Thoughts

on Forging
in the Dark

By Small Cool Games

version 1.2 • June 2021
 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
Playsheets..............................................3
Contacts................................................3
Character Details...................................3
Actions and Attributes............................4
Special Abilities......................................6
Advanced Abilities..................................8
Equipment and Load...............................8
Other Playsheet Things............................9
The Crew................................................9
Cycle of Play................................ 11
Game Phases........................................ 11
Free Play.............................................. 11
The Score............................................. 11
Engagement Roll.................................. 12
Flashbacks........................................... 12
Load.................................................... 12
Stress.................................................. 13
Trauma................................................ 13
Downtime............................................ 14
Vice..................................................... 14
© 2021 by Small Cool Games
The Faction Game................................. 15
Advancement....................................... 15
Coin and Stash..................................... 16
Payoff.................................................. 16
Retirement.......................................... 17
Heat and Entanglements....................... 17
Turf and Claims.................................... 18
Rep and Tier......................................... 18
Crafting and Acquiring Assets............... 18
Rituals................................................. 19
Non-Player Characters.......................... 19
Resolution Systems................. 20
Rolling the Dice.................................... 20
Action Roll........................................... 21
Position and Effect............................... 23
Consequences...................................... 24
Resistance............................................ 26
Armor................................................. 27
Fortune Roll......................................... 28
Progress Clocks.................................... 28
Gathering Information......................... 28
Teamwork ........................................... 29
It’s Your Game............................. 30
Credits............................................ 31
Resources...................................... 31
Games and Supplements....................... 31
Other Resources................................... 31
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
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Intro
Forged in the Dark (FitD) is an 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 31.
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.
Forged in the Dark is not one of those.
1
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 playsheet 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,
Setting
factions, maps, lore
Actions and attributes, playsheets,
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. 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.
Setting
Here are some things you might do with setting.
⚫ Play a published FitD game, but with some
house-rule adjustments to fit your preferences.
⚫ Expand on the setting of a FitD game. You
might make a new playsheet, crew sheet, or
move the action to a different place or time in
the setting. There already plenty of resources
available at bladesinthedark.com to let you do
things in other parts of the Blades in the Dark
setting: you can play Bluecoats, leviathan hunt-
ers, heroes conspiring against the Immortal
Emperor, and other options. I will not address
those in detail here, but if that kind of hack is
what you’re working on, some of the discussion
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
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.
⚫ Adapt a FitD game to a different setting. Maybe
you want to play Blades in the Dark, but using a
city in a different world with different kinds of
magic. This will require relatively few changes
(such as changing references to ghosts, the
ghost field, etc.). You might re-skin some
default playsheets to better reflect the new
setting or change the names of some parts of
the game (renamed actions, etc.) and add some
new things.
⚫ Make a totally new FitD game. This will require
significant work if it’s very different from a
current game, especially if you also have ideas
about changing the core system. Go for it.
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?
Playsheets
An obvious place to start when hacking FitD is to
create new playsheets. You can download the stan-
dard Blades in the Dark playsheets from bladesin-
thedark.com to use as an example of what FitD
playsheets contain and how they can be organized.
3
Are Playsheets Required?
Nope. You could design a game in which characters
are differentiated from each other in other ways
playsheets or “character classes.” There would, in
effect, be only one playsheet. 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 playsheets are too limiting.
Contacts
The contact list on a playsheet provides both the
player and the GM with hooks to NPCs that are spe-
cific to that sheet. Standard FitD gives five contacts
to each playsheet, with a name and brief descrip-
tion. That adapts well to many kinds of settings. 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.
If two players want to use the same playsheet, 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
playsheet, just in case.
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 have other ways 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 13.
⚫ 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
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.
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.
4
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 playsheet. 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 mean-
ing 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 species. You could do the same
thing with heritage, profession, family, or other
important differentiator. Players could choose
from a predefined list or make up their own.
Change the Attributes
Attributes 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. The lowest
attribute is also used to recover stress when indulg-
ing vice. Just as with actions, you can change the
names for attributes to better fit your game.
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 how many dice can be rolled to resist
a consequence. If there are 9 actions, for exam-
ple, 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.
It is very possible to use nine or even six carefully
chosen action words. However, if you do some play
testing and find that players have trouble figuring
out how the actions interact with what their char-
acters are doing, you probably need to change your
wording.
You could also have more than 12 actions (such as
15), but that becomes a lot to remember.
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
5
playsheet, plus four that the player assigns. If you
lower the number of actions without changing how
many dots they get, then the PCs begin with some-
what broader 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 6 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 -1d for level 3 harm) on 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.
 ⚫ 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 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 has descriptive tags that represent abili-
ties, resources, items, allies, etc. On each action
roll, the player gets one die for each applicable
tag. You would probably need to set a limit on
how many tags can apply on any single roll, with
special abilities or advances increasing that
maximum in certain circumstances.
Special Abilities
Special abilities customize each PC by providing
cool and useful capabilities or tricks. Each playsheet
has seven abilities listed on the playsheet (except,
weirdly, the Cutter, who gets 8).
In your game, how many special abilities should a
PC have at game start? Just the one as in standard
FitD? Or, if you want them to be a little more
advanced, you could give each playsheet its own
default ability and one other chosen from the list
at character creation. 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.
6
Veteran Abilities
There is a slot on each playsheet for “veteran abil-
ities.” It’s not well explained in the text, but the
intent here is that the player can take any special
ability from any other playsheet. Don’t be confused
by the three dots in that category on the playsheet:
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 playsheet.
Any PC can take any ability from any standard
playsheet. The ones on the playsheet are just sug-
gestions. You can take as many veteran abilities as
you want. Essentially, there is only one big, freely
available list of abilities for everyone that happens
to be divided up onto specific playsheets for space
and thematic reasons. A character could, from start
to retirement, never bother with a native playsheet
ability.
However, even if a GM is sure to point that out to
players during character creation and advancement,
many players will focus mainly on the abilities that
are right there on the playsheet. In choosing which
abilities go on a sheet, be sure to create ones that fit
the theme of that character type. At the same time,
think about how characters with other playsheets
might use each ability on any of them.
Messing With Special Abilities
It’s fine to take the standard abilities and distribute
them among re-skinned playsheets. Maybe you
want to do a more traditional fantasy game, so you
make a Fighter playsheet and start with 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 playsheets,
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.
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 +1d to action rolls or other rolls in a specific
circumstance.
⚫ Give potency or +1 effect level in a specific
circumstance.
⚫ Increase load limits.
⚫ 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 pushing, such
as making an attack at long range without pen-
alty -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.
⚫ Give the character access to crafting, alchemy,
rituals, or other system for creating new
capabilities.
⚫ Improve 1–3 results to 4/5 in specific circum-
stances (making partial success the worst
possible result).
⚫ Gain +1 stress box.
7
⚫ For playsheets that have a companion (such as
the Hound’s hunting pet) in their equipment
list, a special ability can give the companion
extra abilities.
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
hiding).
When creating a playsheet 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 playsheet 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-
sheets—that’s pointless, since PCs can take abilities
from other sheets.
You could choose to impose some kind of pattern to
every playsheet’s special abilities. In standard FitD,
the first listed ability on each playsheet is presented
as a good default starting ability if the player isn’t
sure which to choose. You might make sure that
every playsheet 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 playsheet’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
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.
8
⚫ 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 playsheet in standard FitD has a list of regular
items everyone can have and another list of items
specific to that playsheet. Special equipment is
one of the ways to make each playsheet 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 playsheet gets six spe-
cial 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 are available for “free,”
while others use one or more slots and are declared
just like any other item in the inventory.
You can change this 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 can also change how many item slots
count as light, medium, or heavy load.
You can also get rid of the load system entirely.
In Vergence, there is no formal system for equip-
ment or load. 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 reasonable amount of stuff. If a char-
acter got loaded down, the GM could reflect that via
position, effect, etc., but there is no system for it.
Other Playsheet
Things
Any number of other items could be added to play-
sheets 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-
sheets to represent the things that are important in
your game.
9
⚫ The PCs in Vergence are from different bloodlines
that have bred for the power to open gateways
between universes. Playsheets are grouped by
bloodline and players can take veteran special
abilities only from other playsheets in the
same bloodline. The contacts on playsheets are
designed so that PCs from the same bloodline
are likely to be related to each other.
Ancestries
In some games, players will choose an ancestry
(species, kin, race, kind, 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 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 method could work in almost any game with
divergent species of PC. If, for example, the char-
acters 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
hard to catch, etc. The GM would charge stress when
those abilities have a significant effect on the game.
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. 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
playsheet, 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 provide
these kinds of collective advantages:
⚫ 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.
10
⚫ 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 with different 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.
Claim Map
If you are using claims, then the crew sheet should
have a claim map. Claims are discussed elsewhere
in this guide.
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 just one sheet for managing group resources
rather than several (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 the basic cycle of free play,
score, downtime. The system is built so that the
characters noodle around in free play until a score
happens, followed by downtime, followed by going
back into free play. You can use this basic structure
with perhaps a few tweaks, or you could change it in
significant ways.
⚫ You could retain the basic FitD phase structure,
but with other kinds of phases, such as rest,
travel, scheming, exploration, reporting to
headquarters, training, going on missions,
dueling your pet monster against other mon-
sters, etc. You’d want to clearly define the
function of each, making them mechanically
and thematically distinct.
⚫ You could build game phases around some
other dramatic unit of time, such as scenes. You
would then establish rules for different types
of scenes, such as action, social, and montage
scenes. Depending on how you did this, it might
drastically change the structure and flow of the
game. You’d need to establish what triggers
the start and end of a scene. You’d also need to
adjust how resets happen: how do the PCs get
back more stress, reset abilities and armor, heal
wounds, etc. Could they have a short montage
between action scenes to reset some or all
stress? If so, should they have fewer stress by
default then in the standard game?
11
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 might change
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 one or perhaps two
scores. A major score could take a couple of sessions
to resolve, 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 which, for the most part, cannot be recov-
ered 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 less 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 or give extra dice to
the engagement roll, affect what items can be
included in load, or other relevant tweaks to the
system.
⚫ Another change would 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 you game, free play might often
merge right into a score, so the starting position
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
12
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 engagement
roll to encourage players to skip tedious preparation
and planning for a score. They can always flash back
to the planning they have already done for the sit-
uation at hand, whenever that would be necessary.
Flashbacks fit many kinds of fiction, but not all. In
a horror game, for example, you might eliminate or
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).
Load
In standard FitD, players state at the beginning
of a score how much load they are carrying, but
the specifics are declared later. This is essentially
another kind of flashback mechanism, designed to
encourage players to not worry about the planning
their characters are doing and jump to the action.
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.
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.
Stress
Stress is the core currency of PC activity in the
game. It's useful but limited. If you don't like the
system for stress as written, you can fiddle with it.
For example:
⚫ 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.
⚫ In the standard game, you have a reserve of
stress that you can spend and later restore. An
alternate method is to have stress start at zero
and have PCs gain stress which they later take
action to remove. This makes no difference
mechanically, but may have a different feel that
fits your game better.
Trauma
When you go to zero stress, you suffer trauma.
Trauma takes the PC 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 (up to 5), it's very possible to go into trauma
unexpectedly (two bad resistance rolls will do it).
This system is designed to reflect the desperate
and unpredictable nature of a criminal gang on the
13
bottom of the social hierarchy. It might or might
not fit your game.
⚫ Trauma could remove the character from play
for some specific period, such as the current
scene. You could also be more specific about
what it means. For example, for the rest of that
score it could limit the actions the character
can take unless in the company of other PCs to
provide assistance and encouragement.
⚫ 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 goes out via trauma to temporarily
take some specific role while not playing the
character. That could be playing one or more
NPCs, negotiating for especially interesting
Devil’s bargains, choosing the next big narra-
tive beat, or any other role that fits the theme
of the game.
⚫ 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 push, resist, or do other things requiring
stress. Some abilities let you mitigate exhaus-
tion in certain ways.
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 push this mechanic even harder 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
or a fully restored stress track, but the PC will
not survive.
⚫ 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 playsheet 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 abstract and versatile system works well 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
14
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.
⚫ Provide a more forgiving recovery system, such
as this one (which doesn’t use a clock):
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
coin spent
1-3: Clear all level 1 harm
⚫ Taking more downtime actions for healing
doesn’t cost coin, it only means the GM has
justification to advance faction clocks.
⚫ Healing just costs coin, no die rolls.
⚫ Clear all level 1 harm during downtime auto-
matically, no recovery action needed.
⚫ All harm drops by one level automatically each
downtime. A PC can take a recovery action to
heal more quickly than that.
⚫ 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. Sources
of solace 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:
⚫ You could also have PCs automatically recover
some set amount of stress, such as 4, each game
session. They could then choose to indulge vice
if they wish to recover more than that.
⚫ You could 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.

Indulge Vice Here are some other ways to make factions work:
Roll worst ⚫ The simplest system is to just use roleplaying
Critical: Recover all stress
Attribute 6: Recover 5 stress and faction clocks. When the PCs interact
rating 4/5: Recover 3 stress positively with a faction, establish a clock to fill
1–3: Recover 2 stress and toward gaining their confidence or earning a
overindulge significant favor. When the PCs interact nega-
tively, then create a negative faction clock and,
⚫ A simpler and more forgiving system is to have
when it fills, have the faction take some kind of
PCs recover all stress at each downtime. This
reprisal.
could fit a game about larger than life action
heroes, for example, or one in which each ⚫ In Vergence, most factions are led by a single
downtime represents a significant amount of strong individual, so factions are presented as a
time and a chance to fully reset. That could be list of NPCs and what they are in charge of.
a “free” reset, require a downtime action but no ⚫ In Deathwish, there is a formal system for estab-
roll, or it could require a downtime action and a lishing different levels of alliance. The stronger
roll such as this: the alliance, the more resources are available to
the crew.
Recover Stress
Recover all Critical: Gain extra information, Advancement
stress and a new contact, or other
FitD has advancement systems for both PCs and the
roll worst advantage
Attribute 6: No problems crew, with xp triggers that are marked at the end of
rating 4/5: +1 Heat or minor narrative each game session.
complication
1–3: +2 Heat or major narrative If you like the basic FitD xp system, keep it, perhaps
complication 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? Then you could have a very simple
advancement system (or none at all).

15
⚫ 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 games with 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.
Here are some possible changes and tweaks:
⚫ 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
position for effect just to make a desperate
roll, or tell other players not to help help with
a setup action because they want their action
to be desperate. That xp trigger is also another
thing to remember to keep track of. You could
choose to get rid of it if the incentive doesn’t fit
your game.
⚫ Deathwish has no xp system. The crew gets one
advance after completion of each score.
⚫ Vergence also has no xp system. Instead, each
type of crew (alliance) has milestones that are
specific to the threat they are facing. When
enough milestones are met, the entire group
earns an advance. This system is simpler but
less granular than xp.
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
16
for wealth: cyberpunk, sword and sorcery, 1920s
gangsters, 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.
⚫ 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 you want, 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 persuades the crew that the loot
isn’t worth much, or the crew gains access to a
huge payout that belongs to someone powerful
(who wants it back), etc. 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.
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 may not
need any significant changes.
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. If dealing with the law
and those who control it is a big part of your game,
17
this system works well. It may be overkill 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.
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.
Entanglements
If you use entanglements, you may need to create
a new set of specific random events to fit into the
random table structure. If giant monsters are a
thing in your setting, then include giant monster
attacks 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.
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 mechanical resource
drain, not an engaging part of the story.
⚫ One solution is to have entanglements happen
less often, but be a bigger deal when they come
up. For example, if 1–3 on the table is that
nothing of significance happens, then the other
results you put on the table will be less common.
You can make those events dire enough to take
over the plot when they do come up.
⚫ 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.
Turf and Claims
Turf and claims are another system for a game
about criminals establishing control of part of a
corrupt city. If your game is not, 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 corrupt city, nodes
in cyberspace, parts of an ancient teleportation sys-
tem, secret passages within a magical high school,
or any other contested “territory.”
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
18
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 (which most PCs
can access) increases their threat to 2. Enemies
also have a threat level, sometimes 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,
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 standard 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 playsheets or special
abilities.
⚫ Create a list of basic items of tier 0 or 1 that the
crew has access to (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.
⚫ 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
19
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.
In FitD, that’s not the case. The PCs take action; but
NPCs are just part of the fiction. If a PC is trying
to convince a hotel concierge to tell her which room
Lord Acton is staying in, there may be all sorts of
rhetorical flourishes happening in the conversa-
tion, but mechanically it’s the same as if she were
trying to pick the 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 NPCs. FitD games can involve
little or no prep, which removes a lot of drudgery
from the GM’s role.
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.
This is a reasonable tradeoff in the core Blades in the
Dark game because NPCs mostly have mundane
abilities. 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.
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) you can make
major or minor changes to these systems.
20
The game suggests using clocks to track the defen-
sive abilities of serious 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 mechanisms 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 has a comprehensive 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 auto-
matic 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.
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, 4/5 is a partial success, 6 a full success,
two or more sixes is a critical success.
 Dice Critical Success
0 0% 3%
1 0% 17%
2 3% 28%
3 7% 35%
4 13% 39%
5 20% 40%
6 26% 40%
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
on page 21, 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 probably
want to have a system in which most rolls involve
1–3 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.
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
21
Partial Fail
22% 75%
33% 50%
44% 25%
45% 13%
42% 6%
37% 3%
32% 2%
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.
Action Roll
The action roll in FitD uses the standard dice
mechanic to resolve any 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 have to explain it very well because
there is no redundancy to help with clarification.
Consider how much explanation will be required by
people likely to play your game.
Bonuses and Penalties
In the standard system, the chance of success is
solely a function of how many dice 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.
This works in FitD in a few ways:
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 he has been 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 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 roll against
an armor class or difficulty rating, this method
takes some getting used to.
3. FitD is related to Powered by the Apocalypse
(PBtA) games, which mostly don’t care about
the difficulty or risk of action rolls (“moves”).
Compared to PBtA, FitD is highly engaged
with action difficulty. Compared to many other
games, FitD very much abstracts difficulty.
But you could change the system to include modifi-
ers for harder or easier situations. You might do this
instead of position and effect, or as part of a com-
bined system. When the GM determines that the
situation is especially good or bad for the PC, that
roll could be made with advantage or disadvantage.
Here are some ways advantage could work:
22
⚫ 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.
⚫ Increase the effect level.
⚫ Allow the player to select one benefit from a list
(which might vary depending on the situation
or the action rating used).
⚫ Scum and Villainy has a mechanism in which
the crew can gain game tokens called gambits.
Any 6 or critical success rolled on a desperate
action provides one gambit. Each gambit can
be spent for +1d on a subsequent roll. The intent
is to provide a larger than life luck mechanic in
which success builds on success.
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.
⚫ Reduce effect level.
⚫ After the dice are rolled, take away the highest
die before determining the result.
⚫ 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 slows down the conversation
and delays rolling the dice and getting a result.
It may not fit a game that’s intended to play
quickly or that gives players other ways to com-
plicate the narrative. You can remove it from
your game and everything will run just fine.
⚫ 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
23
happens before the dice are rolled, everyone knows
the stakes before committing to an action. The flow
differs from that of many other RPGs, in which a
lot of conversation about action resolution happens
after a die roll instead of before.
For flavor, you could change the names of the dif-
ferent levels of position or effect without changing
what they do in the game.
Simplifying 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 you might find it cumber-
some. It requires a brief conversation before every
die roll.
Here are some ways to streamline:
⚫ 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
action difficulty and peril.
⚫ 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.
⚫ 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 oppo-
sition, they often begin at zero effect and must
use various mechanical and fictional actions to
achieve significant results (pushing for effect,
setup actions, etc.).
⚫ 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,
 outnumbering or outclassing the opposition,
having quality equipment, and being in con-
trolled position.
⚫ It's possible to be even more streamlined and
just get rid of position and effect entirely. Suc-
cess 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.
⚫ 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.
⚫ In Deathwish, there is an additional position
level, also called “deathwish.” If you take an
action at deathwish position and you get a
consequence, you either resist or die. This fits a
game that is explicitly designed for high lethal-
ity and multiple PCs per player.
Consequences
When the dice call for a consequence, the severity
has already been determined by position, from
level 1 consequences (controlled) to level 3 (desper-
ate). The GM now decides exactly what happens:
either some troublesome event in the fiction
(reduced effect, complication, lost opportunity, or
worse position) or harm.
⚫ 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
24
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.
⚫ 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
Harm is presented on the same severity scale as
other consequences, from 1 to 3. In theory, all level
2 consequences are equally punishing. But in prac-
tice, that’s not really true: level 2 harm is likely to be
more of a problem, over a greater period of time,
than any other kind of level 2 consequence. When
a consequence is called for, and the GM chooses to
impose harm, that’s an escalation. It’s not neces-
sarily bad that the game works this way. It’s built so
that it encourages players to have alternate charac-
ters to play while injured characters heal up. If that
ensemble crew structure doesn’t fit your game, then
you might need to take another look at how harm
works.
Harm imposes a serious limitation on the PC’s
actions until healed, which by default takes at least
through the next downtime to remove. For these
reasons, most players are more likely to resist harm
than other kinds of consequences.
 One practical issue with harm is that people
(GM and players) may tend to forget to apply the
penalties the character would normally suffer.
That’s because it’s an extra thing to remember
and the penalties are severe enough that they are
not fun.
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.
⚫ n Deathwish, a character is wounded (-1d),
broken, or dying. There are not multiple harm
boxes at each level.
⚫ 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 temporary.
It still takes up slots in the harm tracker, but it
disappears when that makes sense in the fiction
rather than requiring downtime actions.
⚫ You could specify that harm is only physical
or mental damage that will take a long time
to recover from. Anything else, such as being
drunk or scared, is a complication.
⚫ 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
25
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 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.
⚫ You could switch the penalty imposed by level 1
harm (-1 effect) and level 2 harm (-1d to actions).
Arguably, -1 effect is worse than -1d.
⚫ In Vergence, level 1 harm imposes no mechanical
penalty (“it hurts but you’re OK”). At level  2,
the character must spend 1 stress or take -1d
to actions; at level 3, the character must spend
2 stress or take -1d to actions. 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.
⚫ 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.
⚫ 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
replaces harm with a set of predefined con-
ditions (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 prob-
lems (but on a 6 you overcome the problem and
the condition is helpful).
Resistance ⚫ In Blades Against Darkness, PCs don’t resist by
rolling an attribute. Instead, there is a track
Resistance is a core piece of FitD. It allows players indicating increasing levels of distress, starting
to say no to whatever consequences they don’t like. at Fresh. When you resist at Fresh, you roll with
This provides a high level of player agency compared 4d to find out the stress cost and cross off that
to most other traditional RPGs. box. The next resist is also at 4d, but crosses off
the Shaken box. Then the next resist is with 3d
But the GM still has a lot of control. The player can and crosses off the Tired box. As the boxes are
resist, but the GM determines the position that crossed off, the PC has fewer dice to resist with,
sets up the severity of the consequence and to what eventually landing at Shaken with 0d.
degree the consequence is mitigated. The GM can
⚫ In Deathwish, you can avoid level 1 harm by
inflict consequences without any roll at all and so
spending 1 stress. You can do that after resist-
could overwhelm a player with too many conse-
ing, if you want.
quences to resist (that’s not a good idea, but it’s not
disallowed). Ultimately, the GM and players need to ⚫ You could standardize how much a resistance
play collaboratively in order to make the game fun, roll reduces the consequence. Instead of having
just like any other traditional RPG (the resistance it be GM fiat, for example, you might specify
mechanic can’t protect players from a bad GM.) that resistance is two levels. That would make
resistance a bit more effective and reliable.
Resistance is also a gamble, since it has a variable ⚫ You could let the player choose how much of
cost. With an unlucky roll, that cost can more than a consequence to resist (from level 2 to level 1
half your starting stress. Thus the game makes harm, for example). Then roll on a table like this:
it so that most consequences must be accepted,
but those that seem especially egregious can be Resistance Roll
resisted. That fits the “desperate criminals” default Decide how Critical: Recover 1 stress
FitD setting quite well. Since the range of possible many levels of 6: Spend 0 stress + levels of
results of a resist roll goes from gaining +1 stress to consequence reduction
reduction. Roll 1d 4/5: Spend 1 stress + levels of
losing 5 stress, it’s a very swingy gamble. Any time
for each Attribute reduction
PCs have 5 or fewer stress they are gambling on the rating. 1–3: Spend 2 stress + levels of
possibility of a resistance roll pushing them into reduction
trauma
⚫ Instead of rolling to find out the cost of resist-
You can reasonably leave resistance as-is in almost ing, you could have the player pay stress to resist
any FitD game. But there are many possible resis- and then roll to see if it works. For example,
tance tweaks, such as: resistance could have a flat cost of 2 stress, with
⚫ Make the stress cost of resistance less extreme, a roll on this table:
using a table such as this one: Resistance Roll
Resistance Roll Spend 2 stress to Critical: Completely avoid the
1d for each Critical: Recover 1 stress resist, then roll 1d consequence and also gain an
Attribute rating 6: Spend 1 stress for each Attribute advantage
4/5: Spend 2 stress rating 6: Completely avoid the
1–3: Spend 3 stress consequence
4/5: Reduce the consequence
by 1 level
1–3: No luck

26
 ⚫ In Deathwish, the cost of resisting a consequence
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
that action would cost 1 stress). If you resist a
consequence not generated by a roll, you roll an
action rating with the cost in stress equal to the
lowest die (or 0 if you roll a 6).
Who Does the Resisting?
FitD requires no fictional justification for a
resistance roll. The game doesn’t ask the player to
describe any PC action in order to resist. Yet resis-
tance depends on PC attributes and costs PC stress.
So who resists, the character or the player? The
game doesn’t really care.
Sometimes, it’s easy to explain resistance in terms
of the PC doing something. If the PC slips and falls,
we could narrate the character starting to slip, but
using willpower to stay upright instead.
But what if a group of drunken bravos unexpectedly
wanders around the corner and stumbles toward
the crew? If the player decides to resist bad luck, it’s
harder to rationalize the character doing something
to avoid it. It’s more like the player choosing to exert
control of the story, independent of the character.
In practice, many groups mix these modes depend-
ing on what seems to make sense in the moment. But
you could change how your game views resistance.
⚫ Resistance could be made into an explicit PC
move. Resistance could require justification
and narration of something the PC does in
the fiction. That would mean that some conse-
quences could not be resisted.
⚫ Alternately, resistance could be a player move.
It is is a matter of luck or fate: something that
happens to the PC but is not done by the PC. You
could lean into that by personifying the fates,
gods, AIs, or other beings intervening on behalf
of the PCs. There could be a currency separate
from stress, such as divine favor, that the player
uses to resist.
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Armor
Armor provides resistance at no cost in stress. The
term “armor” in FitD refers to both physical protec-
tive gear, as well as “special armor” that may protect
against other sorts of undesirable events. Any use
of armor requires a box to be checked off, which
refreshes at the next downtime.
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 con-
sequence. It’s implied in the rules that you can, but
it’s not fully clear.
Special Armor
Each playsheet 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 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.
You could also have abilities that do other things than
resistance 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
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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 fit the theme of your game better.
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 just let the other resolution mechanics apply to
information. Nevertheless, if your game will involve
investigation, 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.
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, at a cost of 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
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better chance of avoiding consequences 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
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.

It’s Your Game

Any experienced FitD designer will find many paint, take out the windows, stick in a bunch of
points of disagreement with what I’ve written here. aftermarket parts, add racing stripes, and make it
There is no single way to look at hacking a game as completely yours. Your game can have as much or
deep as FitD. Feel free to use this guide mainly to as little FitD in it as you wish.
help you identify all the ways you think I don’t know
Have fun and make a great game.
what I’m talking about and thereby clarify your own
thoughts.
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

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Credits
Text and layout by David Rourke Cover image by Hush Nadoo
Game stuff: smallcoolgames.itch.io Typeface: Alegreya by Juan Pablo del Peral
Twitter: twitter.com/SmallCoolGames1
Email: smallcoolgames@gmail.com 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
There are so many excellent and innovative Forged
in the Dark games that I cannot begin to list them
all. There is a partial list at the official Blades in the
Dark site.
Here are the games and game supplements men-
tioned in this text:
◆ Asphalt & Trouble by Jacob Segal
◆ Band of Blades, Blades in the Dark, and Scum and
Villainy are published by Evil Hat Productions
◆ Blades Against Darkness by Dylan Green
◆ Deathwish by Ian Hart
◆ Crash Cart by Galen Pejeau
Other Resources
◆ An Amateur's Guide to Hacking Blades in the Dark,
by Michael Elliot
◆ Austin Ramsay’s FitD Tech for #TechJam by Austin
Ramsay
◆ The official Blades in the Dark web site and
community forum: https://bladesinthedark.com
◆ The Blades in the Dark Discord server: discord.gg/
JWJYp7RH
◆ The Reddit Blades in the Dark channel: reddit.
com/r/bladesinthedark
◆ The Hacked in the Dark YouTube channel: youtube.
com/c/HackedintheDark

◆ Microblades by Vandel Arden ◆ The Hacked in the Dark podcast can be found at
Apple, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and Player.fm
◆ Moth-Light by Justin Ford
◆ Raiders in the Dark by Small Cool Games
◆ Ruralpunk by Cass K
◆ Sig: City of Blades by Jason Pitre
◆ Slugblaster by Mikey Hamm
◆ Vergence by Small Cool Games
◆ Wizard playbook by eatyourcereal

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