Comments Off on Blades in the Dark: First Look

I found Blades in the Dark through a friend and decided to drop a dollar on it to check out the quick play rules. I heard a lot of good things from the G+ community and the author also wrote Lady Blackbird, which I’m a fan of. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.

(Quick note: This game isn’t officially released yet and the author asked that no one pass out the quick start rules to anyone other than backers or people in your game group. As such I’m going to avoid talking about specific mechanics.)

Blades is about scoundrels and the next big score. It draws inspiration from the video games Dishonored and Thief. Everyone in the group is some sort of cut throat and scalawag who are at the same time competent and prone to vice. There are five play books/classes to pick from. Unlike games like D&D or Apocalypse World, each play book/class isn’t super unique. Everyone has access to all the skills and (at least to start) each scoundrel will only have a light advantage in certain situations. This isn’t a bad thing, but if you are expecting classes in Blades to be as different as classes in D&D you’ll be disappointed.

Your group of players also pick out a group sheet which tells about your gang. As of now their is only one available but there will be several to pick from once the final product comes out. So as of now everyone is in a group of thieves. The group sheet gives your gang some assets and a few new abilities that goes to everyone. So there is plenty of room for customization both on an individual level and as a group.

The couple of things that Blades does that I haven’t seen in other RPGs are:

Quick Plans For most heist games you’ll spend half your play time planning and the other half doing. Not in this game. You pick a method and a single detail and go.

Flashbacks Need a weapon to be handy but couldn’t just walk one in? The game has a flash back mechanic that allows players to spend resources to say they did something prior to this moment. Now you can say that the day before you hid a gun in a nearby sewer grate. How great is that?

To hit and damage for problems and situations In a normal RPG you roll to hit something and then you roll to see how hard you hit it and hopefully kill it Blades does this with situations and problems. Instead of the GM having each and every trap thought out, the GM instead worries about what obstacles the group hasn’t finished with yet and sets the group up appropriately

Teamwork This is the first game I’ve seen that has a good system for dealing with a group of people trying to accomplish something The typical “Everyone sneaks by the guard” scenario can now be done with out one dumb ass in full plate mucking it up. I’m totally stealing this mechanic for my other games.

Healing You heal by getting drunk or sleeping around! No, seriously



And some problems I ran into when I ran this:

Lot to take in The quick start is 44 pages and it can be a lot to take in. Be sure to read it a few times, cause I was missing things.

Some rules were unclear Check out the G+ community. They have a FAQ up that cleared these up for me.

Stress does not = HP We made this mistake and just had everyone take stress instead of offering consequences. I just misread the rules there.



I’m going to be trying this again and hopefully with a bigger group. Now that I have my first try under my belt it should go better. I liked it enough to up my backing on the kick starter to a bit more than a dollar. Many of the stretch goals were hit already and for $20 you will get a bunch of alternate settings. I’m looking forward to the cyber punk one and making it work for Shadowrun. If you’re looking for a game of scoundrels and heists, give this a dollar and a try. Thanks for reading!

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