the group to have a history together.
Actions and Attributes
Anything challenging that a PC might do is struc-
tured into a list of actions. By default, the action list
consists of 12 verbs: Attune, Command, Consort,
etc. Actions are evenly grouped among attributes:
Insight, Prowess, and Resolve. You can mess with
this structure in all sorts of ways.
Change the Action Words
You can change any or all of the words used to
describe actions. Maybe attune doesn’t really have
the feel of how magic works in your setting, so you
change it to cast. You can change one or two of the
words, or all of them.
Your action list should evoke the genre of your game
and expectations for what the PCs will be doing. If
the game is supposed to be about daring expedi-
tions into unknown space, choose words like scan
and pilot. If it’s about swords and sorcery, choose
words like cleave and enthrall. (A good thesaurus is
invaluable for this. I like wordhippo.com.)
It’s probably a good idea for all of your actions to
be the same class of word. The standard game
uses verbs (hunt), but you could change them all to
adjectives (quickly) or adverbs (swift) instead.
You should give a description of what kinds of
activities fall most clearly under each word. FitD
also gives examples of activities that kind of fit,
but not that well (another action might be better,
depending on the circumstances). That establishes
what that action rating does uniquely and also areas
where it might overlap with other actions.
⚫ Band of Blades gives one unique action rating to
each playbook. That action is available only to
characters with that specialization. Each dot
in one of these ratings lets the PC perform a
particular action once per mission.
⚫ You could also have a actions that differ in
meaning from one character to another. For
example, in a game about a galactic civilization,
you could have a species action rating. The
higher that rating, the better that PC is at doing
things specific to their particular species. You
could do the same thing with heritage, profes-
sion, family, or other important differentiator.
Players could choose from a predefined list or
make up their own.
Attributes
Attributes (Insight, Prowess, Resolve) in FitD are
used for resistance rolls. The higher an attribute,
the lower the cost of resisting a consequence of
that type will tend to be. Attributes are also used
to see how much stress is restored when indulging
a character’s vice (using the character’s lowest
attribute). The way attributes work is designed to
encourage breadth of choice in actions. Having one
dot in many actions across each attribute makes
resistance and vice rolls more effective—easing
the economy of taking and restoring stress. If you
change those systems, consider whether you want
to find other ways to provide incentives for action
rating breadth.
Just as with actions, you can change the
names for attributes to better fit your game.
Brother Bear, Sister Wolf uses Mind, Body, and Soul,
for example.
You could also change the number of attributes.
The Blades Hack uses four attributes: Blood, Mind,
Persona, and Shadow. Each has two associated
actions.
5
Change the Number of Actions
Instead of twelve, you can use a different number
of actions. Why would you do this? Well, twelve can
be a lot to keep track of. Every time a player makes
an action roll, a short discussion can ensue about
which actions might fit what the player describes
doing. Fewer actions mean less complexity in
remembering which options are available.
Assuming you use the regular FitD system of
determining resistance using three attributes, a
different number of action ratings also changes
the cap on attribute ratings and how many dice
can be rolled to resist a consequence. If there are
9 actions and 3 attributes, then each attribute
can only go as high as 3 instead of 4.
If you reduce the number of actions, each one will
have to carry more weight, since they establish
what PCs do in your game. Make sure that your list
is broad enough to cover the things likely to happen
in the game. You don’t want to have players describe
what they are doing and not be able to figure out
which action could reasonably apply. You also don’t
want two actions to overlap so much that the dis-
tinction between them isn’t very meaningful in play.
It is very possible to use nine or even six carefully
chosen action words. Play-testing of your actions is
important. You might find that players have trouble
figuring out how the actions interact with what
their characters are doing and that different action
words would improve game flow.
You could also have more than 12 actions (such as
15), but that becomes a lot to remember. If there are
more than 12, the actions are likely to seem more
like skills and you might change the structure or
naming scheme to reflect that.
If you do change the number of actions, consider
how many dots a character gets at game start. The
default for FitD is three pre-chosen dots for the
playbook, plus four that the player assigns. If you
change the number of actions without changing
how many dots they get, then the PCs begin with
somewhat broader or narrower capabilities.
Max Action Rating
By default, action ratings can start as high as 2 and
can eventually go up as high as 4. When making
a roll, a player can push or take a Devil's bargain
for +1d, get assistance for another +1d, and might
sometimes get +1d from a special ability. So when
the character gets up to a base rating of 4, you're
looking at 6 or possibly 7 dice being rolled on actions
the players are willing to invest in.
With six dice, the chance of a critical is 26%, success
40%, partial 32%, and failure only 2%. It is challeng-
ing for the GM to establish meaningful opposition
when that many dice are rolled, because the stan-
dard rules do not impose a difficulty factor (other
than for harm) the dice used in action rolls.
For that reason, you should consider how capable of
success you want PCs to be at game start and how
high you want that to go with advancement, along
with how many bonus dice are potentially available.
In Vergence, for example, the highest an action rat-
ing can be is 3.
Other Ways For Ratings to Work
The system used in standard FitD is certainly not the
only way to generate a numerical rating for action
roll dice pools. Assuming you use the standard dice
mechanic, you should aim for dice pool numbers
that range between 0 and 3 or 4.
There are many inventive ways to come up with
that, including:
⚫ In Blades Against Darkness, the players have two
points to distribute among three attributes.
Each point gives one die for any of the actions
encompassed by that attribute. The player can
also underline three actions. An underlined
action gets +1d.
6
⚫ In Moth-Light, you can mark a number of rat-
ings. The total number of marked ratings under
an attribute is the dice pool for any rating that is
marked under that attribute.
⚫ In Brother Bear, Sister Wolf, you mark two attri-
butes. Each action within a marked attribute
gets 1d. You also mark three actions. A marked
action gets an additional die.
⚫ In Microblades, you assign three points among
four attributes and then mark two actions. You
use the attribute as the dice pool for any action
under that attribute. Instead of adding to the
dice pool, marked actions have 2  effect while
unmarked actions have 1 effect.
⚫ You could establish two different scales, each
running 0 to 2. One scale could be a list of skills
while the other could represent other resources
like luck, magical power, physical and mental
talents, or other characteristics. When it's time
to perform an action, choose one from the first
scale and one from the other and add the two
together to form the dice pool.
⚫ The PC could have descriptive tags that repre-
sent abilities, resources, items, allies, etc. On
each action roll, the player gets one die for each
applicable tag. You might need to set a limit on
how many tags can apply on any single roll, with
special abilities or advances perhaps increasing
that maximum in certain circumstances.
Special Abilities
Special abilities customize each PC by providing
cool and useful capabilities or tricks—they are
essentially individual exceptions to the normal con-
straints of play. Each playbook has seven abilities
listed (except, weirdly, the Cutter, who gets eight).
In your game, how many special abilities should a
PC have at game start? Just the one as in standard
FitD? If the game concept involves more capable
PCs, give them more abilities at start. If the PCs are
absolute beginners, they might start with no special
abilities.
 ⚫ In Scum and Villainy, each playbook has a signa-
ture ability that the character has by default. The
player chooses one other ability at game start.
⚫ In Vergence, the PCs have broad cosmic powers.
They start with one default playbook ability and
three other abilities that the player chooses.
Veteran Abilities
There is a slot on each playbook for “veteran abil-
ities.” It’s not well explained in the text, but the
intent (based on statements made by the designer)
is that the player can take any special ability from
any other playbook. Don’t be confused by the three
dots in that category on the playbook: that doesn’t
mean (as I thought the first time I looked at it) that
the cost of veteran abilities is three times that of
those on the PC’s playbook. Nor do those dots mean
you can only ever take three veteran abilities.
Any PC can take any ability from any standard
playbook. The ones on the playbook are just sug-
gestions. Over the course of advancement, you
can take as many veteran abilities as you want.
Essentially, there is only one big, freely available
list of abilities for everyone. The list happens to be
divided up among specific playbooks for space and
thematic reasons. A character could, from start to
retirement, never bother with a native ability from
their playbook.
However, even if a GM makes sure to point that out
to players during character creation and advance-
ment, many players will focus mainly on the abilities
that are right there on the sheet. In choosing which
abilities go on the playbook, create ones that fit the
theme of that character type. At the same time,
think about how characters with other playbooks
might use each ability on any of them.
Sometimes, an ability is a weird fit for other char-
acter types. For example, an ability might assume
availability of special items from a playbook (e.g.,
the Leech’s alchemical abilities in Blades in the Dark).
If the character doesn’t have those items, a special
ability may not make sense. Consider this when
7
designing abilities and add any necessary special
rules, such as marking some as not available to
other playbooks or requiring fictional justification.
Messing With Special Abilities
It’s fine to take the standard abilities and distribute
them among re-skinned playbooks. Maybe you
want to do a more traditional fantasy game, so you
make a Fighter playbook and start with most of the
Cutter abilities.
⚫ As you continue to refine character types, you’ll
probably find yourself making completely new
abilities. In doing that, don’t worry too much
about “game balance” in the formal sense. What
you want is for every player to be able to do
uniquely awesome things, but not dominate
the game. From a design perspective, it’s great
if there are so many good choices that there is
never any one best ability to take (that’s as close
to balance as you need).
Since PCs can take abilities from other playbooks,
you’ll figure out in playtesting if you’ve made an
ability too good to not pick or so peripheral that no
one would ever want it.
Special abilities interact with the rules in the fiction
in four basic ways:
⚫ Abilities that give a fictional benefit with a
fictional trigger (“you always know when some-
one is lying to you”). These have no mechanical
effect in the game rules, they just require that
the GM treat the character differently from
other characters in specific circumstances.
⚫ Abilities that give a fictional benefit with a
mechanical trigger (“when you spend 2 stress
to push yourself you learn a secret an NPC
wants to keep hidden”). This also provides a
benefit in the fiction, but this time triggered
mechanically.
⚫ Abilities that give a mechanical benefit with
a fictional trigger (“you get +1d when you are
aiding an ally”). The player must establish a
fictional basis to receive a mechanical benefit.
 ⚫ Abilities that give a mechanical benefit with
a mechanical trigger (“you can take +1d on a
desperate action if you also accept -1d to your
resistance roll”).
All of these fit the structure of a special ability; none
of them are correct or incorrect. You may want to
have a mix of all of these available, perhaps on each
playbook, to support different ways of interacting
with the game.
Here are the kinds of things the standard set of
special abilities allows:
⚫ Give narrative permission to do something that
might otherwise be difficult or impossible.
⚫ Give a bonus (+1d, +1 effect, potency) when
performing a specific kind of activity (a subset
of an action’s usage).
⚫ Increase load limits.
⚫ Allow the player to choose a benefit in exchange
for a penalty (such as +1d on desperate rolls
while accepting -1d to resistance rolls).
⚫ Allow the player to mark the special armor box
to resist a certain kind of consequence or get a
free push for a specific purpose.
⚫ Allow the player to do something extra when
pushing. Note that the character also gets the
regular benefit of pushing at the same time.
Many standard special abilities give a couple
of different possible benefits when push-
ing, such as making an attack at long range
without penalty -or- unleashing a barrage of
suppressing fire.
⚫ Reduce how much harm is taken in specific
circumstances.
⚫ Reduce penalties from harm by one level.
⚫ Permanently fill one segment of the character’s
healing clock.
⚫ Give the character an extra downtime action
that can be used for a specific purpose.
⚫ Give the character a bonus to a certain type of
downtime activity.
⚫ Give the character an extra xp trigger.
8
⚫ Give the character access to crafting, alchemy,
rituals, or other system that can be used to
create new capabilities.
⚫ Improve 1–3 results to 4/5 in specific circum-
stances (making partial success the worst
possible result).
⚫ Gain +1 stress box.
⚫ Get extra ticks on a clock for certain activities.
⚫ Get an extra downtime action for a specific
purpose.
⚫ Improve the capabilities of cohorts when
instructing or acting alongside them.
⚫ For playbooks that have a companion in their
equipment list (such as the Hound’s hunting
pet), a special ability can give the companion
extra abilities.
⚫ Reduce the cost of flashbacks for specific pur-
poses (never less than zero) or give bonuses to
actions performed during flashbacks.
⚫ Mitigate the cost of leading a group action (e.g.,
a group action using a specified action rating
can’t cost you more than 1 stress).
⚫ Give a bonus to your roll when leading a group
action.
Some special abilities do one powerful thing (you
always know when someone is lying) and others
provide more than one benefit (+1 effect when
scouting a target -and- +1d to avoid detection when
concealed in shadows).
When making a playbook in FitD format, much of
your time is likely to involve creating a coherent set
of special abilities. You’ll want a range of abilities
that fit the theme of the playbook and help the player
embody what that kind of character can do. They
should be engaging and likely to get a player excited
about trying them out. If you can, you want every
player to have trouble choosing which would be the
most fun to have because they all seem so cool.
You’ll also want to avoid the easy mistake of having
the same or similar abilities on two different play-
books—that’s pointless, since PCs can take abilities
from other sheets. Remember that in default FitD,
you’re really designing one big list of abilities that
all the players have access to.
You could choose to impose some kind of pattern to
every playbook’s special abilities. In standard FitD,
the first listed ability on each playbook is presented
as a good default starting ability if the player isn’t
sure which to choose. You might make sure that
every playbook has one ability that is useful for
downtime actions. At least one could give narrative
permission to do interesting things rather than
manipulating game mechanics. One could provide
a special armor box that can be checked for a free
to resist under specified circumstances (or used
for some other purpose, if you wish). If your game
needs it, you could have other patterns that occur in
every playbook’s list of abilities.
Changing the Special Ability Format
The special abilities in your game do not have to
follow the structure of the standard game. The FitD
abilities tend to give one specific advantage. That
makes sense in a heist game in which every unusual
capability is significant. It also fits many other
kinds of RPG genres.
But your game might require characters with a
broader set of abilities. If the genre is any variant on
super-powered or much larger than life characters,
the standard ability format may not reflect that.
You can design special abilities in many other ways,
including:
⚫ Use the same basic format for special abilities
as FitD, but expand to allow some abilities to do
other things. You could create a special ability
that provides a personal vehicle or magical
familiar, for example. You could specify what
that asset can do, perhaps allowing the player to
chose some number of customized advantages
from a list.
⚫ Make each special ability a thematically-related
combination of advantages rather than just one.
This will tend to make characters more broadly
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capable. Since their abilities can do more,
players will use them more than in the standard
game (but will also need to keep track).
⚫ Give a list of sub-powers within a special ability
and let the player pick two or three of them.
⚫ Define special abilities more in the form of
broad permissions. “Super strength” could just
define the character as being vastly stronger
than a regular person and let the effects of that
be defined by what seems reasonable to the
group during play (and, of course, affect posi-
tion and effect).
⚫ Devise a more crunchy system of building
abilities from constituent pieces. Many other
games have gone this route, but it adds a lot of
complexity.
⚫ Have special abilities structured in levels. The
more dots you put into an ability, the more
things it can do.
⚫ Set up special ability advancement in a tree
structure, with those lower down being prereq-
uisites for more powerful abilities higher up in
the tree.
If you don’t need advancement to be such a big part
of your game, you can have PCs start with some
number of character-defining special abilities, but
then have a set of smaller perks that they can gain
during play. That would fit a genre (such as 19th and
early 20th century adventure fiction) in which char-
acters start out very capable but don’t really change
significantly from one story to the next.
Advanced Abilities
Blades in the Dark includes several sets of additional
abilities that are not available at game start. The
requirements to obtain access are not defined in the
rules, but are discovered during play. These include
a set of special martial arts techniques (Iruvian
sword arts), commitment to ancient and terrible
gods, and binding to a pact with a demon.
You could include similar kinds of advancement
paths appropriate to your setting.
 ⚫ Scum and Villainy has a different set of advanced
abilities appropriate to a space opera setting.
⚫ Raiders in the Dark allows PCs to accept commit-
ments. Each has prerequisite requirements and
costs that the PC must meet. They provide access
to several special abilities unavailable to others.
For example, Blood Magic is available only after
traveling to some ancient place where your
blood might be infected. It requires a long-term
project allowing yourself to be taken over by
something terrible in your body and accepting
a trauma condition. Your vice (solace) becomes
drinking blood from sentient creatures. It gives
access to several blood-related special abilities.
Equipment and Load
Each playbook in standard FitD has a list of regular
items everyone can have and another list of items
specific to that playbook. Special equipment is
one of the ways to make each playbook unique
and interesting. The character doesn’t need to put
in any extra effort to get access to an item on their
list, unlike others who might be able to get it via a
long term project or other action to justify having
something unusual.
In the standard system, each playbook gets six
special items. Generally, they are a mix of things
with a mechanical effect (a fine weapon) and those
that give narrative permission (blueprints). Some
take up no equipment slots and can be declared for
“free,” while others use one or more slots and are
declared just like any other item in the inventory.
“Items” are ways to manipulate the fiction to gain
advantage. They do not necessarily have to represent
physical objects. Some playsheet items are really a
way to give the character an extra skill or capability,
such as “fine martial arts technique.” This would
give the PC potency on martial arts actions. While
special abilities are available as "veteran" choices
to all other character types, these skill "items" are
specific to a playbook and not readily available for
others to pick from.
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Load can also be to represent things other than
just carrying stuff—it can essentially function
as a limiter on uses per score, just like the special
armor box (but more than one, and more flexible).
A wizard character might check off load slots when
using magical spells (which, interestingly, would
naturally tend to support the traditional RPG trope
of magic users not tending to wear armor or carry a
lot of stuff), a hacker could check a load box for use
of intrusion software, and so on.
If you want to be more detailed with load, you
could incorporate a system in which players declare
which items they have ready to hand and which are
stored away and would take longer to get to in an
emergency.
You can change the equipment and load structure
in large or small ways. In Raiders in the Dark, for
example, I wanted wearing armor to be easier, so
I made standard armor cost one slot instead of two
and heavy armor cost two additional slots instead
of three.
Create a standard list of equipment that showcases
the kinds of assets the PCs would reasonably make
use of. You might change how many item slots
count as light, medium, or heavy load.
Another possible aspect of load is supply. In a game
about exploration or travel, it might be useful to
keep track of the supplies or goods that can be car-
ried by a wagon, spacecraft, porter, sailing vessel,
etc. You could create a whole mini-game about
managing scarce resources.
⚫ In Deathwish, one of the actions is called Pack.
For each dot in Pack, PCs get one point of
Supply. They can use Supply to declare access to
larger or rarer items than they would otherwise
have available.
You can also get rid of the equipment system entirely.
In Vergence, there is no formal system for items or
load. There are no item lists. The game isn’t really
about resource management or wealth, so players
can declare any equipment they could reasonably be
carrying. They can carry any fictionally appropriate
amount of stuff. If a character got loaded down, the
GM could reflect that via position, effect, etc., but
there is no system for it.
Other Playbook Things
Any number of other items could be added to play-
books to fit the setting and tone of your game. Do
you need to track the progression of a character’s
Doom, Social Credit, or Corruption? Add whatever
trackers you need to the sheet and develop systems
for making them meaningful. Structure your play-
books to represent the things that are important in
your game.
Gather Information Questions
Although not in the actual rulebook, each printable
Blades in the Dark playsheet has a unique list of
Gather Information questions. These are not the
only questions a character of that type is allowed to
ask, but suggestions intended to focus the player on
their character type's role.
I myself don't find these especially useful
for players or GMs. As far as I can tell, most
groups don't seem to use them much. I would
speculate (without evidence) that they might a
holdover from earlier drafts of Blades in the Dark,
which evolved away from its original roots as a
Powered by the Apocalypse game with moves that
allow specific questions to be asked. The play-
book questions seem to fit that kind of game, but
there is no mechanical support for them in the
existing FitD game engine.
If you like these kinds of Gather Information
prompts, you can include them on playbook forms.
It would be possible to give them more structure
in the rules, such as a special ability that gives +1d
or +1 effect level when gathering information while
asking a question from the list on their sheet (inter-
estingly, if you put that ability on just one playbook,
other character types taking it as a veteran ability
would be limited to the questions on their own
11
playsheets, so it would automatically customize
itself to whoever takes it).
Ancestries
In some games, players will choose an ancestry
(species, kin, race, kind, national origin, etc.). That
could be mainly a detail with no mechanical effect in
the game rules (or perhaps an xp trigger). You could
also give some kind of ability to each PC species.
⚫ In Scum and Villainy, any PC can choose the
“xeno” special ability (instead of a playbook
ability) when created. This ability is described
narratively for each character. Then, whenever
the player wants to use it, the GM assesses a
cost in stress from 0–2, depending on how
much effect it has. This xeno method from S&V
could work in almost any game with divergent
species or types. If, for example, the characters
are different kinds of intelligent animal, a Bear’s
special ability could let her be strong and fierce,
a Mouse could fit through tiny spaces and be
elusive, etc. The GM would assess a stress cost
when those abilities have a significant effect on
the game.
⚫ In Band of Blades, each character is from one of
four heritages. Each heritage has a list of traits
which give minor advantages that also act as
xp triggers. The player picks two heritage traits
for the character. Players and GMs can create
additional heritages for characters from places
less common to the lands where the campaign
is set.
The Crew
The crew is a means of binding a group of PCs
together for a common purpose. The specific kind of
crew tells us, generally, what the PCs will be doing
together and how they will advance themselves. In a
game with high PC lethality or retirement, the crew
also becomes the thing that the story is about. You
might end a campaign with none of the original
PCs, but their legacy remains.
If your game is about something other than a gang
of criminals, you might change this structure (or
eliminate it entirely).
⚫ In Scum and Villainy, the crew is replaced by a
ship (with a literal crew); different types of ships
suit different kinds of activities that the crew
engages in.
⚫ In Band of Blades, the crew is replaced by mem-
bership in a legion of mercenaries beset by mag-
ical foes. In that game there is only one type of
“crew” because it is about a single kind of story
(although they do choose a supernatural patron
which is in some ways similar to choosing from
among different crew types).
⚫ In Vergence, the players choose an interdimen-
sional challenge to face and form an alliance
against it.
⚫ In Moth-Light, the players choose a pact which
will determine the kind of goals and obstacles
the PCs face.
⚫ You could design a longer term intergenera-
tional game in which you only play one or two
scores per decade, with the PCs retiring and
being replaced by the next generation (who
could be their children).
If you don't have a system analogous to a crew, you
may need some other mechanism for giving the
characters a reason to work together toward com-
mon goals.
Crew Sheets
A crew sheet functions as an additional shared
playbook, giving extra bonuses and opportunities
for advancement.
Crew Special Abilities
Crews have their own special abilities, which apply
to everyone in the crew. These abilities work sim-
ilarly to those on playbooks, providing collective
advantages such as:
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⚫ Allow each PC to add one dot to an action rating.
These are divided up by attribute, so that if you
take the Prowess crew special ability, anyone
can choose to add one dot to an attribute within
Prowess.
⚫ Increase the maximum allowed action rating.
⚫ Give some special skill or capability to everyone
in the crew.
⚫ Decrease a cost or increase a benefit.
⚫ Give +1d to the engagement roll for a specific
type of plan.
When you create a crew sheet according to the
standard FitD format, you’ll create a set of special
abilities that fit the setting and the tone of that type
of crew. The standard game gives seven abilities
per sheet. Many repeat from one sheet to another
(sometimes mechanically the same but with differ-
ent names).
Crew Upgrades
Upgrades mostly create or improve crew resources:
the crew’s lair, cohorts, equipment, etc. They can
also provide more xp to crew members when they
train a specific trait.
Crew Contacts
In addition to individual PC contacts, the crew also
has a contact list, with one friend and one rival.
These are professional connections for the group as
a whole. Keep this if the group’s contacts should be
important to the game.
Do You Need Crew Sheets?
Not necessarily. Crew sheets focus the game on dif-
ferent types of play. If your game is really about one
kind of thing, then you can eliminate crew sheets or
have tracking forms for managing group resources
(as Band of Blades does).
 Cycle of Play
Like the rest of FitD, the various subsystems that
you contact in the cycle of play are optimized for the
original setting and style of the game. Depending
on your hack, you might need to tweak or com-
pletely revise some or all of these systems.
Game Phases
FitD is built around a continuous cycle of free play,
score, downtime. The system is structured so that
the characters noodle around in free play until there
is a reason to initiate a score (which begins with an
engagement roll), followed by downtime, followed
by going back into free play. The assumption is that
the GM and players collaborate to establish score
opportunities and the players are motivated to
participate in scores because that's where most of
the game resources they need come from.
You can use this basic structure, with perhaps a few
tweaks, or you could change it in significant ways.
One option is to change the cycle itself. A forced
sequence of free play, score, and downtime reflects
the constrained nature of criminals struggling to
advance within a city, but not necessarily the open
ended nature of heroic fiction, for example.
⚫ In Vergence, the PCs are very powerful and
can travel freely within an infinite multiverse.
Constraining them into a limited phase
structure doesn’t fit the choices they might
reasonably make. Instead, much of the game
is intended to happen in free play. Play can
move into a more detailed operation phase if
an engagement roll is needed. If they need to
restore stress, the players can take a short rest
phase (which just restores 4 stress and resets
abilities). Or, if they want to take larger scale
actions, they can take a longer scheming phase.
A scheming phase allows the GM to check off
a greater number of segments on opposition
clocks than a rest phase. There is no constrained
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phase sequence: the players can choose to move
freely from one phase to another as they wish.
There is a mechanism to allow players to take
different kinds of phases at the same time if
they want, so one PC can rest while others stay
in free play, for example. The game calls this a
“phase split.”
Free Play
FitD calls out free play as a phase of the game
between other, more formally defined phases. Since
it doesn't have specific game systems associated
with it, you could mess with other game phases
and leave free play alone (although you are likely to
change some of the systems that are used within
free play).
The Score
With its focus on criminals committing crimes,
standard FitD is structured around scores. Scores
establish a default episodic structure: each game
session is likely to involve a score. It is possible to
run a couple of scores in one session and major
scores could last two or more sessions, but the
game deliberately imposes an inherent limit to how
much can reasonably happen in a score. That limit
is stress, which is a precious resource that cannot
in any predictable way be recovered during the
score itself. As the PCs use stress and start to run
low, they need to end the score and get to downtime
so they can recover—even if means the score is not
successful.
You could keep the basic structure of a score while
just renaming it to fit your game. Explorers of
ancient ruins could run an expedition or delve instead
of a score. Commandos could conduct an operation.
Children could fall into a shared nightmare.
Renaming might be all you need to do, or you
might adjust some of the systems that are used to
define a score. For example, if you want to allow for
somewhat longer scores, you could provide some
mechanism for recovering some amount of stress.
⚫ In Raiders in the Dark, the crew can find a safe
location and rest for a few hours. During a rest,
PCs restore stress up to half their maximum,
or 1 stress if they are at more than half. They
also reset their armor boxes and clear any short
term harm.
Not all game genres fit the episodic nature of scores.
If necessary, you can change the game structure to
build the action around other kinds of events, such
as encounters, scenes, missions, or short and long
rests. Just make sure you take into account the
economy of stress and stress recovery so that the
PCs have resources to work with during play. If you
change the system significantly you'll probably need
to playtest and make adjustments so that stress is
precious and limited, but not to the degree that the
players are afraid to use it.
Engagement Roll
The engagement roll is designed to focus the players
on the action instead of planning and prepping. It
works well in games that are set up to abstract the
planning part of PC actions.
⚫ In a game that is more about resource manage-
ment and planning, you could create a more
formal structure for prepping before a score,
such as a planning montage, scouting, build-
ing super-science creations in the laboratory,
etc. This could be used to establish facts about
what is about to happen, give extra dice to
the engagement roll, affect what items can be
included in load, or other relevant tweaks to the
system.
⚫ Another change could be to make engagement
rolls optional. The purpose of an engagement
roll is to determine the starting position when
the action starts. Depending on the narrative
structure of your game, free play might often
merge right into a score, so the starting position
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is already clear. In that case, you could provide
the GM with the option to skip the engagement
roll and just declare that a score has begun.
You might also consider whether your game should
have a mechanism for disengagement.
⚫ In Raiders in the Dark, at the end of a delve the
crew can make an exit roll to get themselves
out of a dangerous location. Depending on the
result of the roll, they might all take one or more
consequences or they might get away free. The
exit roll is not required (they might just play
through the exit normally), but it is a way to
abstract that part of the delve if the group is not
interested the details.
Flashbacks
Flashbacks work hand in hand with the engage-
ment roll to encourage players to skip tedious
preparation for a score. They can always flash back
to the work they have already done to prepare for
the situation at hand. They can do that as needed
rather than making the players attempt to plan for
every foreseeable contingency.
Flashbacks fit many kinds of fiction, but not all. In
a horror game, for example, you might eliminate
or adjust flashbacks so that PCs are less proactive
and have less control. To limit flashbacks, you could
increase the cost, so that they always require at least
1 stress (but if you do that, the players will tend to do
more planning and be more hesitant).
Some play groups lean into flashbacks and use
them constantly to flip back and forth between
present time and prep. Other groups (sometimes
with experience playing other games) use flash-
backs rarely or even think of them as “cheating.”
Consider the types of people who might play your
game and how they might respond to a flashback
mechanic. If you are likely to get a lot of tradi-
tional RPG players and include flashbacks, you
could consider ways to ease them into using that
narrative structure.
Stress
Stress is the core currency of PC activity in FitD. For
players, it is useful and precious, especially since
checking your last stress box results in trauma—
and resistance rolls cost a random number of stress
points, so trauma is a risk whenever you make a
resistance roll with 5 or fewer remaining stress.
You can change how stress works in a few ways:
⚫ If the word “stress” doesn't fit your game, you
can rename this resource to a different word,
such as moxie, power, grit, élan, vigor, vitality,
doom, or heart.
⚫ The standard game gives players a max stress
of 9, with a couple of more points available via
crew upgrades. If that's too much or too little,
change the number.
⚫ A crew that is connected psychically could have
a shared pool of stress. Each PC could have a
few personal stress points and then a stress
track for the crew that they can all draw from.
Trauma
PCs who check off their last stress box suffer
trauma. Trauma takes the PC temporarily out of the
game. Trauma is a dramatic event that some players
enjoy. But it also keeps the player from playing for
some (not quite defined) period of time, which can
feel intrusive and not so fun.
Because resistance rolls cost a variable amount of
stress, it's very possible to go into trauma unex-
pectedly (two very bad resistance rolls will do it).
This system is designed to reflect the desperate
and unpredictable nature of a criminal gang on the
bottom of the social hierarchy. It might or might
not fit your game.
⚫ You could also be more defined about what
it means to gain trauma. For example, for the
rest of that score it could limit the actions the
character can take by themselves or otherwise
place constraints on action.
15
⚫ A character taking trauma might play through
a flashback scene to address some element of
the trauma condition the player has chosen—
potentially gaining some advantage (such as a
setup action) that applies to the current fiction.
⚫ You could have some system for a player whose
character is taken out via trauma to temporarily
take some specific role while not playing the
character. That could be playing one or more
NPCs, flashing back to a time when the char-
acter provided guidance or assistance to the
PCs who are still in the scene, choosing the next
big narrative beat, or any other role that fits the
theme of the game.
⚫ In FitD, trauma is permanent. If that doesn’t fit
the setting, you can provide a mechanism for
removing trauma—using advanced technology,
magic, a boon from the gods, or any other
method that aligns with the fiction. Removing
trauma should probably be a significant under-
taking that takes time (perhaps via downtime
actions) or some other player resource.
⚫ In Deathwish, there is no trauma. When you get
to zero stress, you are exhausted. You can keep
playing the character when exhausted, but you
can't do things that require spending stress.
Some abilities let you mitigate exhaustion in
certain ways or gain a bonus when exhausted.
Forced Retirement
In the standard game, PCs who mark a fourth
trauma condition cannot continue as playable char-
acters. They must retire or take a fall and become
incarcerated. This reflects the standard setting
(desperate scoundrels) and encourages campaigns
in which players may have multiple characters. It
also gives players reason to avoid trauma.
You could change this in a few ways:
⚫ In a game like Deathwish, without trauma, there
is no forced retirement (but there is a retirement
system for characters who have completed a
campaign).
 ⚫ You could lean even harder into this mechanic so
that the fourth trauma condition doesn’t mean
retirement, it means going out in a blaze of
glory. The PC could get some temporary bonus,
such as being able to ignore harm penalties and
a fully restored stress track, but will not survive
past the current score or scene.
⚫ Make retirement fit the theme of your game. If
it’s about adolescents who have a way to travel
from our mundane world to a magical realm,
then exceeding the trauma limit (or equivalent)
could mean that the character has become a
grownup and is no longer able to cross over.
⚫ Instead of retirement, taking on too much
trauma could mean some kind of transfor-
mation. Perhaps the character transcends
from being a mortal into some altered state of
existence, which doesn’t require retirement but
does involve changing to a new playbook with
new abilities and limitations.
Downtime
Downtime is a mini game within FitD that is
oriented toward longer term actions. If your
game incorporates downtime, you can make it a
big deal, with lots of different actions that can be
accomplished, or just a pit stop in between more
important things.
Long-Term Project
This simple, abstract, and versatile system is quite
functional as written. Unless you have a reason to
change long-term projects, they fit well into most
types of game.
Recovery
Recovery from harm in FitD can be punishing.
Especially in the early stages of the game, when
PCs may not have access to healers or the coin to
spend on extra downtime actions, a PC who goes
into downtime severely wounded might be just as
hurt at the beginning of the next score. This reflects
16
the desperate nature of the criminal gang setting of
default FitD. It also encourages a game with more
than one PC per player. When one PC is too hurt to
go on a score, another one can sub in.
If your game doesn’t fit that model, you can make
healing easier. Here are some ways to do that.
⚫ You could just let PCs clear all harm in between
scores. If, in the fiction, the crew would normally
be able to wait until everyone is healed (or if
magical or high tech healing is easily obtained)
then letting PCs heal completely between scores
is nice and simple.
⚫ Level 1 harm is cleared automatically at the
start of downtime (this is how it works in
Scum and Villainy).
⚫ All harm drops by one level automatically each
downtime. A PC can take a recovery action to
heal more quickly than that.
⚫ Provide a more forgiving recovery system, such
as this one (which doesn’t use a clock and gen-
erates some kind of healing with each recover
action):
Recover
Roll PC action rating Critical: Clear all harm
or NPC Tier 6: Clear two levels of
Add +1d for harm
assistance 4/5: Clear one level of
harm
Get +1 effect level per
1-3: Clear all level 1 harm
coin spent
⚫ Taking more downtime actions for healing
doesn’t cost coin, it only means the GM has
justification to advance troublesome clocks.
⚫ Magical or high tech rapid healing is available at
a cost in coin. If the PCs have the right connec-
tions (which could be a crew upgrade), they get
some amount of healing for free.
Vice
In a game about criminals, it makes sense that
indulging in vice is the mechanism for recovering
stress.
⚫ If you want to use the same basic system but
make it feel less seedy, you can rename vice to
something different, such as solace or decom-
pressing. Providers of stress recovery could be
family members and friends rather than drug
dealers and bookies.
The vice mechanic for recovering stress includes an
element of risk, since PCs who recover more than
their maximum stress overindulge. The lower you
are on stress, the lower the chance of overindul-
gence (it’s impossible if you have more than 5 stress
to recover).
If you want to dissociate the likelihood of overin-
dulgence from the PC’s current stress level, you
could use a table like this:
Indulge Vice
Roll worst Critical: Recover all stress
Attribute
rating
6: Recover 5 stress
4/5: Recover 3 stress
1–3: Recover 2 stress and
overindulge
⚫ The Blades Hack lets the player roll choose
whether to recover a small amount of stress or
overindulge to recover all stress. Overindulging
means the GM rolls to determine some extra
problem the character suffers.
⚫ A simpler and more forgiving system is to have
PCs recover all stress at each downtime. This
could fit a game about larger than life action
heroes, for example, or one in which each
downtime represents a significant amount of
time in a calm environment and a chance to
fully reset. That could be a “free” reset, require a
downtime action but no roll, or it could require
a downtime action and a roll such as this:
17
Recover Stress
Recover all Critical: Gain extra information,
stress and a new contact, or other
roll worst advantage
Attribute 6: No problems
rating 4/5: +1 Heat or minor narrative
complication
1–3: +2 Heat or major narrative
complication
⚫ The PCs automatically recover some set amount
of stress, such as 4, each game session. They
could then choose to indulge vice (or some other
mechanic, such as giving up a downtime action)
if they wish to recover more than that.
⚫ Create some other restoration method, such as
roleplaying through a small recovery scene with
another PC or an important NPC.
The Faction Game
Interacting with factions is a big part of
Blades in the Dark. You can use the standard FitD
faction mechanics if they fit your game, integrating
your own set of factions.
Here are some other ways to make factions work:
⚫ A simpler system would be to just use roleplay-
ing and faction clocks. When the PCs interact
positively with a faction, establish a clock to fill
toward gaining their confidence or earning a
significant favor. When the PCs interact nega-
tively, then create a negative faction clock and,
when it fills, have the faction take some kind of
reprisal.
⚫ If factions don't go to war in your game, change
the effects of being at -3 status—or remove or
redesign the faction status level system entirely.
⚫ In Vergence, most factions are led by a single
strong individual, so factions are presented as
a list of NPCs and what they are in charge of.
The group can earn a game currency called favor
with individual factions, which can be spent for
extra dice and other bonuses.
 ⚫ In Deathwish, there is a formal system for estab-
lishing different levels of alliance. The stronger
the alliance, the more resources are available to
the crew.
Advancement
FitD has advancement systems for both PCs and the
crew, with xp triggers that are marked at the end of
each game session.
If you like the basic FitD xp system, keep it, perhaps
reconsidering which xp triggers fit your game and
how fast characters and crews should advance.
⚫ Is your game designed for one-shots or just
a few sessions you could have a very simple
advancement system (or none at all).
⚫ Is it designed for a range of different game
lengths? If so, how will it work for just one or
two sessions? 10 sessions? 20? 40? Is the game
still playable once the PCs have earned many
upgrades or does it become uninteresting
because they’ve become too powerful and don’t
have much else to strive for?
Most players like advancement, so it can be a
good idea to make sure the first advances happen
quickly. Even during a one-shot, you could allow
for advancement halfway through. On the other
hand, during a long campaign, it’s important to
make sure players don’t get all the shiny things very
quickly and then have less motivation to continue.
A common concern raised about Blades in the Dark
and some other FitD systems is that in a long cam-
paign, PCs become powerful enough that the GM
has great difficulty figuring out how to challenge
them. With expected advancement, PCs are likely
to have 4 dots in the actions they use frequently, so
they typically roll 6 dice on important actions, which
means a 2% chance of outright failure. Position and
effect become less relevant with large dice pools.
Advanced PCs also often also have 3 or 4 dots in
most attributes, so they roll a lot of dice when
resisting. That means resistance costs little (and
18
they can easily manage their indulge vice rolls to
recover stress they lose between scores). They have
plenty of coin to pay for extra downtime actions
when healing is needed. Because the game provides
few tools for a GM to provide serious challenges to
characters who have earned a lot of xp, the end of a
campaign can fall rather flat.
Some possible changes have been proposed else-
where in this document to address this issue (such
as limiting each action to 3 dots instead of 4), but we
can also consider it in thinking about how advance-
ment works.
Here are some possibilities:
⚫ Scale the cost of advancement. For example,
you could make the first dot in an action cost
4 xp, the second 7, the third 9, and the 4th 11.
Special abilities and crew advancement could
scale in a similar manner. This would let players
advanced quickly at the start, but slow it down
over time.
⚫ Deathwish has no xp system. The crew just gets
one advance after completion of each score.
Advances provide relatively small benefits.
⚫ Vergence also has no xp. Each type of crew
(alliance) has milestones that are specific to
the threat they are facing. When enough mile-
stones are met, the entire group earns upgrades
that can be spent for group resources, new PC
special abilities, action dots, etc. This means
advancement happens at the same pace for
everyone and is less finicky. It does not have any
individualized incentive structure, however.
⚫ Marking xp for desperate rolls creates a weird
incentive in which players may focus on getting
game currency (xp) instead of playing within
the fiction of the game. They might trade posi-
tion for effect just to make a desperate roll, or
tell other players not to help with a setup action
because they want their action to be desperate.
That xp trigger is also another thing to remem-
ber to keep track of. You could choose to get rid
of it if the incentive doesn’t fit your game.
Coin and Stash
The coin mechanic provides a way to abstract wealth
and reward, avoiding tedious accounting of small
units of currency or a cycle of petty theft and fencing
of stolen items. This system is fairly easily adapted
to any game that is about PCs scrabbling for wealth:
cyberpunk, sword and sorcery, gangsters in 1920s
Shanghai, etc. If appropriate, you can rename coin
to whatever fits better, such as “cash” or “cred.”
⚫ If wealth is not a driving factor in your game,
you could choose to remove this system. For
example, in a game about intrepid galactic
explorers from an advanced post-scarcity
culture, a wealth system is largely irrelevant to
what the PCs are doing. You might need some
other mechanism for determining how PCs get
stuff and influence others.
⚫ If you want to get more detailed and finicky,
you can make the system less abstract. For
example, you could make the players track the
actual amount of money or other valuables they
acquire and spend.
Payoff
The standard game assumes that successful scores
generate coin fairly reliably. The larger the score,
the greater the payout, but otherwise the GM is
directed to just give the crew a consistent reward
for completing a score.
If your game doesn’t use coin or some other cur-
rency equivalent, you will need to consider some
other game structure to motivate the players to take
game-relevant action.
Assuming you do use coin, you can build in tropes of
criminal fiction—that the standard game avoids—
by making payoff less certain: an erstwhile ally takes
off with the loot, a fence cons the crew into thinking
the loot isn’t worth much, or the crew gains access
to a huge payout that belongs to someone powerful
19
(who wants it back). If your game is designed to
explore betrayal, you could choose to lean into
those kinds of events mechanically, perhaps with a
random table of complications that must be rolled
after a score.
You could also change the mechanics for payout,
making the benefit from scores less predictable
or adding in other kinds of renumeration besides
abstract coin.
⚫ Raiders in the Dark is about venturing into
ancient crypts and acquiring loot. During a
delve, they can acquire loot dice to represent
various items they’re picking up that they think
will be valuable. Each loot die takes up one load,
so they must make choices about what to carry.
There are two kinds of loot dice: red and blue.
One red is more valuable than one blue, but
two blue are more valuable than one red. They
can combine two blues into a red (representing
sorting and keeping only the most valuable
stuff). When they get back to their base and can
try to convert their loot to coin, they roll on a
payout table to learn what coin or special items
they have acquired.
Payout Roll
Roll your blue Each 5 or 6: 1 coin.
loot dice Three blue sixes: special item.
Roll your red Each 4, 5, or 6: 1 coin.
loot dice Two red sixes: special item.
Retirement
If retirement from life on the edge makes sense in
your game, then include it. FitD has a system for
determining the quality of retirement based on
stash. If that’s not a theme that fits your game, you
can easily remove it.
You could also base retirement on some factor other
than wealth, such as fame, honor, or legacy. Then
you’d need to track or define what elements of the
game contribute toward that kind of PC end game.
Heat and
Entanglements
This system is a way to give mechanical weight to
troublesome attention from the powers that be. If
your game is about acting illicitly within a corrupt
power structure, the heat system in FitD might not
need any significant changes aside from creating
entanglements that fit the setting.
However, if your game is about proactive heroes
who are taking action rather than dealing with
unprincipled power, you might want to just remove
this whole system. In that case, factional issues
could substitute for heat and entanglements.
Heat
The heat mechanic includes a whole subsystem
involving wanted level, incarceration, prison
claims, and entanglements. This reflects dealing
with power and those who control it. It may be over-
kill for games in which that kind of action belongs
more in the background.
If legal entanglements need to be important, then
make them important. Use the incarceration
system or build something equivalent to fit your
game. Make entanglements significant enough to
drive major game events. Create a game in which
the crew either puts a lot of energy into minimizing
heat or pays the consequences.
Incarceration
A formal mechanical system for sending PCs to
prison and then giving them the means to stake
prison claims fits some genres of RPG. Note that
incarceration can split the crew, with some in prison
and others out of it. That could be disruptive to the
game flow (unless players are willing to create new
characters). One change you can make is to not have
one PC do a stint in the hoosegow, but the whole
crew instead.
20
In many game settings, a structured incarceration
system is probably not a good fit. If that’s not what
your game is about, you can take it out while keep-
ing heat and entanglements.
Without incarceration, you may need another
mechanism for the crew to reduce their wanted
level, such as doing favors for powerful factions,
paying large bribes, moving to a different territory
where they are less notorious, or setting up others
to take the blame for their actions.
⚫ In Scum and Villainy, heat is tracked separately
in each star system the crew operates in. The
crew can avoid places where they have become
notorious by going elsewhere.
⚫ In Asphalt & Trouble, the crew builds up heat in
a specific region and can get rid of it by moving
on to some other location. But if they do so, they
lose whatever local assets they have acquired or
improved, such as a base of operations.
Entanglements
If you use entanglements, you may need to create a
new set of events. If giant monsters are a thing in
your setting, then include events with giant mon-
sters as entanglements. If there is a secret society
pulling all the strings, then an entanglement could
be contact with a peripheral (or not so peripheral)
part of the Illuminati.
One issue some groups have with the entangle-
ments system is that it can be rather mechanical.
A common complaint is that this part of the system
feels like playing a board game, which pulls players
out of the feeling of role playing their characters.
Entanglement results can be repetitive over multi-
ple downtimes, which isn't very dramatic.
Many entanglement results can be bought off by
expending resources (coin, rep, etc.). This gives the
players control of whether they play through an
entanglement plot or not, but if a group just rou-
tinely pays up so they can get to the next score, the
entanglement system is just a resource tax, not an
engaging part of the story.
 ⚫ Entanglements could happen less often, but be
a bigger deal when they come up. For example,
if 1–3 on the table is that there is no significant
entanglement, then the other results you put on
the table will be less common.
⚫ If you need entanglements to be major plot
elements, then remove the option to buy them
off. The players will just have to deal with them
in play. The potential problem with that is
that they can derail the plot that the GM and
players are interested in and force them onto a
different track.
⚫ In Asphalt & Trouble, entanglement rolls are
made just before the score. The results are a sort
of extra consequence that will have to be dealt
with during the action.
⚫ Entanglements could trigger a more free form
consequence discussed among the players and
decided upon by the GM. The game could give
a list of examples to pick from, with discussion
about fitting the entanglement to the current
fiction. They could take the form of involvement
with specific NPC rivals, nemeses, and factions
rather than abstract events. Triggering an
entanglement could mean that an established
NPC villain or faction interferes with the crew.
Turf and Claims
Turf and claims are another mechanic that is fitting
for a game about criminals establishing control of
territory in a corrupt city. If your game isn’t like
that, it’s fine to just take out this whole system.
If you do keep it, you’ll want to establish a modified
claim map for each crew type, with mechanical
effects of taking over each kind of claim. Your claim
map could represent parts of a decrepit space habi-
tat, nodes in cyberspace, control of an ancient tele-
portation system, secret passages within a magical
school, or any other contested “territory.”
21
Rep and Tier
Crews “level up” by advancing their tier. They do this
by accruing rep and spending coin. Tier is a mea-
sure of how much strength the crew has acquired
vs. other gangs within the corrupt underworld. Tier
is used for dice pools when crafting or acquiring
assets and when using the crew’s influence. It also
determines quality of equipment and the size of the
gangs the crew controls.
This system can be adapted to any other way
of scaling the crew vs. opposition they might
struggle against.
⚫ In Vergence, the PCs have a static quality level
of 2. Those they encounter might have a qual-
ity ranging from 0 to 4. When they contend
physically or psychically with opponents, the
difference in quality (plus or minus) is used as a
modifier to the effect level of their actions. This
makes the PCs inherently stronger than some
opponents, while placing them at a disadvan-
tage against others.
⚫ Band of Blades uses threat instead of quality or
tier. PCs with standard equipment are threat
level 1 and fine equipment increases their threat
to 2. Enemies also have a threat level, some-
times much higher than 2. This is considered in
assessing position and effect.
Crafting and
Acquiring Assets
Crafting is a subsystem to allow PCs to create spe-
cial assets for themselves. Acquire asset is another
system to allow PCs to get special assets (items,
experts, cohorts) from other people or factions.
 These systems can produce results that are not
“balanced,” but that might be OK, especially in
a short-term game. It’s fun to make and invent
stuff, and if the PCs get cool advantages over
NPCs, then the GM has tools to correct that if it’s
necessary for the story. If your game emphasizes
this kind of thing, you could include a discussion
of the implications and what can be done to keep
the game both fun and challenging.
The crafting and acquire asset systems are fairly
flexible, in that what is possible can be established
by consensus among the group. If you have crafting
in your game, you’ll probably want to come up with
a list of sample craft-able items to fit the setting.
However, if you use Blades in the Dark as your model
for special items, you will notice some apparent
inconsistencies. The crew starts at tier 0, which
means their equipment is normally tier 0 (or tier 1
if it is of fine quality). The base tier of crafted items
is also 0. But the special abilities they can access at
game start say they can have items of up to tier 4.
Does taking a special ability give them access to
those higher tier items? What happens when they
are expended, as in the case of potions? Do the PCs
have to do anything to replenish, or does that just
happen off screen?
The standard rules don’t really answer those ques-
tions. If you use the core game as a model, you might
want to clarify how this all works. Some options:
⚫ Ignore the contradictions. If a special ability
says a PC gets access to higher tier items, they
are freely replenished at every downtime. The
only limits imposed by tier are on those items
not available through playbooks or special
abilities.
⚫ Create a list of basic items of tier 0 or 1 that
the crew can make use of (instead of using
the higher tier items in Blades in the Dark as a
model). As they increase their tier, they get
access to more interesting things.
22
⚫ Allow the PCs to start with the higher tier items
their abilities give them access to. However,
when expended, replacements must be crafted
or acquired. If the required minimum quality
level is not achieved, those items have one extra
flaw per level of difference. Flaws are negotiated
between the GM and players.
⚫ Allow the PCs to replenish the higher tier items
on their regular item lists as long as they have
access to their lair (to make them) or a supplier
(to obtain them). But if they lose access (such
as during a war with another faction), they
can’t replenish other than through action in
the fiction.
Rituals
This is another system that can be adapted to fit
your setting, by establishing what the “rules” of
magical rituals are. What kinds of things can be
accomplished, what are their limits, and what do
they cost? If your setting has magic and this system
fits your conception of how it works, then use this
system. Develop those rules and provide some
examples of rituals.
Magnitude
If you use the FitD ritual system, you’ll need this as
well. Some abilities might also depend on it. If the
scale is not right for your setting, you can adjust
what each of the numbers means.
Magnitude can also be used as a formal measure of
other kinds of scale, such as effect level of magical
spells or size of huge kaiju monsters.
⚫ You could use the magnitude tables (or some
version of them) to set the cost of spells, super-
powers, or other effects. For example, in a fan-
made Wizard playbook for Blades in the Dark, the
PC creates a supply of a resource called Flow
by making Risky action rolls using the Attune
action. Spells are cast by spending Flow, with the
cost determined using the magnitude tables.
Non-Player
Characters
In most traditional RPGs, the mechanical treat-
ment of non-player characters is similar to that of
the PCs. While they are usually simpler than PCs,
they have statistics and take actions like the PCs do.
The GM rolls dice for them. During action scenes,
they take turns along with the PCs.
In FitD, that’s not the case. The PCs have a formal
action resolution system, but NPCs are just part of
the fiction. If a PC is trying to convince a hotel con-
cierge to tell her which room Lord Acton is staying
in, there may be all sorts of rhetorical flourishes
happening in the conversation, but if dice are rolled
to determine the outcome it’s the same as if she
were trying to pick a lock to get into his room. If
combat happens, there is no separate system for it
as there is in many RPGs. Fighting is just treated as
another series of events in the fiction that the PCs
interact with.
This approach has great elegance and simplicity. In
other games, GMs often have to spend lots of time
prepping before each game session to lay out all the
statistics that define the NPCs the players might
(or might not) encounter. By contrast, FitD games
can involve little or no prep other than just thinking
about the fiction, which removes a lot of drudgery
from the GM’s role. The game can also more easily
go in any direction, because the GM has no invest-
ment in having planned out encounters and scenes.
But there is a tradeoff. During play, the GM has to
keep track of the fictional status of all the NPCs in
a scene without much help from the game system.
Usually, that’s fairly simple, but when a scene
includes multiple named and important NPCs, or
when an NPC should fictionally be able to bring a
broad range of abilities to bear, the GM has a lot to
remember and keep track of.
23
This is a reasonable tradeoff in the core
Blades in the Dark game because NPCs mostly have
mundane abilities and are pretty simple to keep
track of. But if your game might include lots of
NPCs who are powerful mages, mystical martial
artists, cyber-enhanced netrunners, powerful
super-villains, or other complex NPCs, consider
whether the GM needs more help with managing
those “boss” opponents.
The game suggests using clocks to track the defen-
sive abilities of notable and competent opponents.
It also has a mechanism whereby a prepared and
capable enemy can impose consequences on a PC
even before any dice are rolled. Those are useful
systems and they may be all that is required.
You could add others, such as:
⚫ A list of abilities for NPCs, with guidance for
the GM on how they can be managed. These
do not have to be as narrow or clearly defined
as PC special abilities, but they can provide
suggestions about how those abilities will affect
game play.
⚫ Examples of what the most complex and capa-
ble opponents might be like and how to manage
them.
⚫ Deathwish provides an example of a compre-
hensive system for defining and managing
opposition. Enemies have a numerical threat
level that is compared to that of the PCs. The
difference in threat level is reflected in bonuses
or penalties to effect. Powerful opponents may
also have focus, so that when they put their
attention on a particular PC, any action by that
PC generates an automatic consequence. A very
capable opponent might have a focus ability that
applies a higher level automatic consequence or
an area affect ability that applies a lower level
consequence on any PC acting within their
reach.
 Resolution Systems
Deep in the core of the game are the systems for
resolving basic game actions. You can do all kinds
of things with FitD without ever touching this part.
But if you are dissatisfied with how FitD resolves
action (or just like to mess around with game
rules) you can make major or minor changes to
these systems.
Rolling the Dice
The basic FitD dice mechanic is simple: roll a pool of
six sided dice and count the single highest number.
1–3 is a fail (bad outcome), 4/5 is a partial success, 6
a full success, two or more sixes is a critical success.
This resolution system is easy to teach and plays
quickly at the table. It is universal to almost all of
the dice mechanics in the game.
As you can see from the table of dice probabilities,
rolls start to lose suspense as we go above three or
four dice. Once we get to five dice, the chance of a
full success or critical is 60% and outright failures
will be very rare.
That’s not very dramatic, so in general you may
want to have a system in which most rolls involve
2–3 dice, with 4 or more dice reserved for special
circumstances or extra expenditure of player
resources. That’s something to keep in mind when
devising the mechanics for figuring out a base dice
pool and for gaining extra dice by pushing, assist-
ing, using special abilities, etc.
Dice Critical Success
0 0% 3%
1 0% 17%
2 3% 28%
3 7% 35%
4 13% 39%
5 20% 40%
6 26% 40%
24
Most FitD games keep this dice resolution system.
Deviating from it makes a game “feel” less like it fits
into the FitD family.
But it is possible to tweak the system. For example:
⚫ Your game doesn’t have to use six-sided dice. If
you wanted to change the range of results, you
could use d10s or some other kind of die instead
of d6s. That might be helpful in adjusting the
probability of different results, such as if you
want to use dice pools that involve more dice
being rolled or if you want more kinds of results
than fail, partial success, full success, and crit-
ical. A bigger size of dice could also fit with a
system in which the player gets a plus or minus
adjustment to the highest number rolled. You
could also use different sizes of dice for differ-
ent purposes or probability ranges.
⚫ You don’t have to use dice at all. Crash Cart uses
a deck of regular playing cards. Instead of a
dice pool, you draw a number of cards equal to
your rating. Different combinations of cards
determine whether the result is a success,
partial success, etc. By controlling where cards
go after drawing them, the game can change
odds over the course of a session: lots of success
early on means failure is more likely later, while
early failure is balanced with more face cards
remaining in the deck, so success is more likely
later on.
Partial Fail
22% 75%
33% 50%
44% 25%
45% 13%
42% 6%
37% 3%
32% 2%
 ⚫ You can easily add a critical failure system by
saying that any roll in which the highest result
is a 1 is a catastrophe. (When rolling 0d, you get
that if either die is 1.) The more dice you roll, the
lower your chance of a critical fail.
Action Roll
The action roll in FitD uses the standard dice
mechanic to resolve any risky or troublesome action
a PC is likely to do. This is a useful system that is
easy to design around.
The action roll is a “fail forward” system. Every roll
produces a change in the fiction; there is no such
thing as nothing happening when a player decides
to take action.
Explaining the Action Roll
The standard FitD rules have a long, detailed, step-
by-step explanation of how the action roll conversa-
tion happens. Many game authors have found that
they can describe it in a lot fewer words. This has the
advantage of being less overwhelming, but it also
means that you your fewer words have to explain
it very well because there is no redundancy to help
with clarification. Consider how much wording will
be required by people likely to play your game.
Action Economy, or Lack Thereof
FitD does not have a formally defined action econ-
omy as many other role playing games do. Neither
PCs nor NPCs take turns in any kind of predefined
sequence.
This can be challenging for those who are used to
other games to comprehend. And it can be tough for
the GM to manage a complex action scene without
formal rules to help with that.
⚫ Players may be used to micromanaging their
characters in small increments of action ("I
swing my sword") while the game system is set
up so that a whole action scene can be resolved
in one or two die rolls.
25
⚫ it can be challenging for the GM to manage a
complex action scene without rules for how to
do that.
⚫ Because NPCs don't roll and there is no turn
order, a GM can find that NPCs just passively
react to the actions of the PCs, without ever
really taking initiative.
For this reason, if you're writing a game that uses
this system, in can be important to provide advice
and examples of how the game is intended to
play. The GM needs to understand how to manage
action, move the spotlight, and how to represent
both passive and active NPCs. And the players need
to understand how to work with the GM to frame
their choices decide what each action roll should
reasonably accomplish.
Alternately, you change the game to incorporate
turn taking or some other formal action economy
system that standard FitD does not have.
Bonuses and Penalties
In the standard system, the chance of success is
solely a function of how many dice are being rolled,
which does not depend on the difficulty of the task.
You have the same chance of getting a full success
on your roll regardless of whether you’re trying to
do something easy or hard.
Fictional actions, of course, may vary in difficulty,
and most games reflect this. FitD reflects task diffi-
culty in several ways, some of which are not obvious
to someone first looking at the system:
1. You only roll if the action is dangerous or trou-
blesome, so if you want to punch a blustering
fool who is no challenge for your character, the
GM might not bother calling for a roll and just
narrate how the fool got taken out.
2. Although the difficulty of the roll does not affect
the dice pool, it does establish the stakes of
that action (via position and effect). Getting
a success against a mook might take him out
immediately, or even take down a whole gang,
while a success against a boss might just stagger
 her. And a consequence received while tangling
with a mook could be much less severe than
if you are in a final battle with the big bad. If
you’re used to other games in which you might,
for example, roll against difficulty rating, this
method takes some getting used to.
3. FitD is related to Powered by the Apocalypse
(PBtA) games (a different, but related, game
engine). Like those games, FitD does not set a
difficulty for action rolls (“moves”). Compared
to PBtA, FitD is highly engaged with action
difficulty. Compared to many other games, FitD
abstracts difficulty in a weird way that can be
hard, initially, to grok. How much help will the
people picking up your game need with that?
You could change the system to include dice mod-
ifiers for harder or easier situations. You might do
this instead of position and effect, or as part of a
combined system. When the GM determines that
the situation is especially good or bad for the PC,
that roll could be made with various kinds of advan-
tages or disadvantages.
Here are some ways that having an advantage could
work:
⚫ Set the worst result at partial success, so any 1–3
result is upgraded one level.
⚫ Upgrade every result by one level, so 1–3 is par-
tial success, 4/5 is a full success, etc.
⚫ Give one or more bonus dice.
⚫ Allow the player to select one benefit from a list
(which might vary depending on the situation
or the action rating used).
And here are some ways to impose disadvantage:
⚫ Make 4–6 partial success and critical a full
success.
⚫ Downgrade every result by one level, so 1–5 is
fail, 6 is partial success, critical is success.
⚫ Remove 1 die. If that drops the pool below 0
dice, the action is an automatic failure.
⚫ After the dice are rolled, take away the highest
die before determining the result.
26
⚫ Allow the GM to select one additional conse-
quence from a list (which might vary depending
on the situation or the action rating used).
If you do use some kind of advantage and disadvan-
tage, you should probably also eliminate or simplify
position and effect. Otherwise, the discussion
required before rolling dice becomes redundant
and tedious.
Pushing
Pushing is a simple mechanic that gives +1d or
increased effect for two stress. It works well in play.
Unless you change the core dice and stress mechanic,
pushing should probably stay in your game.
Devil’s Bargain
The devil’s bargain gives the player a way to get an
extra +1d in exchange for a negotiated consequence
that will happen no matter how the dice roll turns
out. It cannot be resisted.
Here are some ways you could change devil’s
bargains.
⚫ The devil’s bargain can slow down the conver-
sation and delay rolling the dice and getting
a result. It may not fit a game that’s intended
to play quickly or that give players other ways
to complicate the narrative. You can remove it
from your game without breaking anything.
⚫ Change the name of devil’s bargain to some-
thing that fits better: twist, glitch, snafu, etc. Or
it could be something very specific to the lore of
your setting.
⚫ Have two levels of devil’s bargain. The standard
DB could be as written in the game, while a
“demon’s bargain” is a greater gain (such as +2d
or automatic full success) that also creates a
very serious problem for the PC.
⚫ Make it random. Instead of a devil’s bargain,
the player can accept a devil’s die. This die is a
different color from the others. If the devil’s die
 comes up 1–3, then (regardless of the result of
the overall action roll) a serious consequence
ensues, which cannot be resisted.
⚫ Special abilities can interact with devil’s bar-
gains. For example, the PC could get +1d -and-
increased effect on a Devil’s bargain, be able to
resist the DB consequence, or on full success
take an action to try to redirect the Devil’s bar-
gain consequence onto someone else.
Position and Effect
Position and effect set the stakes for an action roll.
On 4–6, effect tells us what has been achieved. On
1–5, position tells us how severe the consequence is.
These overlap on 4 and 5, so partial success mixes
success and failure. Because the discussion hap-
pens before the dice are rolled, everyone knows the
stakes before committing to an action. The flow dif-
fers from that of many other RPGs, in which a lot of
conversation (and dice rolling) for action resolution
happens after determining the success of the action
rather than before.
For flavor, you could change the names of position
or effect, or the different levels of position or effect,
without changing what they do in the game. For
example, position could be changed to risk or dan-
ger. Effect could be changed to reward or result.
Changing Position and Effect
I’m a big fan of the position and effect system and
would find it hard to imagine designing in the FitD
space without them. But that doesn't mean you
can't change or get rid of them—others have done
so successfully. The usual objection is that the posi-
tion and effect system requires a brief conversation
before every die roll, which some find  tedious.
For some groups, especially if they don't know the
system well, it can feel like there is a lot of talking
about the game instead of actually playing it.
27
Here are some ways to change this system:
⚫ In Blades Against Darkness, an action roll is
trivial, daring, or insurmountable. That sets
both how much you will be able to accomplish
and what kind of consequence you may face if
the roll is not fully successful. This combines
position and effect into a single assessment of
how challenging the action is.
⚫ Slugblaster uses a simplified the system in which
an action roll is risky except when the PC is try-
ing to “look cool,” in which case it's desperate.
This streamlines play in a game intended to be
quick and casual.
⚫ It's possible to just get rid of position and effect
entirely. Success is just whatever seems like
this action could reasonably achieve. There
is no position: the GM just applies whatever
consequences seem reasonable in the current
situation. Unless some other system replaces
it, this removes any formal consideration of the
stakes of a roll from the game.
⚫ In Sig: City of Blades, the GM assesses effect. It
is then increased by one level for each of these:
the roll was 6, the roll was multiple 6s, outnum-
bering or outclassing the opposition, having
quality equipment, and being in controlled
position.
⚫ Deathwish gives more mechanical weight to
effect. Significant opponents have a threat level
that is compared to the capability of the PCs. For
each level difference, the effect level of action
rolls are adjusted upward or downward. When
the PCs are facing very powerful opposition,
they often begin at zero effect and must use var-
ious mechanical and fictional manipulations to
achieve significant results (pushing for effect,
setup actions, etc.).
⚫ As noted earlier, you could replace position
and effect with bonuses and penalties to the
action roll.
Adding an Additional Position
In FitD, harm goes from level 1 to level 4, but posi-
tion only goes from Controlled (level 1) to Desperate
(level 3). That leaves an implied position more peril-
ous than desperate, which could be called “deadly.”
⚫ In Deathwish, there is an additional position
level—also called “deathwish.” At deathwish
position, the consequence you risk is dying.
This fits a game that is explicitly designed for
high lethality and multiple PCs per player.
Consequences
When the dice call for a consequence, the severity
has already been determined by position, from con-
trolled to desperate. Worse position means worse
consequences. The GM decides on exactly what
happens: some troublesome event in the fiction
(reduced effect, complication, lost opportunity, or
worse position) or harm.
⚫ You might encourage the GM to state the conse-
quence before the roll: "that's Risky/Standard.
You're risking a fall off the roof. OK?" Knowing
the potential consequence can speed play a bit
and help the player better visualize the stakes of
a roll.
⚫ For non-harm consequences, one option sim-
plify all them into one category. In Vergence,
any consequence that isn’t harm is just a
complication. The GM can still impose the full
range of things in the core game, but they are
not formally divided up. That has the advantage
of allowing the GM to just focus on the fiction,
while providing a bit less specific structure.
⚫ You could structure consequences in various
ways. For example, you could devise a set of
condition cards such as “confused,” “stymied,”
or “equipment malfunction.” Each condition
would apply until the character takes action to
clear it. The cards could be assigned randomly
or chosen by the GM.
28
⚫ The reduced effect consequence can negate all
or most of the success achieved on a 4/5 roll.
That can make sense in the fiction, but it turns
a partial success into a non-success, which is
kind of a drag. You could choose to eliminate
this kind of consequence or provide advice to
the GM on when it is appropriate and when
it’s not.
Harm
Online forums discussing Blades in the Dark and
other FitD games are full of advice for GMs that
they should minimize how often they hand out
harm consequences—even though the game itself
doesn’t say that. This is because harm is a different
and more harsh kind of consequence. Other conse-
quences create interesting problems to deal with,
but harm makes problems harder to solve.
Harm makes sense as a thing that can happen in
the game (for most settings), but you may want to
change how it works. The game presents harm as
if it exists on the same scale of severity as other
kinds of consequences, but that isn’t really true.
In theory, all Risky consequences are equally pun-
ishing. But in practice, level 2 harm is likely to be
more of a problem, over a greater period of time,
than any other kind of Risky consequence. When
a consequence is called for, and the GM chooses to
impose harm, that’s an escalation. Most players will
resist most harm if they have the stress available to
do so (because, once again, harm is almost worse
than other consequences of the same level). It’s not
always possible to resist harm if you wish to avoid
going into trauma, and resistance often reduces
severity without preventing at least level 1 harm.
This issue is mitigated to some degree by the avail-
ability of armor, which can provide a "free" resist
against most kinds of harm.
It’s not necessarily bad that the game makes harm so
bad for the character. It’s built so that it encourages
players to have alternate characters to play while
injured characters heal up. Once the crew acquires
the resources to allow extra downtime actions for
healing, harm becomes much less of a long-term
problem. But in the early stages of a campaign (or if
the crew is at war and can take only one downtime
action per PC), it requires that players either have
multiple characters or accept that they will often
have to go do scores while severely constrained
by harm (unless the GM knows to fudge the action
system by avoiding harm, even when it is a reason-
able fictional consequence).
If an ensemble crew structure doesn’t fit your game,
then you might need to take another look at how
harm works.
One practical issue with harm is that people (GM
and players) may tend to forget to apply the pen-
alties the character would normally suffer. That’s
because it’s an extra thing to remember and the
penalties are severe enough that they make the
character less fun to play.
There are various schemes for changing how harm
works. These include:
⚫ If your game is not really about people taking
serious risks and potentially being seriously
hurt, you can get rid of harm. For example,
Slugblaster is about adolescents doing cool
things on high tech skateboards. PCs can’t
get seriously hurt or die, and there is no harm
mechanic.
⚫ FitD harm can be both long term damage
(cracked ribs) and short term physical or psy-
chological problems (drunk, freaked out). As
the rules are written, clearing all kinds of harm
is handled the same way. In effect, it could
take weeks of game time to recover from being
confused or winded, which doesn’t make a lot
of sense (and in practice, most GMs probably
don’t actually follow the rules in this way). In
Band of Blades, the GM can identify harm as tem-
porary. It still takes up slots in the harm tracker,
but it disappears when that makes sense in the
fiction rather than requiring downtime actions.
29
⚫ You could use hit points instead of harm, as
many other games do. PCs have a number of
points and taking harm subtracts from their
total. When they get to 0, they are incapacitated
(or dead). In effect, this gives each PC a health
clock. There could be some penalty that they
face when below, say, half hit points, such as
taking -1d or -1 effect on actions that would be
impaired by being hurt.
⚫ You could have multiple harm tracks: physical
harm, emotional harm, corruption, etc. For
example, in Band of Blades, corruption is on a
different track than harm. When you fill your
corruption track, you take a permanent blight
condition, which causes physical change and
advances the character toward becoming
unplayable.
⚫ In Scum and Villainy, you clear level 1 harm by
taking the recover action. Additional harm is
addressed via a healing clock.
⚫ In Blades Against Darkness, harm can be des-
ignated as magically tainted, which cannot
be healed by normal means. The PC will need
to seek out some source of special healing to
recover from that kind of injury. This makes
trained harm even more penalizing than
regular harm.
⚫ Band of Blades has a broader range of levels of
harm. Level 4 is a fatal wound (dying), while
level 7 harm is “blown to bits” or equivalent.
⚫ In Vergence, level 1 harm imposes no mechanical
penalty (“it hurts but you’re OK”). This gives
players a bit more of an “action hero” vibe in that
harm is a problem but less of an impediment to
doing things.
⚫ In Brother Bear, Sister Wolf, there is no level  1
harm. A controlled consequence just can't
result in harm. Level 2 harm is -1 effect level on
affected actions, level 3 harm is -1d, and level 4
harm is dying.
⚫ Harm could represent "damage" to specific
action ratings or attributes. For example,
when you take harm you'd need to identify an
 attribute it applies to, such as Resolve. Any of
the actions under Resolve would be used at a
penalty. When all of your attributes have harm,
you're incapacitated.
⚫ You could use a system of predefined condi-
tions instead of harm. Each type of condition
could have a separate penalty and a method for
clearing that condition. For example, Ruralpunk
(a game by Cass K. that used to exist as a web
site but, unfortunately, appears to have been
taken down) replaces harm with a set of pre-
defined conditions (hurt, angry, etc.), each of
which is matched to one of four attributes. If
you have a condition and you take an action
under the matched attribute, that roll is made
with an extra condition die. Depending on the
result of that die, the action may generate extra
problems (but on a 6 you overcome the problem
and the condition is helpful).
Resistance
Resistance is a core piece of FitD. It allows players
to say no to whatever consequences they don’t like.
This provides a high level of player agency compared
to most other traditional RPGs.
But the GM still has a lot of control. The player can
resist, but the GM determines the position that
sets up the severity of the consequence and to what
degree the consequence is mitigated by resistance.
The GM can inflict consequences without any roll at
all and so could overwhelm a player with too many
consequences to resist (that’s not a good idea, but
it’s not disallowed). Ultimately, the GM and players
need to play collaboratively in order to make the
game fun, just like any other RPG (the resistance
mechanic can’t protect players from a bad GM.)
Resistance is also a gamble, since it has a variable
cost. With an unlucky roll, that cost can more than
half your starting stress. Thus the game makes
it so that most consequences must be accepted,
30
but those that seem especially egregious can be
resisted. That fits the “desperate criminals” default
FitD setting quite well. Since the range of possible
results of a resist roll goes from gaining +1 stress
to losing 5 stress, it’s a very swingy gamble. Any
time PCs have 5 or fewer stress they are gambling
on the possibility of a resistance roll pushing them
into trauma.
You can reasonably leave resistance as-is in almost
any FitD game. But there are many possible resis-
tance tweaks, such as:
⚫ Make the stress cost of resistance less extreme,
using a table such as this one:
Resistance Roll
1d for each Critical: Recover 1 stress
Attribute rating 6: Spend 1 stress
4/5: Spend 2 stress
1–3: Spend 3 stress
⚫ In Blades Against Darkness, PCs don’t resist by
rolling an attribute. Instead, there is a track
indicating increasing levels of distress, starting
at Fresh. When you resist at Fresh, you roll with
4d to find out the stress cost and cross off that
box. The next resist is also at 4d, but crosses
off the next box. Then the next resist is with 3d
and crosses off the Tired box. As the boxes are
crossed off, the PC has fewer dice to resist with,
eventually landing at 0d.
⚫ In Deathwish, you can avoid level 1 harm by
spending 1 stress. You can do that after resist-
ing, if you want.
⚫ You could standardize how much a resistance
roll reduces the consequence. Instead of having
it be GM fiat, for example, you might specify
that resistance is two levels. That would make
resistance a bit more effective and reliable.
⚫ You could let the player choose how much of a
consequence they want to mitigate (from level 2
to level 1 harm, for example). Then roll on a table
like this:
Resistance Roll Who Does the Resisting?
Decide how Critical: Recover 1 stress
many levels of 6: Spend 0 stress + levels of FitD requires no fictional justification for a
consequence reduction resistance roll. The game doesn’t ask the player to
reduction. Roll 1d 4/5: Spend 1 stress + levels of describe any PC action in order to resist. Yet resis-
for each Attribute reduction tance depends on PC attributes and costs PC stress.
rating. 1–3: Spend 3 stress + levels of
reduction So who resists, the character or the player? The
game doesn’t really care.
⚫ The player chooses to pay stress a set cost in
stress and then rolls to resist and then rolls to Sometimes, it’s easy to explain resistance in terms
see if it works. For example, resistance could of the PC doing something. If the PC slips and falls,
have a flat cost of 2 stress, with a roll on this we could narrate the character starting to slip, but
table: using willpower to stay upright instead.

Resistance Roll But what if a group of drunken bravos unexpectedly

Spend 2 stress to Critical: Completely avoid the wanders around the corner and stumbles toward
resist, then roll 1d consequence and recover the the crew? If the player decides to resist bad luck, it’s
for each Attribute stress you spent harder to rationalize the character doing something
rating 6: Completely avoid the to avoid it. It’s more like the player choosing to exert
consequence control of the story, independent of the character.
4/5: Reduce the consequence
by 1 level In practice, many groups mix these modes depend-
1–3: No luck ing on what seems to make sense in the moment. But
⚫ The player chooses how many stress to spend you could change how your game views resistance.
and then rolls that many dice to see whether the ⚫ Resistance could be made into an explicit PC
conseuqence is reduced or avoided. The attri- move. Resistance could require justification
bute limits the maximum stress expenditure. and narration of something the PC does in
the fiction. That would mean that some conse-
Resistance Roll
quences could not be resisted.
Roll dice equal Critical: Avoid the
to the stress you consequence and recover the ⚫ Alternately, resistance could be a player move.
spend, limited stress you spent It is a matter of luck or fate: something that
by the attribute 6: Completely avoid the happens to the PC but is not done by the PC. You
the GM decides consequence could lean into that by personifying the fates,
on for that 4/5: Reduce the consequence gods, AIs, or other beings intervening on behalf
consequence by 1 level
1–3: No luck of the PCs. There could be a currency separate
from stress, such as divine favor, that the player
⚫ In Deathwish, the cost of resisting a consequence uses to resist.
generated by an action roll is equal to the lowest
die result (so if you rolled 3d on the action roll
and got 5, 2, 1, resisting a consequence from
Armor
that action would cost 1 stress). If you resist a Armor provides resistance at no cost in stress. The
consequence not generated by a roll, you roll an term “armor” in FitD refers to both physical protec-
action rating with the cost in stress equal to the tive gear, as well as “special armor” that may protect
lowest die (or 0 if you roll a 6). against other sorts of undesirable events. Any use
of armor requires a box to be checked off, which
refreshes at the next downtime. Since even physical

31
armor works once per score (even though you might
be wearing it the whole time) it functions as a kind
of plot armor rather than trying to simulate the
benefit that wearing armor would provide against
one or many attacks.
There are other ways to handle some or all kinds of
armor. These could interact with special abilities
where appropriate.
⚫ Checking an armor box could allow the player
to convert harm to some other kind of conse-
quence of equal (or lesser) level of severity.
⚫ Checking an armor box could improve position
(and reduce the consequence) by one level.
Alternately, being armed with shield could
improve position when applicable, while armor
works as per standard FitD.
⚫ In Sig: City of Blades, if you have a kind of armor
that applies to a consequence you suffer, you
can pay 1 stress to resist instead of making a roll.
You can also resist to reduce the consequence
further.
⚫ Checking an armor box could add +1d or +2d to
a resistance roll instead of providing an auto-
matic resist.
⚫ Armor could give a +1d to relevant resistance
rolls throughout a score (not just once).
⚫ Wearing armor could allow the character to
spend 1 stress to reduce applicable harm by
1 level (or 2 levels for heavy armor) throughout
a score.
If you make armor less useful, you could provide
more armor boxes to compensate.
Note, also, that you might want to specify whether
you can both resist-and- use armor on the same
consequence. It’s implied in the rules that you can,
but it’s not fully clear.
Special Armor
Each playbook in the standard game has at least one
ability that gives access to special armor. When the
special armor box is checked, it gives a free resist
32
against some category of consequence, such as
being surprised or being magically attacked.
This system can fit many kinds of games, but it isn’t
required. If you do other things with resistance you
can cut special armor and nothing will break.
Some special abilities do other things than resis-
tance when the special armor box is checked. It
essentially provides a “once per score” box.
You could also rename “special armor” to some-
thing else if calling it armor is confusing within the
structure of your game: special box, limit break,
extra box, etc.
Fortune Roll
The fortune roll is a simple way for the GM to allow
a decision to be made randomly rather than by fiat.
GMs have been using the equivalent of fortune
rolls for decades, but FitD provides a neat system
for resolving questions not addressed by other
mechanics.
It depends on ratings in the game all being on the
same (usually 0–4) scale to use the standard FitD
dice mechanic. It's one of the few times in the game
that the GM rolls the dice instead of the players.
This generally works well enough that there isn't
much hacking that needs to be done.
Progress Clocks
Clocks are a simple concept that can be easily
adapted to tracking many kinds of progressive
events in the game. It’s probably best to retain clocks
in some form, although you could simplify your text
by removing the long description in the SRD of the
many different uses for clocks. You could also use a
track or other visual indicator, instead of a clock, if
that better fits the theme of your game.
If your game has a specific use for a progressive
event, such as a “doom clock” leading to some sort
of plot twist, you can build that special kind of clock
into your system.
Gathering Information
Gathering information is just a way to formalize
the regular systems in the game as they apply to
learning things. It is possible to cut this section
out and, by implication, the PCs will still be able
to make action rolls that let them find things out.
Nevertheless, if your game will involve investiga-
tion, it can be useful to include it.
I think standard FitD is a little confusing about how
gather information rolls are supposed to work (the
text implies it’s a fortune roll but the table says it
could also be an action roll). In writing Vergence, I
clarified that there are three kinds of gather infor-
mation rolls:
⚫ Gather information action roll. This roll is
made when the act of information gathering
could be dangerous or troublesome. Position
is handled normally, determined by how much
risk is involved in getting the information.
Effect determines the detail of the information
acquired.
⚫ Gather information fortune roll. This roll is
made when there isn’t any risk to gathering
information but the GM wants there to be
a random factor involved. The result of the
roll determines the detail of the information
acquired.
⚫ Gather information long term project. When
research will involve multiple activities that will
take significant time, the GM sets up a project
clock and the PC can use downtime actions to
fill it.
33
Critical Information: Depending on the kind
of game, you might take an idea from the (non-
FitD) Gumshoe system and declare that the GM
never calls for roll to see whether the PCs get
the basic information they need to make sure
the game doesn’t stall. They always get those
important clues that will keep the plot moving,
no matter what. Rolls can still be made for extra
detail.
Teamwork
The teamwork maneuvers give the PCs ways to help
each other and share game resources.
Assist
Assisting, by taking 1 stress, is half as costly as
pushing, which costs 2 stress. This seems to work
quite well and encourage player reciprocity. If you
use the standard FitD stress system, assisting is a
quick and easy way to drive cooperation.
⚫ You could limit assists to only actions that the
assisting character has one dot in.
⚫ You could allow the assist to happen after
the action roll, adding +1d afterward rather
than before. This could be a special ability.
⚫ You can allow a higher level of assistance, such
as +2d if the assisting character pays 1 stress
and also takes a separate Devil’s bargain.
⚫ In Sig: City of Blades, a character can also spend
1 stress to give another character +1d to a resis-
tance roll.
Group Action
Lots of FitD games make no change to group
actions. I am not the biggest fan of this mechanic
because, if several PCs participate in a group
action then the chance of no one getting any kind
of success becomes vanishingly small. Thus, it
can take away the tension as group rolls become a
virtual automatic success. It can also seem strange
that five people sneaking past a guard have a much
better chance of success than one person does.
 ⚫ Deathwish eliminates group actions. The game
runs fine without them.
⚫ In Vergence, group actions are limited to those
situations in which they make sense, such as
three people throwing their weight against a
door to bash it down. The GM considers position
and effect based on whether having a group do
the action is a help or hindrance, then the lead
PC makes a roll for the group. The participants
share any consequences, but there is no special
stress cost.
Protect
This maneuver lets players accept consequences for
others fairly freely (as long as it can be fictionally
justified). It encourages cooperation and sharing of
problems.
If you want to focus the use of protecting, you could
limit it so that you can only protect a character if
you assisted on that roll. Or if you use some kind
of bond system (page  4), you can only protect a
character with whom you share a bond (or you get
+1d to resist when you protect a bond-mate).
Set Up
Set up is taking action in the fiction that can affect
what happens later. You could technically eliminate
this from the rules and it could still happen accord-
ing to the regular action roll system (because action
It’s Your Game
Any experienced FitD designer will find many
points of disagreement with what I’ve written here.
There is no single way to look at hacking a game as
deep as FitD. You might use this guide mainly to
help you identify all the ways you think I don’t know
what I’m talking about and thereby clarify your
own thoughts.
34
rolls, of course, affect what happens later). But it
does make it more clear that you can do it if it is
called out as a specific thing.
The standard rules state that a setup action provides
either +1 effect level or improved position. What
that means is that a setup action roll can basically
have only one possible effect level. If you want to
encourage more teamwork, you could leave this less
defined, so that the GM and player set the stakes for
a setup action like they do for other actions, with
higher effect level producing greater benefit.
For example, perhaps if the PC succeeded on a roll
after trading position for effect, that might generate
both improved position and effect for a subsequent
roll. Or the benefit might last longer. This could be
negotiated as part of the stakes of the setup action
roll and how the fiction plays out.
Other Kinds of Teamwork
You could establish other teamwork maneuvers.
For example, if your game is about sailing across a
sea of dead souls, you could have a kind of group
action for the PC piloting the ship for the group
over a portion of the journey. If your game is about
harnessing the power of friendship to combine into
a super-powered magical robot, there could be a
teamwork action for that. Create teamwork actions
that reflect what the PCs will do together within the
scope of the game.
In writing this I’ve chosen to stay mostly within
the FitD design space. That means I’ve discussed
changes that are consistent with what is already
in the system. But you don’t have to! Scratch the
paint, take out the windows, stick in a bunch of
aftermarket parts, add racing stripes, and make it
completely yours. Your game can have as much or
as little FitD in it as you wish.
Have fun and make a great game.
 Credits
Text and layout by David Rourke
Game stuff: smallcoolgames.itch.io
Twitter: twitter.com/SmallCoolGames1
Email: smallcoolgames@gmail.com
Cover image by Hush Nadoo
Typeface: Alegreya by Juan Pablo del Peral
Software: Adobe Creative Suite

Blades in the Dark and Forged in the Dark are by John Thanks to all the participants at the Blades in the
Harper Dark Discord hack talk channels

Resources
Games and Supplements Other Resources
There are so many excellent and innovative ◆ An Amateur's Guide to Hacking Blades in the Dark,
Forged in the Dark games that I cannot begin to by Michael Elliot
present them all. John Harper maintains a list ◆ Austin Ramsay’s FitD Tech for #TechJam by Austin
at itch.io and there is a partial list at the official Ramsay
Blades in the Dark site.
◆ The official Blades in the Dark web site and
Here are the games and game supplements men- community forum: https://bladesinthedark.com
tioned in this text:
◆ The Blades in the Dark Discord server: discord.gg/
◆ Asphalt & Trouble by Jacob Segal JWJYp7RH
◆ Blades in the Dark, Scum and Villainy, and ◆ The Reddit Blades in the Dark channel: reddit.
Band of Blades and are published by Evil Hat com/r/bladesinthedark
Productions
◆ The Hacked in the Dark YouTube channel: youtube.
◆ Blades Against Darkness by Dylan Green com/c/HackedintheDark
◆ Brother Bear, Sister Wolf by Small Cool Games ◆ The Hacked in the Dark podcast can be found at
◆ Deathwish by Ian Hart Apple, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and Player.fm
◆ Crash Cart by Galen Pejeau
◆ Microblades by Vandel Arden
◆ Moth-Light by Justin Ford
◆ Raiders in the Dark by Small Cool Games
◆ Sig: City of Blades by Jason Pitre
◆ Slugblaster by Mikey Hamm
◆ The Blades Hack by Skelpie Limmer
◆ Vergence by Small Cool Games
◆ Wizard playbook by eatyourcereal

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